Happy Easter!!

Happy Easter, Friends!
This weekend is one of the busier holiday weekends I've had. Tonight, we're cooking a big Roast dinner for my Mom and Grandpa. Aside from tonight, we have dinners to go to every night up until Monday. I'm going to be exhausted by the time Easter is over! Right now, I'm just relaxing watching some TV before I have to start making all the veg & potato dishes!
I hope your Easter is full of family, friends & good times!

Little Maple Leaf: Food Edition

Balsamic Chicken with Brown Rice

Homemade Ceaser Salad Dressing

Sweet Potato!

I have a serious love affair with food. 

Cooking (as well as eating) is one of my favorite hobbies. I'm constantly looking for new recipes to bring into my kitchen that both John & I will enjoy! Lately, I've been all about cooking ethnic (Indian, Thai, and Asian dishes mostly) and usually about cooking healthy. Most recently on my "must make" list: Sweet Potatoes. You can do so much with the delish vegetable & they are oh-so-good for you. But, you already knew that! I love to mash my sweet potatoes & add brown sugar, cinnamon & nutmeg to them as well as a little bit of butter. Mmmm. 

Also, as much as ceaser salad has a high fat content, homemade is always the better option. It's quick & simple to make and probably cuts out the fat & calories (as well as the surprise additions) that come out of a bottle.

The one thing that sucks about creative cooking is that it costs a lot of money. I used to follow recipes to a T but lately, I'll usually try to use what I have on hand and create my own spin off a recipe that I've fallen in love with!

Anyway, enough banter on cooking.. I hope you enjoyed the pretty food photos that came along with this post!

Have a great day!

Five Senses

Seeing

Snow that is finally starting to melt!! I see grass again, people! Let's celebrate!

Tasting

Morning coffee that I've been savoring oh, so much lately! Also, lots of healthy chicken dishes that I've been whipping up!

Hearing

Pink & Fun-Give Me a Reason -- Such a beautiful song that I find myself rockin' out to at the top of my lungs everytime I hear it play.

Smelling

Summer candles such as "Beachside" from Bath & Body Works. The scent smells like sunscreen and fresh water and I find myself aching for the summer months everytime I light that baby!

Touching

My camera everytime I cook food! I've been so good at snapping a quick photo on my whiteboard of whatever dish it is that I've whipped up!

*originally inspired by Angela Hardison

Friday Chaos Blog Hop!!

Friday Chaos Blog Hop!!!

Yay!! I'm so happy to be co-hosting with the Friday Chaos Blog Hop ladies :)!! This has seriously been the most successful blog hop for me so I strongly encourage you all to participate if you're looking for more readership! Have fun!

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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Hi I'm Kristine, Enjoying_Life with 2 crazy boys, a soldier, lots of gym time and open road running. Raising my family fit &amp; beautiful, no matter where we call home!"</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />"Honey's mummy follows my journey through mummy hood to a beautiful little girl and baby boy. I am a qualified beauty therapist, ex air hostess and one time city EA. So glad to have found my ultimate calling - bringing up beautiful babies. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We moved to Surrey from London, with Honey's daddy - a professional rugby player and sausage maker."&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><br />Don't forget to come by next week and link up to see if you're featured as <b>Blog Of The Week!</b> <br /><br /><b>Featured Co-host</b></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">

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Unedited: Day to Day

After some back & forth decision making, I finally decided to incorporate a little personality into my blog. I'm going to do my best to take my good camera with me almost any time I leave the house capturing moments I would normally snap from my I-phone (which is often). I want to show my readers a small tidbit into my life while also practicing my photography. :) I like this idea because normally I only post photos when I schedule a set time to go out and take photos but I'm only sticking to one theme usually (nature). There's so many other things to take photos of!!! Which means, more practice :)

Unfortunately, I just came up with this idea yesterday and while I have snapped a few photos from my professional camera, here are a few tidbits from the past week courtesy of my I-phone (if you follow on instagram, sorry if you've already seen these):

The most beautiful sunrise that I see when the sky is clear on my morning drive to work! I always say I'm gonna take a photo through my window and this time, I finally did! Yay!

I'm serious when I say I'm obsessed with our kitten, Minni. John and I often talk about bringing a puppy into our family, but I just don't know if I can. How would Minni feel? Ugh! Serious problem, guys.

I ran my first 5k on St. Patty's Day! I've just recently taken up running and I'm so proud to say I ran the whole 5k race in 33 minutes and only walked about 3 minutes of it! This is a major accomplishment for someone who always shyed away from running because I found it waaaay too difficult.

Following the last photo, I'm now training for a 10k! I'm addicted to races now (after 1, haha). My ultimate goal is to be able to run the 1/2 marathon come September! Wish me luck!

I read on one of my fave health websites (Women's Health) about a challenge where you have to cook for 31 days! I loved this challenge because I have a bad habit of always wanting take out or restaurant food on Friday nights. Ugh. So John & I accepted the challenge.......

....until Friday rolled around and we decided to get Thai. Challenge=Fail! But we started over and now we are on day 4 of cooking! Yay us! P.S. Just discovered Pad Thai (amazing!)

Me hangin' in John's hat cuddling with Minni. This happens on a nightly basis. I was also watching the Spring Finale of Pretty Little Liars. Anyone else watch? So amazing. What do you guys think of Red Coat?

Me taking a random outfit post today at work. I kinda liked my outfit today, I felt super preppy! Ha.

Hope you enjoyed taking a peep into the life of Little Maple Leaf :)

Randy & Tannise's 25th Anniversary

My best friend Tamara gave me the honour to photograph her parent's 25th anniversary!
I've always been close with her family so it was definitely nice to be a part of such a special event.
They had some beautiful decor that included candles everywhere & rose petals!
The cake was also decorated by a family friend and it was gorgeous.

It's definitely rare nowadays to see love last so strongly for so many years and Randy & Tannise are some of the lucky ones!

Happy 25th you two lovebirds!

Tannise & Randy's 25th Anniversary

Blog Lovin'

<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/5050737/?claim=62yt8hcf74q">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

So I guess Google Reader is closing??
News to me.
If you want to continue following my photography adventures after July, it'd be an absolute honor to have you.
Thanks for the support!

Foam Board

So I got a white foam board for my photography. Of course, when I decide to start practicing on it, it's dark. Just my luck.

The point of having the white foam board & diffuser is to take the photos when there is sunlight in order to obtain the natural lighting. So instead, I used a table lamp for my lighting and had a very persistent kitty wanting to take photos with me. Le sigh.

Something I noticed (and remembered from my schooling days) is that when you DON'T use the diffuser (which I didn't use.. but perhaps should have especially since I made it tonight and it's just sitting there) is that there's a lot of shadows on the white board. Unfortunate.

I'm going to practice this more on Saturday when I have the day off.

Until next time.

New Layout

I designed a new layout for my blog. A nice simple design.
I want my photos to be the main focus of Little Maple Leaf and I don't want a busy layout & banner to distract from the pictures.

As I learn more about design & photoshop, you may see some more changes. But for now, I'm really happy with the clean look.

In other news, we had a big snow {storm?!} and now it looks like a Winter Wonderland outside. I mean, yeah, it's pretty and all... but I really want to see some flowers & green grass. I debated taking a walk down a trail and snapping some photos... but I'm feeling particularly grumpy today and to be honest, don't really feel like it. It would be beautiful though.

Until next time...

Coloured Winter

Funny story about today's photoshoot:

For the photo of the small walking bridge, I had to go through probably about 4 feet of snow to get to that little area and my feet were soaking & freezing because snow got all down my boots & socks.
As I proceeded to take the photo, I heard a rustling and sniffing in the bushes behind me so I ran for my life back to my car getting yet ANOTHER sock full of snow. I was terrified for my life. It didn't help that there were animal tracks EVERYWHERE at this park. So yeah, it was pretty scary.

The things I do for a nice pic eh?!

Summer by the Lake

Another one of my instagram photos taken from last Summer.

 John's family's camp is my favorite place in this entire world. When I'm out there, I feel relaxed and at peace. It's comfortable & cozy, there's always an amazing dinner being made and not to mention a glass of wine or a Corona very close by!
Looking at this photo brings back some amazing memories and I can't wait for Spring to arrive so we can head back out there and enjoy the great outdoors {in luxury}.

I'm hoping to be able to go out to my family's camp spot this year. It's literally in the middle of nowhere but it's so quiet & calm and the fishing is great. I wasn't able to go last year because I was working at a job that didn't allow me to switch shifts very often. Last summer wasn't the greatest. But I really hope to make up for all my lost times with family this summer!

More of my professional photos will be posted back soon. I just wasn't able to get out today because of my stupid dead battery. Hopefully tomorrow! Happy Saturday!

Waterfalls & Rainbows

Some old instagrams that I took last year with my cell phone.
Our city had just had a flood so the water was extra high at the falls... everyone and their mother was going to check it out, including me. I remember being amazed out how quick the water was flowing. Also, certain lookouts were blocked off because the water was skimming the bridges so it would be dangerous for people to stand there.
Amazing, I tell ya. Plus check out the rainbow! So close & beautiful!

Flowers-Last Summer

Today I took a nice scenic drive to take some more snowy photos to discover my camera was dead. Such a waste of gas! Ugh.
After cursing alone in my car, I went to the grocery store and now I'm home watching Real Housewives of Vancouver... don't judge.

Because I have no recent photos to show you, I decided to pull some of my old photos from last summer when I first started toying around with my camera every now and then. I remember being really proud of these photos because they were the first ones I had actually tried to compose properly and I really liked the result.

Looking at these photos is making me super excited for when the snow melts, the water starts flowing, and the flowers start to bloom.. so much prettier to capture than snow & slush!

I am actually going to be posting some pretty instagrams that I took last summer too. Hint: They involve waterfalls & rainbows. So keep an eye out!

Which sort of makes me wonder if I should do a weekly instagram feature as well or if that would ruin the quality of my blog. Thoughts?