allthingscreative

Whataweekend!

This weekend included seeing Emmie push past her fear on a kiddie ride and then later win a Tweety Bird pillow ... the girls tumbled at their gymnastics class ... we went to Joe's family reunion where the girls swung at a SpongeBob pinata right before "our table" sang me Happy Birthday (so sweet for my sister to bring the cake and the flowers and SpongeBob plates! Love it!). And to completely finish us off we had a birthday pool party followed by me reviewing photos with my brother and his new bride. And yesterday was full day of household recovery from all the fun!

Favorite from Beach Session

Did a photoshoot with a young couple and their adorable baby girl ... she wasn't too keen on the sand, but my couple had some fun with me. This is my favorite shot as the evening sun at the beach brought out a very nice happy couple vibe.

I just uploaded at my recently chosen imaging facility ... Shore Labs to have it printed on metallic paper. Very excited to see how that silver comes through where the sun is hitting those Lake Michigan waves.

For added fun I put together this collage frame. The pictures are floating between three pieces of glass. I was loving their beautiful faces against the crisp summer sky.

Stay tuned ... more to come! :-)

I'm baaaaaaaack! :-)

Wow. That was quite a break, wasn't it? Well ... it wasn't spent in my backyard playing in the pool with my kids ... THAT is for sure!

I finished the cabin book for my parents. Buy it here.

AND ... I shot, edited, and delivered a 30-minute video project for a hairstylist, shot two weddings, and had some design work come my way. All very challenging, very rewarding work. There's lots of updates I'm looking forward to sharing. That's what I love. Hand me something that seems impossible and then somehow figure it out.

PLUS ... Joe and his father are building a playhouse in our backyard for the girls working off of this plan.

The cherry on top of all this great work coming my way is that one of my photos was published in our area's newspaper The Times. This is a slideshow of all the photos ... mine shows Joe standing on the shoreline.

Details to come on each of these, but wanted to catch you up quickly on what's been going on.

OH ... you can sneak a peek in the photo albums link ... there are a few shots of one of the weddings I shot.

Our beach

Our favorite spot ... first visit of the season.

The blue park

Getting ready to prepare sessions along with times and locations. Stay tuned!

Ready to run ... and walk

In 2001 Smooch and I trained and ran the Chicago Marathon together. To get the cliches out of the way ... it it was such an awesome accomplishment for he and I both and an incredible year all together. When you face and overcome obstacles, train your mind and your body to endure long periods of discomfort (I know, it sounds a bit twisted), and then to complete a 26.2 mile trek with your life partner along with 40,000 other people. It's an experience that you just want to go back to.

My older sister is an avid runner and has done several marathons (including Paris!). She recently told me after taking a couple years break from the long distance races that she's doing the Chicago marathon again this fall. And after a few weeks of thinking about it (and a conversation with Smooch, of course) I told my sister I was in too.

To give me inspiration and help me prepare, I pulled out the photos from the 2001 marathon. In looking back on the race my husband and I did together, I recall it vividly even though it's almost six and a half years ago. There's things that were great and things I would have done differently. Let's see how this one unfolds.

My first "hurdle" is to get my legs built up to running five times a week and running a full six miles. Six miles is the first long run for week one of the training program. 

I am SO excited to be doing this again together with my sister (we'll probably do a good portion of the long runs together) and with the support of my husband.

Also, I wanted to share Smoochie is doing a marathon (of sorts) too right now. He's participating in a company-wide contest. They're all wearing podimeters and logging their steps. He's logged two-three hours (a DAY!) on the treadmill. We're having fun tracking the steps and saying, "You've walked round trip to/from work" or ... "You walked three marathons this week." Proud of you, baby! Keep it up! 

There are a lot of other fun things going on that I'll share as they progress.

Happy Saturday!

Mommy homework

I've got a couple of projects ongoing right now. During the day and evening I'm experimenting with where or how I can fit in some productivity. This morning after having her cereal and talking about what we're going to do, Syd asked me, "Are you going to do your Mommy homework?"

I love this for so many reasons ... I stopped doing design work and stopped pursuing or accepting projects for a good stretch of time because any work from an outside client really threw a lot of stuff here at home completely off kilter (to be fair ... it three me completely off kilter). So not worth it.

The girls have really developing into becoming more self-reliant and cooperative. There's a lot of other good stuff going on here at home and my family circle that I can take on additional responsibility and the do the work justice.

So with this sweet and innocent inquiry I feel that what I do on the computer doesn't take away from what else we do around here during the day while Daddy is making the chedda', but it now will fit nicely into what the scheme of things peacefully.

Hmmmm ... looks like we're getting somewhere.

Feed the ducks. No ... the birds.

After a perfectly lovely weekend filled with a bathroom catastrophy home-cooked meals (by both me and Smoochie), a visit to a fellow-photographer friend to exchange advise and technical assistance, design work for a book I'm doing for my father, and we finished it off with a quick visit downtown to feed the ducks (as you can see the seagulls had a different idea). *SIGH* after all this I've fallen in love with my husband, my family and my camera all ... over ... again.

Props go to Sydney who was absolutely freezing toward the end of our visit, but still had it in her to sit and smile for momma's camera. See her clenched fists?

I've never done this before

I cooked all afternoon yesterday. Or, more accurately ... the girls and I cooked all afternoon. These girls were so over-the-top-can-barely-contain-themselves excited to cook for their daddy. Carried by their excitement and enthusiasm I told myself I'm going to pull this off ... and I did.

There was a shout (or gasp) or two on my part. They would NOT leave the candles for Daddy's cake ALONE, I was concerned they were going to break. Em took it upon herself to somehow retrieve the cake from deep inside the fridge and carry it to the table.

We enjoyed a roasted 12lb turkey, garlic mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans with bacon crumbs and tossed salad.

Happy Birthday to our Daddy.

 

Capturing Better Candids

My presentation went smoothly last night ... such a great feeling to be able to talk and share about something you love and lookout into a darkened room and have smiling faces looking back at you as they enjoy what you have to share. It's good stuff.

At this particular club the audience is an eclectic one ... an odd assortment of people with a wide arrangement of age, ability and backgrounds. Some of them have been photographers for twenty or thirty years. Some are professionals. And based on the feedback I received, or .... should I say REACTIONS I got ... I ruffled a lot of feathers as I shared that I didn't care one ounce about f-stop and ISO ... that I  didn't concern myself with tehcnical perfection, set the camera on auto and just click away. I LOVED it!

Here is the presentation: Capturing Better Candids (PDF) - view here (3.17MB)

Below are the links I had listed within the presentaiton:

www.photojojo.com - Very fun tips, tricks and a wee bit of craziness all having to do with photography ... be ready to loosen up.

www.tarawhitney.typepad.com - Love her fresh approach to photography. I am inspired by her philosophy.

www.tarawhitney.com - Click the "details" link ... love her explanation on how she works with her clientele.

www.myfonts.com - Love and trust this site for all things typographical. And what's great are all of these are downloadable for free.

www.blurb.com - Self-publish full-color books starting at about $13 ... doesn't get much better. For real.

Thanks to John for pinch-hitting on the projector! Thanks to Smoochie for being flexible with his birthday. He turned 38 yesterday, but we'll be celebrating it as a family tonight. Thanks to Nana and Popa for watching the girls so I would have time to work on my schtuff.