Thursday, June 26, 2008

I love my friends!

What a funny night. Right as I am starting to make dinner I can hear someone yelling my name. My friend Michelle came by and said that her and Pam (photographer friends) had some girls in their wedding dresses across the street from my house. So I had to grab my camera and run over to play. I am so glad I did! I am thinking it's time for a So Cal photographer play date :)






Saturday, June 21, 2008

Yipee!!!

I got up this morning, checked my email and found a message from pink ink studio www.pinkinkstudio.net saying that I won 2nd place in the babies competition for last month!!! I won some actions from Nicole Van http://actions.nicholev.com/ and a $50 gift certificate to pink ink studio. I am so happy :) To see the other winners go here http://pinkinkstudios.net/newsletter-press/pinkinkpress-061508.html

Thanks Pink Ink!

Friday, June 20, 2008

when the boys are away...

The girls will play :) This weekend the boys went camping and the girls are having some "girl time" As soon as the guys left my two girl old girlie looked at me and said "okay lets do make-up now." We put make-up on eachother and then I made her a dress and a matching one for her dolly. I felt proud, my sewing machine has not come out to play in a long time. Today we went out for pedicures and lunch. I love my silly girlie!

Thursday, June 19, 2008

mini-me


Yesterday I took the kiddos to story time, like I always do. I found these two pictures in my wallet. One is me at around 2 years old and the other is my daughter 2 years old. I think God gave me a mini-me :)
edited to add a little comparison of our son and Doug. What do you think?

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

When we go out to play


Denise www.deniseboveephotography.blogspot.com and I thought of a great idea! We would pack up our kids walk to an open field and take pictures of eachother with our kids. Well that's just not as easy as it sounds! It was an adventure. We both have two year old girls that had to pick up every sharp and dangerous thing they could find. After a short photoshoot we came back to my house and let the kids get back to doing what they do best...playing.






Sunday, June 15, 2008

because Sarah said I wouldn't do it...

My good friend Sarah played a little game on her blog and challenged me to play as well. I was going to fix Sarah's blog up all "cute" and then list it in my blogs I visit. But, we have yet to get together and I wonder if that is because we have 6 kids between the both of us?

Okay here's the game, list 6 quirks about myself...I want to start by saying I have no quirks! The fact that I vacuum our little house 2-3 times a day and clean the bathroom "at least" once is not a quirk...it's perfectly normal. Which brings me to:

Quirk #1 - I vacuum a lot...okay maybe it's too much. I can't explain why I just feel the need to vacuum a lot?! It's bad enough that my kids now ask if they can vacuum as well.

Quirk #2 - I pace...I pace sometimes... okay, almost all the time that I am on the phone (which could explain my size) I am the kind of person that you want to say "Cherie, sit down!" I hate sitting still. Maybe that's one of the many reasons I like photography. It is fast paced. Or I have ADD?

Quirk #3 - I have to sleep with earplugs in or a fan on. I am the world's lightest sleeper and I am always telling Doug "you are breathing too loud when you sleep"

Quirk#4 - I can become instant friends with almost anyone. My close friends tease me about it. I just love people, that's all!

Quirk#5 - I am semi obsessed with the show survivor. We started watching it the 3rd season and I have never missed an episode since then. Even the week that both of my kids were born. I still tuned in with my new babies. My friends know that most of the time I will not answer the phone during survivor...pretty bad huh?

Quirk#6 - hmmm...for the last one I think it would have to be my over obsession with cleaning. I blame it on my Mom! She is quite the cleaner. You could ask any of my friends that I talk to often and within 2-3 minutes of talking with them on the phone I will complain about the disaster my house is. Holly, Adri, Denise, Rochelle is that true? You ladies know it is :) Is my house really a mess? Um...no most of the time it is kind of clean. I do have to admit that I have let go of my clean obsession a bit lately with the goal that I relax and enjoy my kids this summer.

So that's it 6 quirks - now Holly, Denise, Ro, Adri, Angelica want to give it a try on your blogs? Oh and here is Sarah's blog (which I will make cute) http://drinkingfromthesaucer.blogspot.com/ Sarah is a crack up! Read some of her blog...anyone with kids will get a kick out of it!

Friday, June 13, 2008

I am lucky!

I am so lucky...or I guess blessed is a better way to put it. I swear I get to photograph the most beautiful families! Lisa wanted pictures with her daughter to give to her husband for father's day. This is the 3rd time I have photographed their family and I realize more and more that I love having families come back to me over and over. I love being able to catpture kids growing...I love being able to freeze the short amount of time we have with our kids. It's the best!



Wednesday, June 11, 2008

The 3rd time...

This was such a special shoot for us. Brian and Jen were the first couple we ever took engagement pictures of. We learned a lot from working with them (they may not know this yet) during their engagement shoot we learned how to get a couple to relax and have fun in front of the camera. We asked them to kiss at their engagements and they gave each other a quick kiss...Doug and I looked at them and said "okay you have to do that again" right away Brian said "so you are telling us to loosen up." We laughed with them, they probably didn't know how scared we were! The funny thing now is that this was the 3rd shoot we have done with them ( their wedding was the 2nd) and Jen already knew what I wanted her to do right as I started to say something. I just love that!

Isn't this location so beautiful?! When Doug spotted this light I fell in love! Brian and Jen are always great in front of the camera.




Isn't Jen so beautiful pregnant?! She really had that glow about her.



We are so excited for them to become parents! They are going to be great at it!

Thursday, June 5, 2008

OPAM?

Yes that's right I am now doing OPAM! What's OPAM you ask? Well Tara Whitney http://www.tarawhitney.com/ started a little thing called OPAM (one project a month) and asked her blog readers to join in on the fun. She did her first one last month and I didn't do it. So this month I thought I would give it a try.

My first project is going to be our bedroom. I use the term bedroom loosely because our bedroom is most likely the same size as your closets. Before getting into that I should give you a back up story about us. I met Doug when we were 19 years old at church. We met, fell in love, 10 months later we were engaged and 11 months after the engagement we were married. I have to admit that life might have been easier if we would have finished school had our "careers" then got married. But, that's not how we did it :) At 22 I was pregnant with our 1st child, 23 when he was born. The birth of Ryan kicked Doug into high gear to finish school. So he plowed through it while working full time and graduated with a 3.8...not too bad for a couple of kids huh? We were so poor but our parents helped us out and I stayed at home with Ry. Two years later Doug was working on his master's and surprise #2, I am pregnant! When Kim was born Doug was going to school full time, working full time and doing an internship on top of that. We did not see very much of him. When he finished his master's he graduated with a 4.0...smart guy! So that brings us to this little house. We were so blessed to find this house because we could almost afford the rent while Doug was in school. It's 100 years old, tiny...really tiny. I never thought we would live here that long so it took me a long time to decorate it because, why decorate a house you will not be in for very long...right? 3 years later I am breaking down and decorating it. Our bedroom is just plain sad. I have painted the other rooms and made them pretty cute but our bedrooms is the catch-all for everything. Now that will change thanks to Tara I will OPAM this house into cuteness!

Here are my starting pictures. I am not going to paint because it takes way too long but hopefully it will look better at the end of this month :)



So maybe one day we will be in our dream home with lots of space...but for now this historic house is home. Check back at the end of the month for my finished project!