Carmen's Maternity session

God help me! This hobby of photography could really turn into something amazing up in this neck of the woods. I spent a few hours today hanging out with one of the most fantastic women you'll ever meet! She has this engaging smile that draws you in and lord have mercy, those eyes! She is clearly at home in front of the lens and makes my job easy as pie. She is nearly nine months pregnant and had the energy & gusto for pretty much everything I threw at her.

We pulled out all the stops today. I had her standing, sitting, walking, laying...and she was rearin' to go for each and every pose, outfit & location. Lucky me!

This is just a glimpse of some of the wonderful images we were able to capture today. It was such a gift to be able to try my hand at photographing someone other than my kids for a change. So gratifying.

Gratitude looks something like this.

Alright, so Tuesday's photo session was a bust but we're gonna try again today. Poor mama, kinda hard to muster your inner supermodel when your legs hurt and you were up all night compliments of Braxton Hicks contractions. Yuck. So today is "take two" of the photo session. I'm super excited about having the opportunity to create some meaningful images of a friend & her fella. He's a member of the RCMP so there should be some beautiful photos with her wearing his red serge (that's their fancy uniform, in case you live under a rock or something and have no idea what it is!)

We've been scouring some inspiring photography websites for ideas and will take a stab at it ourselves today. Let's all keep our fingers crossed that the sun shines and the temp stays nice and warm (it's only zero right now! YES!) so we can go outside for some additional photos in the snow. Should be a great day, no?

Yesterday was a real treat. It was Remembrance Day so that meant no school which, in turn, meant no alarm clock. We slept till like, 9:30. Ahhh...you wanna talk about gratitude? Dude.

So after a very luxurious sleep-in, we got up and immediately began baking. Ray was on the bread and I was rockin' the raisin strips. We headed over to my pal, Carlie's place for a visit. The boys disappeared immediately and the grown-ups hung out sipping wine & cold beer upstairs while I followed the only daughter on the scene, Ruby all over the place. The light in Carlie's house is unbelievable so I just couldn't help myself.

I grabbed a few photos that I really like and Ray snatched the camera and got one of me! I love that! Here are some of the photos from yesterday ::

Here is the beautiful Carlie herself. Mama to three and master creater of all things bead-y.


This is the delicious Miss Ruby herself...sitting upon her...uh, throne.


This is my current fave pic of me. Thanks Ray :)



I couldn't stop there...had to have one of my fella too!


Did I mention that I'm grateful. I'm grateful for a wonderful family, friends who I wouldn't trade for anything, a comfortable warm home and a life that looks an aweful lot like a dream. Life is good.

Belly shots?

Do you think it will work if I try to will the clouds away? I see the sun is trying to poke through and for a while there, it was winning...but I see new clouds rolling in over the mountains. Ugh. Maybe it's nicer in town.

Today is slated as attempt #1 to get some great maternity shots of my pal, Carmen. However. She had a rotten night last night, compliments of the small person incubating in her belly. Poor girlie. Gonna hafta bring her some prezzies, I think.

Fingers are crossed that her 3.5 hour drive to get into town from Pelly doesn't suck ALL the wind outta her sails. I've been poring over photo ideas and have some really fun stuff up my sleeve. Let's see what today's good for!

I ♥ Faces

I have been wanting to participate in this photo challenge for a while. This week's theme is "Thankfulness". I chose this photo because I'm immensely thankful for all-day kindergarten. My little guy comes home after a long day tired and happy. I get a day to myself to work, read, knit, photograph. Whatever.


Click the "I ♥ Faces" logo above to see what everyone else does with this week's photo challenge.

Monday mishaps

Oh, today is not feeling like a very organized kind of day. Poop. I really dig Mondays in general but there's something about today that's a little off-putting. It could be the bickering kids, it could be that we ran out of dogfood, it could EVEN be that the kids almost missed the bus. Not sure. It's like trying to figure out which drop of water made the toilet overflow (not that we had that problem today but it is still just the morning and anything could happen). Oh, did I mention that we haven't been using our coffee maker recently - we're using the stovetop Moka maker instead- so when Ray peeked inside the countertop coffee maker and discovered a whole science experiment of multiple varieties of fuzzy-wuzzy mould?!?! I wasn't really surprised...given how the rest of this morning has gone. Ugh.

I'm gonna attempt to package up all the Etsy purchases that I can and ship them out today and hopefully the shipments I'm waiting for will arrive soon, soon, soon!

I'm still mulling some fun ideas for pregnancy photos with my pal Carmen & her fella, Phil so that is very much a good thing. I have to prepare one of my online classes at Our Big Earth today and then a little daytime tv (Oh Oprah, my tv BFF) and knitting sounds like the right way to do a Monday.

Do it!

Go big or go home

Y'know, I don't really like doing things on a small scale or just half-way. As a lover of cliche's, I'm an "in for a penny, in for a pound" kinda girl. So after being immersed in a 2 day agriculture seminar, I needed to switch gears for a bit and do something ultra-creative to feed my soul. I bought a couple of photography DVDs from Me Ra Koh's webside (a photographer whose approach to making images is much like my own) and got all fired up to make some kick-ass photos! WOOT!

So as I was watching the DVDs, I got a note from a pal on Facebook who's expecting her first baby in a few weeks and she asked me if I could take some photos of her. The timing was serindipitous so naturally, I seized the opportunity. There's no pressure to pull off anything in particular because, after all, I'm not a pro photog but rather a friend trying to get a few pretty shots of my buddy before her baby gets here. Sounds like a good time, doesn't it? So I've reviewed a few of the galleries of my favorite pros and have a great list of compositions & scenes I'm going to attempt to reproduce.

We're going to do this later in the week so if it all works out, I'll share a few of my faves here.

Today is officially 'pajama day' so we're just chillin' with the kidlets and watching a little telly.

A quickie

It's friday and there's a new challenge up at LP. Take a look at everyone else's pages here. It was a super tricky challenge for me but I think I came up with a doozy! If I do say so myself. I have an extra flower similar to the one in my layout. Leave me a comment and a random commenter will receive my spare pink & black flower in the mail :) Gotta share the love!

Ray and I are taking in a 2-day agriculture conference today & tomorrow so our days are gonna be pretty full and our brains mostly melted. But for a good cause. I think I"ll make sure I take a sketch book with me so I can jot down any great ideas that may come to me. What are you doing with your day today?

Not lovin' Halloween

Halloween. Ugh. My least favorite day on the entire calendar. It's loaded with obligation (costumes, god help me!) and going against my personal beliefs about my kids and candy. My boys get a little candy now and then but they're the kind of kids who, when given a bag of M&M's, can't believe how lucky they are. Let's face it, kids get WACKED when they eat lots of refined sugar and dye. My kids are, anyway. And when they're WACKED, they get in trouble because they can't harness the excessive energy. So trick-or-treating (hello! Telling our kids to take candy from strangers?? Anyone else notice how this is just a little hypocritical? or is it just me?) makes me crazy. I freeze my ass off - did I mention it's -5C (20F)- so there's some serious lack of enjoyment for me, then the crappy costumes that are buried under snow gear so no one sees them is another waste (of money cuz I have NO time to make them) and then they come home with a giant bag of candy that I have to inspect before I can let them eat it - y'know, the razorblades in apples or opened packages or home made stuff from folks you don't know. Great. Sounds like lots of fun.

Instead, we're having a party at our house. I like my house. It's warm. We bought a few treats for the kids and even have fun jack-o-lantern goodie bags. There's chocolates, gummies, chips and candy apples. No one is being deprived here but no one is going to overdose on sugar and barf their guts out all over the bed again. I just can't do it again. An ounce of prevention, people!

So a few other families are joining us and I must say, I'm really looking forward to it. Some winter BBQ, great convos, some snacks and even Halloween treats. Not too shabby.

And as if all this weren't enough to keep us totally busy, we're planning for Craft Show Mania! I've also been swamped with Etsy orders. Yay for me! My advent calendars have been just flying out of the shop (Thank you Etsy Admin for your support!! ♥)

There are four more craft shows coming up (check my FB Page for details) and the inventory is piling up around me! There are gonna be loads of amazing new products. You don't wanna miss out. If you are thinking of ordering anything from my shop for the holidays, you might want to get on that. Availability for custom orders is quickly disappearing but message me for info!

Oh, and before you go, read this great post from Shutter Sisters. Their blog is one of my go-to places for inspiring reads. This one is a little older but it won't disappoint.

layouts and photos

Yesterday was the kind of day that left my muscles aching because I had stamped so much. That's good, right? Saturday is the first craft show of the season and I'm feeling a little panicked that there isn't enough stuff! That always happens and you know what? I always have way more than I think (and more than I need!). Hopefully being the first show of the season, it'll give some indication as to which things I need more of and which things I don't need to bother making again.

Hey, by the way, keep your eye on the Lotus Paperie blog. We're putting the call out for a new Design Team soon. You know you want in on that action!

My kidlet (Sethy) is home today - parent/teacher interviews begin today and both boys are home tomorrow. That's one long-ass weekend!

Sundog was a wicked good time and I finally got a chance to play with my TTV camera a little.

Oh, I also got nine pages made ::

And away we go!

Dude. It's friday and that means that our 3-day retreat at Sundog starts today. I gotta say, I'm pretty excited about it and am really looking forward to getting to know a bunch of new ladies as well as spend some serious face-time with some "old" ladies (hee hee). There are 14 of us in total and we're pretty much taking over the place. The event is fully catered so we don't have to lift a finger...except to scrapbook.

I have so much packing to do and did I mention that our power company has informed us that there will be a scheduled power-outage right about the same time I'm setting up my stuff at the retreat. I hope it doesn't last too long. I hope it's a sunny day.

I haven't decided if I'll do much scrapbooking this weekend or if I'll make cards n' stuff for my craft shows coming up. I'll probably scrapbook because I can always MAKE time to work but don't always make time to create for creation sake.

It's dark and cold out this morning...there's been talk of going back to bed once the kids get on the bus! We'll see. I might be awake by then. Maybe not. Update for ya next week.