Happy Halloween!

Miles was Drew Carey For Halloween!


No, that wasn't his costume but it would have been free! ; ) He was a snuggly bear and he wore it all day as we went to a halloween party at the mom group I sporadically attend. We had a bit of a hectic evening, so we didn't get a lot of photos of Miles in his Halloween Costume, but we did capture our very nerdy family trick or treating on John's Blog. I was a queen bee and John was a worker bee. It was a costume we could throw on in 2 minutes after I sketched some whiskers on Miles. Gotta love the low maintenance costume plan!

I hate to put this photo up becuase it's blocking the pretty sunset pics from last night. Oh well, guess I'll have to snap some more sometime! Gotta run. We are heading to Cinci for a formal wedding this weekend and I'm SUPER STRESSED becuase, as I always do before a formal event, I feel like I have nothing to wear and due to the fact that I have hobbit feet, there is always an issue with shoes. It kind of put a hamper on my very favorite holiday, but I shook it off in time to enjoy this beautiful evening.

Happy Halloween everyone! Now it's time to gorge on some candy!

sunset snuggles

Tonight we were finishing up dinner and I looked outside and said to john, "Look at that sky, I wonder if we can get some cool silhouette shots." He agreed, so we threw the baby in a sweatsuit, grabbed the camera and headed out for some experimentation. (Love taking pics where I don't have to worry about my hair or lack of make up!)







I can't wait for another pretty sunset. The only problem is that Miles is so heavy that after we lift him up ten times to try to get the best shot we are dead tired! Seriously, everybody who holds him can't help but comment how "solid" he is.

Thanks for looking and Happy Halloween Eve! Don't forget to vote in my poll on the right side of this page. ; )

kitchen swimming

Miles is on a nap strike. He used to take an awesome 2-3 hour nap in the morning and then another hour or two in the afternoon. Not lately. I think he's just learning to do so much that he doesn't wasn't to miss anything with a nap. This means that by 3 in the afternoon, I'm wore out and need a break. Miles loves to play with water, as we all know from the water dish video, so I went one step further.
I set him in a warm sunbeam and gave him all sorts of cups and bottles filled with water.

By the way, Miles is still wearing his Bum Geniuis diapers. As you recall, the diapers are supposed to fit a child up to 35 lbs. Miles is still only on the second snap and probably weights around 19 or 20 lbs. It's been great to be able to wear the same set of diapers so long. I wish I could say the same about baby socks. Man, he plows through those like pop corn. But I digress...

Stamp is always near by. Considering how much that dog hates baths, I would think she would be running in the opposite direction.

It's nice to get some use out of the unitasker and space hog that is the plastic baby bathtub. Hopefully Miles will rediscover his nap time. Until then, I'll just keep working on ways to keep him busy.

Becky & the kings do coffee and some shots...

Camera shots, that is. ;-)


John and I got a new camera yesterday because when we shoot photos one of us is always dancing around begging to take a shot. So we are now a two man shooting crew. More on that later.

So today we got to shoot for the first time without juggling cameras. It was AWESOME. We shot my sister-in-law, Rebecca. (That would be Andy's sister, not John's, as he has only brothers.) As you can see she is verrry photogenic. Miles came along too and he was a really good sport. Oh, and regarding the location, it's my favorite coffee shop, the Mocha Lounge. I have been dying to go shoot there because they have a lot of windows and some great light with all the widows. Their parking lot gave us a little bit of grunge and some woods to round it out. Oh, and it's right down the street from us, so quick travel time for Miles in case we had to escape quickly.


John captured this one. He is THE MAN!





Then into the coffee shop we headed...

Becky loves jewelry and always wears cool and funky stuff. I had to capture this sweet ring. It reminds me of Jurasic Park. (You know, the mosquito in the amber...I'm listening to that soundtrack right now, so it's on my brain too.) Look at those lips too! This is one of my favorite photos. Oh to have her skin!


John captured this one. I like how the wall art reflects in the coffee table.








Here's Becky giving her Blue Steel look ala Zoolander. Ok, I have to quote the movie: Becky, you are really, really, rediculously good looking. ; )


Go to John's Blog for a behind the scenes look at the shoot.

Go to John's photography portion of his website for a better view of the photos.

Can I just say an AMEN that this blog is complete? Blogger went KAPUT right in the middle of loading this so I have been doing this one photo at a time and about ready to stick my finger in my eye. An hour and a half later and I"m done! It's 1 AM and I'm going to bed! Thanks for looking.

sunny schick saturday

After a bit of rain this morning, I noticed this leaf on our patio with these beautiful beads of water on it. It was hanging out there all morning, waiting for me to capture it.
John and I had some errands to run and we have been wanting to swing by Sunny Schick, a local camera shop, so we headed out there today. My mom watched Miles so we could have the afternoon to ourselves. After doing a bit too much damage to our credit card at the camera shop (more on that later!!) we took some time to practice snap some photographs downtown to get some experience shooting in a richer environment than our house and yard. (I have been DYING to get out of the house to shoot, but it's not so easy to keep your eye in your camera and on your baby at the same time.)

By the way, we aren't in love withourselves, it's just that all of our friends were busy this weekend with Halloween stuff, so nobody was available for a shoot. So sharing these photos is not about sharing photos of ourselves, it's more about sharing the shots we have captured. We love shooting other people as we have enough photos of ourselves to last a lifetime. Tomorrow we are going to shoot my sister in law, Becky, so stay tuned for her. We had so much fun playing with our camera, though it was freezing outside!

I LOVE the detail of the ivy in this one and of course, John is such a cutie.


I think this picture above is kind of funny. I look like a commercial for a drug company, like I should be saying, "I found a hormone therapy I can trust. So can you with Zeritol." I'm such a dork, but that's all I can think of when I see that photo.
We found this trash bin by the Salvation Army that had glass, broken christmas ornaments and all sorts of trash strewn around it and it made for some awesome texture. We weren't able to really capture that, but perhaps next time we will. Here's the best one from that area. BTW, we attracted some attention from the workers who were very curious. That was a little interesting, but they were just curious and wanted to give us some tips.

I can't tell if I like this shot. John likes it, so we'll keep it. I was standing next to this part of the trash bin that had allll of this shattered glass. I wasn't standing close enough to it to make the shot make sense, so it ended up being a head shot.
Shiny, happy John!


After cropping this one 8 million different times we finally made this shot work.

No Miles on this shoot. You'll have to see the post below for one. We had SOOO much fun shooting but we left the house with a half dead battery (duh!) and we were cut short. Glad we get to play again tomorrow! Becky is BEAUTIFUL, so I'm excited about getting some great shots.

To better view the photos, go to: John's website

or check out his point of view: John's blog

lovin lunch

familly pop-in

My mom had her grandkids (and Miles' cousins ) for a couple days because of fall break so she popped in for a surprise visit after taking them all shopping. Of course, I had to snap some quick pics.

Emily (in the green shirt below) likes photography, so she took this shot.

Here are all of my nieces and nephews (minus Kurtis, he didn't come along)

add in Miles...

and grandma...

Woa! There goes Miles!
















The pugs were SOOOO sad to see them go! Stamp whined at the door and squeeked her toy for about a half an hour. Hopefully they will visit again soon.