Check out these handsome, blue-eyed dreamy babies! I had the opportunity to capture them for their nine month portraits several weeks ago and found myself falling in love with their sweet faces while editing the images. So. darn. cute. For now, one shot. Tomorrow I’ll show you more!
It’s Easter morning—He is risen, He is risen indeed!—and I am at home blogging and partially watching episodes of My Little Pony on Netflix. The stomach flu not only knocked me out of attending Redeemer’s Good Friday service, it also left me as weak as a kitten Easter morning. So while our church family gathers this morning to worship our risen Savior, we are at home resting. The ingredients for our Easter feast sit quietly in the refrigerator awaiting a postponed meal with my folks. Fortunately Livia was still able to hunt eggs, an annual tradition with Grandma & Grandpa, yesterday afternoon. I’m pretty sure she would’ve burst into a million disappointed pieces if she had to wait longer to find all those fun Easter treats.
I leave you with shots from our egg-dyeing extravaganza Thursday afternoon. In the past I’ve run to the grocery store to buy more eggs to dye as one dozen is never enough. Lesson learned: three dozen eggs is just right to wear out my crafty kid. We had fun and she was ready to close up shop before the last three or four were complete—perfect. This year I baked the eggs in the oven per Renae’s suggestion, using this Alton Brown recipe. Though it felt incredibly odd to place the little eggs directly on the oven rack, I loved this method of hard-cooking eggs. They turned out perfectly and only a few cracked (with no drips at all). I should note that not only did I steal Renae’s idea of dying eggs in glass coffee mugs, I also requested those specify mugs for Christmas as I’ve long coveted Renae’s. See what living next door for eight years does for you? Identical kitchenware.
Happy Easter, friends. We worship a living Savior today, and every day of the year! Praise God.
I don’t know who is responsible for planting red, purple and yellow tulip bulbs in this garden, but thank you, thank you, thank you! They brighten up one small corner of my neighborhood in the loveliest of ways.
The Master Artist outdid himself this spring. Or maybe he does it every spring and I’m just particularly grateful in this moment. Whichever the case, I find myself praising God for his beautiful creation frequently. I’m thankful for eyes to see and the artistic inclination to capture the image forever.
It was warm yesterday! But we know what to do when it gets warm. Put on a cute swimsuit and a set of shades, grab the hose and fill up a bucket. Aaaaah. The good life.
We began the day with a few small chores, then cookie-making. Livia and I were ready to do some baking together, so we pulled out one of Jeremy’s favorite recipes and made a large batch of Oatmeal Scotchies. Sometime between measuring flour and doling out tablespoons of batter onto cookie sheets a realtor called and wanted to show our house to clients. I figured we’d set an appointment for Sunday or Monday. Uh no, how about in 30 minutes? Liv settled on the couch with earplugs and a video on my laptop (cleaning-wise, kids tend to undo whatever their parents are doing!) while Jeremy pulled out the vacuum and I ran around in crazy-fast-tidying mode. Five minutes later—seriously, five minutes later—the doorbell rings and the agent and her clients are on our front porch. I opened the door looking like, well, like I look on a relaxed Saturday morning after doing nine laps around the house. The vacuum was roaring loudly in the background, and I asked them to have a seat on the porch for a minute or two. Awe.some.
Long story short, the couple looked at our home and said nice things about it. We invited them to a small plate of cookies before leaving, and that was it. In retrospect I couldn’t believe how many small tidying tasks I had done that morning before getting the call—grace from a providential God!
At noon I joined a group of girlfriends for our 2nd Annual Reuben Lunch. Everyone walks into the chosen restaurant and order Reubens. Maybe Maralee can explain why Reubens are the sandwich of choice; all I know is that these particular sandwiches are delicious at Toast in Fallbrook. And the sides are great, too. But the truth is that I’d eat peanut butter and jellies with sides of sliced bananas if it meant I got to spend time with these awesome women. I left my camera at home but I’m hoping someone else captured a few moments from our lunch.
The evening was spent in my first 2013 senior shoot. The client happened to be someone I babysat a long time ago. (I have a memory of breaking his parents’ pan while popping popcorn–whoops. Dumb kid! Me, not him.) The session went wonderfully and I’ll post images from the shoot in a few weeks. After the photo shoot I drove home quickly and picked up my date for an evening of Hunger Games. We had both read the series and have been eager to see the movie version. Besides dealing with the caveats of watching in the theater (note to the general public: don’t chew ice all through a movie), we enjoyed the flick and thought it was really faithful to the book.
March 31 = good day.
People, selling a house is crazy. Yes, somehow folks do it all the time. They manage to go to school, go to work, fix meals, play with their kids and somehow, at some time, someone makes an offer on their home. All the time this happens. But seriously, it involves a bit of insanity to make it work.
First you go through all the updates and repairs and de-cluttering necessary to allow strangers to look at your house without being utterly grossed out. The goal is to make it appealing to them, so you do a large amount of work to seek out the imperfections you’ve lived with for far too long and find a way to make them livable. The gash in the wood door that you’ve been ignoring, the streak of crayons your child left on the wall five years ago, the broken screen, the water leak, and so on and so forth.
And then, if you care at all about the actual look and feel of your home, you walk through with fresh eyes and try to make your spaces appealing to the masses. Take down that ugly bulletin board, put up a fresh photo, place a matching towel by the sink, clear the jars and canisters from your countertops and add a bowl of fresh fruit here, a vase of fresh flowers there.
Awesome. We’re almost ready to show the house. But remember that canister of Pringles your family ate on family movie night? Once you pop you can’t stop? Well, it left a plethora of teensy chips on the carpet. Get out the vacuum. Notice those circles of grime on the living room coffee table, yes, your daughter’s milk spilled and sat there for a few days. Find a rag and some Lysol. Then there’s the toilet in the basement that no one’s examined closely in a week and the Legos on the pink carpet upstairs and the piles of clothing in your own room because the seasons changed overnight and you’re still at a loss for where all your summer clothing has gone to. Yes, go pick up all that stuff and then see what else needs to be done.
At some point, you stop wiping and tidying and rearranging and you call it good. You take a few deep breaths.
You look around your house, the clock turns to Open House hour and you think, “Now why am I moving? My house ROCKS.”
As much as I’ve adored Canon over the years, I’m turning Nikon. It’s not hard to love Nikon when I’m shooting with a fabulous new-to-me Nikon D2x. The sharpness and clarity of the images pleases me to no end. It makes shooting springy pics like hostas rising from the soil and mulch that much more enjoyable.
See that guy working in the yard? Yeah, he’s mine. Te amo, Jeremy Tredway!
Our mild winter weather proved beneficial to this natural light photographer. The week after Christmas found me doing two shoots with families I really love. First up was the Kirk and Schlegel clan in Milford. Driving out to Milford under a clear Nebraska sky and photographing these families was such a treat for me!
