Pictures

I am busy this week editing pictures that I took last Thursday and Friday.  I am slowly gaining confidence in myself in shooting people (haha...always fun to drop in a sentence).  Last Thursday, I took pictures of a Senior boy.  His mom said that he would probably tolerate about 30 minutes.  I was finished in about 35.  I got some really good shots and I had a great time editing.  His daughter (yes, you read that correctly...he has a 5 month old daughter) is absolutely adorable.  I could eat her with a spoon she was sooo cute.  It almost made we want another one.  Here are a couple from that session.

On Friday I took pictures of one of my most favorite families ever!  These people are my family without being blood.  A little story how I met these people:  I answered an ad on Craigslist for voice lessons for Elexis.  It was the only ad she ever placed and I am the only normal person to have answered the ad.  The first few lessons, we clicked.  Her youngest KK hid in the pillows the first month or two.  Now the kid throws herself at us as soon as we walk in the door.  Elexis takes piano and voice from her and then we hang out with them (often eating dinner) for a few hours every Thursday.  Her husband is in dental school, so I get to ask him a lot of questions regarding teeth when I have them.  The girls call me Aunt Cristy or Elexis' mom (which is what they called me for two years).  I am so happy these pictures turned out the way they did.  I got some great candid shots that turned out to be my favorite.  They are a gorgeous family.

I finished off Friday evening with taking pictures of my beautiful cousin as she won Homecoming Queen!  I am so stinkin proud of her!  She and her sister are my favorite cousins.  I get to take her first set of Senior pictures in the next coming weeks.  I will take more in the Winter and Spring.  I guess that is one of the benefits she gets for having her cousin as a photographer.  

Her awesome boots she wore with her dress.

Other than that, it's been a pretty slow week.  I have gotten tons of housework done (for once).  I even went through our lost sock box and matched about 25 pairs of socks.  I still have about 25 unpaired in there.  I would like to know where all the socks go....

Pictures are my life

So, June was busy; July was busy; what made me think that August wasn't going to be any less busy.  Today I spent 5 hours at a family reunion that wasn't even my family.  At least I got paid for it, I was hired as the photographer.  I had a lot of fun and became an honorary member of the family.

For today's happiness challenge...I am happy to have my camera.  I feel like it is an extension of my arm.  I love being able to take an ordinary scene and put my perspective on it.  I love capturing special moments or really just moments in general.  My husband bought me my first dslr (or "professional" camera) 3 years ago.  It was the cheapest one available.  I went through all of photography school with that camera.  I know that camera inside and out and can figure out the settings in the dark.  He bought me my higher end dslr for Christmas.  I begged him to take it back because of the price.  I am so glad he didn't though.  It is so nice.  I still don't know how to fully use it.  That is why I try to pick up my camera every day.  I try a new setting, they don't always work; but at least I tried.  My love for photography started way before I got either one of my cameras.  I remember having photo shoots with Elexis when she was two.  I would take my film point and shoot camera and toddler to the park and just have a blast shooting her.  Some of my favorite pictures from her childhood are those.  I moved up to a regular digital camera as soon as we could afford it.  I was spending a crap ton in developing costs with all the film I shot.  Elexis is starting to take a small interest in photography.  I am going to try to teach her a few things, if she will let me.

Here is a shot of baby toes that I took today.  This is a quick rough edit.  I love baby toes.

I did get to spend the day with one of my best friends.  Here is a rare shot of me in front of the camera especially that I took with my big camera.  

Photo Day 3: Red

Pretty ripe red tomato slices at the reunion today.  

Here is a clip of Elexis (and the rest of the orchestra) playing Don't Stop Believin'.  Part way through I forget I was taking video instead of taking pictures and I turn my phone sideways.  oops.  

Photos from Easter

I love my camera.  I took a lot of photos over Easter.  I had a great time with my family, but this post will pretty much be a photo dump.  Enjoy...

 egg flower

 lemon cake I made for my mom

 Crazy eggs

teal egg

 My aunt totally posed for this.

 cupcakes I made

 My cousin's little girl

 My cousins and I (I am in the red)

 My aunts, uncle and mom

my family minus 4 cousins

Ok, there are a lot more, so I made a Flickr account and you can find more pictures here.

Why I Blog

Day 17 of the 31 Day Blog Challenge

I am very new to the writing a blog part of blogging.  I just started last month.  I have been reading blogs for years though.  Over the past couple of months, I have been reading more blogs of people I would want to be friends with in real life.  I would never comment on these blogs, because I didn't want to seem stalkerish.  One day I decided I needed to just put myself out there, but I wanted to be fair and give people access to my life as well.

I started my blog so I had a place where I could post the many pictures of my cat that I take.  I also would like to showcase and challenge myself with my photography.  I also love to bake and wanted a place to share that as well.  I am just a general lover of reading people's lives.  I love to see how people live in different cities and their adventures.  I have loved this challenge because I have found so many great new blogs.  I am commenting more and feel myself branching out.  I am not a writer, so I write what I feel.  I look forward to doing more challenges and catching up with the blogs that I am currently following (I like to read blogs like books, I start from the beginning).  I try to comment back on every comment made (sometimes it takes me a couple of days).

I wish everyone a Happy St. Patrick's Day.  Pardon the quality of the picture, it was taken with my phone.

Cake Pops I made...pot o' gold

Also, I just found out a picture I submitted for a contest, won!!  I am so excited!

Join Fabulous Finds by Tiffany, for more wonderful bloggers!

My Photo Challenge

I talked last week about a personal photo challenge I wanted to do.  I invited another girl to join me and we did pretty good about it.  I got all 7 pictures taken and edited.





Monday:  Monochrome Monday - had to be in one color scheme

Text or Toy Tuesday - "E"

Whatever or Way back Wednesday - Photographer's choice or edit a picture taken a while back.  I chose Way Back.  Picture taken 2 years ago.

Texture or Thoughful Thursday - I guess Cherrie fits the bill on both

Food Friday - Oreos

Sign or Street Scene Saturday 

Song Title Sunday - Just Around the Riverbend (Pocohantas)

Loving this challenge.

Challenges

I like challenges.  They make me step outside my comfort zone.  I also don't like to let things beat me so I try to stick challenges out.  This month on Instagram, I participated in the February Photo Challenge of the Day.  I have 4 days to go and I have taken a picture every day.  I plan on continuing through March.  It holds me accountable to a personal challenge of taking a picture every day.  Now granted I use my iphone for my Instagram pictures.  I want to follow through with my challenge of growing artistically with my camera.  For Christmas, my husband bought me a Canon 7D.  I LOVE this camera.  I also have a Canon T3 that I went through photography school with.  I could be blindfolded and change every setting on that camera.  I want to get that way with my 7D.  On google + I have joined a few photography communities.  Doing that has helped me get the creative juices flowing.  I now have a brainstorm of ideas that I would like to execute.  So, to help me become a better photographer I have composed a Day of the Week Challenge for myself.  To hold myself accountable, I will post at the end of the week all the pictures I took (and edited!!).

These themes are subject to change as I become more inspired, but here is what I have come up with so far:

Monday - Monochrome Monday - Black and White or Sepia Photographs

Tuesday - Toy or Transportation Tuesday

Wednesday - Way back Wednesday or Imitation Wednesday - Either revisit and edit a picture taken before photography school OR recreate photographs that I find inspiring.

Thursday - Thankful or Texture Thursday - Something I am Thankful for OR textures

Friday - Food Friday - Uh, yeah...I like taking pictures of food

Saturday - Street or Signs Saturday - This will help me get out and explore locations

Sunday - Song Title Sunday - Interpreting song titles into photographs

I am really excited to get started.  I would love to have people join me if they want.  They do not need to be professionals or even own a nice camera.  If I get interest I will set all that up.

I will probably brainstorm ideas for some of them on Sundays...I also will keep up with my challenges I  have already started.

3 Musketeers Stuffed Triple Chocolate Cupcake

The title is a mouthful to say...

I had some leftover 3 musketeer hot cocoa minis from Christmas.  I decided instead of throwing them out, I would stuff them into cupcakes.  I used just a regular box cake mix that I had in the cabinet.  I used my pretty pink Kitchenaid mixer to prepare it according to the box directions.

I lined my brand new cupcake pan with cute little snowmen liners that were on sale after Christmas.  

I poured the batter about half way up and added the unwrapped minis to each cup (after, of course, I took a few photos of the chocolate).  I covered the minis with the remaining batter.

I slapped those bad boys in the oven for a quick 17 minute bake in the oven.

After taking them out of the oven and letting them cool completely...

I iced them with a chocolate cream icing.  I decorated one cupcake and had a little photo shoot with it.  

   

Google +

I am trying to get the hang of Google +.  I have been using Facebook since before Facebook was cool. I'm kind of over it.  Don't get me wrong, I will never delete my fb, but I find myself not really updating anymore, unless I am putting up pictures.

Enter Google +. I like that it has all of these communities that I can be a part of to showcase and get feedback from my photography.  I am a photographer who would rather photograph architecture or food than people.  + is a little bit more challenging to navigate.  I guess it doesn't help that I don't have any real friends on +.  So far the communities I am a part of are: Cats of Google + (because I am slightly obsessed with my cat), Food Photography and Canon Photography.  I have posted a few pictures and gotten a few likes.  I am interested in diving more into the communities.

I like the idea of circles.  Facebook dropped the ball on that one.  I like the ability to share with a certain group of people instead of everyone.  This is going to be a very useful tool in the future.

So far my only dislike is I have to upload pictures to each community instead of just being able to pull the image from my albums.  Oh, well!

I am off to explore.

My cat

I appear to be fairly obsessed with taking pictures of my cat.  I can't help it.  She sits for me longer than the kid or the dogs.  She doesn't mind that I stick the camera 3 inches from her face.  She is a very photogenic kitty.  I am sure people are tired of my cat pictures all over Facebook and Instagram, so I guess I will do a blog post full of the beautiful pictures of Cherrie.

A little back story on Cherrie.  A year and couple of months ago, my darling daughter, E, was at her Nana's.  My mom lives out in the country and has a few feral cats.  One of the cats had kittens.  There were only two kittens to be found.  Well, my child decided to sit out some milk and wait for one of these little baby kittens.  After some time, this little furrball came out to get some milk and E grabs her.  She takes her inside and bathes her because furrball is covered in fleas.  E then calls us and begs to bring this kitten home.  We already had a 16 year old cat at home that didn't take kindly to new pets.  After much pleading to her dad (I was an easy sell), he caved.  We told E that furrball would have to be completely flea free before coming home.  My mom kept her at her house for about 3 weeks and bathed her a lot.  E decided to name her Cherrie from a series of books that she reads.  So this is how Cherrie came to live with her family.  My dear 16 year old cat (who I have had since she was 6 weeks old) passed away in December, just 2 months after we got Cherrie.  Cherrie helped me through the loss.

Cherrie is a little spitfire.  She is very curious, very playful and it sooo entertaining.  She plays fetch with anything.  She loves the dogs.  She also loves dog treats and will sit with the dogs when the package comes out.  She doesn't like cups to be upright and will knock anything she can onto the floor. We love this little wall climbing cat.  Now for some pictures.

Baby Cherrie - 6 weeks old