Sleepy & White

I have tried my very best to enjoy each moment with little B because I know these are moments we can never get back. This first six weeks have already flown by and I can’t believe he will be 2 months old in just a few weeks.

Since little B’s announcements went out, I thought it was time to share these pictures which I took when he was seven days old (belly button shot was 14 days :)).  I look at them and marvel at how little he was. This little guy loves to put his right hand next to his face which is funny because we have a sonogram picture of him doing this exact thing.

This is was my favorite picture from the session and melts my heart. This represents little B just how he is, no hats, no crowns, just his little face sleeping away with his hands.

We love you little guy!

Precious Love

Piglet: “Pooh, how do you spell love?”

Pooh: “You don’t spell it, you feel it.”

Baby Sunshine

I am not into posting weekly bump reports, but I have to say, I am too excited to keep these to myself.  After a long weekend of baby shower festivities, my Dad was still up for the task of taking some pictures to capture this beautiful time in our lives.  We headed down to the beach just as the fog was burning off leaving the sky filled with a mix of clouds and warm sunshine.

Only a few more weeks until we get to meet this little bundle! Thanks Dad for capturing these for us – we will treasure forever!

xoxo

Maxi Dress, my new bff?

Maxi dresses – oh how I love you! You are like one big blanket that wraps around and never has to be adjusted for bending or sitting. You give this party of two enough room to keep everyone involved happy. The best part, you don’t give me extra bulge in unwanted places like those evil, dare I say,”maternity” pants do. Any and all maxi dresses are welcome in this house (at least for the next 8 weeks).

xoxo

Sunshine & Water

Nothing warms the heart more than a visit from your sister, a warm sunshiny day, and a walk along the beach. May you enjoy your weekend with all that it has to offer!!!

xoxo

Texture + Light

Just messing around with the camera today and decided to see what I could do with some items around the house focusing on textures and light.

This was a new blanket I picked up from Restoration Hardware that seems to add just the right amount of texture to a room. 

Invitations seem to be flooding our house lately and these wedding invitations, made by the bride, Alexandra of Alexandra Works, were nothing short of beautiful.

And lastly, a sand dollar that Ryan and I found on the beach during a run a few weekends ago. One of my favorite things, is when Ryan brings me home sand dollars he found while on his beach run. I love that he takes care when making his selection and will never bring home a less than perfect one. I was lucky enough to actually find my first perfect sand dollar that day and don’t worry, I am still shaking sand out of it!

Happy Sunday!

Two Little Lovelies

I am editing my way through these images and can’t wait for these proud parents to see the entire gallery because I just have way to many favorites. These little girls melted my heart the entire session.  Even though we had a tough time getting them to both sleep at the same time, by the end, they both gave me 3 minutes of sleepy bliss which allowed me to capture my favorite picture of the day — two sleeping little girls in tutu’s. Precious.

xoxo

Happy Tails

Well, you would think after this long hiatus I would come back and have a great recipe, a new nifty craft, or shoot, even some decor updates. But none of those are happening because I have been maxin’ and relaxin’ and enjoying time with the hubs. Our dinners have been mostly take-out, home decor has been relinquished to removing the Christmas decorations, and crafts have been replaced by Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Gossip Girl.

So in an effort to get back into the swing of things I will leave you with these photos of Lola…no we did not get a dog despite my charming efforts to swoon the hubby into saying yes. {insert extra big smile here} Lola belongs to our best friends who just might be obsessed with her and all things Lola.

Yes, this shoot really happened with three collar changes and all – but don’t worry kept the  Christmas dress safely stored away in the dresser drawer.

Hope these pictures warm your heart just a bit on this chilly February evening!

forever friends

One of the best things about the holidays is the time I get to spend with family….evenings cuddled together around the wood stove catching up on all the daily chatter. Seems like this just doesn’t happen as much as we would like, so I will treasure it when it does.

The best part about it is, the older I get the closer I become to each of them. I always loved my family but I can say there was a time when I was…well…less than enthused to be seen getting dropped off for school by my Dad in his work truck. Now days, I’ll ride shotgun in any car he comes to pick me up in — added bonus if my Mom is in it too because they, along with all my siblings, truly have become my best friends.

xoxo

Friday | Picture of the Week | Week 47

Ahhhhh…..Christmas. The sights. The sounds. The smells. All so pleasant to enjoy from the comfort of home. Dare to enter the mall or a store and you might be singing a different tune! But when all is said and done it really can be the most wonderful time of the year!

I have always dreamed of one day spending the entire month of December in New York. Of course, in my dream month in New York, I would have ice skating skills worthy of those cute skating outfits ala Blair Waldorf, endless money to spend at Bergdorfs, and of course time to enjoy a wonderful drink at the Plaza. So, for now, I will enjoy a glass of wine from my New York wine glass and call myself lucky. Lucky to have our health and lucky to be surrounded by such love. But don’t worry, I will still be stalking all those New York bloggers {The Glamouri, From Me-To You} and hoping for some good ol’ New York eye candy.

xoxo

3rd Annual Thanksgiving Photoshoot

For the past two years, my sister and I have orchestrated a Thanksgiving day photoshoot so we were excited to proceed with our 3rd Annual photoshoot. While the first year we put on as much make-up as possible and rushed out of the house wearing whatever clothes we had packed and last year we upped the photography and used a white background with a few flashes, this year was by far the best yet and completely out of control!

See, what I forgot to realize was that my father participated in many mountain man rendezvous shoots for his gun club back in the day and had an entire trunk full of mountain man attire! Um, yeah. You want to know how legit he was – he even hooked us up with a quiver! A quiver, you ask? Don’t worry that is the same thing we wondered when my Dad came in asking us if we had seen his quiver!

Quiver: A portable case for holding arrows.

Kelsey, seriously killing it in this light! She may be little, but that girl can model with the best of them! 

A special thanks has to be given to my Dad for photographing these and being just as crazy as us and to Ryan for still loving me despite my sometimes crazy behavior!

xoxo

Friday | Picture of the Week | Week 43

This is what an evening in looks like when your husband is snuggled up sick in bed and you are left alone with a camera and a Vogue book.

xoxo

Friday | Picture of the Week | Week 42

I L-O-V-E this picture and I am so happy to finally share with you and hope that you fall in love just as much as I have. I took this in Grand Teton National Park and still can’t get over the beautiful colors and serene setting. It makes me want to buckle up my cutest pair of boots, put on a long flowy dress, hop on one of those horses and ride around while yelling “Yeeehaw” and singing “For purple mountain majesties: Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed His grace on thee”!  

Happy Friday!

Friday | Picture of the Week | Week 41

Photo: Shell Island, Florida

She is beautiful. She is quirky. She is funny. Best of all, She is my sister. She was obviously the much cooler, older sister. She knew about New Kids on the Block far before I ever heard of Joey or Jordan and already had her pick for who she would marry – Jordan of course! She provided me with the 90210 episode summaries when I came home from gymnastics too late and had already missed the show {pre-tivo days}. We would spend hours “cleaning our room” {only to be found laughing for most of those hours and spending the last few minutes shoving everything under the trundle bed – and that sucker had a lot of room!}. She liked purple and I liked pink – talk about the sister perfect combo! She was the sister that I would bond with, love, annoy, and look up to during those days and for the rest of my life.

She will always be my older sister {but i just might be slightly taller than her now}. I love you sis and thanks for the fun visit {more pictures to come soon}!

xoxo

Wedding | Kim & Michael

I was lucky enough to photograph Kim & Michael’s wedding a few weeks ago at Lake Natoma Inn in Folsom, CA. This wedding was filled with lots of love and family and I was blessed to have my Dad along side to photograph with me!

xoxo

Octoberfest | Big Bear

We were fortunate enough to spend the weekend in Big Bear enjoying lots of time with best friends. We sat around the fire drinking wine, telling stories, and playing board games. Gone are the days of heading out to the bars in search of Mr. Right because we all had our Mr. Rights sitting right beside us. Boring as it seems, it was absolutely perfect.

This picture was taken through the wine glass. I placed my focus point on Anthony instead of the actual glass – I love how it looks like he was placed into a snow globe. 

We spent the day at Big Bear’s Octoberfest and got to enjoy endless rounds of the chicken dance, the polka, and beer. These alphorns were pretty darn cool to see, but we couldn’t help but wonder how they transport those things! {we decided they must break apart and fold up somehow–although I still like the explanation that they tie it to the roof rack}

This guy had a legit waxed mustache and us girls couldn’t help but to get a picture with him! Several competitions occurred throughout the day and when Katie came back with the news that she had signed our men up for the saw cutting competition Ryan and Tony immediately begin discussing strategy and sizing up their potential competition.

For a good giggle here a video of two city boys destroying the log in a mere 17 seconds! The winning team, who were featured on American Logger, won with a blazing time of 10 seconds!

Happy October!

Catalina Glimpse

We  are still here just super busy, and can’t seem to spend a single weekend at home, so just a quick post with two pictures from a trip to Catalina to start your Wednesday off….

Oh yeah, and just in case you need something to entertain you while at work, here is Boo the Dog’s Facebook page with over 2 million followers and more pictures of him on People.com.

xoxo

Girlie Chatter

Girls. I love everything (well almost everything) about being a girl and appreciate our differences from the male gender. I love that girls can spend spend endless hours getting lost in girlie chatter about clothes, make-up, shoes, and of course the proverbial discussion of boys. Our voice-mails are longer, our gmail chats are filled with emotions, exclamations and smiley faces, and our text messages result in full paragraphs sometimes worthy of chapter introductions. I don’t realize a girls need to talk and chat until Ryan makes some remark like “Whoa – that was the longest voicemail ever” or “you talked about all that in a text?!”

I recall one 5-hour drive to Mammoth with Shauna and Katrin.  Ry had made sure the iPod was freshly loaded with new songs and the axillary cord was in place so we could listen to music during our drive up. When we arrived, Ry asked how the drive was and if the iPod worked ok. At that point, when trying to recall, I realized that we didn’t even turn on any music for the entire 5-hour drive and rather spent our time talking with each other. As funny as it seems, it is relaxing and enjoyable and amazing that we never run out of stuff to talk about.

This picture above reminds me of those times. Girls just getting lost in the chatter about the important things in life – you know, what your wearing tonight, someones new hair, or the newest episode of RHOBH!

Cheers to girlie chatter and may it never grow old!

xoxo

Friday | Picture of the Week | Week 39

Reminds me of a secret garden where lots of fun, exciting stuff is about to go down! Who wants to come?!

xoxo

love

i love this picture so much. i love the beautiful colors of the water. i love the serene un-posed feeling. i love the exposure. and best of all, i love that man.

I took this picture with our Nikon Fm3a film camera. The Fm3a allows us the ability to enjoy photography in its simplest form: the subject, the camera, and the photographer. There are no extra ISO settings to contemplate or the vast lens selection to maneuver through {because we only have 2 that will work on it} and best of all there are not hours and hours of editing involved.  The film camera is definitely under used in our house but when each picture costs close to $1.00 it is hard to grant anything in our life film worthy {i am frugle what can i say}! Anyway, I am always so happy when we get the email from Richards Photo Lab letting us know that our film is ready because I love seeing the results and makes me love photography even more!

****And because I have been asked several times the difference between the film and digital pictures and how our film pictures appear on the blog, I guess it is not obvious to all. So here, ya go! We send our roll of film to Richards Photo Labs who then develops the film {just like the old days} based on specific color profiles which I have been working with them on. Once the negatives are developed, Richards Photo Lab then scans the negatives and creates a digital .jpg and sends us an FTP site where we can download the images and store just like our digital files! As a bonus, they will print the roll of film for you for $4 – so you actually get a printed picture as well {i love that part}******

Whatcha got on?

Tank: Alternative Apparel (in turquoise); Shorts: (Old) Abercombie; Scarf: H&M; Shoes: UGGS

When planning what to wear on this trip, I scoured the web for hiking clothes that were functional, yet I would actually want to wear again. My search came up came up short. Everything looked liked workout clothes and was still more expensive than buying a regular shirt that I would actually wear again. I knew the changing temperature swings (20 degree mornings, with 70 degree afternoons) would require me to wear several layers, so I opted for my trusty jean shorts, this Alternative Apparel burn out tank and Uggs. I was able to easily layer jackets or sweatshirts over the tank and the Uggs were switched out for running shoes once the day heated up.

Friday | Picture of the Week | Week 38

With so many pictures from our trip it is impossible to pick a picture of the week, but I decided on this one from Lower Canyon Falls in Yellowstone. The canyon lit up by the sun was breathtaking!!! This was the view from the brink of the Lower Canyon Falls facing east.

We happened upon this part of the park as the last part of our day unwound, and Mrs. I-want-to-do-and-see-it-all insisted that we had to go check out the canyon because we would not want to come back to this region once we went back to camp (all features are at least 40 minutes away from each and this particular one was about an hour from our camp at Grant Village). Turns out, we came upon this feature at the perfect time of day (5pm-ish) because the sun was setting behind us, thus illuminating the canyon walls in the most brilliant golden yellow. I promise you, the canyon really is that colorful and beautiful in person – no extra Photoshop tricks there!

This was the view from Inspiration Point facing back (west) at the Lower Canyon Falls. We were standing right below that sun flare on the right.

My dear friends, THAT on the left is the edge of the waterfall. and on the RIGHT is my intelligent husband.  I will never understand why he must walk down, off the path mind you, to stand so close to the edge!  There is nothing right there that you can’t see from the safety of the path located above! 

And this is the brink of Lower Canyon Falls. As with most waterfalls, they leave you awe struck as to how they can continually dump so much water over the edge, year after year after year. Lower Canyon falls did not disappoint and was WELL worth the 20 minute hike down to the edge.

Neither of us wanted to step away from this beautiful site, but we knew we had an hour drive back to camp and had to begin making dinner. Ryan loved watching the water fall over the edge of the cliff and I am pretty sure I could have let him stand there all day doing so.

That is one happy husband!

xoxo

Word of the Day: Geothermal Features

Want to know the quickest way to sound smart and like a total Yellowstone local? Use the term geothermal in a sentence when referring to natural occurrences such as Old Faithful, hot springs, or other various unearthly things such as mud pots and other geysers.  Little fact, because we are full of knowledge about these smelly, weird, and slightly creepy features, Yellowstone has over 10,000 thermal features! These pictures are from the Mammoth Hot Springs which are located at the north end of the park. 

The National park service states, “Geyserland, fairyland, wonderland–through the years, all have been used to describe the natural wonder and magic of this unique park that contains more geothermal features than any other place on earth.” Fairyland? Wonderland? Not sure those are accurate descriptions of these guys, as I spent the day with my nose covered and laughing because I couldn’t believe how BAD it smelled. I continued to tell Ryan this is one big fart being released by the Earth. Everywhere you look, Earth farts were occurring – and more than one at time, so you can imagine something as big as the Earth releasing this “excess air” and how bad it would smell. Sulfur mixed with rottenness equals smel-ly! 

We weren’t sure what to think of these things. They were cool, but, not that pretty, yet we kept taking pictures of them. They were mysterious and intriguing because it’s as if we were seeing the crust of the Earth. I guess we were just fascinated by them as neither of had every seen anything like it before. This was copied from the National Park Services website regarding the Mammoth Hot Springs:

“Water rises through the limestone, carrying high amounts of dissolved calcium carbonate. At the surface, carbon dioxide is released and calcium carbonate is deposited, forming travertine, the chalky white rock of the terraces. Due to the rapid rate of deposition, these features constantly and quickly change.”

The park makes these cool boardwalks so that the millions of visitors every year do not disrupt the natural occurring events, such as the hot springs. 

So there you have it – the weird, creepy, kind of pretty in a un-earthly way Mammoth Hot Springs geothermal feature!

{I’m sure after my description you are all dying to go now – sorry if these are one of your favorite Yellowstone features they just weren’t for us!}

Friday | Picture of the Week | Week 37

Something I was really hoping to do while spending our time at Glacier National Park was to get a night time picture of one of the lakes. One evening, after cleaning up dinner, we headed down to the lake armed with a tripod, bear bell, flashlight, bear spray, and a remote for the camera. Since, we were deep in bear country we could never be to prepared and the bear bell and bear spray became part of the daily packing routine {yes, I am a HUGE chicken and would not let us go anywhere with out even though this may have been a bit over the top being that we were not back country camping or anything crazy like that}.

The shore line of the lake was pitch black, so Ryan was on bear watch while I fiddle with the camera and tripod. We took turns alternating between playing photographer and attending to the bear watch.  We spent about fifteen minutes down at the shore before deciding, we got what we needed now lets book it outta here and back to safety. {Safety for me consisted of our nylon, totally bear proof, impenetrable tent! HA!  Whatever, somehow it eased my mind. If I can’t see you, you can’t see me mentality}.

I love the reflection of the moon over the water and am so happy that I was able to “sack up” enough to get this picture and thankfully, no bears were seen this night!

xoxo

Friday | Picture of the Week | Week 36

Good morning from Utah! Like I said, I have been in love, amazed, and in awe of the majestic clouds. In Los Angeles we rarely, as in like never, get clouds like this! The last time I saw these type of clouds was over a year ago while visiting my parents! I am not sure if these are old news to most, but I have to say I wish clouds like these filled the skies of my pictures every day! Just one of the many things I will treasure about this trip {besides my hubby, co-pilot companion}!

xoxo