Christmas Eve!

Christmas is almost upon us and the fun has started early here at the Hilton household, with all the girls showing off their Christmas costumes!

Buffy in her jumper!

 Rafferty as 'Mrs. Clause'.

 Monroe as an elf :)

 Lily (also) as an elf!

(She really wasn't into having her picture taken today lol!)

Lola as a Christmas tree :D

(Sneaky Lily peaking from her Lola's right ear!)

You may have noticed 2 things about our pictures...

1) We have 2 elves. Unfortunately I neglected my duties and never realised that Lola didn't have her own costume, so everyone had to trade round and luckily we had a spare elf costume that nobody usually wears, so it worked out in the end! Next year we'll be buying some new costumes though, so things should be simpler Christmas 2012!

2) We have a severe lack of presents under our tree! That would be because Lola is an absolute monkey and has developed a fetish for wrapping paper/boxes. She actually ruined one of my dad's presents, before we'd even wrapped it...

She did that in literally 2 minutes! We only left the room to hunt down the sellotape so we could wrap it :( Naughty Lola!

Our presents have, for this Christmas at least, been relegated to the relative safety of the coffee table...

Other than that adjustment all is as planned and we're very excited for 'Santa Paws' visiting! My dad and step mum are visiting tonight to drop our presents off and collect their gifts, so tomorrow at some point, when we have a spare minute, we'll drop in and post about what the girls got this year :)

Until then, we wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Love and licks,

Rio, Jonny, Buffy, Rafferty, Monroe, Lily and Lola.
xo

Awkward Family Pet Photos Book Review

In the modern human/pet relationship a lot of boundaries get blurred. We lavish time, attention and sometimes a ridiculous amount of money on our furry little friends, like never before. Sometimes though people take their love to an extreme that borders on the obscene. There's a secretly strange section of the population, whose actions are just plain awkward and that's what this book, 'Awkward Family Pet Photos' is all about, those actions caught on film!

Enter the brilliant minds behind the book, Mike Bender and Doug Chernack. They saw an opportunity to gather together a host of funny, bizarre, weird and sometimes, down right cringe inducingly awkward 'family photos', that people have dragged their pets into! Many people feel their pet is a part of the family, us included and a family photo includes those with 4 legs as well as 2. Reading through the book though you'll come to see that so often the pet isn't the awkward one in the picture, it's us, the people setting up these amazingly odd shots!

I was lucky enough to get a pre release copy, so I've had a look through the book and I can say it's an intensely odd mix of the funny, the weird and, as the title suggests, the down right awkward. You can expect to find gems like Page 13, where cowboy chic meets a pet possum or Page 159, where one dog had his day, right behind the cute prom couple! One of the funniest shots (to us) and by far our overall favourite is on Page 54, so be sure to check it out if you grab yourself a copy!

The book is officially released today, so it'd be a great stocking filler or Christmas present for the animal lover in your life, who may well have a picture of themselves and their pet that would fit in! The book is a good read, it's put together nicely and is great quality, with a nice price tag to match. To check it out more and see how you can order your copy you can visit the 'where to buy' page, there you'll find links to this book and also see this books predecessor, 'Awkward Family Photos' for sale!

We hope you do get a copy and if you do then we'd love to hear about it! You can share your favourite pages or tell us about your awkward pet photos by emailing us or tweeting to @riochanelhilton

Love & licks,

Rio, Jonny, Buffy, Rafferty, Monroe, Lily and Lola.

xo

P.S We'd like to say a big 'thank you' to Jonathan from Crown Publishing at Random House for sending us our copy!

(Products mentioned in this post were sent to me for review.)