Snow White

Hellllooo sorry it's been awhile. I've been working and schooling like crazy. Today was the final day of our photography class. It was very very bittersweet. My final project for the semester was FairyTales.


It's been one of the craziest things I've attempted....that and not waiting a half hour before I went swimming again after eating. Now that it's over I'm not sure how I feel. I no longer have a valid excuse to go up to my friends and ask them to put on costumes for an afternoon, but I'd like to keep taking themed pictures like this. It was a lot of hard work but really rewarding. I thought of this project early on in the semester. I realized I wanted to do it because I've always loved fairytales and I wanted to recreate them in my own way. Someday I'd like to hang them in a nursery. 


I won't post them all at once. Today I'm going to present to you Snow white. I played it while I had P snap the pictures. 

Next up, you can't have Snow white without the evil queen.........eh Amy? ;)

"Take a picture of me!"

I'm sorry it's been awhile since I've posted. Things have been crazy with school and work and picture taking. I figured I owed it to you people to make this post extra special. So I spent some time on paint and decided to illustrate this story I'm about to tell you. I hope you appreciate it because I can't really feel my fingers and I'm only able to type out of will power.

When I was a lot younger, a LOT younger, (my birthday's on Tuesday) my family and I used to go camping. At some point my dad invested in a video camera. Not one of those puny cameras that you can lift with one finger. It was one of those kind that you see camera crews hauling around. The kind that you hoist on to your shoulder and hope that the camera doesn't weigh more than you or else you're going to be filming lying on your side.

Anywho, to get back to the story, my dad bought this enormous camera and he was so proud of it, he took it everywhere and filmed everything. Good thing he did or else I would have never believed I'd ever been to Disneyland. The footage from the 'It's a small World' ride still creeps me out. What was that suppose to inspire? Worldly unity? A fear of mechanical puppets? Maybe a little bit of both? Amirite?

Off track again. Sorry. So we were in the woods camping one weekend and my dad was filming the scenery.

It wasn't long before I noticed the cannon sitting on my dad's shoulder and that only meant one word....ok three words. Being. On. TV.

I checked out the situation and quickly made my way closer to the the object of my attention.

I was very clever. I don't think he saw me whatsoever.

And so I snuck.

I'm pretty sure my dad was aware of my presence but that didn't matter to me. I was in stealth mode. I was going to catch him off guard and make myself famous.

I made my presence known. "Dad...pssst Dad. I got something I wanna show ya..."

 "It's really something, Dad. You're going to be so impressed."

 "It's a leaf....and it's special."

"Look at my leaf Dad! Look at it! Take a picture of me and look at it!" Well it doesn't figure that all the footage that my dad got was of me slightly out of the screen yelling at him to 'take a picture of me' with my leaf.
I'm not sure what was so special about that leaf. I'm pretty sure as soon as my dad turned off the camera I tossed it over my shoulder and went to ride my bike.

At least I got my picture taken though. 

As promised....

Here are the Ninja love pictures I promised from my last post. You guys are all in for a big surprise. I'm taking a photography class this semester and I've already started working on my final. I think you'll love it. But I won't be telling what it is. You'll have to wait and see.

Another Christmas spent with my amazing husband! Loved every minute of it and we even filmed opening our presents this year. Mr. P couldn't be bothered to wait to actual Christmas morning, we ended up opening everything at 8pm Christmas Eve.

I've been having fun coming up with more fun photos to take with family and friends. I recently did a photoshoot with my brother and his wife. I call it Ninja love. Photos of that next post.

P.S our house has smelled amazing all winter thanks to this!!

J.K

My brother and his wife were kind enough to let me take pictures of them this weekend. People are my weak points and I'm trying to get better.

Fear...in the form of a fin

One of my biggest fears when I was little girl were sharks. Great.Big.White.Ones. And it's all thanks to one movie. Jaws. I used to love to take baths and one thing I would sometimes do is swim underwater like a mermaid. Since I was in a bathtub it was more like thrash around, spilling water over the sides and making the floor a hazardous zone for anyone who tried to come in a stop me. After I saw that movie, I would go underwater but the very idea that a shark could somehow end up in the tub with me terrified me right up to the surface. I was a mermaid no longer.
One time while we were visiting some of our family in Wisconsin, we decided to spend the day at the lake. Apparently I was more traumatized than I thought because as we were walking along the narrow wooden pier towards the water, I found myself slowing down more and more. The next thing I remember is clinging to a dock post and refusing to go any closer to the water. I'm serious...no I'm Sirius hahah ....... sorry. Anyway, all my family wanted to do was look out at the view and possibly dangle a few lower extremitites in the water but I would not budge. I clung to that pole for dear life and would not let go until we were heading back to land. True story.

Please don't get me wrong, now that I'm older, wiser and more vulnerable, Jaws is one of my top all time favorite movies. I literally watch in once a week. Why? Because first of all, I love to be scared and I love scary movies. Second of all, I found the subject of my terror fascinating.

The very idea of this is insane. I'm not quite sure how I feel about it.

Best week of the year? Shark week, followed very closely by General Conference. Very closely. I love learning about these fascinating animals. Great Whites especially. I think they're beautiful, I think that they need to be protected and respected.
A couple years ago, I was swimming in a lake with some friends and for some reason I decided to pretend a shark was chasing me and I high tailed it to the shore. Why do I do these things to myself? Practice in case it ever happens? Better safe than sorry? You can never be too prepared?

Here are some the my favorite shark links: Beware, they're terrifyingly awesome.

link 1

link 2
I like this one, it's like you can hear the shark saying, waaaaaasssss sssssuuupppp?

link 3

link 4

I heard somewhere through the grapevine that there has been a couple instances where dolphins have assisted people who are being attacked. Anybody else heard that? They distract the shark to help the person get away.

Something I want to do before I die, and maybe I'll force myself to do it since I just recorded it on to my blog, is cage dive with Whites. Ugh how terrifying and thrilling. I would love to do it though, confront my fear and probably pee my pants...or err wetsuit.
However, accomplishing the above goal is a bit of a problem for me since I won't get into the ocean. My family and I were in San Diego two summers ago and of course we went to the beach. My mom (traitor) and two of my brothers dragged me into the water and trust me I was screaming. I surprised nobody thought I was being murdered and offered assistance. I lasted in the waist deep water about 11 mins. Both my mom and I felt something brush our legs and we high tailed it out of there.When Mr. P and I went to Mexico for our honeymoon I was happy to enjoy the water from the beach but I did learn to scuba dive in the hotel pool!

I know you guys probably think that's extreme but it's actually quite manageable. I'm thinking about joining a support group... Meh who are we kidding? One New Year's resolution at a time.

Anybody else scared of sharks? Or anything else for that matter?

love and embarrassing pictures

Who would have thought a girl from Indiana and a boy from Pennsylvania would have ended up together? I'm amazed everyday that I was lucky enough to find him and that he found me.

                                                                   

                                      

Merry Merry Birthday

P's birthday is coming up on Saturday. He just barely had one last October but he wants to have another one this year too...and on the same day even. Kids these days.

I decided to throw him a little surprise birthday party. In preparation for said surprise party, my conversation with P went a little something like this:

me: I need you to make sure you're home by 7 on next Saturday.
P: I'm not sure baby, I just took off time so we could go to PA.
me: No you definitely need to be home by 7.
P: Why?
me: .........
me:......Joey's having a BBQ and I really want to go.
P: Well I'll think about it.
me: No you need to get off and be home by 7.........because I really want to go to Joey's thing...........and I don't want to be late.

I might as well as phoned up P and said 'hey be suspicious about a party I might be throwing for you'. P later admitted that he thought I was throwing a bbq party for him at my brother Joey's house. He was only half right.

I spent a month and a half secretly buying stuff for the party and hiding it all over our apt. Sometimes I forgot where I hid stuff and found candles and candy corn under all my socks or paper cups and streamers under the toilet paper stash.

When Saturday came I spent most of the day decorating the house and getting everything all ready.

Here's the spread, I made most of the food and got the rest at Costco. My mom had a Halloween tradition of taking plastic gloves and putting candy corn in each finger and then filling it with popcorn so I had to make them as well.

While we were in PA, P's mom gave me a whole bunch of pictures of P when he was growing up. I put them to good use.

I was worried about everyone fitting comfortably but I think it worked out just fine.

I only had to run out once for a couple more pizzas but other than that the night was a success. Thanks everyone who came and made it great for P!

Pennsylvania

P and I flew home to Pennsylvania this weekend to celebrate his sister's wedding. Needless to say we were beyond excited. We haven't seen his family since our wedding and I was stoked to see PA in the fall time. Trust me I was not disappointed.

P is from a little area called Bucks County. It's not a state park but it should be. It's one of the most beautiful places in the world.

This is P's backyard, I know right?

We're planning on moving back there someday. It's so beautiful there I think anyone could fall in love with it.

Here's a fun fact for you. M. Night Shyamalan's movie Signs was filmed in Pete's home town.

 This leave was suspended by a spider's web. If you look closely you can see it.

                P's house is like something out of a story book. His dad bought it and renovated it.