We are waiting until the birth to find out the gender of the baby, so what is a husband to do when bringing home flowers? Bring home all three colors of course!!! Just one of the benefits of not finding out the gender of your baby – the hubs didn’t want to leave anyone out!!!
A few good things come out of a DIY wedding, but one underestimated thing is the mad craft skills you gain! We {we = every girl related to me that I could possibly recruit to help} did all our own centerpieces for our wedding and I have to say, despite my minor meltdown at 12am on the Thursday night before whereby I exclaimed this is the worst idea I have ever had to which my sister gladly cured with a ice cold cocktail, they turned out beautiful! We got a few pointers from a skilled florist and went with it from there. Two years later, I am still reaping the benefits of those floral skills, as I made this birthday centerpiece for Ryan’s sister using two bunches of Trader Joe’s flowers. As for tips, your best friend when making a centerpiece: Oasis Floral Foam!
Reminds me of a secret garden where lots of fun, exciting stuff is about to go down! Who wants to come?!
xoxo
Summer, please don’t go! I love you toooooo much and will hang on to every last ray of sunshine that you use to warm my skin with! I will kick off my sandals and treasure the grass under my feet and the freedom of walking barefoot on the beach. I will joy in the last of the 4/$1.00 corn on the cob at the grocery store and the smell of meat on the barbecue. I will take in and savor every last piece of what you have left to give, until the cool breeze will soon force me to put on a jacket and long pants and prepare for the looming winter blast. Yes, I will. I promise, I will.
xoxo
85mm, f/1.4, ISO 1600, 1/2500
Today, I wanted to share a few photos from a recent trip back home along with my camera settings. I love this dangling rosemary that my Mom planted on her patio along with the aged pot. This was shot right at dusk about 30 minutes before sun set.
85mm, f/2.5, ISO 640, 1/400
This is a photograph of my little sister – some might say younger sister, but since she is both younger and little, I prefer little sister. Most of my editing involves simple use of the curve tool and the burn tool.
85mm, f/1.8, ISO 1600, 1/2500
85mm, f/1.8, ISO 1600, 1/1600
Even though I shoot 99% manual, I usually don’t spend too much time thinking about my camera settings when I am taking a photograph. I select my desire aperture and then roll my ISO and shutter speed until my in camera meter is on target, which is usually exposed for a half stop over because I love bright pictures. When I put my camera down, I usually start shooting with whatever settings I had last – TERRIBLE habit that I need to get better at!
One thing that I realized when putting in my .exif data into this post is that I am often using a very high ISO which requires me to use a fast shutter speed. In a perfect world, I like to keep my ISO as low as possible, for better clarity.
Anyway, just a few photos that I wanted to share because I love visiting home to re-charge the batteries and these just remind me of the time spent at such a loving place. Plus, I had to give my Mom’s new milk bottles a little love because they are pretty much the neatest thing around!
xoxo
It seems as if from the first day she walked into our lives she became family. Corynne’s first time meeting the family was during our family portrait — yikes! Of all situations to meet your future in laws, I am sure this may be one of the worst, but Corynne was gracious, loving, and won over our hearts. There could not be a better girl for my little brother and I am so happy for their upcoming wedding in July.
We started the wedding festivities off with a “Love Story” themed bridal shower. My Mom, sister, and I started planning this bridal shower months ago, but we do not all live in the same town so coordination was key! We wanted to incorporate many vintage details because we had leftover decorations from my own wedding so it would save on costs and fit perfectly with the venue, my parent’s home which is modeled after French country influences.
The chalkboard frame was purchased from the Santa Monica flea market. The actual chalkboard was made using masonite and chalkboard paint purchased from Home Depot. (If you measure your dimensions beforehand Home Depot will even cut the masonite for you!)
From the beginning, I knew I wanted to work with vintage books. I fell in love with the cupcake liner pomanders and decided to incorporate books into the design. Here is a tutorial on my pomander process.
As for the books, I searched several antique shops in the area and came home empty handed. I tried a used book store and found several linen covered books with the dust jacket still on and therefore not the “old” look I was going for. To give them the vintage distressing they needed, I used sand paper to give the edges a worn look. This saved me a lot of money because I was not paying antique prices.
The bride arrived driven by her fiancé in my Mom’s 1940’s MG TC. An MG TC is actually the car that Ryan O’Neil drove in the movie “Love Story.”
One of the games we played was titled “Crazy Little Game Called Love” in which celebrity wedding photographs were used and the faces of the celebrities were replaced with the face of the bride and groom using Photoshop (Yes, they take as long make as the sentence to explain it!). Each guest received a packet of “playing cards” and a sheet in which to write down their guess. It was great to see the Mom’s who all knew Grace Kelly’s wedding but were completely clueless when it came time to guess Carrie from Sex and the City.
I spent the first part of the year learning to master the craft of french macaron’s so that I could make for this event. My Mom bought Annie Rigg’s Macaron book from Anthropologie for me and I am proud to say I successfully made 30 vanilla ganache macarons!
Each guest’s place setting was set with a vintage paper flower. I bought the flowers from Jardin de Papier on Etsy and assembled them myself. My Mom purchased the pink “Love” plates during Valentine’s Day from several TJ Maxx’s around the area.
Instead of a “Marriage Advice for the Bride” we decided to make a “Love Story” book where guest were asked to describe their own love story or write the love story of Corynne and Nick. This was really sweet for the bride to be able to have all of her guests, including her Moms’ Love Story on paper for her to look back on.
The best gift of the day goes to Michele, the bride’s Mother, who decided to give her daughter this book…naturally it provided for some good show and tell and lots of laughs!
I also wanted a champagne infusion station where guests would be able to mix together their favorite champagne drink. My Mom bought champagne and peeled the labels off to make our own “branded” bottles. I made labels which read “Love Story”, “Once Upon a Time”, and “Happily Ever After”. We used old wine bottles for the peach nectar and orange juice and used a corresponding design on the juice labels.
We ended the day with mini homemade chocolate mousse desserts and a 3-tiered pink cake masterpiece created by Shirley a San Juan School District’s ROP bakery teacher!
In the words of Ryan, “She’s baaaaaak” and here are the flowers to prove it! Since it has been…um, all of five days since something girlie has graced the blog (and a whole three weeks since flowers have made an appearance) here are some blooms in celebration of Saint Valentine. I seriously never get tired of getting flowers or photographing them.
While I do not really “enjoy” Valentines Day, I do love that there is an entire holiday devoted to pink, white, and more pink! Enjoy your super pink, girlie, sugar filled day! Happy Valentines Day!
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This picture of the week business is much harder than I thought. I find Friday’s are just coming quicker and quicker and it’s only week 3! Since the days are still so short if I don’t photograph a picture on the weekend I am subject to photographing indoors or at night.
This picture of the tulips, a sweet present from Ry, was taken on our dining room table with no flash only our hideous, industrial, it-came-with-the-apartment ceiling light. I used our favorite Nikkor 35mm lens at f/4, 1/50, ISO 1600.
Happy weekend to all!
With my Dad getting back into the photography business (kevingeorgephotography.com), and Ryan sending me flickr links every hour, photography seems to be surrounding my life. I love looking at pretty pictures, but I get frustrated when I can’t produce images that I am actually proud of, but I guess you have to start somewhere! I am totally in love with the soft, creamy, dreamy pictures these days, maybe its a little mental state leftover from the wedding.
Since, my knee is still hurt (from snowboarding), I was not able to join Ryan on a beach run last night, so I decide to walk the strand and gaze at the flowers that I hope to have in my yard one day! Well, actually I hope to have a yard of pretty pink peonies, a gazillion tulips, and beautiful hydrangeas, I will have to settle with these pictures for now!
Our Footprints..... 