New look...

So as many of you may have noticed I put my branding up, yay.  That said, I am still having issues with coding etc. boo.  So it may look a little crazy right now but you get the gist of it, what do you think?  I designed it myself so that it fits into my aesthetic and I'm pretty happy about it.  I did the drawing in CS5 illustrator and used photoshop for the overall design and putting everything together.  I also made the slideshow in flash (so I apologize if you're on an i-pad or i-phone because it won't show up, someday I will have to fix that).  Also if you have a moment click in the different categories cause I made some fun headers.  I know I still have things to tweak here and there but I hope the feel is at least very present:)  Let me know what you think and if anything looks really funky, though I am working on it so it might get fixed without anyone telling me;)

Sweet! Photochallenges...

This is a picture from my daughters cake mash for her first birthday a couple of weeks ago.  I'm using as a "two-for" and linking it up to the Paper Mama Photo Challenge: Sweet, as well as Trendy Treehouse shutter love: Hands.  I think it fits well don't you?  I love her hands burrowing into the pink frosting, priceless!

Urban Springtime...

Living in the Rockies means that even though the days may have nice temperatures, like in the seventies, (except this week, it's been unnaturally cold) the nights lows are so low that springtime hasn't emerged quite yet.  So the other day when my daughter and I were out walking, I found these little beauties and had to take a picture.  Of course I've never been a big macro photog so I didn't have the right lens with me but I still think I got a couple of nice pics.  I will have to be more prepared next time now that I know I am getting more macro inspired;)

And my entry for Simplicity's photo challenge: leaves and flowers:

I heart faces: Slice of Life

So in my previous post I talked about my reasons for doing my selfies, I left one out  that my daughter has become increasingly more of a wiggle worm and I need a subject I can control!  I thought this photo that I took while doing my selfie shoot on Friday was perfect for I heart faces photo challenge: Slice of Life.  This was definately one of those moments, no one was looking at "me" for this picture and it was so unplanned but one of my favorite pics from the whole shoot.  And crazy, I'm in it!  I was also doing a "no, no" by showing my remote but hey...that's life!

Selfie Love...

So I got in my remote for my camera this week!  Up until now I haven't ever used one (pause for gasping cries of horror followed by endless bouts of bowing);).   My remote got here on Wednesday evening and I couldn't wait to try it out so I planned a shoot for the next day.  That night my daughter started throwing up:( and I got the flu as well so we took a sick day:P.  Friday, the stars were all finally in alignment...all but one that is.  Let me explain.
Lucy was happy and healthy as was I, as was my hair (good hair days always rock my world), naps were being taken to their full extent....and it was overcast.  Overcast in photog speak means one of two things, one being very good and the other not so much.  It meant beautiful distributed light, like a world of open shade.  On the other hand it means the weather can turn ugly, meaning raining out a shoot or just getting nasty cold.  It decided to do the latter.  My husband takes the only car we brought to this internship to work so I had to walk to the park, which is pretty close, so I wasn't too worried.  When we got out the weather was pretty warm with just a slight breeze.  So I came prepared with sweaters for bothLucy and I as well as a hat for Lucy.  When we got to the park I was able to get a few good shots when the wind picked up and started feeling icy! So I gave up, packed Lucy in, with her hat and sweater, but because the wind was so cold I wrapped my sweater around her as well, pinning in her arms, which thankfully she didn't fight.
Then I ran home, in short sleeves, it was awful.  I also think that I am just running a lot colder lately.  Since I stopped breast feeding and my body has lost all that free heat that came with it.  So, all in all it was not what I had hoped for.  I fully plan to get out today and do some more since the weather seems in much higher spirits today and I will make sure I post those later;)
Now on to my explanation of the title of my post.  My family was teasing me, saying that I was vain taking all of these selfies.  So I thought I would list the reasons I am doing this and why it isn't vanity at all.
I am doing this so that I can for one, get good at it.  This is so we can grow up with not only pictures of everyone around me but of me!  I think my kids will love to have pictures of themselves but I also think they'll appreciate seeing pictures of their mom, and not just tired on trips, arms length hurried pictures, but real pictures.  I am sure they'll love seeing my different styles, hair cuts, and youth;P  I know I love this about the few pictures we have of my mom.   
I don't take these pictures out of vanity, I do however, have self love.  I love what my Heavenly Father made me.  Everyone is different and these different forms of beauty should be celebrated!  I am the ninth of ten children and every one of us has such a different form of beauty.  I also have 28 nieces and nephews and the same can be said for every one of them.  We may all come from the same gene pool in one way or another but we are all so different and I love celebrating that fact (as I am sure every other photographer can relate).
I used to complain to my mom all the time about my nose and ask incessantly for a nose job.  Of course we never had the money for anything like that besides the fact that my mother said I was beautiful and that what made me so special was my nose.  I never believed her.  I always hated my nose and let it hold me back from being as outgoing or as secure as I should have been.  But then life changed, I grew up.  I never really grew into my nose physically (well, a little bit, I was kind of a gangly youth so it looked a little less proportionate back then) but I grew into it mentally.  I came to love myself despite my nose and stopped letting it hold me back.  To give you an example of how insecure I was, I was afraid to be too fashionable or different in my clothing or hair because I was afraid of drawing attention to my nose.  Yeah, a little unhealthy.
So, not really knowing or realizing it my nose stopped bothering me.  This fact snuck up on me when a few years ago I had to get surgery on a deviated septum (the bone in my nose was crooked, cutting of the air to one side and making infection easier).  This was before I was married while I was still under my parent's insurance.  They asked me if I wanted to get a nose job during the surgery since it could be included for a fraction of what it would normally cost, since they were already getting in there.  I thought about it.  My husband and I were engaged at the time and I asked him what he thought because my own feelings were so jumbled.  He told me that he really didn't like the idea because he loved me for me and my nose made me the way I was.  When he said that I realized how much my nose had stopped bothering me over the years and how not only had it dissapeared from my negative thoughts but how it had become an asset to my character.
I'm glad I didn't get a nose job and even though I still joke about how big it is I really wouldn't be the person I am today without it, and not just physically;)  So that was my unnessesarily long explanation of my self love but there you have it.
So joining in Elena's I love me selfie challenge, here I am, big beautiful nose and all!

 

Btw, I know I was supposed to hold up a sign saying I am beautiful but seeing as I shot this at a park in the middle of the city I wasn't too keen on getting any more unwanted attention;)  So you'll just have to imagine it;)

 And just for fun I thought I would let everyone know that I'm evidently passing that self love to my daughter;) (that or she really needs a sibling to play with, I'm working on it baby!)

 

Spring is in the air!

It's in the air but no one's told the plants yet;P So when I took some of Lucy's one year pictures a couple weeks ago she had to be the flower in bloom.  I still need to get some pictures taken of her in her actual birthday outfit once I can get out and get some balloons that won't poop out on me!  Most of these pictures fit well into the paper mama challenge:green, but this one was my favorite:

 

Here are some of the rest just for fun, I got some pretty cute shots, not hard with miss munchkin:) My husband says that the ones of her in the tin bucket make him think of Oscar the grouch, I was going more for a potted flower look but oh well, she's still a cutey!

 

For more green entries go to:

Selfie Magic: Model Eyes

Call me model.... okay so I tried, I definitely got closer than I ever have to looking model-esk.  I used to just look drugged up when I would try to do this sultry look.  All thanks to Elena's tutorial, found here, I was able to look serious without looking too harsh or crazy.  I noticed while practicing my model eyes that one of my eyes squints more than the other, it's probably normal but it kind of creeped me out.  I still have some practicing to do and I will admit I could have been more diligent this week on it but it was sorta crazy over here.  I have been trying to figure out branding for my blog/photography.  I need to narrow down what I like and what my consumers like.  It's a grueling task.  I like a lot of different things so narrowing them down is where it gets the hardest and organizing my jumble of thoughts is not easy.  My sister works in marketing so she is going to help me stop being such a psycho.  I decided that the underlying theme for my model eyes pic would be my branding mania.  The model eyes shot is how cool I would like to be feeling about branding:

And this is how I really am right now:

 Yep, not pretty...

  

 

This is a special post because my little girl turned one on Sunday!!!! Of course me, being me I had to put a backdrop down and have the cake mash in our makeshift studio.  To do this I used a disposable tablecloth, the dollar fifty kind from walmart, duck taped it down so it was both a backdrop as well as a drop cloth.  This meant easy cleanup as well as a ready made background!  

I also made her crown.  I just cut out the pattern from an old manilla folder first which was pretty well freehand.  Then I used the same cup cake for both sides with the slightly larger one in the middle.  I used the pattern to cut the crown out of felt then used fabric glue to hold the entire crown together.  I used iron on rhinstones for the "sprinkles" and some larger rhinstones for the "cherries" atop each cupcake.  Then all I did was sew on a bit of headband elastic for the back part and there you have it!

Now, originally I had planned on taking some pictures outside with her birthday outfit, but the balloons we bought for it the night before were on the floor by the morning!  I was so mad, we will just have to take some later this week.  This time I'm not taking any chances, I'll go get the balloons right before;P

So here we have the photos from the infamous cake mash!  Lucy decided that this was the one day she was going to actually take a long nap in the middle of the day (of course on the day I just wanted her to take a cat nap), so we were fighting with the light quite a bit.  I used my studio lights though so it worked out fairly well.  

 The photo bellow is one of my all time favorite shots of Lucy.  She looked so serine, in all actuality she was, she had no idea what was happening and she had just gotten up from her three hour nap.  The undercurrent of excitement was there but this photo was very peaceful.

And because one of Lucy's pictures from her cake mash happens to perfectly fit into this weeks theme for Simplicity: Beverages.  Lucy was getting her liquids in before the big fight!;P

Selfie Magic: Multiplicity

I think all of us have a bit of a multiple personality.  More in the sense that we wear a variety of figurative "hats" instead of hearing voices or being totally crazy;)  I decided to show some of mine in this weeks selfie challenge: Mulitiplicity.  It was a lot of fun and didn't take very long, believe it or not.  At the moment my husband and I are living in sort of a slum so our apartment is small and kind of rundown, but we live in the middle of the city next to everything, so considering all of that we got a pretty sweet deal!
The one redeeming quality about the place, besides location are the windows, I love how much light they let in.  However I had to shoot in the morning to have the light on this side of the house and since I don't usually shower before Lucy's nap time at 11... you do the math;P Long story short I got this done in less than thirty minutes, along with my little girl following me everywhere.  I definately had nasty bed hair, but it seems to look okay. 
The one thing that bothered me about my final product was the blurriness of the middle character, where I'm feeding my daughter, but since I was working with my squirmy bug and against the moving sunlight as well as an impending nap time I am more than satisfied with it!
Please notice the clock on the wall, signifying my constant changes during the day between my different "personalities" and I guess you could say responsibilities:P  There are many more "hats" that I wear than what's shown here, as I am sure is the case with everyone but I think this gives a good taste. 

I also did some processing on this second one to give it more of a hazy, faraway look, giving the feeling I get when I get through a day switching through everything;)

For more cool selfies go to:

 

Selfie Magic: Inner Child

So it's taken me forever to get this entry in because I've had a nasty cold!  I didn't want to take pics of myself so sickly and be traumatized so I waited.  It ended up being a good thing because my adult romper came in this week!
Okay, let me back up because your probably wondering what in the world I'm referring to.  Well, a while ago I had this "crazy" idea about making some short overalls, without all the hardware, cause it hurts my daughter.  I decided I wanted it to have more of a bubble shape and since I couldn't find any online that weren't up your crack short I thought I would have to make my own.  Then as I continued researching I came across these jumpers at Target and realized that all I needed was to buy a jumper, take the legs up to make them shorts and cuff them, hence the adult romper is born!
As I've said before we traveled light to this internship so I didn't bring my sewing machine but as soon as we go back in april I will shorten them.  Until then I decided to roll them up in these pics to give you a rough idea of what they'll look like...

 Oh yeah and I apologize if anyone is offended by the whiteness of my legs, what can I say it's the winter:P

This is definitely my inner child coming out because I'm pretty sure no one I know would be caught dead in these, but they're so comfy and they work for me!

 I used an action by Lindsay Giberson called Strawberry Vintage on these pics, it completed the look perfectly!

For more fun Selfies go to...

Frogs, snails and puppydog tails...

As many of you may not be aware as of yet, Lucy is bringing back the skullet baby!  So get your razors/clippers out and start growing your own, they'll be all the rage in no time! 

She has old man baldness in the front and party in the back!  Since Lucy was born she's always had a normal amount of hair on her head, not a lot, but not too little.  Then I started noticing an unusual trend in her hair growth in that it was growing fine in the back (again not a lot but not sparse either) with nothing in the front.  

Her hair line was receding as her head size grew! In fact I give the girl a comb over from the hair that grows at her crown just so she doesn't look completely bald!  Anyway, yesterday she found one of my hair things and started trying to put it on, just like she does with her hair bands or my necklaces.  So I thought, why not, I'll put some of her long hair from her crown into a ponytail, it was so cute!  I could've gotten more hair in it from the back but she was a bit wiggly;) Regardless, she loved it and didn't even try to take it out so I had to get some pictures;)

 Doesn't it make her look so grown up?!  I can't believe my baby is turning one this weekend! (*sniff*)

Lucy loves to watch the cars that go by during rush hour on our street so I got some pictures of her intently pointing and waving to the cars.

 This one is my favorite and is my entry this week for the Paper Mama's photo challenge: Simple Beauty.  I love the backlighting on this shot and her sweet wave to the cars passing by...  

 These are the moments that I love to capture, sweet, quiet, beautiful....

For more simply beautiful entries go to:

Happy Weekend!

Yay!  It's the weekend!  My husbands home and I plan to take full advantage!  Have a great one:)

And just for fun something I made for my family blog, it turned out so fun I had to share:

Outside

Lucy loves being outside, which makes me want her to walk even more.  I admit, it kills me that every time we go out she literally cakes her pants in dirt and I always worry about her putting her hand in something less than desirable.  She was almost there last month and then all the sudden it's like she got scared.  She was walking with just holding my one hand but now she puts her claws into me if I try to let go of one of her hands.
Yesterday she was chasing our neighbors kitty around (I am allergic to cats) but as much as I didn't want her to catch it I tried to use it as an excuse to get her walking, it worked a little bit, until she realized that if the cat was on all fours she could be too.  Oh well, she's getting there.  She turns one this month on the 13th!  Maybe she'll get it before then;P  Here's my entry for both the paper mama challenge: Movement, and Simplicity's: everyday!  I was spying on Lucy playing outside (note the caked dirt on her hand;P)

 

For more entries go to: