Anniversary

Well, I'm a couple days late in mentioning this, but I didn't remember until today. January 28th marked 1 year since my last official day of work at Blue Cross Blue Shield. I worked part time as a Medical Review nurse there, and my main job function was to review ambulance claims for medical appropriateness. I quit at this time last year because I knew I didn't want to put our girls in daycare for just a few hours every day, especially since my pay would hardly cover that. I always knew I wanted to be a stay at home mom.
Well, one year later, and I'm loving every minute of being at home! My photography business really took off in the past year, and I'm so glad that I have more time to devote to it now. I definitely put more hours in doing this than I did at my part time BCBS job, but that doesn't seem to matter much when you're doing what you love to do. I'm very confident that this is what I was meant to do- not only being a mommy, but also being a photographer. In fact, I let my nursing license expire at the end of 2005. I don't anticipate ever having a job in the nursing field again, so I didn't see the point in bothering to keep it up!

Recent Stuff

So much for the slow season... January has been busier than I expected, which is great! Here are a few favorites from the past week.

New backdrops

I finally got the new backdrops that I ordered at the end of last year. I wanted to get a couple that were totally different from the ones I have. I think these will be fun. But I'm running out of room in my studio now!

This one I just got today, and K. helped me test it out.


And B. modeled for this one.

The case of the amputee dolls

We recently solved a mystery in our house. It started a couple weeks ago when K. noticed that her tiny little Cinderella doll was missing her right hand. I thought she would've been very traumatized by this, since she loves those little dolls. But she didn't seem to mind too much.

Then a few days later, one of her Barbies turned up with the same affliction- a missing right hand.

At this point we had a definite suspect in mind but couldn't prosecute anybody until we had some concrete evidence, or caught the offender in the act.
The next day, yet another Barbie was discovered with a missing right hand. However, this one was not a clean cut amputation like the other two, the edges were ragged and rough. Which confirmed my suspicion that I had the right suspect in mind. Yet I still needed to catch them in the act.

Then a day or so later, there was finally a break in the case. I was at my desk and out of the corner of my eye noticed our puppy, Jasmine, had something in her mouth. She kept spitting out and then picking the object back up and chewing it. I went over, opened her jaws and fished the object out. This is what I found:

I was slightly disturbed by the sight of the tiny little hand, but we finally knew for sure who was dismembering the dolls.
So we reminded K. once again that she needs to pick up her toys when she's done playing with them. But yet today, I saw this:

I wonder why it's always the right hand?

Baby Steps

Well at almost 15 months, B. finally got brave today and decided to start taking steps on her own! She's been cruising while hanging onto things for a while now, but whenever we'd try to get her to take some steps on her own she'd go into her silly mode and start dancing or acting goofy. She just loved the attention.

Here are a couple video shots I took tonight with my old digital camera.
First Steps

Is it bad that I'm a little sad because this is going to complicate picture taking? As you can see from my last post, yesterday I could just stand her up and back away to take her picture and she would stay put. Now I'll be chasing her all over. Not to mention I'm sure our little troublemaker will now find new ways to get into mischief. I'm sure she'll keep me on my toes.

Crafty day

I've been looking online for the past few weeks for the right flower wreath and tutu to add to my studio "dress up box", but didn't have any luck finding exactly what I wanted. So I decided to make my own. After a trip to Hobby Lobby and a few hours of work, this is what I came up with. B. was happy to model the new items...for about 20 seconds.

B. mastered the cheesy smile at a very early age. She plasters on this goofy grin whenever a camera (or a phone) is pointed in her direction. She fakes an underbite and juts her bottom teeth out in front of her top ones. But you just gotta love that face!

The well dressed bear

K. is at an age where she loves to play with Barbies, Polly Pockets, and lots of other little dolls and things. But her little fingers just can't quite get all those tiny little clothes on their little bodies. So she very often brings them over to me and asks me to dress them. Which I of course don't mind doing. But now B. has taken to copying everything her big sister does. And she brings me all these little dolls and their clothes wanting me to dress them. Only problem is, that's ALL she does. Gives them to me, I dress them, give them back to her, she pulls their clothes off, gives them back to me... You get the picture. She thinks it's a pretty fun game! Lately her favorite thing to dress is this little bear that K. got from Uncle Keith and Auntie Paula for Christmas. It came with a lot of different outfits, for all the different seasons. But B. thinks the bear needs to wear ALL of her clothes at the same time. So this is what she ends up looking like. (Yes, she is wearing 3 different hats!)

Oh, and B. got jealous that the bear was getting her picture taken, so she went and knocked it over so she could get in the shot...

Big Dreams

We had some fun last night looking through my old scrapbook from elementary and high school. We both thought it was funny how even though it was my scrapbook, there were probably more pictures of him than of me. I guess that's what happens when you find the love of your life when you're 14 years old! Anyway, I got a kick out of this. Here is my interview with our local paper for the "Meet the Kindergarten" column. I guess I knew what I wanted out of life back then. How cool that I'm actually being what I wanted to be "when I grow up."



Oh and by the way, as far as I can recall I never even liked Scooby Doo, and it most definitely wasn't my favorite show. That answer must have been taken out of context. ;)

Go For It

One of my favorite Christmas gifts was a devotional book that my husband bought for me, "Life on Purpose for Mothers". It covers a lot of very practical lessons which can be applied to everyday life. I loved this part of what I read today:

"What vision has God given you? You are endowed with a unique purpose, and in order to fulfill that purpose you will need to press toward the desires God has given you. They may seem trivial, or they may seem unattainable, but don’t neglect to reach for them as He leads you. One step in the right direction could catapult you into the next level of calling for your life. Take a risk, and you’ll realize it’s no risk at all - because all of heaven backs you when you reach for God’s desires."

What a great motivation for me (and all of us) to start working towards those big dreams!

Mission accomplished

I was on a mission today - I wanted to get a great picture of K. to enlarge on a big canvas for a sample down in my studio. So when B. was down for her afternoon nap, K. and I snuck downstairs for a bit. Lately she's been a lot tougher to photograph than she used to be! She's learned the cheesy, pasted on grin that most kids do at this age everytime a camera comes out. But we had some fun today, I told her princess stories and acted like a goofball as I snapped away. I'm happy with the results, but I'm having a hard time deciding which one to order! If anybody has any opinions, I'd love to hear them!

What a privilege

Having been in business for 2 1/2 years now, I have had the great privilege of watching many children grow up right before my eyes. Whether they're a baby planner coming in every few months over their first year, or a preschooler coming in for their yearly portrait, it's always amazing to see how much they grow and change in such a short time. I really look forward to sessions with returning customers for this reason, and then I love to go back through their past images and put together a collage or two showing the growth and change of the child.
I love my job!

Back to work

I will have my first session of the new year later this afternoon, and I can't wait! Even though my last session was December 30th, it seems like such a long time ago. I'm glad that the Christmas season rush and busyness is over, and now I'm ready to start 2006! I have lots of plans for Blessings Photography this year, and I can't wait to see what God has in store for me, my family, and my business. I think it's going to be a terrific year!

More chaos in our house...

A few of you have had the chance to meet our newest family member, but fore those who have not- meet Jasmine. She's an 8 week old rat terrier puppy who joined our family on December 15th when daddy decided that the girls needed a dog for a Christmas present. I, of course, "pretended" to go against the idea, all while I was searching the newspaper ads for the perfect puppy. ;) Well, we found a breeder offering what we were looking for and made the trip up to Ada, MN to pick out a pup. We knew we wanted a female, and there were 4 to pick from. K. fell in love with this one in particular, and even though she looked very similar to another one, she kept picking this one. We all agreed that she was the sweetest and cutest of the bunch, so we brought her home. We all agreed upon the name Jasmine (might've had something to do with the fact that the girls were watching Aladdin in the van on the way to the breeder).

Jasmine has fit into our family very well in the few weeks she's been with us. She loves to cuddle and give kisses. B. is her best bud because she travels on all fours too. She's been doing well with housebreaking and is starting to paw at the door when she needs to go out. Of course she still has her share of accidents, but that's to be expected.

Trying something new for the new year

I always enjoy reading the blogs of my friends, family members, or other photographers. So I thought the new year would be a good time to start one of my own. Here I will share my thoughts and ideas, and of course a few photos! Both business and personal, anything goes here. Since I am on the computer most of the day, it shouldn't be a problem for me to keep up with this, right? Well, we'll see...