Happy New Year!

New Baby photos

I have taken the week off from photography! I did manage to get a few good photos last weekend while visiting my favorite new baby. (Correction...I suppose Matt took the photos since I am holding the baby)

Isn't she cute?





I want to mention that these photos were taken with my new 35mm 1.8 lens....it was almost completely dark at the hospital!

This next one I took a couple weeks ago when she was a newborn. The lighting was terrible in the hospital, so hopefully when baby comes home I will take some more "official" photos with some cute clothes!




I love how this one shows the little ducks on her anklet and her name (although I blurred that out)

Jenn's Holiday Traditions

I get this one from my mom!



Usually red, but this year my nails were pretty and pink. :)



At least this year I have been drinking plain lattes and not all the sugary stuff.



Hang out late with awesome friends:







Make Holiday Tags:



Taking lots of Holiday Photos (I love practicing with other people's trees, since I don't have one):



I have more traditions that haven't been photographed yet, such as Christmas Eve dinner with P & H and wrapping all my presents super-last minute!

Oh, and this morning I started a new tradition...Christmas Boot Camp! :)

What I've been up to lately...

Dressing up for parties...



Listening to Josh Groban in the car...



Making Paleo cookies...



Browsing Pinterest while making cookies...



Taking pictures of my beautiful city...



Taking random food photos...



Hanging with my cute Batman-playing husband...



This is my life right now! :)

Looking forward to Tintin tomorrow!!!

Practicing Photography + Baby + Food photo (Random post!)

I have a new photographing friend! My friend E just got a new Canon SLR and we practicing shooting yesterday with manual mode. I am still super rusty, so its great to have someone to teach and then re-learn myself. She has great lighting in her house and fun antiques to take pictures of!



(E, you need to change your chalkboard!) :)



Isn't this just the cutest typewriter?



She just turned 25 yesterday so I made her a little scrapbook. I took some pictures of it before I gave it to her and she said it was okay if I posted them up here. It was a fun book to make and I'd like to make more for other friends.









That's not all the pages, but I thought I would share a few.

Since this post is already long, I will post a photo of a cute little baby girl that is new to our lives since Friday...



I am so excited!!!

To finish up I will just post a quick photo of my dinner. I'm healthy again! I made veggie soup after my two hour work out and am eating it at 10:15pm!



Good night everyone! Happy Monday!

Gingerbread Houses

Tonight is Friday and we are actually at home. We usually have a home meeting on Friday night, but this week is a little different. My good friend Audra is at the hospital having a BABY!!! That's why there isn't a home meeting.

Matty is busy playing Batman with his new PS3, so I thought I would post some photos from last night.

We went to Josh & Ellen's for dinner after work. At about 9pm we decided to head downtown to visit the annual Gingerbread House display at the Sheraton! My photos aren't incredible, but hopefully they capture how COOL these houses were!







Here is a smash-nosed kissing shot...

Birthday!!!

I had a wonderful birthday!

I guess I am now of the age that I will have to start lying about my age. Ha!

Every year I want to go to a restaurant that lights a candle for you on your birthday. There is just something about that candle...



Although I ate well most of the day, I indulged guilt-free into that lava cake from Bahama Breeze. Its "to die for" as Matt would say.

We met our good friends Heather and Phil for a relaxing dinner. It was pretty awesome to see them on a Tuesday night.



The people at my office forgot about my birthday which was actually kind of awesome because I got a second birthday celebration on the 14th. My boss bought me my first orchid. I took a photo and sent her this as a thank you:



Here's to another awesome year!

Hopefully I wont see any wrinkles or grey hair anytime soon!

Chocolate Fountain + New camera lens!!!

This weekend was crazy and full! Some friends were in town and we had a little party on Friday night. I broke out my chocolate fountain! I bought lots of yummy cookies from Trader Joe's that I ended up eating throughout the weekend. Oops!



Saturday night was Christmas party for Matt's work. Again, I brought my fountain. Even though there was a slight hiccup involving the host not having a microwave, it was a big hit! The little kids had chocolate all over them.



As my white elephant gift at the party, I got a CD of Glee Christmas music. That's what I've been listening to this weekend. Its been festive and fun.

Last night before my friends left town, we got to do some fun scrapbooking! We watched Die Hard 2 as we scrapbooked. I am always a fan of these adventure movies, no matter how many times I watch them.

Overall I nice weekend! Before I sign off I must mention my new camera lens! Its a 35mm 1.8. I love it!

And I only have 25 hours left of being 25!!! I feel so old!

I've always been a scrapbooker

For about five years now I have been looking for my old scrapbook that I kept from middle school through high school. I didn't put many photos in there, but I did save just about every bit of memorabilia I could think of and tape it in my book.

Today my heart completely broke because I FOUND THE BOOK! But it was completely destroyed.



It had been in my basement storage unit for these past four and half years. It was in a completely random box and I have searched in the storage unit before but never found it. Today I decided to clean out the unit and give things away. I found one or two boxes that had lots of water damage and decided to throw them away. Inside was my scrapbook!

I still haven't decided what to do with it. Most of it is destroyed but there are still memories in that book. Today I went through it and photographed it, at least what was left of it. High school was mostly preserved (photos aside) and it was really sixth and seventh grade that are completely unreadable.

What I most loved to see was all the doodles! I usually doodled in my school books and then at the end of the year I would cut them out and put them in my scrapbook.





(Apparently gel pen is pretty water proof! I'm glad I used those all the time in middle school.)

I also loved seeing my school schedules and homework assignments.





Some bits of history made me laugh. For instance I made fun of "health food:"





Some items really capture time:





I was quite the artist:







Some things I saved were quite ridiculous!


(I'm pretty sure that foil cap is from the milk that Mom would bring to every track meet. She would bring lots of exotic flavors)

And here are a couple of favorites:





Even though the book is destroyed, I am glad I found it! Photographing these pages brought back so many memories. Now I have them digitally!