Wine glass

This morning I walked out into the kitchen to do the few remaining dishes from dinner last night, but I started taking pictures of them instead. I know right, who takes pictures of their dirty dishes?

But the thing is, there is this time mid-morning where the sun comes pouring through my kitchen window and I LOVE IT. It surprises me every weekend- I forget about it during the week. Anyway, this morning it was shining right on the wine glasses on the counter and I couldn't resist a few shots. I'll spare you and show you only one. Luckily, it was white wine, so you can't really tell they are dirty!

Sorry Riley, maybe next time

So on Saturday we were visiting Kati in Athens, just minding our own business and doing a little shopping after lunch, when BAM, we were blindsided by an adorable puppy display. It was one of those dog-shelters-set-up-in-front-of-the-pet-store situations, and man do they know what they are doing. Kati saw this face and was hooked:



She was pretty serious about saving Buster, as she is about all homeless pets. It is, after all, her fault that I adopted Riley out of the trunk of a car in the Target parking lot four years ago when all I really wanted was to return a pair of shoes. She just can't let their furry faces go. Thank goodness for the helpful shelter lady, who assured Kati that these dogs were all in foster homes and had somewhere to go that night. Otherwise we would have been cramming countless yelping puppies and teenage dogs into her new one-bedroom apartment that night.

This was the one Dylan and I fell in love with, but slapped ourselves a few times and shook off any romantic notions of Riley and his new best friend tiptoeing quietly through the house and sleeping at our feet. Also, the name "Bulldozer" sent up a few warning flags.



The rest of the weekend was free of any homeless pet guilt, and we had a blast hanging out with Kati and her boyfriend Stephen. Dylan was brave enough to eat the deer that Stephen grilled. Sorry, I prefer to fill up on Baskin Robbins.





I love this picture, if only because the second before I snapped it Kati was arguing, "No Stephen, I do not want to sit on top of the giant flowered bulldog in the middle of downtown for a picture." What a great fake smile that is!



Fun weekend with the BFF! Check back later this week- got a few things up my sleeve.

Week in review

It has been a busy week friends, and I don't even have any pictures to show for it. It started off with a nice, relaxing Monday off work, and then from there things went into turbo speed, so I'll just hit the high notes. 

The Great Blizzard of '09 on Tuesday didn't stick around long enough for the camera, but the flurries were enough for Dylan to get a day off school- all the districts closed down. I had to go to work, but did insist on wearing my scarf all day. I hope at some point this year to get a few inches of snow on the ground. I know, it's SC, but a girl can dream...

Wednesday night at Bible study we were a little distracted, but so full of joy as we welcomed our second baby into the world. The nine of us (my Bible study girls) all claim to be aunts to each other's children. The word "children" might be a little excessive since most of us don't have kids- up until now we only had a little nephew to spoil, but now we have a niece! Courtney gave birth to little Cayden Grace at 9:49 last night. We are so in love with all 7 pounds and 2 ounces of her, even if we haven't met her face to face.

Courtney, we are SO excited for you and Kirk and can't wait to all come visit you guys (and take millions of pictures) in Georgia. We're praying for you as you start your life as a mom! 

Ok, that's two down, seven to go- who's next?? 

In the land of photography, I am happy to say that I've caught up on editing and have gotten to devote some time this week to some other projects. I've also done a little reorganizing (of my brain and my files), so I should be refreshed and ready for my next shoot.

Time to get back to packing and cleaning. Dylan and I are heading to Athens, GA this weekend to visit Kati in her new apartment! I'm pretty psyched to have my BFF a short drive away. Chicago was cool and all, but not really conducive to a weekend roadtrip. I am anticipating a fun weekend. And lucky for all of you, that means my next post will have pictures.

I am not old.

Shout out to Ryan- I love sharing my birthday with one of my best friends. (Even if he did drink Corona with pancakes when we were in Kiawah.) And I love that he always shares his Chocolate Wonderland cake with me!

So last night a group of us went to dinner to celebrate. As the waitress sat us at the table, she asked if there was a special occasion. I told her it was our birthdays. She smiled and said happy birthday. And then it happened.

She asked how old I was. That in itself does not bother me. I am not age-sensitive. It is not a state secret. So I smiled back and said "25." This was her response.

"Oh, wow! You look really good for 25."

I managed a confused "Thank you?" as she skipped away to get our drink orders. I "look really good for 25"? Well of course I do! What is that supposed to mean? Isn't that the POINT of being 25? Isn't it a given that I will look good? 

Let me clear a few things up here. Twenty-five is not old. Twenty-five is the age that everyone wants to stay. Twenty-five is the age that everyone lies and says they still are. No one hits middle age and pretends to be 17 or even 35. It's always twenty-five.

I could have cut her a little slack if she was say, a ditzy high school student with dangly earrings, an orange tan and flat-ironed platinum dyed hair. But she wasn't. She was a smart, articulate, 22-year old USC student who also sings opera on the side and other than her terrible taste in compliments, was a great waitress. (Oh and if this means anything, she thought 24-year-old Ryan was 27. No comment on his looks though.)

All I can say is that if she is my waitress when I go out to celebrate my 40th birthday, she'd BETTER say I look 25 then.

... more of the prego!

Here is part two of Neely's maternity shoot! As I've said before, Neely and Doug are some of my closest friends, and it's one of my favorite things to be able to photograph memories for people I love. I was still developing my interest in photography when she was pregnant with the first two, so I was really happy to be able to capture this time as they prepare for Number 3.

Ok, pictures. Doug's brother whisked the girls away to go play with cousins, so we got some quality time to just shoot the two of them and got some really sweet shots.

These two make parenthood look like a breeze. They are so easy-going and fun! I like them. A lot.







What a beautiful mama of THREE











As you can see, Neely is a natural. And while Doug would never agree with me, I think it is safe to say that he rocked his "serious face" pictures.

Can't wait to meet the little one in March!

One on the way!

I decided to break this post in half. I knew I would love these pictures, but I didn't know how much.

When I found out my good friend Neely was prego again we quickly began scheming when we could do a maternity shoot. I'd never done one, she'd never had one, and we were both really excited. We planned our shoot for when we knew she would be in town for Christmas.

We got rained out the first day, but I think the fog that hung around for our backup day actually provided a nice look for the images.

Today I'm going to share with you the first half of the shoot- we got some good shots of the family while there are still only four of them!

Neely and her husband Doug already have two beautiful daughters, Keely and Macey. (Macey was in the preview I posted Saturday.)









I can't really put my finger on what it is but I LOVE this image of Keely



Someone is really excited about her new little sibling!







You can tell by how sweet these sisters are to each other that Little Baby is going to be very loved!





Ahhh I can't wait to meet Baby Number 3. I love this family.

Check back in a few days for more pictures!

Gorgeous

Are you even kidding me. Yeah that's right. I didn't even pose that as a question. It's a statement. How is is possible to produce children this beautiful? I think I am going to have a heart attack before I finish editing this session. And how I will narrow down pictures of this family for an official blog posting I cannot even BEGIN tell you.

Worse than I thought

People, we have a crisis here. Yesterday I half-jokingly blogged about being spoiled by my recent lax work schedule. But this morning I discovered that I am, in fact, ACTUALLY SPOILED.

Dylan and I switched cars today. He was taking the SUV in for an oil change, so I was driving the pickup truck to work. “Trucky-poo,” as I affectionately call him, is a 1995 Nissan, who’s just been chugging along since Dylan got him eight years ago.

The problem started with the ice on the car. I use the term “ice” loosely- this is South Carolina and it was 31 degrees. Maybe “frozen dew” is more appropriate? Regardless, it was enough that I couldn’t see out the windows. I debated driving off anyway (since I was already ten minutes late), peeking through the small clearing on my windshield in hopes that the blinding sun shining on the melting frost wouldn’t cause a deadly accident.

Instead, I sat in the car impatiently for five minutes growing more and more frustrated because not only was the defroster blasting on the windshield useless, I had no heated seats, no sideview mirror defrosters, no rear window defroster, and had almost dislocated my shoulder reaching across the seats to hand-roll the passenger window to wipe the ice off (which, by the way, accomplished nothing).

And then I had the gall to almost throw a temper tantrum. If I was a cartoon character, my head would have turned into a smoking thermometer with the mercury almost at the top.

I stomped up the driveway to the other car, retrieved the ice scraper and attacked Trucky-poo’s windows, which probably looked pretty ridiculous to the neighbors since during my stomping fit the engine finally warmed up enough for the heat to melt the frost veil. But I scraped at the water anyway, just to show that truck that I meant business.

Hold on. WHAT?? Since when is it ok to unleash my wrath on an elderly truck who had insufficient time to warm up? Since when do I consider heated seats anything but a luxury item? I am in shock. I never saw this coming. I am not a girly girl, not wealthy, and not prissy, all of which I considered strong indicators for spoiledness.

To Trucky-poo, I apologize. You are a great and loyal truck. Please stick with us for a few more years.

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions (for no other reason than I stubbornly refuse to make New Year’s resolutions) but I sure do plan to stop this nonsense immediately. I am considering drastic measures to prove my un-spoiledness. I don’t need these modern luxuries of man like “electricity”- I can use candles for light and fire for cooking. And besides, if I get too cold I can always go sit in the car on my heated seats.

Spoiled.

I am not accustomed to working five days in a row. The holidays have spoiled me. I am not sure that I have been to the office for five straight days since sometime in November.

It's really cramping my style. I was starting to feel that four-day weekends and food-fests were the norm. Where are my mid-morning runs and my hours of photo editing time? How am I supposed to clean the house? When do I run errands or watch repeated episodes of The Office on DVD? And I would really like to add some afternoon naps back into the mix. I am going to have to remember how to fit things into a two-day weekend like a normal person.

For someone who does not have an especially stressful job, say like, search-and-rescue on Mt. Everest or being part of the Secret Service, I can't believe how tired I am just from going to work from 8:30-5 every day. I actually drank coffee at the office this morning because my job does in fact require mental effort and creativity, both of which needed some refueling. And I am not going to be able to stay awake for the rest of this National Championship football game, and that, my friends, is a problem.

Co-workers, if you are reading this, don't be alarmed if you see me passed out on my desk tomorrow. Surely everyone at the office will be ok with that. If anyone asks, just tell them I am brainstorming.

I LOVE newborn sessions.

A few days before Christmas I did a newborn shoot for 12-day-old William, first baby for my friends Brent & Elizabeth. I have to admit it was nice to sling my camera over my shoulder and walk across the street. Yay for friends who are also neighbors!

I had spent a few hours with William the week before and was so impressed with what an adorable and easy baby he was. He just slept and slept in my arms- recipe for a perfect photo session. While he was just as cute as ever when I showed up for a second visit with my camera in hand, William was not quite as happy to see me. He had spent the morning (and previous night) throwing up on mom, and was not the slightest bit interested in sleeping through his session.

I wasn't quite sure how patient he would be with us, but what a great baby he was. Once we got him snuggled up with some blankets in a basket, he was happy to just sit and look at me. Toward the end of the session there was a little screaming, but we promised and promised that he could eat soon if he would stick with us for just a little longer. When that didn't work we resorted to mom's magic touch. Elizabeth held him for about five minutes and he was out like a light, so we were able to get some really sweet sleeping shots.

Here are some of my favorites of the morning.















This is about where he woke up at the end and asked, "Where is that meal you promised me?"





Let me repeat, I LOVE doing newborn sessions! If you are someone you know is due soon, shoot me an email to schedule a shoot! I recommend planning your session for the first 1-2 weeks after baby is born. Sessions are done in your home and can be just baby or baby with mom/dad/siblings. (And a photo session makes a great gift!)

One of the boys

Well, here we are. It's 3:00 a.m. on New Year's Eve/Day. And I am AWAKE with the boys.

We're hosting our second annual Curtis New Year's sleepover, complete with our famous New Year's Day breakfast. All the girls have been asleep for hours (some in beds, some on the couch) but I am going strong. I pride myself tonight on my ability to "hang with the boys," which I think you have to admit makes me pretty cool. The problem is that now I don't know what to do with myself.

The four boys are playing a thrilling game of FIFA on the PS3, and we only have four controllers. (The fifth boy is snoring soundly by the front door, but he is a dog. And I still want to know who stuck one of my down throw pillows under his furry little head...) I killed some time washing dishes and getting sheets and pillows ready for everyone, but I think that landed me squarely back in the "girly" category so I quickly finished.

Anyway, the only thing I can think of to do is blog, but I don't even have a picture to post! I'm such a lame photographer- I didn't even get my camera out tonight. And I'm not big on New Year's resolutions, so I don't really have any to post.

So I am debating heading to bed, for no other reason than the fact that I am bored. Shockingly, not even tired. Just bored. So for the record, I did not fall asleep during my party. I went to sleep on purpose. Does that make me less cool?

Happy 2009.