One of the things I remember loving most about summer was getting a pail and picking black raspberries all afternoon along the park fence behind my parents house. We would come home with nearly empty buckets, purple faces and fingers and often a stomach ache. When we did manage to discipline ourselves enough to bring home an abundance of berries, it was because we knew the splendor of my mom’s homemade black raspberry jam. We spent a summer morning in the quiet hills of the berry patch at Hencle’s Berry Patch in Baldwinsville picking early black raspberries. If you’ve never had a black raspberry, not to be confused with a blackberry…or a red raspberry, they have a distinctly different and delicious flavor. We don’t eat much sugar at our household, but we decided to use this recipe which has only 3 ingredients, if you decide to use the lemon juice as suggested by some reviewers. We ended up using a cup less sugar and it still came out great. We also opted to just do a refrigerator jam, rather than canning it, since we knew it wouldn’t last long. Boy is it delicious on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Not exactly as I remember, but pretty close.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Hoping perhaps you had a chance to do a little Irish jig, have a pint your wild Irish rose….

With all the things required of me in both my personal life and business, some things had to give…unfortunately, the blog was one of them. I’ve been posting my recent work on my facebook page and even that is somewhat infrequent. Fortunately, my clients are well aware how much a child changes things…when the third one arrived, I have to be honest and say I did not realize how much he would change things. Rest assured I am still here, I am still working…as busy as ever behind the scenes. Please forgive me if I am not able to post as much as I’d like. xoxo

This first image sums up how I have been feeling that it has taken longer than usual to post this preview. I have more beautiful babies and bellies to post very soon, but we’ll start with this beautiful baby.

What a sweet little girl and lovely family of three.

We had fun with this little guy. So cute.

What a sweet little guy. Full of smiles and just so happy to be snuggled.

Ella did a wonderful job sleeping for her session. Her Daddy is a vet and works with mice, so they brought along this adorable little mouse hat. But, I am quite certain that Ella is the cutest little mouse they’ve ever seen.

And he is just so cute. Look at his adorable hair!