Thursday, July 12, 2012

Granddad of Year!

When I am at work and Mr. Wonderful is keeping Bella, she usually calls me at my desk in the morning.  Yesterday was no different.  When I asked her what she was doing, she excitedly told me that she was looking at the American Girl catalog.  She loves to get their catalog and awaits its arrival much like we used to wait for the 'Wish Book' to come out. 

After my day was over, I went home and sat down and grabbed the catalog thinking that I would look through it myself.  That's when Mr. W told me how he spent his morning.  Isabella had gone through the catalog with an orange highlighter and marked the title of each item that she wished to have.  There were roughly 300!  Next, she sat down at the table with her Granddad and went through the catalog page by page, showing him each item and then reading to him the description of each item!  Since he is known to indulge his favorite little girl, he sat there patiently listening and looking at each of her grand desires. 

After they had gone through the whole catalog, she told him that she didn't expect to get everything that she wanted.  But maybe she could get three.  Three would be a good number.

When he was done telling me all of this he said to me "That's why I will win Grandfather of the Year"!
So, here you go honey.  You do deserve it!
As if there was ever any doubt!

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Senior Photo Shoot & Request

WARNING: Picture Heavy!

I spent the weekend in Ohio taking pictures-LOTS of pictures!  It was an easy assignment though as the model for this shoot was my niece Julia.  She is a senior in high school and wanted her old aunt to shoot her.  Mom wanted me to do it for a couple of reasons, number one being the price tag-free!  Ha!
Julia is a beautiful girl inside and out, but she is completely unaware of her outer beauty.  Hard to believe, but true.  She is a natural beauty and the camera loved her.  Let me show you a few of my favorites:

  
  
Love that maxi dress on her!  We went out early in the morning in an attempt to beat the high sun and the heat.  It didn't work.  It was HOT!  We kept going back to the car to sit in it with the A/C on just to cool off a bit. 
My sister asked that I take a picture from behind so that in 20 years or so, Julia can look at this picture and say 'Boy, I had a great ass  behind.' !!  Who can appreciate that, raise your hand!
Lake Erie was so warm.  This beach is just lovely too, it's fairly large and has nice sand.  It's close to the parking lot so not a lot of walking and they have a little cafe and clean bathrooms-but it was empty.
I was wading in the water to get some of the shots that I wanted and let me tell you, it felt great.

After we were done at this location we went back to the house to cool off for a bit and get some lunch. ( I took a 10 minute power nap. ) After a while Sarg. (aka: my sister) told Julia to change and we would go over to her High School to get a few shots there. We made it a quick mini session as it was so hot and the sun was really too bright.

 
This is their little dog JASL.  She is such a sweet dog.  She is full grown and weighs only 4 pounds!  Quite a change from my 70-80 pound labs.  JASL was happy to pose with Julia.

I wound up with lots of good shots and plenty for them to choose from.  These photos are straight out of the camera, no editing as of yet.  Haven't had the time to play with Photoshop yet.  Please let me know what you think as I would love to get some feedback.  All were shot in Manual mode, some with my Canon 50mm lens and some with my Tamron AF70-200mm lens.

One last thing, Isabella's School Age class at La Petite is trying to get postcards sent to them from all 50 states and anywhere outside the US too.  If you can,  please send a postcard to:
La Petite Academy
Attn: Isabella
150 Old Farm Drive
Frederick, MD 21702

Thanks.  Hope to hear from you soon!

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Easily Confused!

It doesn't take much to throw me off my game and frankly having a day off and a holiday to boot fall in the middle of the week has done just that!  I keep thinking that today is Monday and I needed to do my Weekend Review.  Since the weekend has not occured yet, I'm going to skip that for now and share a short post with you today.


I told you that I've been dying to use my new Annie Sloan Chalk Paint and hadn't found anything to use it on yet right?  Well, I just jumped in on a small piece that I found at a consignment shop.  Can I just tell you that I am in love?!  This paint is really great to work with.  It leaves no brush marks, dries easily, is easy to distress and the colors are downright swoon worthy!  So here is the little piece before:

And here she is after:
I love it!  I need to finish it with some wax, but I didn't have any of that yet so I'll just have to wait on that.  The color is Duck Egg and I really like the color.  It's not too blue, green or grey, but just the perfect combination.  It's a great accent color for my studio, which is mostly a light beige, white and black.  I have been hoping to infuse a great accent color into the room and I am so happy with this color.  I have a couple of square boxes for the walls and I went ahead and painted those with this color too.  Can't wait to finally finish that room.  I need a few more things-curtains and an Expedit Shelf from Ikea, and a couple decorative pieces and that should do it. 
Oh!  The hardware on this piece I just dipped it in something that I had bought to clean my coffee pot with.  Can't remember what it is called, but I mixed it up in water and just dropped the pieces in there (after checking a small area first) and let it sit for a few minutes.  The gunk started to come off right away.  After I took it out of the mixture I went over them with a Magic Eraser because it is non-abrasive and wouldn't scratch the surface.  Voila!  Easy Peasy.

Tomorrow I'll be heading out to Ohio for a short weekend.  I'll be visiting with my sister and BIL and their two girls.  My main reason for going is to do a Senior Photo Shoot for my niece Julia.  That is the excuse that I'm using anyway.  Can't wait to see them!  My nieces are truly two of the sweetest, kindest and Godliest young women that I know.  They are a joy to be around!  They are so incredibly close to each other and to their parents that it just makes you feel good.  I'll be going by myself though, no company for the road.  The Mister has to work and Bella's parents want to keep her.  Go figure!

It'supposed to be a real scorcher on Saturday with temperatures expected to reach over the 100 degree mark again.  From what I hear, The Buckeye State isn't going to bring me any relief either.  Thank goodness for air conditioning!