Wishful Slacker

Will this work? It all depends on baby!

 

Flexibility is the new word of the year for us.  That and humor (but said the way David Brent would.  Humor.  Vis-a-vis...you and me...yeah? <wink>). 

Sorry, I digress.

Around Christmastime I purchased a photography deal through one of the new fancy deal-a-day websites (I think I had found this one on youswoop.com).  For $40 you got an hour-long photo shoot at your home and a disc of images and printing rights.  Sounded pretty good, so I snatched it up (I am so cheap now that I gave it to Jim as one of his Christmas gifts). We have started a baby picture wall at our home, and I decided to have the photographer come out in May, the week of Ellie's 6 month birthday. 

We wanted to get some pictures of the baby with Jim and me, and because of that we had to schedule our appointment earlier in the morning on a day when I was home from work and Jim would be able to head into work right afterwards.  We decided to have the photographer come out at 9:30.  Baby would get up at 6:30, we would wear her ragged with play, put her down for a nap by 8:15, and she would wake up nice and cheery and ready to go. 

Here is what happened instead- Baby woke up screaming at 4:00 am for some very strange reason and fussed and fussed.  I sat rocking her for an hour before I headed back to bed.  She then woke up a little after 7 in a fairly good mood given her middle-of-the-night blip, but try as we might we could not get her to settle for a nap after the usual interval.  We sang goofy songs, looked at the pretty girl in the mirror, kissed Sophie the giraffe, and bounced and bounced and bounced in the Jumparoo, but to no avail.  Finally she did fall asleep, 30 seconds before the photographer called us from the intercom downstairs. 

Again, flexibility and humor.  Oh well!  We nudged her awake and dragged her outside because the photographer wished to take advantage of the natural light.  This led us to yet another hiccup- Eleanor, a winter baby, had been outside about 7 minutes of her life without being shielded by a stroller or carseat canopy.  Any glimmer of light on her face made her squint and scowl.  We might as well have given birth to a vampire.

So, here are some of the pictures!  They remind me of the day we learned how easily any plan can fall apart now in our post-baby world, and Eleanor's grumpy face cracks me up.  I managed to find 15 shots out of the great mass of photos that are on the nicer side (and most of them are of Ellie and her daddy).  As for the special 6 month photo for our wall- well, that didn't end up coming from this shoot after all!
 
Thankfully we perked up a bit with Daddy

A year of FOOD

The work on our apartment continues, though my husband has ordered me to the couch this weekend and forbidden me from lifting, vacuuming, tidying, or working on the baby's room.  He did acquiesce slightly today and allowed me the task of laundry, which I was happy to do as he drove all over the city to shop at all the places that annoy me. 

As part of our "let's make this place look AWESOME!" campaign, my husband has started getting large prints made at Costco of some of the sights from our summer trip to England and Paris.  The big risk we're taking here is getting the prints without a good plan for where to buy our frames.  THIS IS DANGEROUS.  This could result in a pile of beautiful glossy prints that will collect dust and dings and baby spit up over the next few months if we don't get on this asap.  Jim went around looking for frames today, checking out Kohls and JoAnn Fabrics and Target and Cost Plus and came up with nothing.  So....we shall hope that the magical frame-fairy pays Roscoe Avenue a visit sometime soon.

One of the ideas my husband had is for us to blow up some of our food pictures to hang in our kitchen, and he suggested that I go through my food photo archives to find some contenders today as I occupied the couch.  I learned some things through this searching.  While I enjoy taking pictures of a lot of different foods, I realized that I REALLY enjoy taking pictures of pastries.  And, coincidentally, guess which foods have given me the least amount of grief this pregnancy? Yes- pastries.  Actually, looking back there were a few weeks in the first trimester when I continuously ate and then quickly "lost" Jim's delicious banana bread.  But aside from that phase, sugary pastries have treated me well.

I must say, with a pat on the back, that I haven't overly abused this fact.  In the past week I craved a scone every morning but never bought myself one.  Okay, not that I haven't overindulged- there is a reason I am 40 pounds heavier and it doesn't all involve the full term fetus I am carrying!  A Halloween sugar cookie sits on our kitchen counter, waiting for me  as I type.  Mmmmmm...

And as an aside from pregnancy-related food affinities, there is a reason I love taking pictures of food.  It's not just about the FOOD itself, but rather the memories of where you were and what you were doing at the time you got to enjoy that item.  It's the whole experience.  The first two pictures I have posted below are from a fantastic coffee shop in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston, where we settled for morning coffee during a quick weekend escape last fall.  I remember the gorgeous weather and the church book sale going on across the street, as we day-dreamed about which red brick house we would one day occupy.  

Anyways, here is my year of food :-)









Do you think, next time I blog, that we'll have a baby?  Hmmmmmm.....
Happy Halloween everyone! 

A "Feel Good" book to take to the hospital with us :-)

Click here to view this photo book larger

Family Fun

We traveled to my sister and sister-in-law's house in Kalamazoo yesterday for a belated Mother's Day gathering.  My sister's house it smack in between my parents' place near Detroit and us in Chi-town.  As we were about 45 minutes outside of Kzoo, I received a text message from my mom saying that they had arrived.  Following that, I checked Facebook on my cell phone.  This is what transpired:

My sister's car window was scratched, and not broken (we think the idiots were trying to not make a lot of noise, and perhaps got freaked out by the angry Doberman who was likely throwing herself at the bedroom window at them).  This little hiccup aside (and once I realized that her status update was NOT directed at my folks), we were able to proceed with the day.

It had been a while since we had a day together void of any other engagements, and it was so nice to spend a laid back afternoon in their backyard.  It had been a loonnggg time since we had been to my sister's house- I had a day to mull over how long it had been and never came up with an answer.  I always like going to their home.  Piper and Stacie have a great eye for design and art, and their house is so full of warmth and meaning.  After coming home from their place, I look about our apartment and think, "Now what cool stuff could we do around here?..." and then I shrug and end up on the couch with my laptop. 

I brought along my camera and was excited to take some pictures out in the daylight.  I have so much to learn about indoor photography, which is a problem since in less than six months we are going to have a baby just in time for the darkness of winter.  Flash/no flash/blurry pics=hmmmm, I need to look into this further!  And I don't often take my camera with me during the week when I am heading to work- it's heavy and bulky and usually I'm in a rush to get to work in the morning and just want to get home afterward!  To wander in the backyard yesterday and to notice the flowers and plants and lawn ornaments was very enjoyable!


 

My parents brought along their two dogs, a Vizsla and Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, to add to the pet menagerie already present: a Doberman, Chihuahua, Rat terrier, Cornish Rex cat, Beta fish, and some pond fish.







And it was great day to be with family!


 

Website of the Week

I learned about a lot of great websites this week that I'm looking forward to sharing in the future!  The site I am featuring this week is the blog of our wedding photographer, Kris Noorman.  It's hard to believe that tomorrow is October 1, which means that it has been almost a YEAR since our wedding.  I've been strolling down memory lane through Kris and her husband Jake's pictures of our wedding, so it only seems right to feature Kris's blog today.  Not only are her pictures amazing, but Kris herself is a wonderful person, and it's really fun to follow her family on on her blog. 

And, of course, if anyone in Michigan or Chicago is in need of a photographer, Kris's blog is linked to A Picture's Worth Photography.  She photographs for all events (one of my favorites that she posted last year was when she followed a couple to the airport to meet their newly adopted baby- can you imagine being witness to that?!).  Her photography style is very candid and natural- no fake posing with Kris! 

Fiddling with photo editing

One of the items on my recreational "to do" list is to work more on learning the in's and out's of photography (especially now that we have our fancy Nikon D40 cameras) and photo editing.  Since it's practically 300 degrees out today (slight exaggeration) and we're trapped indoors clinging to the A/C, I've been using the past few hours to peruse the camera manual and a digital photography book.  We took the photography boot camp class at the Chicago Photography Center back in December and I would enjoy taking their 7 week long Fundamentals of Digital Photography class at some point (in researching this class, I found out that the founder of the Photography Center was recently fired and started his own institute.  Sounds like there was a serious photography feud going on based on this article.  Because these classes are not cheap, I think I'll wait a bit for things to settle down before deciding when to move further along with this decision!).  The bootcamp class was good for us to be introduced to the concepts of aperture and shutter speed settings, etc.  Our wedding photographer, Kris Noorman, has an amazing blog and recently posted a good summary about this too.    

So though I haven't delved into this as seriously as I hope to one day, I have started experimenting more with doing some very basic photo editing in iPhoto.  When I say very basic, I mean that I've just been fiddling with contrast and exposure settings.  I hope to learn more about programs like Photoshop and Lightroom (which we just downloaded onto my laptop- yay!).  I think I need to create more hours in my day and figure out a way to get paid to learn rather than work.  Anyone interested in supporting me financially in this quest?  Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? 

I thought I'd post a couple before and after shots of pictures that I've worked on.  I've noticed that pictures seem to get pretty washed out in Typepad.  Hopefully the difference between these pics looks as cool as it does in iPhoto.  And, disclaimer- I don't think these pictures rock the house or anything, I'm just showing them as examples of the simple changes that can be made using the standard iPhoto editing feature.

1) Darn kite string! Before:

After:

2) Looking at the city from east of the Shedd Aquarium (which is what you see in the foreground).  Before:

And after: