These Days...Sunday June 6th, 2010

Today was my bridal shower. I have to say, it was fabulous. I have the best friends and family ever. They threw an amazing party that was everything I could have imagined. Everyone who came was fun and friendly and gave me such awesome gifts. It was a perfect day.

My morning started with the hairstylist coming over to test run my hairstyle for my wedding. Next my bridesmaids came over to pick things up. Then they went to Tom & Ray's restaurant in downtown Damascus, while I finished getting ready. I showed up at Tom & Ray's and everyone was arriving. I started to get a little nervous, I wasn't sure what to expect. But like I said, it was fabulous. I had such a great time.

After the shower my best friend and Matron of honor, Mandy went out and got coffee. It was wonderful to get to sit down and talk to her about life and everything. Its been a long time since we've had the chance to just sit and talk one on one. I am very grateful for that time. Because she is amazing part of my life here that I am so sad to leave, I decided to use her as my subject today. I wanted to take photos of her that really show who she is. That is why there are 2 photos of her, one to show her silly quirky side, and the other to show her thoughtfulness and intelligence. She is a wonderful personm and has been like a sister to me and I will miss her dearly.

These Days...

My photograph today, makes me feel like a Cat-Lady. I'm not by definition a Cat-lady, I mean I'm engaged and I have a social life. I most likely wont live my life out knitting at home alone with 7 cats. But, my photo today is of my cat. Her name is Princess, my family has had her since I was in the 2nd grade, which makes her something like 16 years old. She has been a loyal, calm, gentle and loving cat her entire life. I will miss her more than words can express, when I move. The past 2 weeks she's been having some issues that frequently occur in older people, she's a cat and we've never had a cat live quite this long so we are unsure whether this is a normal "old cat" problem or if its indicative of a more serious problem. But, we're worried, and the thought that I might NEVER see her again, is down right devestating to me. So, my photo today is of her.

Have a good night.

These Days... Tuesday June 1st

This evening we worked on finishing up the little details with the Jam for my bridal shower, so my photo today is of that. Its WAY to grainy for my taste but I didnt have the chance to take a better one.

So here it is.

These Days...

Let me say that I am pretty excited about these days... today. I had an amazing day today. I went to church and learned a lot. I got to stop by and see the family I babysit for one more time before I move (because I left one of my lenses at their house last night), My sister and her daughters came over and we made homemade jam, and listened to music and had a water gun fight, and had dinner together, outside and ate delicious kabob that my Dad cooked on the grill, AND we got Jimmy Cone for dessert. When I think about today, all I can do is close my eyes, smile and sigh in happiness. It was like every perfect summer day of my childhood years. I wish all Sundays could be so great. I know I've posted before about how much I love clothes-lines, it reminds me so much of summer and of my grandmother and of happy things. Well my mom had hung some sheets on the line today to dry, for the first time this year I believe, and it made me so happy. It made me wish I was like 8 years old again, and could run through them and smell the freshness. Since I'm not 8 anymore, I decided to take some photographs of it instead.

I have 2 photos for the These Days... Project, one of the laundry and one of the cute little table setup we had for dinner in the yard. Maybe not the most breath-taking photos but they will certainly remind me of this wonderful Maryland summer day.

Enjoy!

Ashley's Senior Session

I have been itching to post the Full preview of Ashley's senior session for the past week, but I wanted to  finish editing the set before posting. So now that I have finished and given her the images, I am putting up her post.

You met Ashley, a few weeks ago, but please meet her again. :-)

Ashley is my cousin and she happens to be a Senior. She is actually graduating a year early, which makes her fabulous. The Saturday before Easter we headed down to D.C. to take some senior pictures. We started out at the National Botanical Gardens, and then we walked around the Mall, and eventually headed over to the Cherry Blossoms by the Tidal Basin. So I decided to asked her to some questions about herself so we could all get to know her a bit better.

Lets start with the basics, Her birthday is September 1st. Her Favorite color is Purple. Her Favorite Band is Metallica. Her Favorite type of  Food is German. Her Favorite subject in school is English. She'll be attending Kaplan University starting in July this year, and will be in the Nursing assistant program. When asked what her Favorite things to do in her spare time, she responded with "Just volunteering and working at the Hagerstown suns. I like doing anything that requires creativity like crafts and projects." Sounds pretty cool right? She totally is.

Now that we've got the basics, lets move on to the fun stuff!

I asked her If she could travel anywhere in the world where would it be and why? And she responded with such an amazing answer:  "I would travel to Africa where there is high poverty. I think it would help me appreciate what I have more and seeing a new culture would be exciting. Maybe I can get a tan too." Talk about girl after my own heart.

I also asked her If she was the richest person in the world, what would she do with her life/career and she gave a quality answer, that totally makes me smile. She said, "I would help out as much as I can. I would travel and find out more about the world. And okay I'd probably get a nice house and a pool and a pool boy. :] "

My final question was, As a kid, what did she want to be when she grew up. This is another one where her answer isn't all that different from what mine would be. She said, "I could never decide on one thing. I wanted to be a marine biologist for a long time because I love the ocean so much, but right now most of them are sent to cold places to do research and I hate cold weather. I used to watch shark week and all those shows on TV because its so fascinating. I just love the powerful feeling of the ocean."

 

 

She really is amazing and an awesome model to boot. So for your viewing pleasure, a slideshow of Ashley's Senior Session:

 

 
 

Busy Busy Busy

SO I have been Busy Busy Busy this week with editing of photos, wedding stuff, moving out stuff, and work has been super busy with a bunch of special events this past week. To top it all off, I went to my friend Jess Morris's wedding on Saturday to see her become Mrs. Jessica Friley. It was alot of fun. Today My mom, My sister, My aunt and My cousin all went with me to a bridal expo in Gaithersburg. We had a great time, and it gave me some great ideas. The main one is what my table centerpieces will look like. Originally I thought I would do eclectic candle centerpieces but have decided to modify that by adding mason jars with flowers in the center of the table with a mish-mosh of candles surrounding them. I did a test run so that when I meet with the florist, hopefully this week, I'll have something to show her. I thought that since I was going to be taking pictures of them anyway I would post them here as well. Enjoy. Have a great Sunday afternoon!

From blog stuff

sneak peak!

Here is a little sneak peak of Ashley's Senior session. Ashley is my cousin. She is super smart and is graduating a year early, this June, and so we headed down to DC to do some senior portraits. I'll give you more info about her when I do a full post. Enjoy!

Family

Today I spent the day with my sister Katie and her family because its my mom's birthday. We went shopping and then to my niece Grace's (my sister Katie's daughter) christmas play that was rescheduled. The play was so good. It was simple and pretty short, maybe 30 minutes but it was really nice and all the kids did an amazing job. Right after the play was over my sister was holding her other daughter hannah and it was such a sweet moment so I told them to look at me and I snapped this shot. You might remember both of them from my photo of the day this past wednesday, originally this fact had deterred me from choosing this photo but it was just too good to pass up.

I've decided that I am really over winter, and that the only reason I thought I liked it was because of the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons. I wish the cold weather would go away because it makes me a bit mopey, I tend to want to curl up in a ball and avoid the world. Not a good thing to do so I'm trying to fight through it and hold out for Spring. Well enough random musing, have a great night and a great Monday tomorrow!

Day 03- Wordless Wednesday

the half blood prince

So I said I was going to post about going to see Harry Potter 6, but I lied. I was busy photo editing from some portrait shoots I did and didn't have a chance. As much as I know everyone was dying to hear about H.P., I feel like posting some stuff from those shoots.

So I went to the beach the weekend of July 18th, and my Aunt Cathy asked me to take some good pictures of my cousins because she doesn't have many of them together. I felt nervous and I felt a lot of pressure because I haven't really done much portraiture. I think that nerves and awkwardness aside it went well. Here are two of my favorites from that shoot.

My Friend Francie got engaged that weekend when I was at the beach and She asked me if I would do her engagement photos and I excitedly agreed. After I had some time to think through my decisions I freaked out a bit. I was afraid that I would disappoint them, and that the images would be boring and they would hate me forever. Obviously this was a bit disproportionate and dramatic, but all the same these were my fears. These fears prompted me to ask my parents to go with me to the locations of the pending shoot and do a mini test shoot with them. Well to my immense surprise, I got some great shots of the parentals. My parents have very few pictures together, seeing as my dad does not particularly enjoy having his photo taken, so I was glad to have some good pictures of them for my mom and family. Here are a couple of my favorites.

So I know that these aren't those most blow you away images, but I think they are pretty good considering I don't have much experience with taking pictures of people. I know that with each shoot I get better.

Well, its off to bed for me, because in the morning I am going along with my close friend, and seriously talented photographer Sarah Patch to do an engagement shot for my best friend Mandy and her fiance Joe.

I will post a few of the shots I've finished from the Francie + Aaron engagement shoot sometime tomorrow.