Bear Mug

This bear mug became the only non-gem souvenir (other than food) that we bought on our vacation.  I love mugs so much which naturally means I have a lot.  I don't know where this one will be stored... I might need to purge some mugs to make space.  I bought this mug from the Knoxville Zoo because of all the animals we saw on our trip, both at the zoo and in the wild, the bears were the most prominent.  I lost count of how many we saw, but it was a lot!  Many of the bears we saw in the wild were moms with their baby cubs.

Nenya can be hard to photograph with strobes because she washes out so easily being all white.  I also was rushing at this point because I could tell that all the hams were basically ready to be done.  So, I while I don't love all of these pictures, I decided to go ahead and share them and make this a learning experience that you really can't rush with little hams modeling for you, especially when you have run out of treats to bribe them.  :)

Okay full disclosure, I think the only reason I actually decided to post these pictures is because I actually loved the way Narya's turned out!  She just looks SO good with all these rich browns!  And the way she is peering over the edge in the second picture just melts my heart!

So you know how I am obsessed with Narya's picture of her peering over the edge?  Well, Vilya did it too!  The similarities between them are too much!  They are both so amazingly cute!!

Gems

I want to take a quick moment to point out that this is my 800th post on this blog!  I never thought I would be such an avid blogger or have actual readers, but here we are!  Hahahaha!  Alright, here's the story on these pictures.  I have to confess that 90 percent of the souvenirs I bought on this vacation were stones of some kind.  I really got carried away!  I have always wanted to buy a big gem like in this series, but I never got one growing up.  So another confession is that I really am not good at spending money on myself.  I am definitely a natural saver, not a spender like my husband.  That being said, if you are surprised like I am at the number of souvenirs we bought, it was all because my husband loves to spoil me and he does that by convincing me to buy the things that I want.  He's really quite amazing!

I love Nenya's little side smirk in the second picture!  She is so dang cute!

I have mentioned in the past that I have been pushing myself to grow and try new things, especially when it comes to lighting.  This means that I don't always get the pictures I want, I don't get as many pictures as I would like, or even that I might not like any of the pictures I got.  So that is why I only have one picture of Narya for this series.  The others were out of focus which is something that I hate posting if I can help it.  I think the fact that I hadn't taken pictures of these hamsters for like two months could have also factored into why I struggled a little more with these.  

But regardless of all of that, I LOVE this picture of Narya because she looks so amazing with all those rich browns and amber colors!

Vilya wanted to hide his face behind the stone.  I don't understand why though because he is obviously adorable!!

Amethyst

You might notice a theme with these recent pictures I have taken.  You see, I really like gems.  The more they sparkle and glitter, the better!  I also specifically really love amethyst.  When I was younger, I would often buy a small chunk of it as a souvenir from the various vacations my family took.  So I definitely already have a lot of amethyst in my home, but something about being on a vacation with my family again turned me into a kid and I just had to get another.  Of course I can't tell where I got each of those individual chunk from now, but they still hold so much value to me.

The nice thing about Nenya being white is that she looks so stunning next to any color, but I especially love the way she looks with the purple of the amethysts.  

I don't know how obvious it is or isn't that Narya is small for being a Syrian hamster, but she really is the smallest full grown syrian hamster I have ever seen.  My understanding is that her siblings stayed small too, so I'm not concerned.  I think it just makes her that much cuter!

Speaking about things that may or may not be obvious, I don't know if you all can tell that there is generally at least one picture from each ham in which they are eating.  I try to time the pictures so the food isn't super obvious (in other words, wait until they have stuffed it and pause to see if there is more food before I take the picture), although there are definitely times when the pictures in which they are obviously eating are so much cuter.  Anyways, using food is a trick I often utilize to get the hamsters to stand where I want them to be for pictures.  Anyways, I brought that up to explain why Vilya has his paws up to his face in the first picture.  :)