And the winner is....

First of all, thank you, thank you, thank you!  To everyone who entered, shared and voted, what a fun contest!  I am so doing this for spring so stay tuned for sure!

It was a great race and all three finalist were great pictures that represented the holidays perfectly.  I loved it!  But we have to have one winner and without further adieu that winner is.............

Alyx from

Everyday a New Adventure!

with this beautiful picture...

Blog // Facebook 

I will be e-mailing you, Alyx.  

Thank you again and happy Sunday!

Photo Contest Finalist

Happy Wednesday everyone!!  

Today I want to showcase the finalists of the photo contest we had last week.  Some great pictures were entered, THANK YOU so much for those of you who entered and voted, what fun!  

However, we could only choose three finalists here today and of these three, one will win a free ad space, beautiful French scarf, and some French coffee!  Well, it might be Kenyan coffee, just sold here in France, but you get the idea.... :)

So let's get to the introductions!

First we have Amy from Avery's Loft and her three beautiful kids on Christmas.  This definitely looks like the holidays to me!  Aren't they cute in their matching jammies??  

Then we have Alyx from Every Day is a New Adventure.  She is a fellow expat living in Germany teaching English.  Love her blog where she shares her wonderful adventures of living abroad.  Isn't her photo beautiful!   And so creative!

Then lastly, but most certainly not least, is Lil Moo Moo who blogs over at Musings of Lil Moo Moo about life as a newly wed, her gorgeous wedding and much more.  She shared her beautiful Christmas card this year where we get just a snippet of how pretty that wedding was.

Okay, so here's how you vote.  Just leave a comment below with the picture of your choice in the comment.  One vote here per person!  You can also head over to Ma Nouvelle Mode's Facebook page and vote there. The pictures will be posted, just like the one that you are voting for!  That's it!

Congrats to our finalists and good luck!!  Thanks everyone for joining in the fun!

Holiday Photo Contest!!

Back in August I had a contest for the best summer photo.  I thought it was a lot of fun and wanted to do it again!  I think I will do it for each season as opposed to a weekly or monthly meme.  So with the holidays over and I am sure you have loads and loads of wonderful photos, it is time to showcase your favorite!


Here are the guidelines:


For the pictures:

• Have the picture represent the holidays to you.  You have to have taken the picture.  It can be of whatever subject you want, your mom, dad, kids, husband, dog, whatever.  But what embodies the holidays to you?
• Link up a post with one picture in the post.  This is how we are going to vote, so it needs to be specific. {I really hate being a meanie, but I will delete posts with more than one pic. So be good:)}
• Make sure you have the button in the blog post you linked up.  Use the button code below and paste it in the edit HTML section of your blog post. When you click back to 'compose' mode this beauty will show up!
<a href=”http://manouvellemode.com/” style=”border: none;”><img alt=”Ma Nouvelle Mode” src=”http://http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c142/nlynn6/MNM_Holiday_Photo.gif” style=”width: 129px; height: 129px;”/></a>

For the linking:

• If you want to link up and you don't have a blog, that's okay! You can link from a Flickr or Photobucket account too!  {good for Etsy shops without blogs}
• After you link, check out some of the others that look good to you.  The top 3 links with the most clicks will be the finalists.
• Don't cheat!  Scouts honor here, kids!  Click if you think the picture looks interesting, don't click your own picture a million times.
• Tweet, Facebook, or blog about your link.  Once you link up, you can see the number link you are and send your friends and family to your link.  Get your friends & family voting for you!

And you know what, to up the anti a lil' bit, the winner will get a free LARGE ad space on Ma Nouvelle Mode for the month of February, a beautiful scarf purchased at a little French market here in my city. AND a bag of my favorite French coffee!!  I might even throw in some French chocolate...  How's that for incentive??

That's it!  I will do my best to feature each link on my Facebook and twitter accounts one time for equal opportunity.  After that, it's all you!  I will reveal the top three finalists next week! 


Good luck!!

My Second Wedding

A couple months back I got to be a part of a wonderful photo shoot.  It was so much fun.  Many of you might have seen the gallery of images, but I thought I would re-post many of my favorites.  The pictures were featured on Style Me Pretty, a popular wedding blog, and you can see the whole gallery here.

The photos were taken by Brienne Michelle Photography.  She is really really talented.  I was so impressed with the pictures.  My hair, which was super awesome, was done by the fabulously talented Anna Quinn.  Makeup was done by Kristen.  I felt like a rockstar!

 Lavar and I were married 4 years ago.  Unfortunately, I wasn't all that involved in the wedding planning.  Don't get me wrong, mom, it wasn't you!!  I wish I would have, but you know, young and stupid, I didn't put much thought into it and I didn't know much better.  The photography was one thing I didn't like.  He wasn't creative.  Our poses are us just standing there.  No props. Nothing fun. Such a bummer.

 But these pictures... I LOVE these pictures!  She was so creative with the lighting and poses and telling me where to look and what to do.  Cuz let's face it, I'm no model and I had no idea what looked good.  She was probably getting a good laugh editing these.  "She thought she was so sexy!! hahaha"

 So these pictures are my new wedding pictures.  I love them.  I am even gonna get them printed out and hang them.

 The only problem is that guy on the left there, don't know him.  And the girl on the right, I actually know her, so I guess that's okay.

 With all this beautifying going on, I almost actually felt like I could have been a model!  But then real life kicked in and I remembered how much I liked to eat.

 We had a blast at the reception! haha

Since I have been settling in here, I haven't scheduled too many posts and I am working at night so I don't get to put that much time into the blog.  Not as much as I would like to anyway.  But my plans are 1 hair video and 1 makeup tutorial a week along with some outfit posts and whatever else I feel like writing about.  What do you think?  Is there anything you would like to see or not like to see here?  What are your favorites?  What do you expect when you come to my blog?  Sorry for the questionnaire, just trying to get some direction!!

Happy Monday!



Brienne Michelle Photography website
Flowers - Petalicious
Hair - Anna Quinn
Makeup - Kiara

Favorite from September

I saw this challenge over at The Paper Mama and because {like most mothers} I think my kids are the cutest there are, I thought I would enter.  I recently took this picture on our plan ride home to France when we were stopped in Madrid.  There was a play place in the airport.  Genius.

If you want to check out other links, here's the button.  But if you have seen mine and already think he is the cutest, I totally understand.  :) 

 Happy Weekend!

Summer Lovin' Photo Contest Finalists!

First I want to say, thank you all for participating!  It was super fun to see all your pictures of what summer means to you.  You guys took some beautiful pictures!

Now it's time for the finalists!!  Drum roll pleeeaaasssseee......

In no particular order, first up we have sweet little Aveline.  Gina over at Oaxacaborn submitted this photo of her beautiful daughter and her infectious smile. 

Here's how Gina describes summer: "It’s summer. I can smell it in the fresh air blowing in through the open French doors as I sit drinking my coffee out of a cobalt mug. I can see it in the wind that blows through Sierra’s long silky fur, and I can taste it in the tender lettuce greens heaped high on my plate."

Photo #1 ~ Sweet Aveline

Then we have Liene from Femme au Foyer.  She is a Latvian expat living in France! We live about an hour and a half from each other, what a small world!

"Sometimes you remove the seeds. Other times, you eat them first."  Super cute!!

Photo #2 ~ Lovin the seeds!

And lastly, we have Lesley from Fabulously Flawed.  I love her photo because it is a different take on summer.  Here is what Lesly had to say about what summer means to her:

"This is summer to me.  We live out in the country.  In summer our front field blooms with a million wildflowers. It's really so lovely.  My daughter and I gather up cookies and tea and have sunset picnics.  It's really one of my favorite things about life, let alone summer."

Photo #3 ~ A Country Summer

Now for voting!  Just leave a comment saying "I am voting for Photo #..." with the number of the picture you will be voting for!  You can also cast your vote on my Facebook Page by leaving the same message "voting for photo #..."  Super simple! {maybe not for me later... :)}  Finalist, make sure you share with your friends and family on Facebook, Twitter, blog, or wherever else you want to share!  Get those people voting!  The winner will be announced toward the end of the week!

Congrats to the finalists!!  Beautiful pictures!!

Summer Lovin' Photo Contest

Okay, it's time! Got those pictures ready?  I am so excited to see them!  First of all, let me show you mine.  This has to be one of my favorite pictures of the summer.  I brought out the camera when Tae was swimming and started snapping some pictures of him doing all his awesome jumps.  Here is his best karate move.

Don't you love it?  This is summer to us.  We spend almost all day outside in the pool or hanging with friends.  Tae is a fish and Eli is loving it just as much.  So this picture represents our summer so well. 

So now it's time!  What picture represents your summer?  To enter the contest check the deets posted earlier today.  Enter your post and make sure you click on some of the others that you think might like!  By clicking you are voting and the top three will be finalists!  No cheating and clicking your own a million times, people, girl scout's honor!!  Feel free to become a follower of my blog to stay updated, but it isn't a part of the rules! :)  But please grab a button to put with your post or on your side bar!  Thanks!



<center><a href="http://manouvellemode.blogspot.com/"><img border="0" src="http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c142/nlynn6/summer-lovin-photo.gif"/></a></center>

Can't wait to see all the photos!!

Summer Lovin' Photo Contest Deets

Are you ready??  Tomorrow is the big contest!  I can't wait to see everyone's pictures!  I also have one of my own that I am pretty excited about!  I thought I would give you some deets today so that you can be ready to link up in the morning.  Here's the 'rules':

For the pictures:

• Have the picture represent summer to you.  You have to have taken the picture.  It can be of whatever subject you want, your mom, dad, kids, husband, dog, whatever.  But what embodies summer to you?
• Link up a post with one picture in the post.  This is how we are going to vote, so it needs to be specific.
• You can link up to 3 photos, but they have to each be in separate blog posts.  See point above... :)
• Make sure you have the button in the blog post you linked up.  Use the button code below and paste it in the edit HTML section of your blog post.

For the linking:

• After you link, check out some of the others that look good to you.  The top 3 links with the most clicks will be the finalists.
• Don't cheat!  Scouts honor here, kids!  Click if you think the picture looks interesting, don't click your own picture a million times.
• Feel free to tweet, Facebook, or blog about your link.  Once you link up, you can see the number link you are and send your friends and family to your link.

That's it!  I will feature each link on my Facebook and twitter accounts one time for equal opportunity.  After that, it's all you!  I will reveal the top three finalists next week!  If you have any other questions, feel free to e-mail me at manouvellemode{at}gmail{dot}com.

<br /><a href="http://manouvellemode.blogspot.com/"><img src="http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c142/nlynn6/summer-lovin-photo.gif" border="0" /></a>

I can't wait to see all your pictures!

Family Photo Session

I am super excited about today.  Today my family {parents, brothers, sister-in-law, niece, & our family} are taking family portraits.  My husband and I are having a fun time putting together outfits to make sure we all look 'fly'.  That sounds a lot better when he says it...  But anyway, I spent some time looking through some websites to see what kind of pictures I like.  I know I don't want totally posed pictures, but I wasn't really sure what I did want.  So here are some I found and like. 

Love the way this picture is in action, the kid is clearly enjoying himself.  Super cute.

Just love the little, sandy feet.

I love the parents kissing with the kids in front, super cute!

Little studly boys.  I like I have a couple boys who would fit this description!  Except little Eli has a herniated belly button and it sticks out super far.  It basically looks really funny. haha

I have a few boys that might like to do this post too!  Boys love to jump!

I love this picture with the letter K in front.  I might have to go find a really big 'S' tomorrow.  I also think I like the ones where they are sitting down.  I don't really know why, but those are the ones I kept choosing.

So tomorrow my lovely cousin is taking our pictures.  I can't wait.  She is just starting her photography business and we are happy to let her 'practice' on us.  We also don't have any family portraits, barely any pictures for that matter, of just us four.  If you have any suggestions for cute picture styling ideas, I would LOVE to hear them!  Please leave them in the comments, we need ideas!!

I can't wait to be able to share the pictures with you all!

Don't forget about the Summer Lovin' Photo Contest tomorrow!!!  Get those pictures ready!
Picture credits for all the pictures