I kept going back and forth about offering mini sessions for Christmas this year. The upside to doing it, is I can get more family sessions done in a shorter span of time and after a huge rush last year, I decided that mini sessions were probably a good idea. So now my only obstacle was deciding on what to do! I love getting creative and I love design. I also love Christmas trees. I thought of an idea to bring a Christmas tree to the beach and let families decorate it. I contacted the town to make sure it was okay first, then I put my plan into action. I was doing the mini sessions about 2 weeks before Thanksgiving. I knew that I saw trees at Walmart before Thanksgiving last year so I was hoping and praying it would be the weekend that I was planning on. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. The trees arrived a week later so I was forced to buy a fake one. Oh, the horror! For those of you who don’t know, I grew up going to awesome Christmas tree farms with my family to get our tree. We would always go the first Sunday of December, after church, hunt for the perfect tree, cut it down ourselves and bring it home to make our house smell amazing. So I have never and will never own a fake tree. But when I set it up in my house before bringing it to the beach, I was like, “wow, this is so pretty!” ….maybe having one isn’t so bad!

After a few last minute cancellations I had three families come to me that day to the beach on Oak Island. Each session was so much fun! I played my Christmas music playlist while they decorated and one family brought their own hot chocolate to drink after they decorated! I loved that idea, I actually meant to do the same but completely forgot! Though, the day certainly wasn’t Christmas and hot chocolate weather! They were forecasting temps in the upper 50s, but with my experience, they’re always off by a few degrees, so I thought it was going to be colder. I told everyone to bundle up just in case, and it ended up being 65 degrees!

Afterwards, I just sat and enjoyed the view of the tree all decorated, on the beach at sunset. It was too pretty to take down! Here’s the Best Family, the Boldt Family and then the Morris Family!