Welp… we’re 9.5 months in to Pandemic distancing, masking, being “non-essential” (lol JK we are ALL essential to this world), and all of that jazz with the highest numbers of Covid-19 currently ravaging us here in the United States-! This didn’t stop us from having our 7th New Year’s Eve together though and for the 6th time in a row, solo together with our pets as usual.
And here it is… our glittery Pandemic masked 2021 annual New Year’s Eve photo that we captured last night-!
Jenny wore her favorite vintage 80s one piece bathing suit, hose she got when she worked at a photo studio in L.A. back in 2012, and a faux fur with a glittery mask while Jason wore his favorite shiny outfit that he’s worn for the past 4 New Year’s Eves (along with a shiny fanny pack & mask Jenny got him and a light up tie that her sister got him)-! Earlier on New Year’s Eve in the afternoon we rescued a kitten outside in a park in Mishawaka which we’re fostering for 4 days until we can take him in to get scanned on Monday (since we found him in Mishawaka and their Humane Society isn’t opened after the holiday until Monday morning). He ate up some of our own cat’s food that we gave him, drank the water we gave him, and we put him up in a massive plastic dog crate (our dog Rizzo’s) with blankets so he could warm up from the snowy 20 degrees he had been outside crying in. We’re keeping him completely separate on a different floor of our house from our other 3 pets (male elderly cat & 2 dogs) because you never know if other animals are carrying any mites or anything, but overall the little guy is VERY clean with perfect teeth, so he may be a kitten. Our New Year’s Eve was very comprised of scrambling to help him and feed him/ try to find a spot opened where we could buy Dollar Store cheap kitty litter potty for him to use (since he obviously can’t use our cat’s) because after we Googled and Facebooked the Humane Society and found out that they aren’t going to be opened for over 3 more days we knew we couldn’t let him freely roam a whole floor of our house. We didn’t even remember to set off fireworks or build our belated gingerbread house (that we made the walls for from scratch on Christmas) on New Year’s Eve because we were trying to figure out how to help this freezing cold & desperate kitty! We did take our annual photo later that evening and just barely got to cheers bubbly grape juice at midnight (then went to check on kitty to see if it was doing ok alone)!
We’ll also share with you the other 6 years that we did our New Year’s Eve photo- the past 6 of 7 being in the exact same spot outside here in the Midwest winter. (Last year we were particularly unaware when we said “Roaring” 20s… not realizing that it’d be “Roaring” with a Pandemic, racial injustice & unrest, INSANE conspiracy theorists & anti vaxxers causing REAL harm, and a damn presidential election).
Jenny’s hair color is real in all of these, by the way. She uses a wash out colored conditioner so that it’s easier to remove the hair colors before photographing high end weddings. You may not be able to tell, but we both try to cover ourselves in FULL glittery outfits and shimmery materials that don’t FULLY show up in the great outdoors (versus an indoor studio where we could have FAR more studio lights on and directed at the rainbow shimmer materials). Anywho, here’s 2019:
In 2018 a whopping 4 New Year’s Eves ago we really clamped down on the idea of rainbow shimmers and glitter to add to our New Year’s Eve hats and kazoos.
2017 a good 5 NYEs ago we were kind of lack luster. Jenny did have a holographic rainbow shirt on with hand stitched eggs on it made by a Russian artist that she loves, but all-in-all our New Year’s Eve headband and balloon were a bit meh. We HAD just moved into our house in South Bend, Indiana 4.5 months earlier AND adopted our dog Coco 4 months before the New Year!
We started our extra-extra long sparkler tradition 6 NYEs ago in December 2015 for the 2016 New Year-! We had sparklers left over from when we’d flown to Michigan from California for the 4th of July, so we figured that it was as good a time as any to use them! We had just moved back to the Midwest 3.5 months earlier after 11 years away living in Ohio & California AND had just adopted our cat Kevin weeks earlier in that December! We had also rebranded and built a BRAND new website (THIS one!) a month earlier (after having had our own personal Professional Photography websites for 11 years now)-!
7 New Year’s Eves ago back in December 2014 we rang in New Year’s Eve up at Jenny’s mountain house in the National Forest in Santa Barbara, California with Jason’s twin brother visiting with his wife & their dog! We all made champagne gummy bears, buttered rum, and more and ended the night watching a documentary about the Burt’s Bees guy (being the very exciting young adults we are)! (We also loved spending New Year’s Day up there with them-!)
Thank you so much for putting up with our weird annual traditions throughout the years-! We love keeping our creativity up even in the Professional Photography “Low Season” i.e. January through March, so forcing ourselves to keep up with these traditions no matter how tired we are after a VERY long month fulfilling a million orders from our amazing clients AND a VERY LONG almost 10 months of Pandemic. We have so, so, so much to reflect on after we devoted our entire year to our clients and really not seeing anyone outside of work, but we’ll share more on that in a blog post later this winter-!
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If we don’t hop on here until later this month on January 27th, then just know we’re trying to breathe after this CRAZY INSANE 10 months of running a Small Business during the Pandemic. All of the peace, love, happiness, and Responsibility to you this 2021 Pandemic January! Brace yourselves for the Pandemic to ramp up even more after people have clearly irresponsibly gathered like crazy for Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and apparently many UNMASKED winter Pandemic Vacations to Tulum, Mexico. We hope you survive and that you don’t kill anyone <3 Please keep folks safe. To a SAFE breather for those who get holiday time off of work!