Wow so December is almost here, I can’t believe it! I’m so excited for Christmas as always, but want to make sure I’m ready; my mind has been so full & busy with more bookings to arrange, trips to organise for 2012 and lots of chores & loose ends to tie up, hopefully I can catch up with everything in time to relax fully over the twinkling season! 🙂
And gosh doesn’t food taste extra extra good this time of year? So comforting in the dark evenings as the cover of night draws in, making us all scamper in to our nests and be cosy with candles & blankets 🙂 I cooked a delicious roast pork dinner this weekend, with the crunchiest, most succulent crackling, goose fat covered potatoes, veg, gravy, and for pudding – caramelized ginger crème brûlée with creamy lime brûlée tart shells!
And this evening I’m making a butternut squash, pumpkin & nutmeg soup with my new blender… as well as a raspberry & blackberry meringue roulade (because I had to do something with the egg whites left over from making my brulees of course!). Okay so maybe I’ll need to do a ‘few’ extra sit ups but talk about food for the soul! *swoon* Sooo worth it 😀

So as the last leaves blow blustering from the trees I feel lucky I managed to do a few autumnal shoots throughout my birthday month of November, including these lovely images taken by Clive at Ashridge Forest one beautiful sunlit morning…

It was an extra extra fantastical shoot because we TWICE (almost) got swept away by a 30 strong pack of deer! The first time I was posing in this sort of valley, and suddenly I could hear a rumbling sound and through the sunlight all these large creatures (bizarrely at first my mind thought they looked like giant rabbits) came marauding towards us across the field, Jurassic-Park-style, ‘they’re flocking this way!!’ and I realised they were deer – amazing!! (but alas no funny man shouting ‘Jesus Christ, Fenton!’ behind)
And later on when shooting the red dress in the woods, again the whole herd raced by, antlers aplenty, less than 10 metres from us. Well I thought it was pretty incredible anyways, and Clive managed to get a quick snapshot in all the excitement… And yes; I’m that professional that even in close range of being trambled by wild stags I STILL pose, just incase it’s the photo of the century! 😛
Well… it wasn’t quite, as we were using narrow d.o.f and they were very fast, but it proves my story even if it doesn’t show it quite as dramatically as it honestly really was 🙂 😛