Save the Date – Ladies Night Out!
I am excited to announce that we will be hosting our first ever Ladies Night Out, here at the studio!
You are invited to join a few of my friends, and me, for a fun, exciting evening! Mark your calendar today, to save Saturday, July 11th for a night out with your Ladies!
For more information, please visit our Ladies Night Out website.
Mind of Her Own
At just over a year old, Lola has found her independence! She wants to do it her way and no other way. This can lead to a challenging session, when what she wants to do is carry around Mommy’s lip gloss or hold a cracker in her hand. The problem is that she’s so darn cute, it’s hard to say no. Then when you do say no, she’s learning how to throw tantrums. So, as soon as you take it away, or say no, the tears come out!
Eventually the lip gloss “disappeared”, the cracker was eaten and anything else she could get into, magically grew taller than her! She was left with only myself, Mommy, Daddy and Mimi for entertainment. She made do! Evidently when we wear her hat, we’re pretty funny looking!
What An Awesome Day!
Sunday was a Helping Paws event success! To sum it up – 38 Dogs, 3 Cats, three tired helpers and an exhausted photographer, but SO worth it!
The forecasted rain and storms were non-existent. The rare, pleasantly soft breeze, brought in nice temperatures. BUT, best of all, the furry kiddos were in high attendance, each of them bringing their own personality and adorable expressions! I can’t wait to share their images with you.
The goodies that everyone donated for Wayside Waifs were amazing! We were blown away by everyone’s great generosity. I know Wayside Waifs will be so excited to receive our delivery.
*Photographs courtesy of my friend, and Pet Portrait Day helper, Chris.
A HUGE THANKS to both Chris and my sister, Lori, also a Pet Portrait Day helper. We would not have survived without you!!
Rock Star Baby
Pete was amazing the day of his session. Just six days old, and he was as laid back as could be. Of course, he probably ate during more than half of the session, but during the other half he was rocking the camera! All about the sleepy baby expressions, and giving the cute smirky grin!
I love when babies are sleepy drunk on milk! You can pose them, and place their arms and legs anyway you want and they just keep on sleeping. They’ll have a little startle reflex right when you touch them, but give them time, and you can feel the resistance melt away.
Helping Paws is Sunday
This weekend, on Sunday, June 14th we will be hosting our second Helping Paws (One Lick at a Time) Pet Portrait Day!
We have had an awesome response, and our schedule is full, with lots of furry, four-legged kiddos. We created this event to benefit Wayside Waifs, a humane society committed to helping homeless animals find a permanent place to call home.
Even if your schedule didn’t allow you to participate this year, or maybe you don’t have a furry, four-legged kid in your life right now, we could definitely still use your support. If you would like to donate and support Wayside Waifs, we would really appreciate it.
For donation suggestions visit our Helping Paws website. You can drop off your donation at our studio the day of the event (anytime between 11 AM & 5 PM), or we can make arrangements with you for another day. Wayside Waifs can always benefit from monetary donations as well. Please let us know how you can help!
Technology & Me
ARGH! I have a love/hate relationship with computers and technology. I love what they allow me to do, from the incredible images I can create in my digital world; to the emails I can send at 2 AM when I’m the only person awake!
BUT, I tend to attract problems. If it can go wrong, it will go wrong! It’s a good thing I’m married to a computer engineer who can handle most of my techno crises!
We took a short break this weekend and headed to the lake with our friends. It was a great weekend – beautiful weather, no cell phone coverage, no internet connection, just friends, dogs, sun and smiles!
We get home from our relaxing break, I go to turn on my laptop (which is the computer I use to do all my email, blog posting, admin, etc – basically anything non image related), and crash, boom, it does not turn on. Error message! With a little digging, Pete discovers that it is basically d-e-a-d! He proceeds to spend the rest of Sunday running repair programs and trying anything he can think of to get it working again…with no luck!
After multiple phone calls to the help desk, we are now waiting on disks to be sent overnight. So, he spends Sunday night and Monday morning setting up a temporary computer for me, but it’s just a short term solution and not a 100% solution at that.
Then we find out that they don’t know when the disks are going to ship. Hello, people, trying to run a business, here! ARGH! Pete starts fiddling with the laptop again, and now it’s doing something. It may just be repairing itself! I’m keeping my fingers crossed, but not holding my breath. We’ve still got a long way to go!
Now, after two days of not being able to get the day to day work done, because he’s been working non-stop on fixing my computer, Pete has made progress! Luckily we run a back-up every night at 2 AM. Unfortunately, because I turned off the computer since we were leaving, the backup didn’t run on Friday morning. The result is that the only thing we have access to is the Thursday 2 AM backup. SO…everything I did on Thursday is gone. I love computers! (Note the sarcasm!)
I think I’ve been receiving everyone’s emails and I am trying to respond as quickly as possible, but if you don’t hear from me (or if you sent me a message on Thursday), you may have been lost in the shuffle, so please send me a new message or give me a jingle!
Fingers crossed, we are up and running and Tuesday will be a much more productive day!
Generator Kicking In!
Sunday night, as the thunderstorms were shaking the house, the dogs were shaking at my feet and rain was pelting the side of the house, Pete and I were convinced we were going to have the first chance to use our brand new generator. Wouldn’t you know it, now that we have a generator, the storms didn’t cause us any trouble, there wasn’t even a flicker with the electricity.
Of course, Monday morning, when the sun was peeking out from behind the clouds, and there wasn’t a rain drop to be seen for miles, at 9 AM, off went the electricity. What?!? Craziness, I tell you!
BUT…I can’t tell you how awesome it was, when just seconds later, GRRRR, we hear the generator kick on and the electricity is right back on. This time the electricity was only out for forty-five minutes, which is extremely unusual, (we are used to several hours at a time) but it was so nice to not be stumbling around in a dark bathroom or flipping on light switches, only to remember that there is no electricity!
This removed any doubts we had about not needing the generator…it’s less than a week old and we are already putting it to work!
Too Helpful?
Is there such a thing as too helpful? Yes, there is! When it comes to Miss Abby and her little brother Matthew. Abby is SO sweet and cares SO much about Matthew, it’s absolutely adorable!
BUT…when it comes to session time, that’s not such a good thing. Being three years old now, Abby was totally working the camera, and having a great time. Matthew on the other hand, as expected, being 18 months old, was giving us a little bit more of a challenge.
I had tons of great images of Abby, and really wanted to get some of Matthew. So I asked Abby to stand next to me. Evidently, that was like me asking a pig to fly. She could not do it! She needed to show Matthew where to sit, where to stand, not to do that, if he fell she needed to help him get up. I was going crazy trying to get her out of the view of the camera, but yet keep him in it! She was adorable, but way too helpful!
Tired Baby
Despite the long nap that Mommy said Lily had taken that morning, we had a tired baby on our hands! We actually made it through two outfits and four headpiece changes, but in the process, we definitely pushed Lily to her limit! By the time we were done, she was tired of sticking out her tongue at us, tired of giving us her old man face and ready to close her big blue eyes…all in all she was worn out!
The bonus from a tired Lily…I got thumb sucking images!! I know I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I love images of babies sucking their thumbs! How precious!
Puppy Love
Our dog trainer, Vicky, just got a new puppy! His name is Kano and he’s a Dutch Shepherd. He came straight from Holland, where his parents are working dogs, to join Vicky’s family!
Although he’s only eleven weeks old, as expected, Vicky has wasted no time teaching Kano what’s right and what’s wrong. He has pretty much mastered the sit command, and is getting better at his down command. He’s a pro at letting her know when he needs to go outside.
He still does have some of those puppy mannerisms! Chewing on everything in sight (which Vicky is very quick to reprimand if it’s the wrong thing). Jumping up to get that toy that you have in your hand, because he knows it should be his! Throwing little tantrums when he doesn’t get his way! He’s just like a little two year old. He’s knows what to do and what not to do…he just chooses when he wants to do it!
I asked her what the biggest thing was that he had destroyed in the house, and the answer…he chewed through the electrical cord of the lamp! See, it happens to all of us, even our trainers! (Except of course, Vicky had left Kano out and loose, because her son said he would watch him while she was gone. Hmmm, it was during this time that the lamp stopped working!)
Check out those gigantic feet! They are so loud when they hit the floor. At this age, there’s nothing very graceful about Kano. Vicky says he should grow to about 75 pounds!
