Welcome to our blog!

Hi, thanks for stopping by our photo blog! I'm Anna, the person behind all of the blog posts you're reading! I work with my husband Travis, aka TT, a wedding and portrait photographer for MD/DC/VA area. What you'll find here is our latest photography work, our life, passion, family, and all the moments that I want to remember about everything else that happens in our lives. We'd love to hear from old friends and new friends so don't hesitate to leave a comment / subscribe us to get the latest blog posts.
By the way, be prepared for some music pumping on here as it's loading; Turn your volume up/down, put on your headphones ;) Enjoy


email embrace @ embracephoto . net ; anna @ embracephoto . net ; travis @ embracephoto . net ;
phone anna 240.506.1491 travis 703.608.8152


Monday, December 31, 2007

Happy New Year 2008!!!

Ok everyone, my work just announced the "We won't notice it if you had left" the unofficial early dismissal message so...we're jumping up and down! We're going to start our NEW YEAR celebration NOW!!! Ok, so HAVE A WONDERFUL NEW YEAR celebration with your loved ones. Wishing you all a happy, healthy, and of course properous NEW YEAR!!!

We have lots on our TO-DO list for this year, but we'll take it ONE BY ONE and do them in mindfulness !!!

See you NEXT YEAR!!!! (love that...it's the perfect time to say that!)

Love,
our hubby&wife team of Embrace Photo

Friday, December 28, 2007

Holiday 2007

This year, we hosted our first Holiday dinner at our house! So, on the night of Christmas Eve, my parents, brothers and sisters gathered at our house for dinner and celebration. Since this was the first time we had a full family reunion after my brother's graduation, we got together for a post-graduation memories. My brother was excited to put his gown to use!


My brother is the youngest in the family, but he still loves holding and kissing our parents:




The kids' favorite moment, time to tear up those wrapping papers, but before doing so, we did manage to capture this. They were on their last breath of patience!

My lovable nephew, the cheeks I don't mind pinching:


The following are some of my own captures that I would like to remember:
Princess kept on carrying the presents up and down from the table, aligning them neatly, almost wanted to tear them all up before the stroke of midnight!


Piggy riding uncle:


Can one tell that Princess doesn't want to be bothered when it comes to unwrapping those presents. But babyboy loves his sister anyways:


Santa dropped this new TOY down my chimney (: TT that is my santa. I didn't get anything for him this holiday, but all of us should learn how to share (: So I'll share my new toy with him.


This is a whole story on its own. Can one guess what this was? After having finished opening her presents, she actually stuffed on and wore all of the clothes she received one layer after another, until her behind turned into this hilarious looking booties.


That's all our story for Holiday 2007. We hope everyone had a restful few days off, and shall we begin our New Year Countdown-----3 Days before 2008!!!

Thursday, December 27, 2007

My Brother's Graduation

My brother is now officially an alumni of University of Maryland at College Park. The moment our family has been waiting for, as he walked that stage of success. I get very sentimental when it comes to these events and speeches, they always make me teary. But they're good happy tears. Here are a few images captured by my older brother, another set of artistic eyes in our family.

The 2007 graduation for the A. James Clark School of Engineering was held in the Cole Field House:



That's my brother getting up and walking that stage, WOO HOOO!!!!

The proud family:



In case you're wondering, TT took the position of video-graphing this event, so, that's just what he did.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

My NYX collection

I heard good things on the NYX ultra mania loose powder and other great reviews on some other colors of the single and trio. As much as I love cosmetic, my wallet is crying out loud, so this is all the collection I have thus far. At the time of order, they didn't have all of the loose powder in stock, so, I'm short on 4 of their whole collection. But anyhow, thanks to Enkore for the tips on how to depot my trio, I took his advice with a little spin. I got lucked out that I only have 4 of the trios, so guest-imate that they will fit into my MAC palette even if I don't take each metal pan out individually. So, I followed Enkore's method by prying out the black plastic pan, by wiggling it and bending the corner and side. Yes, I sort of observed the sides, and wiggle to loosen it up..then I sort of saw a small opening, from then I inserted my tool, and pried it out. I was afraid to cut the black pan, so after the whole plastic insert is taken out, I used double sided tape and taped the whole trio black plastic pan onto my MAC palette. (Oh, of course, you'll have to follow Enkore's method of converting the MAC 15 and snapped it out.) So instead of taking advantage of all of the 15 available spots, I put all 4 of my trios and have the perfect 12. I'm very happy with the result for now. For those that don't mind using your MAC palette for just 12 NYX eyeshadows, then this is really a quick method. But if you want all 15, then you can do enkore's or glitzy's method (: If you feel the double tape isn't secure enough, then use more double tapes, or...you can use your imaginary from here to try out whatever you'd like (maybe krazy glue - after all, enkore's genius alcohol method can loosen the glue if you ever want to take the black plastic pan out from the MAC palette). I just want to share my experience with you all. Feel free to let me know how you think.

Of course here is my NYX collection and the before / after the NYX trio depotting (don't mind the crazy original NYX's label I taped onto MAC, that's just for temporary before I use the other labeling method :)





I really want to share this with you all. I can't really do anything without my princess's help. She saw me taking pictures of my makeup, and this is what she came up with:

She took a picture of her own kiddie collection!!!
Too cute (:


By the way, NYX's loose powder are not bad at all, pretty good as a matter of fact, but do use it with a mixing medium. Their jumbo eye pencil leave crease on my lids, but I will definitely give them another chance. I have only used one of their trio thus far, and the rust is indeed very nice! I used that for the holiday party look I posted earlier. The gloss- I ordered only one- the Earth, and 3 words- simply too pretty!!

Happy Holidays everyone, may this season bring you much peace for your heart and much laughter for your soul.

Monday, December 17, 2007

How small can the world be??

Ok, so I know all of you have stumbled into people you have once known in your life. But what are the chances of that happening. Pretty rare. So here is the scoop:

On Saturday, we attended TT's Holiday Party at the Ritz Carlton in Pentagon City. The event is held here I would imagine every year, for the Crystal City team. He's been with the company for seven years, but this was only our second time attending the event. Last year, I felt a lot of vibe entering the cocktail hours, and followed by the entrance of the ballroom with a live-band. But this year, I had all intentions of arriving on time for the cocktail hours, but with the kids' arrangements and all, we arrived at the last few minutes of cocktail and entered right into the ballroom. As we were looking for his team and colleagues, and almost made the decision to sit there, but there wasn't enough seats, and right then, we met another of his colleagues who was sitting at the next table, and there were 2 seats left so we decided to join them. As soon as I rested my purse and looked around at my table, you would not imagine who I saw. I had to blink my eyes a few times, and screamed out "BURROWS". But the room was still very noisy and she didn't hear me, so I got over to her seat, and tapped her on her shoulder, she turned around and we were both soo shock. For like 1 minute we were just staring and smiling at each other, speechless. Then we both started rambling on playing catch up! She was my very sweet High School friend and we haven't seen each other for yearsss. What a coincidence to have found each other in this large crowd, but yet, we were so close as to be sitting in the same table for dinner!!?? How small can the world be?? I have heard from friends that she is doing her studies out-of-state, so definitely she's not the person I would expect to run into. But she was in town that weekend only to attend the holiday party with her boyfriend. So now, we're both up to date with each other. She has 3 more years to finish her Ph.D at HARVARD!! We are soooo proud of her!!! Congratulations!!! We all knew she had great potential and would excel. Go BURROWS!!! We definitely have to stay in touch!!


Yes, TT and I did the boogie to the 'electric slide' and all that!
As I was testing out the point-n-shoot Sony I had borrowed from my younger brother, since our princess had broke our small canon (which actually was cured a day later, by our wonderful TT. It had gone through some trauma but it's still so faithful and now still works like a charm!! Unbelievable how many times we dropped it and thought we had to lay it to rest. Canon A80!!)

I love this dress. It didn't come out exactly like how I had pictured it, but in the end, with the help of Christina, my go-to personal stylist, we had pulled together this customized look. Couldn't ask for a better fashion (: Red sash bow and red rose, totally a holiday look, at least to me (:

By the way, the makeup I had on, if you're at all interested, I'll share it with you on the next post (:

Happy Holidays from the Makeup Gurus

I thought this was very cute, how all the makeup gurus I've been following put together this. Thought I'd share it with you. Pursebuzz, you're so cute, I love your new haircut. Thanks for passing it on to us. Aboywearingmakup, you're just soooo hilarious. Enkore, thanks for putting it together! Thanks for thinking of us (: And Happy Holidays to you all from Maryland!!



By the way, thanks again to pursebuzz for passing on the awesome sale that Urban Decay is having, 30% off HOLI code. And the best part is, it's $1 shipping. You can't beat that!! It's a dead on STEAL!!! I'll share with you my hauls in future posts to come (:

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Farewell to Autumn

So Winter is officially here. How we miss the nice warm days out. Not too long ago, these were how we spent our Autumn days:

On a nice Autumn day, our princess and prince got a treat to BK as we rarely eat out:


Our prince catching a glimpse at the birds flying by:



Our girl's infamous smile:


Natural hair style when mommy was too busy cooking and neglected to comb my hair:


Cruising our Pontiac on Halloween day, what a beautiful day if you can recall:


An act that he often does and just makes us CRACK UP:


Princess is more observing than mommy, she notices everytime when the house is clean, smelling good, or the grass is freshly cut, she would make compliments that makes our heart so flattered that she actually notices!


Our princess having fun in the yards:


Our little ones learned to share!!!


They learned to appreciate one another (at times):


If you noticed from the photo of Princess on the grass, she is having on Minnie Mouse while Prince is having Mickey Mouse. Princess knows so whenever she wears Minnie, she makes sure little brother wears the Mickey. Mommy only pointed that out one time to her and she remembered.

Another thing we want to share with you is that our little ones have taken a big milestone in learning to sleep by themselves!!! Makes me sad, but in the long run, we know that this is the best. The first couple of nights, it was hard, as princess would come over and ask if I can stay in her room until she falls asleep for a little bit, but mommy assured and praised her that she is being such a good BIG girl, that she actually slowly and quietly went back to her room and didn't make a sound. I was VERY Impress! Loving them to death!

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Some makeup we love

I couldn't help but share this with you all:



Note: on either browsers, you can click on the above picture and zoom in/enlarge to see the detailed directions on how to achieve that beautiful look.

This is sooo sooo perfect. Hope you enjoyed (:
Those that are interested in trying some fun eyeshadow colors and on a budget, L'Oreal is having BOGO going on NOW at your Eckerd Pharmacy or also known as Rite-Aid!! Actually the sale wasn't on their ad!!! I just stumbled onto it while in the store, so just wanted to let you know. I bit my tongue and hauled some HIP duals for myself!! I will post my collections as I get them (soon) (**SiNgiNg** I'm so excited... and I just can't hide it). LOVEEEEEEEEE ~.~

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

It's My Birthday

A year older is a year wiser, a few more wrinkles and fine lines and a few more gray hair. But what the heck, who's counting? Let's go celebrate! Thanks to all my gal friends from High School for taking me out for my Birthday on Sunday night. Although the weather reduced the number of activities that was in plan, it was a blast just to hang with the girls. Check out my friend Lynn's blog for pictures from our girl-night-out!


Also, thanks to the two awesome anonymous guys who bought us our drinks at the bar!

**Ok, I usually don't do this, but IT'S MY BIRTHDAY, "so I do what I like", {dancing & spinning}" Adding to the collection of photos that I'd want to look back ten years from now**
Before I headed out, TT and I went for a studio spin:




Guess what, I finally get to go to the movies in ages!! Thanks to Lynn for taking me out to see Enchanted!!! I really did like it a lot! I'd recommend it to all the ladies!! Especially if you like Cinderella fairy tale then you'll dig this one! I am considering taking TT to see it again!