Whale Watching and Holidays

It's been a busy holiday week! This year we had four Christmases with both our families - at Tommy's Grandma's house, with my cousins, with my family and with Tommy's family. Its nice to spend time with everyone and make new memories. Over the last few years I've learned to really appreciate and cherish the time you have with your loved ones.

This year for Christmas we gave customized photo calendars to our families. Tommy made a calendar for his family using his photography with all the family birthdays. I made a calendar featuring my artwork for my family. These calendars went over well, we even had to get some for ourselves! Here are some pictures.

Custom calendar for my family with some of my favorite artwork

Do you remember this older drawing? This was one of my favorite drawings I made when I was in school.

From Tommy's calendar. This is a photo of his sister's cat Bridgette (RIP, I miss this sweet kitty)

This picture was taken at Joshua Tree National Park. Tommy exhibited this at the 2017 Ontario Open art exhibit this past spring. 

This week, after the Holidays, I went whale watching with my sisters, my sister-in-law and all my nieces and nephew. Even though we didn't see any whales we saw lots of dolphins and had a great time. Some pictures below.

Newport Beach Harbor. We did the Davey's Locker whale watching tour. It was 2.5 hours boat ride.

I just missed the dolphins this shot! Didn't catch any on camera :(

View of Newport Beach from the pier. There was people swimming in December!

For Christmas we got some gift cards to Best Buy. At first I didn't know what to buy, since we haven't been to the electronics store in a few years, so I was a bit overwhelmed trying to think of what to get. We decided to get some video camera filming gear since Tommy and I have been talking about doing video projects like documentaries, etc. We came home with this:

(Left) Light reflectors for camera light, a shot gun mic that connects to the top of a camera, and and LED light

Mobile photography kit for my phone - I was originally going to get a flexible tripod for my phone but then I saw this entire kit that comes with a flexible tripod with bluetooth shutter remote, a microphone, a mini LED light and three clip on lenses (Fish eye, wide angle and macro) plus the case to store everything! 

Testing out the video kit for phone. So far I love it! I'm thinking of using this to record drawing and painting videos once I start working on my 2018 artwork for the Invitational. 

We were so excited, like kids get on Christmas, when we came home with our new gear! I'm really looking forward to making new projects and videos.