i am NOT getting sick.

I may have some body aches, and a headache, and maybe a tiny bit of a sore throat but I just flat out refuse to get sick. I'm just gonna keep downing vitamin C (even though my super smart 18 year old said that they learned in health class that doesn't help) and taking ibuprofin and keep refusing to give in.

Today was another really full day between taking almost 40 individual/family pics at my church and then a truely terrible volleyball game w/my league....yeah, all while dealing w/my not being sick. If I do have to get sick (not that I'm going to) tomorrow and tuesday would work for my schedule, but then after that I've got stuff to do.

Last week, one of my nieces brought in her 9mo little boy and we decided, rather than drive out to the studio we'd do some experimenting w/my slave flash here at home. I think they turned out great, but it did kind of remind me of just starting out when I hung a blanket over a door for a background:)


Here's one in my office w/my black couch in the background, check out the cheeks on this kid...so cute!


This is the same way I'm doing the church pics also, and I've got to say that slave flashing is alot easier than hauling around my big alien bee lights. I'm shooting at ISO 160, 6.3, & 160th of a second in a windowless room and the pics are turning out really nice. Great color and exposure. I've also been using a grey card for the first time since we are able to mass edit some of these shots.

Not too shabby!

Friday I had a studio appt for Dillon, who is Duncan's little sister. She was supposed to have her pics taken when Duncan came in however she was sick (not me) and had to reschedule. She was feeling better and full of smiles for me.

check her out!!!

This coming week has no sessions planned. Just some editing, then we're having a few friends over for a taffy pull and then again a Sunday full of individual/family pics, 3 more Sunday's to go.

Big guys & little guys

I am slowly getting back into the swing of things here. Had a couple of fun sessions this last week.

Connor came in for his senior session, and even though we did most of them inside because it was FREEZING, we snuck out for a few just for fun...really cold fun.


Another one of our kids turned 18 on Monday....Caleb is officially an adult...I guess.

We took our family, along w/3 of his friends to Fun City over the weekend. 3 days later and I'm still sore from climbing the rock wall!



Then one of my favorite little guys, "Duncan" came in for his 4 year old shoot. I've been taking his picture since he was a baby. It's so much fun to get to see these little guys grow up. Duncan is just one of those smiley little kids and he told me before he left he needed to give me a real tight hug!

Nothing makes your day like a really tight hug from this kid:)

nights and days

Break is over and the kids are back in school, but for awhile there it was like they were babies again...babies w/their nights and days mixed up!

Just about every time we'd bring home one of our brand new precious tiny babies from the hospital, for about the first week they'd sleep all day and want to eat all night. The past couple weeks it was like that again, only they're not so tiny anymore, but they still want to eat all night. Every night the kids went to bed later and later and got up the next day later and later. I remember when our kids could barely stay up till midnight on New Years....not a problem now.

We did have one case of stomach flu and I'm really hoping it stays that way. Of course that kid was sleeping up in a tree house bed way up high and couldn't get down the ladder to the bathroom so the clean up was extensive. Doing laundry at 3:00 a.m. is not my idea of fun.

Anyway, we are now getting back on the early bedtime, early wake up schedule and it's tough...but I like it way better.

This is officially my "slow" time and I'm not doing too much right now, just a few sessions. I am getting my tax stuff together and getting ready to file IL sales tax and then in a couple of weeks I'm going to start taking family pictures for my church's online directory. I think there is around 150 families so I think I'm just going to enjoy these next 2 weeks before it gets crazy around here again.

a few shots from this morning

I'm still experimenting, this time i used an external flash set at 0 and tried a high iso, however, several of the images had alot of noise so I would not call this morning's experiment a success because I only kept a few shots. Anyway, here are the few keepers.






These will be featured in my Wall Art album under online ordering.

On the bright side, I found my house yesterday! It was buried under a few layers of wrapping paper and dishes but amazingly unharmed. Now I just need to survive thru Logan's paintball slumber party today, tonight, and tomorrow and we should be good till New Years. Four 13 year old boys w/paintball guns for the next 36 hours...pray hard.

Christmas is over...

Crazy how you run around and spend an entire month trying to get everything baked, bought, wrapped, & taken to the right party, and then BAM, it's over. That's an awful lot of preparation for one day...or for most of us 2-3 days by the time you hit the in-laws, the outlaws, and your own family party.

Christmas day we woke up to several inches of snow and opted to not try to drive our rear wheel drive van thru it and instead listened to church online and then all went sledding. Our oldest built a ramp out of a picnic table and they all took turns trying to break their necks...I may have tried just once. In the afternoon, my brother in law came and plowed our drive so off to grandma's house we went for the Sauder Christmas. Then later that night it was back home to make snow ice cream. It was a really nice Christmas!

Yesterday, after church, we turned down yet another dinner invite, we grabbed a few groceries and some very important paintball accessories and then came home and did nothing for a few hours...and it felt great. I think we are partied out....of course that doesn't stop the party from wandering over to our house anyway. A few nieces and my sister showed up to use the hot tub then play some card games and the kinect. That's the big gift this year and it's quite the work out. This game gets you up and moving! I only played a few games on it and I am SORE!!! I'm excited to play for 1/2 hour everyday and get my heart rate up...not that my morning walk w/my 78 year old mom wasn't doing it for me:)

Today I've got a few orders to mail out, and then I've got to start digging thru the wrapping paper and boxes to find my house...it's here somewhere.

Here's where I would normally post all the cute pics of the gift opening, sledding, etc. IF I had taken them....

Merry Christmas!

Just wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas!


May you be blessed in the coming year!

What I did instead of clean my house:

I had to drive Logan to a friend's house Saturday morning and saw that the hoar frost was covering the plants along the sides of the road. I was planning on coming home and getting some cleaning done but I've always wondered what hoar frost looks like close up. So instead I had to grab the macro and try to get a few shots. I'm learning a little more everyday about macro work. It is NOT easy to get these shots. A big part of getting them is timing, and the ability to hold super still while hunching over the plant and trying to block the wind so the plant doesn't move and for ME not be shaking w/cold all at the same time. I won't even get into the technical aspects of it! Too bad it's gotta be so cold for all this beautiful frost to exist!








Every time I post macro work I have at least one person ask about being able to get prints of them so I've created an album on my website. If are interested in ordering prints go to "online ordering" then you can go to "wall art".