New site launch, birthday party, and awesome contest!

This past Saturday we threw a party to celebrate my birthday and the launch of my new AlyssaPix website!  Thanks to all who came out and supported the launch!  I wish I would have taken more pictures but we were all too busy having a blast to pick up the camera.  I did manage to snap a few off at the end but I am kicking myseld for not getting a big group shot, and a shot of all the guys drinking girly blue cocktails!  It was a super fun night that went by too fast!  I just wish I could do it all over again in slow motion.  So with all the excitement of the new site and because July is my birthday and I love both receiving and giving presents (mostly receiving but still)  I thought this is the perfect time for a new contest.  This contest starts today and is going to be the biggest best contest I have ever had.  As you can see the new website is geared more towards weddings then families.  After 7 years of photography I have discovered that my favorite thing to shoot is weddings.  There is just something about capturing those moments in time when two people in love become one that just gets my heart pumping!  So this contest is going out to all you local bride and grooms!  I want to offer more then just great wedding pictures to my clients, I want to offer a whole experience.  From the day you first inquire all the way to the celebration of your first anniversary I want to invest in your marriage and not just your wedding day.  I am so excited to begin this new path and thought that this contest would be the perfect way for one lucky couple to win that whole AlyssaPix experience.  So I will be giving away 8 hours of coverage by AlyssaPix and the red carpet experience FOR FREE (a $2500 value)!  To win this contest you need to email me a paragraph on why you want to be an AlyssaPix bride or groom along with a photo of you and your fiance.  The deadline for this contest is September 15th, so if you are engaged, know someone who just got engaged, or plan on getting engaged then jump on this opportunity!  Please click here to enter and see all the details and fine print!

 

I want to send out a huge thank you to Josh and Amber Meeks for filming and editing my new promo video, Michael Hardie for coming up with the design elements of the new site, Chantelle Drumeller of Simply Blissful Photography for shooting the pictures for my stop motion video in her studio, my children for being part of my video and putting up with their parents working endless hours to get ready for the launch, and last but not least my incredibly handsom and talented husband Ben of Kai designz for implementing all his web master talents on my site!  Also have to shout out to all my friends for letting me get advise and feedback from you, Debbie Jones and Maya Terhune for helping me with food for the party, and my clients for being so amazing and giving me all sorts of compliments in my rave section!  Huge Huge Mahalo to you all!  I could not have done all this without all of you.

 

So without further ado here are some pics from the big AlyssaPix launch birthday bash party!

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s get silly!

My most recent AlyssaPix bride and groom!

These two act like newlyweds even though they have been married for years!

I LOVE it!

Thanks Brenda for this awesome gift!  Branding is everything;)

Thanks Laura for knowing I would love your necklace so much you bought me one also!

 

I am so lucky to be married to the cutest web designer on the planet!

 

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BBQ & Corn Hole….Georgia Style!

Editing these pictures brought me back to that perfect Georgia spring evening sitting on the back porch with one of  my favorite families.  Yes,  I can almost feel the wind on my face, taste the delicious BBQ on my lips, and here the crowd cheering as I kick some corn hole butt!  Yep thats right!  Folks you heard it here first!  I, Alyssa Turner, am the corn hole tournament champion.  I am just waiting for my official “Corn Hole Champ” shirt to come in the mail.  I don’t know that it is the most flattering title in the world to hold but I am going to wear it proud!  To this day I can’t say the words without smirking.  I don’t know if it is just my lack of southern charm, or my short stint in prison, but I can not say “yes I just got it in the corn hole!”   with a straight face.   I was in total shock that I was the only one who had this problem!  How did everyone not giggle like a school girl every time they heard it.  Not only that but I am pretty sure I said “that’s what she said!” about 50 times that night!  Then I proceeded to laugh at my witty sense of humor…..to myself!  I know real mature, but I have not quite adapted to life on the outside yet.  Ok fine, so I did not really have a short stint in prison but if I ever do remind me not to wear my t-shirt!

Corn hole, for all of you that are unaware is a super fun game that I just happen to be awesome at!  I know, I know, add it to the list!  Ok it may have been beginners luck,  or my awesome partner, or maybe the great tasting BBQ that brought me to my victory that night, but Alyssa is my name and Corn Hole is my game!  Winning the tournament was not the very best part of my night though.  No the best part was hanging out with the Alexander’s and the Griffin’s!  Vanessa has been one of my best friends for the past 8 year, and her family has become my family.  In fact we have had adoption papers drawn up and signed to make it official!   Grandmuv gave it the seal of approval and I am in like flint!  Not only to I have the best new extended family ever, but my new dad from another lad happens to make the best BBQ in the whole wide world!  Of course he does not make it very often because it requires a whole 24 hour cooking ordeal!  No he only saves it for very special occasions, like when I come to town!  My new sister from another mister made some amazing grits!  Coming from the great white North, this was my first grits experience, and although I have nothing to compare it to I am pretty sure Jenna’s grits is up there with dad’s BBQ!  Vanessa topped it off with some amazing rosted potatoe salad and we had a meal fit for a queen, or a corn hole champ!  Thanks for an awesome visit and your amazing southern hospitality.  I am missing you all like an inmate misses freedom!  I know what your thinking Vanessa so you don’t even have to say it.  Two words…..censor button!

 

THE COOK

 

THE FOOD

 

THE DRINKS

 

THE GAME

 

THE TEAMS (well most of them)

 

THE TOSS

 

 

THE CHAMPS!!!!!!!

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Happy Birthday Corben!

Corben I cannot believe you are eight years old!  How did that happen?  It seems like yesterday when you were all snuggled up on the couch with you bald little head, your favorite blankie, and your toothless grin.  Now you are eight and you are almost as tall as me!  At least you still have your favorite blankie, and now that your two front teeth are missing you still have a toothless grin!  You are my sweet little momma’s boy and if anyone tries to tell you that being a mama’s boy is not cool you just don’t believe it ok?  Being a mama’s boy is way cool, especially with a groovy rad mom like me! I love you so much and am so proud of the young gentlemen you are becoming.  I love that you are still not too old for snuggles and goodnight tucks!  It is perfectly fine with me if you want to keep doing it into your thirties.  I know your wife may not agree but I am just saying I would be ok with it.  Happy Birthday Corby!  I love you!

Corben is my only son amongst 4 sisters and he is right smack dab in the middle of them all.  As you can imagine living in a house full of girls the football gets replaced with good hair tips and baseball gloves for dress up clothes.  Corben has awesome Justin Beiber hair so I am ok with the  first one but when you see the girls dress Corben up in a cinderella costume and tell him he must not be late for the ball well I have to put my foot down.  In Corben’s defense that has not happened in several years!  I will be the first to admit that the estrogen runs the Turner household so on Corben’s birthday we always make sure the party is all boy!  This year we decided to hit the tracks!  The race tracks that is!  Check out Corben and all his racing buddies!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Grayson is one!!!!

Move over Martha!  You may think that you know how to throw the best parties, make all those cute little crafts like no one else’s business,  and knit oven mitts out of recycled yarn, but I say what else you got?  I think my best friend Vanessa (glue gun) Alexander just blew you out of the water.  Let’s just say if I had know that Vanessa had such mad craft skills I would have made her plan all my kids birthday parties.  The birthday party she created for her sweet Grayson’s first birthday made my silk flower arrangement I tried to pass off as the real thing at my wedding coward in the corner like a nerd at prom.  This was hands down the best, most fun, fabulously decorated 1st birthday party I have ever been to.  Grayson your mommy rocks!

Seriously when Vanessa asked me to fly out and take pictures for Grayson’s 1st birthday I was so excited!  When she text me a photo of the first pin wheel she hand made I nearly fell off my chair!  Then she told me she had made a special playlist to go along with his theme and everyone was going home with a CD!  My though was “wow this is going to be one special party for one special guy.”  But when  she called me and said she may have gone a little over board I started seeing everything in pictures and I could not wait to see it all in person.  Allot of blood, sweat, and tears went into planning the best party this side of the muddy Mississippi!  I can say this first hand because I strung pennets for 8 hours staright and witnessed 10 pounds of lemons being squeezed by hand.  It may have been allot of work but it was worth every last lemon drop.  Why don’t I just stop jabbering and let the pictures speak for themselves!

Grayson thank you so much for letting me capture this great celebration!  The theme was “You Are My Sunshine” and it could not have been more perfect because this little guy lives to make other people smile! He is the happiest baby on the planet and you just want to squeeze his little cheeks off his cute little smiling face.  I tried to sneak him in my suit case on the way home but I totally got caught on my way out the door.  Probably because the bag would not close all the way when I tried to squeeze his mommy in there also.  Miss you all so much and cannot wait to see your smiling faces again!  Happy Birthday Grayson!

 

 

 

Every kids dreams of having a lemon-ade stand this awesome!  Grandpa and Uncle Wes are pretty talented!

 

 

 

 

Now this is a dessert bar done right.  For the record everything tasted as good as it looks!  My waist band can vouch for me!

 

 

Check out these hand made pin wheels!  HAND MADE PIN WHEELS!

 

 

 

 

 

Have I told you how much I love this family?

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Greg & Maya Oahu Engagement Photographer

There is something to be said about a love affair that begins at camp! Little did Maya know bathing herself in off mosquito repellant, and packing up her 6th grade class for an overnight trip to Camp Timberline, would result in meeting the man of her dreams! Maya tells me the story goes that he spotted her first. Greg might tell it a little different, but Maya swears that Greg was the one who could not keep his eyes off of her the whole time. He may have checked her out first but when Greg scolded one of the children and said “we do not say shut up at Camp Timberline……we say shut up please!” well Maya just knew he was the one, and As they say the rest is history!

Greg proposed to Maya on the beach two years later and they have been making wedding plans ever since! Seeing as  we are on the subject of proposals, I should probably go ahead and tell you the story behind this one! Each one tells this story a little different, but I like Greg’s version best. Once you hear it I am sure you will see why Maya left out some minor details when she told me her side. So once upon a time on a beautiful sunny day in Hawaii Maya and Greg cozy up on the sand and chat.  The sun was beginning to set behind them ,and they were slightly out of breath from a long day of surfing.  Greg grabs Maya by the hand and begins the speech that he had been rehearsing in his head for days. As the butterflies stir in his stomach he looks Maya in the eye and repeats what he had practice in the mirror hundreds of times before this moment, “you know Maya our life is almost perfect!” He breathed a sigh of relief as he got out that first sentence and things were going just as planned. But before he could break into his next line Maya retorts with “well it would be perfect if we had a working washing machine!” A bit stunned by Maya’s response and wondering in the back of his mind how the conversation went from wedding proposal to washing machines Greg decides to just start over. I mean after all, this is the speech that he had been rehearsing for weeks!  He could not let a little segway get the best of him. So he takes a deep breath and once again says “You know Maya our life is almost perfect!” A little confused Maya decides to keep her mouth shut this time and just smile, which is a good thing because the next line from Greg’s mouth were words that she would never forget. Greg down on one knee says “and the only thing that would make it totally perfect is if you would marry me!” This is the part in any normal fairytale where you would say “and they lived happily ever after” however Maya thinks traditions were made to be broken and decided to take a different turn on the usual fairytale ending. This was the part of the story that Maya left out when she told me the first time. Greg however was more then happy to fill me in!  So it turns out that the ring Greg picked out was slightly too small for Maya’s ring finger so she placed it on her pinky for the time being. Just like any girl who just said yes to marrying the man of her dreams she was overflowing with excitement and gushing like a school girl! (Being the best 6th grade teacher on the island she knows first hand how school girls gush!”) The sun was setting on the most perfect day of her life and she walked hand in hand with her new fiance on the beach when……oops! It turns out the ring that was a little too small for her ring finger was also a little to big for her pinky and off flies the ring into the sand! She felt it slip off her finger and as she ran through a series of what to do next scenarios she decides to tell Greg what happened. After all now that they were engaged it was for better or for worse right? So as she glanced to the left and tried to decided just how fast she could scale a few tree stumps and get into the get away car should Greg not think she is quite so cute with the ring he could have bought a small car with was buried in the sand, she confesses what happened. Lucky for her Greg was still so excited that she said yes he did not even get upset. Ok so he may have been a little upset but like a true gentlemen he hid his emotions and began to dig in the sand for the ring that he had placed on maya’s finger just moments before. After a few minutes of raking through the sand he found the ring and put it right back where it belonged.  No wait, first she made him propose again!  I can’t blame her, any true perfectionist would want to try again!  So Greg once again asked Maya to be his wife, and then they lived happily ever after! Of course once I heard the “full version” of the story I decided we must reenact it in photos! So check out the last photo to get a good visual!

Maya and Greg will be getting married next month and I cannot wait to see these two love birds tie the knot! leave them some love in the comments below and come back later to check out their wedding pics!

P.S.- for those guys out there that think taking pictures is so boring and lame, just like Greg used to, I will leave you with a quote! “You know that was really fun!” what?   yep you heard it here folks!  FUN!!!!  I am much to professional to ever say “I told you so” so I  just gave him a smile and nod….oh who am I kidding! I totally stopped in my tracks and made him repeat it just so the universe knows that I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if someone left a shoot without thinking it was fun! Just saying!

 

P.S.S- Sorry there are so many images!  These two are just too darn cute to narrow it down to just a few!

Heaps of love and blessings to you both! Can’t wait to rock it out at your wedding!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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