With almost 400 guests, an amazing Boston band, enticing silent and live auction prizes, and sponsors such as Grey Goose Vodka and South Coastal magazine, the night was wildly successful in raising money for the Glenna Kohl Fund for Hope.

I’m guessing you’ve never been to a masquerade ball like this? It felt so very Shakespearian! People were decked out from head-to-toe, including elaborate gowns, top hats and masks. I look forward to seeing this event continue on in memory, support and celebration of one beautiful young woman’s life – and beautiful young people everywhere.

More photos can be found HERE.

Well what can I tell you for today…

My photography is up in our employee exhibit space at my office in Boston for the month of October, so that’s pretty fun. I put up about 8 or 9 canvases and two framed prints, and we even had a little “gallery opening” one evening. I just wish I worked on the floor that all the photos were on so I could enjoy seeing smiley dog faces during the work day too!

You may have caught that I also photographed some pretty big-name New England athletes a couple of weeks ago (click the photo for more). It seems I’m doing more and more events – another one coming this weekend with a masquerade ball! – which is completely unrelated to pet photography. Sure, I can get away with shooting the occasional family portrait, but how do I market myself as a dog and event photographer? Stay tuned, as there are a lot of thoughts like this circling my head now that I own staceyhedman.com for launch in the spring. Version 2.0 of my business is on its way!

In the meantime, Gary got his hands on six gallons of unpasteurized cider at the orchard up in Manchester, VT, and he’s currently in the middle of brewing a large batch of hard cider. The house smells yummy, and what a perfect time of year for it! The reason he was up in Manchester, and I was not, is that he’s helping his folks build a gorgeous pergola over their back deck. From the looks of the weekend’s photos, it’s reminiscent of an old Vermont barn framework – totally awesome.

My Dad’s birthday just passed and Gary’s birthday is next week! We missed apple-picking season (again), but we do have some prime pumpkin-carving activities in our future. Oddly enough, the cucumbers are still growing like crazy, and I pulled ten off the vine last week. What a confusing year to start your first vegetable garden. I’m kind of happy that we didn’t have a summer this year though… I mean, I love the sun and beach, but it was like having a year off of some of the thoughts you often have in the summer – cleaning the house for company, looking good in a bikini, making sure you’re wearing enough sunscreen, being out on the boat all day and thus accomplishing nothing on the homefront. I’m okay with just raising the white flag and saying “go ahead, winter, let’s do this.”

Since you just clicked on a site called SaltyHedman.com, I’m going to go ahead and assume you’re at least slightly interested in what we Hedmans were up to?… Well Friday night included a planned run around West Barnstable with girlfriends, followed by a spontaneous bonfire on the beach in Sandwich with a larger group of pals – what cozy fun!

Saturday was a day of errands and food prep for the big adventure we were to embark on Sunday morning. Months ago, we reserved our spot on a small island off the coast of Falmouth/Mashpee, MA. Washburn Island is part of the larger reserve called Waquoit Bay Estuary…. and it is approximately two miles long with 11 primitive campsites. As luck would have it, and the season winding down, we actually were one of only three or four boats overnight on the first night, and Gary and I were alone with just our dogs on the second night! What an incredible heaven for the dogs (we had four total), who ran around mostly off-leash to sniff trees, splash in the ocean and – in Bromley’s case – roll in human feces and eat dead bunnies. Blech.

If you are interested, make your reservations very early in the year next year. Particularly if you’re looking for a Friday and Saturday night, which we obviously didn’t get this time around. The island is now closed to campers for the season. We shared the trip with our friends Jess & Nate and Alicia & Tim, and dogs Kenai, Shiloh, Brewer & Bromley – but we look forward to being able to include more of you next time!

By the way, Washburn Island is one of those things that makes me completely doubt my first 18 years on this peninsula. I don’t know what the heck my friends and I were doing all those years that we never kayaked Scorton Creek or camped on a desolate island.

Anyway, I hope you had a relaxing and uplifting mini-vacation yourself over the weekend, and that you’re enjoying the crisp September air that blew right in!

I thought I’d share a few scenes from the beautiful evening my girlfriends and I shared with BIRTHDAY GIRL, Cindy. We had originally tossed around a bunch of picnic-by-kayak types of ideas, but with the whole hurricane “thing” going on, we found ourselves on the Yummy Goods-inspired farmer’s porch of our friend Melissa’s home.

Note: I’m pretty sure the deck doesn’t always look like this, but trust me when I say that the inside of Melissa & Stuart’s home is indeed that yummilicious.

That’s Beth in the corner, who just minutes before these festivities had posted a most lovely blog post about ME and Cold Nose Photo – thanks Beth!

Cindy, we hope you had a marvelous birthday eve in the company of your fine friends and bread n’ cheese – and wine and that heavenly chocolate peanut butter cake! Oh, and unicorns.

This isn’t my usual bus…

I’m typing to you from the bus up to visit my friend Jessica in Portsmouth, NH! But this isn’t just any bus… First, I printed out my ticket directly from the C&J website. I arrived at the gate and was handed a bottle of ice cold water. Walking down the aisle of the bus, I turned from leather chairs to televisions (with headset jacks at each seat) to the ample leg room, and right to the jewel of it all – CUP HOLDERS. Why is this the first bus I’ve been on with cup holders? How awesome that would be in the morning for our coffees.

We start to pull out of Boston’s South Station and – what’s this? – we have WIRELESS INTERNET??

Anyway, Jess moved to Portsmouth recently while beginning an exciting job opportunity in Newburyport, MA. I look forward to getting up there, taking her dog for a walk (her other dog is home with Gary and the boys right now), and walking around town with only margaritas as a goal.

So what have you been up to lately, my friends? Are you enjoying these lovely two weeks of summer before it all disappears again? Exciting to be talking about hurricanes already…

I’ve gotta say, the photography biz just took an extreme turn for the sky in this beautiful weather (that means it’s gone “up”).  I have booked six dog gigs over less than three week’s time, and that’s not including a spontaneous session at a family reunion with four families (and three dogs) on the coast of Rhode Island! My press release was picked up for the first time today by the new BostonPetLink.com, and I even interviewed with the Barnstable Patriot yesterday. How funny, because my friends and I used to be in the Patriot for local rec and high school sports.

Gary’s been doing a ton of fishing, and we’ve been eating a ton of fish. Our garden is finally catching up and we’re seeing lots of cucumbers, tomatoes and hot peppers forming. Unfortunately, our many dog walks through the woods and ponds has led to us both having poison ivy on our hands right now – ITCH!

These photos are from the recent annual trip Eric & Jill made to spend a week on the Cape with the kids and friends!

No, it has nothing to do with sunshine or anything – don’t be crazy. June has now passed with 30 days of rain, rain, rain. Honestly, even July has sent us packing for the hills of Vermont this 4th of July weekend. I haven’t been on the boat once, but Gary’s been squeezing in some excellent fishing with pals whether rain or shine, daylight or midnight.

Heather was in town from Arizona for the last few weeks, which is always awesome. We managed to hit a couple of our regular spots to catch up and eat ice cream, but the time went fast. Here are her girls playing at Craigville Beach one evening:

The Pashbys came into town one weekend as we also kicked off Emily’s bachelorette weekend in Wellfleet and Provincetown! Drag-queen karaoke is the perfect bachelorette festivity, FYI. Highly recommended. It was great to have a bunch of our friends meet each other that weekend, all cozied around the back deck sharing laughs and that now-so-familiar bottle of Hound Dog iced tea vodka (classy). We also got to meet Otis that weekend, the adopted little boxer brother of Toro Pashby!

In the meantime, a local animal hospital is ordering up about 10 to 12 of my prints in art gallery canvas and they look incredible! Check out the first trial order  below, and you’ll see this 30×20″ vision of Brewer above your bed when you visit next. It’s so exciting to see these and to be able to start showing them to clients.

On that note, I dabbled in my first-ever family photo session on the beach for a college friend, and I actually loved it! While I don’t expect to change the business name to ‘Warm’ Nose Photo any time soon, please do spread the word to friends and family that I’m available! Click on the photos to go through to the larger portfolio.

Stay tuned for more photos from last weekend, when Gary, Eric and Jill all ran the Fairfield Half Marathon in Connecticut, and the nieces and nephew had their uncle build them a big sand box in the back yard!

I hope you all have something exciting and dry planned for the holiday weekend ahead!

But sadly, unless Gary wants to start posting to the blog himself, this post isn’t about hippies and Wal-Mart parking lots.

It was a blissful weekend on Cape Cod! I worked from home and had some great walks with the dogs at nearby conservation areas. I spent a LOT of time on my photography business and was even contacted about two dog sessions and a large border collie event in August! Check out the next stage of the Cold Nose Photo logo:

I went for runs and I rode my bike, but I didn’t do any of the planned yard work because of the insane amounts of mosquitoes in the neighborhood right now! Gah!

The only human contact I had were the lovely ladies encircling Yummy Goods in West Barnstable >HI LADIES!< and an evening out to celebrate Kim’s birthday at Baxter’s on Saturday.

It’s not to say that I don’t love my husband, but it felt really awesome to be so silent and self-scheduled for a few days! I always had things like this to look forward to upon his return:

Sunday night I drove out to Chatham for a photo session with horses! And ducks and chickens and sheep and donkeys… It was so much fun! Here’s one cool shot, but you can check out the rest over at Cold Nose Photo or by clicking through this photo to my Flickr site.

Welcome to the glorious month of June! Happy Birthday to my fellow Geminis!

You can see the picket fence in the background here, but rest assured there is also wire fencing behind it to keep the four-leggeds on the inside.

I love that everyone’s laughing and happy in this photo:

Tracy’s kids are so incredibly used to having dogs around. Charlie decided to spend some quality alone time with Brewer in the grass.

Sister Michelle thoroughly enjoyed playing in our sandbox… She doesn’t need to know it was actually a veggie garden, to be planted today.

It was soooooo wonderful to be able to hang out with friends, stuff ourselves with food and merriment, and know that our “kids” were having fun nearby. No one was home alone in a crate. Every pup was getting their exercise and socialization. All were laying down, exhausted at the end of the evening. We counted 11 dogs in total!

This morning was another momentus occasion! We woke up, opened the door, and joined the dogs in the yard while sipping coffee! I’m still in my pajamas!

Hope you’re having a wonderful Memorial Day weekend where you are!

We started planting from seeds about eight weeks ago, which means it’s time to start moving these little guys out to the great outdoors. So far we have broccoli, asparagus, hot peppers, sweet peppers, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, spinach and various lettuces growing in the house. Still to come will be brussel sprouts, snap peas, cucumbers, soy beans and potentially more!

In order to give our new veggies the best sun in the back yard, Gary and I moved the shed about 30 feet to the back of our yard. Here are the three 4×8′ raised beds that we built this weekend!

While we’re at it… Gary and I were also down in Barrington, RI this weekend to help out with the renovations to the home Gary grew up in before moving to Vermont at age 11. We snatched up (with heavy shoveling) a ton of hostas from the yard and replanted them in ours.

Here’s a look at the stone wall and landscaping Gary has endeavored on to the left of our driveway:

What have you been up to in your own yard? Want to start a veggie garden of your own but have no idea where to start? First, there is an endless amount of information for free on the Internet or for a quick $12 bucks at Amazon. But for a quick fix in Eastern MA try Jennifer at The Edible Yard. Better hurry!