Clay and I got to spend some much-needed time with two of our very creative (and cute!!) friends from Berkeley this past weekend in Oakland. It's always a lot of fun connecting with college friends and sharing post-graduation stories, especially over Indian fusion! Justin and Clay actually had teamed up this past fall to shoot a couple of wedding videos that were back-to-back weddings over two consecutive weekends. (See one of them here!) While Shira and I recently have been able to find that we share the same excitement for lettering, photography, hiking, and travel. I'm so glad we got to explore a little bit of Oakland with them before we left for our trip. The first two shots were actually taken just in front of a wall that we happened to drive by on our way to lunch!

My friend Dennis thought that it'd be a good idea to celebrate his sister's birthday this year by giving her a photo shoot and I was glad to help! Emma came down to the South Bay early on a cloudy Saturday morning and luckily, there was no rain at that hour.  We all decided to head over to the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga which was close by and had a variety of different spots including a hiking trail (with a running creek!), a historic villa, and a garden theatre. It was a morning well spent shooting these two siblings!

Fred Mok is the pastor of the English congregation at the church I grew up in, Chinese Church in Christ - South Valley. I got to know him and his wife Judy pretty well while I was part of the youth group in high school and also when I served as a youth counselor during my first two years of college. One winter back in 2010, I started taking family photos for them. Even when I returned home from Berkeley for the holidays, I would visit them at their home and take some family snapshots. And I'm definitely excited to say that this past Sunday, we had our 5th annual Mok Family photo session! As you can see in the second to last picture, it usually gets a little chaotic with all four Mok siblings Caleb, Micah, Abby, and Elliot, but that's what makes it so enjoyable.

Clay's company held their holiday party at the Academy of Sciences this year, so we decided to drive up a little earlier and explore the City together. Here's a photo of me with my handsome date at Mount Davidson just moments before the sun disappeared. And here's the same photo below, just slightly edited!

A few weeks back, I helped my friend Kirstie carry out a photo shoot for her online etsy shop, A Jar of Pickles. She opened up this shop a couple years ago when we were both still in college and since then has created so many lovable greeting cards, notepads, and prints! This winter she designed two separate holiday card sets featuring Christmas puns and Christmas song lyrics. It was a lot of fun setting up these little Christmas trinkets and drawing out the festive spirit of the holidays during this shoot. What's also exciting to share about this year's line is that all the proceeds will be going to support the First Love International children's homes in Nepal and India, where we both will be traveling to for missions right after Christmas!