the winners

I finally chose which pictures I wanted to use for my photo project. I knew that it was going to be hard but I had no idea just how hard. I decided to just go with my favorites although I have a lot more favorites!! These pictures are a mixture of funny and serious and I don't think that I will get bored of them. There really isn't any rhyme or reason to my selections other than I wanted semi recent ones of Maddie rather than going with a lot of baby pics. Now all I have to do is stop second guessing myself and order the prints. I am not 100% sure if I am satisfied with all of my editing, but I don't know if I will ever be totally satisfied. I may tweak a little more, but I am ready to be done with this part and off to the framing, hanging and enjoying part. I may or may not post pics of the finished product.....I may force you to come visit me to see!! California people start booking your flights! lol As always, your comments are welcome.

Maddie:












Charlotte:

strawberry field forever

Dan and I took the girls strawberry picking last week. It was such a great time! We got a bucket and off we went into the fields in search of the ripest fruit. The best part is that you get to eat strawberries as you pick them. It's $8.00 for a bucket which holds about 4 pounds, and whatever you eat while you pick is included. I think that we ate about as much as we put into our buckets! I was telling Dan that this farm had a great business plan because their start up was probably pretty low.....random land in Johnston County, strawberry plants. Their operating cost is probably pretty low.....water, fertilizer and maybe some workers. And then they charge money and let the general public do all the labor. It's a fun experience for us, and virtually no work for them! lol The farm also has peaches, tomatoes, lots of greens and other organic fares. I think that Maddie's favorite part of the afternoon was the ice cream.....they have an ice cream shop right next to their fruit stand. It was a hot day and it sure felt good to sit in the rocking chairs in the shade and eat our ice cream while we watched other suckers pay to labor in strawberry fields! What a great day!

backyard fun

Our backyard is great! We seriously spend a good chunk of our time out there and the more we are out there the more we discover. Today we saw a raccoon climbing up in the trees and we discovered that we have two HUGE mulberry trees with thousands of berries on them. I was a bit freaked out by the raccoon, but after Dan threw sticks at him (typical male lol) we discovered that it was way more afraid of us than we were of it. I don't know why a raccoon scares me more than squirrels.....we have squirrels everywhere and they don't bother me a bit. I'm sure I'll get over it. I need to figure out some things to do with mulberries because we seriously have a lifetime supply! Before we figured out what they were Dan ate one and I was honestly a little worried that he might get sick and die. Who eats random berries when they have no idea what they are? Men. I will blog more about our berry trees at a later date, until then, if you know of any good recipes that use mulberries, send them my way! We celebrated Memorial day with swinging and bubbles.....lots of bubbles and we grilled and I made my guacamole! I'll post the recipe for that later too.....it is super delicious! All in all we had a good day and we have 4 more days this week to spend time together in our backyard. Gotta love Dan's work schedule.....except for when he has to work! lol

cousin photo shoot

My mom is very into capturing the moments that we spend together as a family. (I wonder where I got it from?) Since we are all pretty spread out.....meaning that I live in North Carolina and everyone else in my family lives in California we don't get many moments where all of us are together. I think the last time was Christmas when I was pregnant with Charlotte and even then my sister in law was missing from the festivities. Over Charlotte's birthday weekend we were far from having the whole fam here, but we did have all of my parent's grand kids.....until December anyway! :) So we decided to make the most of it and try and get some cousin shots. I have to say that it wasn't an easy task. I have a hard enough time with just my 2 girls and generally nothing good comes from trying to get them in a shot together both looking pretty and smiling, not nose picking or whining, so imagine 4 of them!! I think that what we got is pretty good. I dont think I had one single shot where everyone looks perfect, but overall they turned out beautifully and I think they will be great memories. I didn't actually shoot for very long, the whole thing probably took about 30 minutes, but it was pretty early, some of the kiddos hadn't eaten breakfast yet and the weather had changed overnight and it was far too chilly for sundresses. But the girls were real troopers and we got them back inside as quickly as possible. It is quite comical to watch the deterioration from the beginning of a shoot to the end and how quickly kids become done. Thats why I have always preferred candids.....follow a kid around, play with them and grab magical shots while we never stop moving. Artistic shots are always my favorite and they are the easiest on everyone to capture. Maybe next time we'll take the cousins out to a flower field or to the woods and let them run around with fairy wings on and I'll shoot them on the move. Anyway.....here are some of the shots I got. I am not 100% sure of my editing, but they were a little underexposed so they all needed tweaking. I may still play a little more with them.

Let me know what you think?