The fall-like winter seemed to quietly turn into an early spring, but suddenly the weather changed to a real winter. Freezing cold. Snow. Frozen dew. The winter tyres are not just a luxury right now and I have to keep carrying buckets of water for the horses. It’s so cold that even the water inside the horse stables freezes. But it’s gorgeous! I took my horse Leska’s coat off for the photo and she loved it.

A few months ago, Jamy from De Top and Jonathan from PicturePresent asked us to teach a workshop on posing wedding couples.

Right after we had agreed, I was a little nervous. A workshop by Marco and me – would anyone want to come see us speak? What if there’s no one there!
The workshop is tomorrow. And I’m a little nervous again. Our workshop was sold out first. Twice. So we’ll be speaking in front of a lot of people.

And of course we are still dotting our ‘Is’ and crossing our ‘Ts’ on the night before the workshop. That’s how we roll. But we survived Friday the 13th unscathed and I’m sure we’ll do fine on Saturday the 14th. We prepared well and we mostly know what we will talk about. But I’ll admit it’s a bit exciting. And then there’s the real important issues yet to solve. Like: black heels or silver heels? Blue nail polish or orange?

We are going to do our stinking best and hopefully there will be a few photographers in our class tomorrow who will briefly think back to us during the next wedding they’ll photograph. And who will then pose their bride and groom with lots of confidence. And lots of fun.

December 31 is obviously a good day to look back at the year past and look forward at the year to come. And I’m sure that’s what we will do, tonight, with a glas of bubbly and traditional pastries. But this New Year’s Eve, I thought it would be good to take you back to last month. Nice warm weather. Enjoying our time off. A great hotel. A unique country. Awesome company. Dubai. Amazing!

The top photo is the view from our hotel room at Le Royal Meridien Jumeirah Beach. We totally recommend this hotel! Another one of the hotel, seen from the ocean.

Botero’s horse at the very luxurious Dubai Mall’s entrance. The crazy tall Burj Kalifa in the backgrond – with its 800+ meters the tallest building in the world.

Of course we visited the observation deck of the Burj Kalifa. Just the elevator ride up to the deck is a whole new experience. And when you’re up at over 500 meter height, the skyscrapers below you (that are way taller than the tallest building in the Netherlands) look like little toy towers. Bizarre.

We’ve done quite a bit of sightseeing. A few photos we took on our trips.
Marco in the desert:

The Burj Al Arab – the only seven star hotel in the world:

One day, we had lunch at the Pierchic restaurant at Madinat Jumeirah. It’s built in the ocean at the end of a long pier. Great food, great view!

View of Dubai from Palm Island:

Atlantis The Palm at Palm Island:

My mom and I at the Dubai Marina:

Grand Mosque:

I could go on and on with photos of the Dubai Creek water taxi, the old souks and lots more, but I’ll close off with this amazing night time panorama shot of the Dubai Marina, close to our hotel. We know we’d love to come back to Dubai again – and next time we’d love our trip to coincide with the horseraces at the Meydan Racecourse!

Have a fun and save New Year’s Eve and we wish you a wonderful and beautiful 2012!

Mascha and Jeroen got married in the West-Frisian Museum in Hoorn, which was totally decorated for Christmas. We’ll share more photos from their awesome wedding soon, but I thougth this was a fitting image to wish everyone very happy holidays!

Enjoy Christmas and enjoy spending time with your loved ones!

Lots of love,
Marco and Ellen, Ms. Daisy and Flo

Dubai. A very special country. Or rather, a very special emirate. With scorching sun and fresh white snow. The most luxurious malls and the cutest little souks. Star restaurants and falafel-on-the-corner. Women dressed all black and men in white robes. The most expensive racehorses and the fastest camels. Manmade islands in the sea and vast areas of desert on the other side. My parents and us spent a week basking in the sun, enjoying a sumptuous life and being amazed by this awesome destination. It was superb and great and unique and I would go back in a heartbeat. I’ll share more photos from our trip soon, but this race camel with a mind of his own will have to do for now.

Happy Thanksgiving!