Fadedwords

It’s been a pretty good weekend so far.  Yesterday I worked at the farmer’s market and had a very sketchy/disturbing conversation that left me shaking me head.  I won’t repeat it, but I was left thinking, “wowsas, that was creepy.”

Today I had lunch with my good friend Jackie.  She is one of my favorite people to spend time with and has been such a wonderful friend the past 7 months.  On our way back to her house I let her hear some of the music my brother and I recorded for my Mom, because she’s seemed interested in hearing me sing.  Her response made me cry.  I think that she was being more than a little generous with her compliments, but it was very nice to hear someone that thinks I’m talented other than my mother or friends**.

Tomorrow I will be scrapbooking with some of the girls.  I have some dance recital photos to scrap, as well as starting my horseback riding album.  I’ve been looking forward to starting my riding album for a very long time, and I’m hoping to get all the dance photos done and have time in the afternoon to work on the horse photos.  I printed just my high school and college photos, which unfortunately aren’t many at all.  I truly wish I had taken more photos in that early time riding, because it was some of the most fun I’ve ever had.  After all the scrapping, we’re going to have a cookout.  Sometime tomorrow I’m going to ride, just a matter of if we do it in the morning or the evening.

In two weeks school will be over for the summer.  In just under three weeks, I will be on a plane to Seattle with one of my favorite people in the world.  In a little over a month I will be traveling to Michigan to watch one of my closest friends get married.

Lots of good on the horizon.  I’m definitely trying to focus on those things.

Feeling a little sad tonight… or maybe it’s stressed.  Or maybe it’s both.  There’s a lot on my mind.  *shrug*  I’ll live through it, and I’m sure a little sleep would help.  Occasionally dreaming helps.

“So since you wanna be with me
You’ll have to follow through
With every word you say
And I, all I really want is you
you to stick around
I’ll see you everyday
But you have to follow through
You have to follow through
You’re gonna have to follow through…” -Gavin DeGraw

I can’t listen to this song right now, but it plays in my head usually once a day.  I don’t know how life is going to play out… all I can do is muddle through and do what I think is the right thing, and then hope for the best.  Sometimes I think I screw things up more than I help them, and sometimes I’m certain that I’ve made good choices.

*shrug*

Sleep will be good.

I was lucky enough to get hired to take preschool portraits of the grandson of one of the women I have frequently photographed at barrel races.  I was a little apprehensive because it was my first paying portrait session.  As it turned out, I had no reason to be worried.  The little boy, Jeremy, was very outgoing and a willing participant in the shoot.  His Mom Emily and I hit off right away and had a great time.  It was great to see Tracey, his grandmother, and I really enjoyed the time spent with her!

The icing on the cake is that these pictures turned out really, really great.  I’m not usually one to toot my own horn, but when I saw these images on my computer I knew that my clients would be happy because I was proud of them.  Really proud.

Some examples:

You can see all the photos from this shoot HERE.

I’ve received such amazing compliments about these pictures and feel so great about them.  This shoot really helped to boost my confidence level and I really cannot thank Tracey and Emily enough for their support of my work, as well as the wonderful day with them.  Not only did they hire me for this job, but they also took me on a fantastic trail ride after it was all over!

This is me on Princess, the giant Percheron cross that they let me ride.  She belongs to Mr. Jim, Tracey’s hubby.  She was used to having beginners and little kiddos on her, so I had to be a little stern with her when we first started.  Once she realized that I meant business, she was a great partner!  It was a great experience for me because I rode without my stirrups 90% of the ride simply because it was more comfortable than trying to reach for them! (your stirrups are a little longer when you ride western, and I just am not used to riding western anymore.)  I did discover that woods freak her out a little; it was made very evident by how far she jumped to the side when we were loping past!!

This session was a really wonderful experience and I’m feeling fantastic about my work.  I hope to book some more sessions over the summer and continue to improve my portfolio.  Emily has already asked that I do fall photos of Jeremy, and she wants me to do portraits of her as well!

All of my friends do some really awesome stuff.  Most of them I could be more specific about the awesomeness.  In this case I have to be kind of hush-hush.  I’m not allowed to post pictures or really say much of anything, despite the fact that I want to gush and go on and on and on about this.  It would embarrass her and make her cranky.

But I will say this:

My best friend is amazingly talented.  It sounds cheesy and cliche, but seriously?  I don’t know that I could be more proud of someone than I am of her.

You were really wonderful BC.  Really.  Don’t argue or tell me about any mistakes or any of that malarkey.  You were amazing.  Be proud of yourself, because I am so so proud of you.

…I’ve been pretty busy the last few months working on a really big project for someone pretty darn important to me.  It’s Bethany!  Her birthday is tomorrow (woot) and I wanted to get her something really nifty that she would like a lot.  I decided way back in about August that I wanted to create a Disney scrapbook for her, which I knew would be a pretty big undertaking because there were quite a lot of photos.  I had been thinking about my own album, and knew I would end up splitting it into parks because I plan to use pictures from all of the people who went!   I knew that I wanted what I did for Bethany to fit in one album, and I wanted to focus on us rather than my family… although I also knew there would be some shots that I had to include of my family just because they were a pretty important part of the trip.

I started the album in February (I think) and have been working on it steadily since then.  It began with a monumental trip to Archiver’s to get supplies (paper, stickers, album, etc) and morphed into working 1-3 hours every night that I had free to get it done.  This isn’t a complaint, just an observation of what goes into a project like this.  I loved making the book because it allowed me time to reflect on one of the best times I’ve ever had.  The past few months have been incredibly stressful, and I haven’t had a lot of time to spend with Bethany.  Doing this album reminded me of such a wonderful time and that even though we are both super duper busy, she is my best friend… and one of the best friends I’ve ever had.

I gave her the book this morning, because tomorrow will be busy for both of us even though we’re going to be in the same place for much of the evening.  I wanted her to have it and be able to see her reaction.  I wrapped it in a huge box filled with packing peanuts so she wouldn’t be able to guess what it was right off.  The album is so heavy that she had to get on a chair to get it out!  When she realized what it was she looked at me with big eyes and said, several times, “You can’t give this to me!” Hehe.  Silly girl, I already did!  Obviously there hasn’t been time to look at it, but she’s told me every time she sees me how much she loves it, which is good because for awhile I wondered if she would hate it! (ps- I’m slightly insecure about myself sometimes).

I posted pictures of the album on my shutterfly account.  If you have the password, super!  You can go look.  If you would like the password, let me know and I’ll get it to you.  Here are some highlights of the book though!

It’s pretty big… 90+ pages.

This is from the day when we found Chip and Dale!

Animal Kingdom… this is one of my favorite layouts from the entire album.

This was the coolest parade ever.

I ended up adding the title ‘Favorite Things’ to the Clydesdale page after I had already snapped the photos of all the pages.

A page from the Epcot day.

It came out really, really well… when I was finished I was very proud and I just hoped she would like it.  She really does, and I can’t wait until she has a real chance to sit down and look through it and see everything.

I will do an album for myself of the trip, but for now I’m taking a break from Disney photos!!  My next scrapbook project is going to be my horseback riding album.  I am doing a big crop on Memorial Day with some of my favorite scrapaholics, and I’m looking forward to starting that.  Also on the list of scraps-to-do is to get caught up with scrapping Merlin’s photos (I’m incredibly behind).  I have an album to do for my Mom as her belated Mother’s Day gift too, as soon as I get the photos.  She and my Dad went on a cruise and I’m going to do an album for her.  Bethany asked me the other day to make her an album of the trip she and her boyfriend took to NYC over spring break, and I will do that one as well!  I would like to scrap my recent trip to Biltmore, as well as starting the girls’ album.  Right now I don’t have a ton of pictures for that, simply because there aren’t a ton of pictures that have been taken so far this year!  We’ll need to work on that.

So in case you were wondering, I have been a busy scrapper the past few months.  It was well worth it though, because Bethany really liked the album.  It gives me such great joy to make something like that and have someone love it.  I’m looking forward to doing some of my own projects for a little while, and then starting in on some more that will go to others.