Preserving Memories

Something I have never been good at is organization.  I am a self-proclaimed hoarder (I mean, not as bad as the people on TV but I HATE throwing things away) and have been known to have piles of "stuff" all over the house.  My OCD husband can't stand it and gets great joy out of throwing stuff out (asking first, of course).

I decided to upload all of our pictures to Shutterfly.  That way, I could order prints, create books, and have a place that would store all of my pictures.  (Wishing I would have done Flickr too because when Shutterfly doesn't exist anymore, a bunch of my pictures won't either.)

I have two 12 by 12 Shutterfly albums- one of my pregnancy photos and one for Ethan's first year.

When I was pregnant with Ethan, I was inspired with all of the pregnant mamas taking weekly pictures.  Although I never posted them, I wrote a few sentences and posed in the basement each week and described how I was feeling and what was new that week.  I had to turn into a complete nag to get my husband's help but I am so happy with how our little project turned out.  (MAN, I got big!!!)

 Once Ethan was born, I knew I would need a baby book.  I searched the shelves at Barnes&Noble and Borders, searched Etsy, and look up online-templates and nothing fit what I had in mind.  So instead, I created my own through Shutterfly and I ABSOLUTELY love it...all 111 pages of it.  I kept a Word document to record all of the monthly "happenings" and just cut/pasted it into my album where I needed.  Here are some of my favorite spreads:

I also create 8 X 8 books for each of our professional photos sessions.  I always try to keep an album created in my "cart" because Shutterfly often offers free 8 X 8 books.  For Ethan's Goodnight Moon photos, I added the words from the book to his pictures and he loves to hear the story and see picture of himself.  So cute!

I am definitely behind in our vacations photos.  I haven't made a book for Italy (yeah, 3 years ago) or Alaska but they are on the to-do list.

I also like to upload all of my cell-phone pictures to Shutterfly and drag them all into an 8 X 11 book.  I fit 6 pictures on a page but each year, my book gets longer and longer.  Waiting till a good coupon code comes through to order my 2012 book but it is finished and waiting in my cart.

 Back before Ethan when Mia was boss.

I posted about my memory keeper for Ethan from Paper Coterie for Ethan, but I recently purchased another one.  Because I didn't have a place for our wedding "stuff", I decided to get another memory keeper to hold our wedding invitation, program, shower invitations, and various wedding items.

 I had a coupon code (of course) so I ended up ordering a book to keep track of the hilarious things that Ethan says and does.  I ordered it when he first started talking about 9 months ago and I am so glad I did.  He is like his mommy and has A LOT to say.  He is also like his daddy so he is pretty darn funny.  It is so great to have a place to put it all. 

So, that is what I do to try to capture and preserve our family memories.  Although I was completely organized his first year, I can honestly say that more pictures are taken on my iPhone than real camera.  I haven't uploaded anything to Shutterfly (because there isn't anything to upload but cell pics...ugh).  Even though I'm married to a professional photographer, we don't take many pictures of our own family.  Always striving to improve in that area. 

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My husband is legit!

Too legit to quit, actually!
http://www.mnc-photography.com/

I am the proud mama who can't hang this on my refrigerator so I am "hanging" it here. So proud :)

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12 Weeks to Better Photography- Week 3 (White Balance)

This week's lesson is all about the color of light and white balance. The handy-dandy lesson is HERE. You see, sunlight casts different colors throughout the day but for this lesson, we focused on indoor light. Most times when I take pictures indoors at night, the pictures come out yellowish. Not very pretty. Tonight, I took a picture of a white piece of paper so my camera adjusted to that color. I'm not very good at explaining (or even understanding) this photography phenomenon so go ahead and read the lesson yourself.

Let's get to the photos. The first picture was taken on AWB (auto white balance). Notice the overall orangish tint to the picture...The next picture is taken using the tungsten WB setting. The white on Mia's paws, face, and neck are actually looking a little more white but not quite perfect yet. Finally, I was able to use the custom white mode (CWB) that I set up earlier with the white paper. Perfect :) Personally, I think this picture looks like it I took it at noon with all the windows open so light could fill the room. Nope...it was 9 pm!We celebrated Mia's birthday all day and you can tell that she is just pooped. We got some adorable pictures of her opening her presents and I hope to have them uploaded soon!

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12 Weeks to Better Photography- Week 2 (ISO and Shutter Speed)

Better late than never, right?

This week's lesson is about ISO and shutter speed. The very helpful printout is HERE. ISO is all about lighting. You set your ISO to low numbers in low light and higher numbers indoors. The lower the ISO, the slower your image is captured and the more light is required. The higher the ISO, the faster your image is captured and the less light is required.

Shutter Speed is how quickly your shutter opens to capture the image. A fast shutter speed can capture things like sports and quick moving action. A slow shutter speed looks blurry...think cars on the highway at night. I love those kind of shots!

This week's assignment wanted us to capture water in our sink. The ISO was set to 1600 because I was inside. This first picture has the shutter speed set at 0"5 (half a second). The shutter speed is REALLY slow so the water looks blurry.

This next picture has the shutter speed set to 1/80 of a second. Much faster and sharper but still a little blurry.Finally, I set the shutter speed to 1/1000 of a second. VERY fast and able to catch a very sharp picture. Cool, huh?!? (I did have the lighten the color of the picture afterward because not enough light was getting through with that fast of a shutter speed.)Week 3's assignment will be up tomorrow!

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12 Weeks to Better Photography- Week 1 (Aperture)

A few blogger friends are following this online tutorial and I thought it would be the perfect way to get more familiar with my camera. Meredith at La Buena Vida posts a photography lesson each week and then you try it out and post your results.

Week 1's lesson is about aperture. Everyone loves when pictures that have that "blurry" effect and aperture is the reason why it happens! Mike has tried lecturing me about this many time so I was familiar with this concept. When your aperture, or f/ (f-stop), is low, then less light is coming into your lens. Therefore, less of the picture is in focus and the background will be blurry. When your f/ is higher, then more light is coming into your lens and more of the picture will be in focus. Read more about her first lesson HERE. The printout that helped me a lot is right HERE.

I was outside enjoying the weather with my favorite pup and decided to take some shots of her adorable, little legs.Picture #1- This picture was taken with the f/ set at 1.8. This means that a small part of her legs will be in focus and the rest of the picture will be blurry.
Picture #2- This picture was taken with the f/ set at 8. This means that you will see more of her leg and hairs in focus, as well as the fence and ground in the background.

Picture #3- This picture was taken with the f/ set at 22. This means that more of the background is in focus, such as the wooden planks of the fence and the coloring of her back leg.Week 1- Done and done!

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Blog evolution

As my 2 year blogoversary approaches in January, I am enjoying a look back at all of the fun I have had in the past 2 years. The blog started as a fun way to talk about my wedding plans and DIY projects. Everything was pretty random after the wedding until little Mia came into our lives. I felt like she was all I wrote about. Recently, I started running (in case you didn't know) and my blog evolved into a running blog. Mike started photography and I am sure that my blog readers are getting sick of hearing about that too! Well...I don't care!

A couple of weeks ago, we/he shot 3 sessions in 2 days. Here are some of my favorites from the weekend. First, our friends Nick and Mimi and their baby, Collin.Next, we met Maggie, Dave, and their pup, Charlie...
The next morning, Mike met our friends Josh and Stacy (and their baby on the way) at Josh's fire station. I'm pretty impressed (but obviously biased). Thanks everyone who is following his blog and commenting on his posts. I know all of you bloggers love comments and they mean a lot to him too. Thanks for supporting him! I know he really appreciates the feedback, advice, and compliments.

I am looking forward to posting my own pictures soon. Mike will be photographing Stephanie's wedding in August and guess who the second shooter is?!?! ME! I have been tagging along with him and I really can't wait to learn more about photography.

I will continue talking about my running journey. I just committed to my first 10K run. I will be running the GO! St. Louis marathon relay with some of my girlfriends. I am a little nervous to train through the winter but I look forward to being about to run for 6 miles!

Just wanted to give a shout out to all of my readers for hanging in there with me and my ever evolving blog. To those of you that thought this post was going to announce something exciting, I'm sorry. You are going to have to wait a little bit longer for my blog to take that turn!

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San Francisco!

Stephanie and I cheered together in high school. She was a freshman on our JV squad and we cheered together again on Varsity. After graduation, I can honestly say that I haven't seen Stephanie again. Then one day, she commented on my blog.

Stephanie is living in San Francisco and is recently engaged to a super-handsome man named Scott. We have been reading each others' blogs and getting to know each other again. She even used an idea that I posted on our calligraphy blog for her bridesmaids.

Then, she started looking at Mike's photography blog. One thing led to another and now I can official say that we will be heading to San Fransisco to photograph her wedding next summer!!!!

To say that we are excited is extremely an understatement!!!

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I am learning!

Yesterday, while Mike spent the day mulching our flower beds, I decided to try out this camera-thing. I really want to learn how to take great pictures and of course, Mike is already a pro. I just walked around the front yard and snapped away.

First off, does anyone know the name if this kind of tree? It is in the corner of our backyard and I LOVE IT! So beautiful and I want another one!We have ONE tulip in our front yard! So sad...I don't know what happened to the other ones!Pretty bushes and sprouting hostas...Fun with rings!Off to brunch to celebrate Ali's birthday. Hope everyone enjoyed their weekend! It was beautiful and sunny in St. Louis and now it is supposed to rain all next week :(

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