Wednesday, May 26, 2010

i love this image

I made this today from a picture that I just love. I don't have the photo credit, but I would love to know who took the shot. It's gorgeous.

xoxo

Monday, May 24, 2010

We're taking the day back.


Today, we took engagement photos at an old barn on Arkansas Highwat 5 in Benton, Ark. My mother-in-law told me about this place and after seeing it I fell in love with it's beauty and I knew we had to shoot there. 

I will give you, the reader, some back story. We have already wed; Andrew and I eloped Nov. 28, 2009 in Eureka Springs, Ark. (with Jax as our witness). But, even though we eloped, we still wanted a big wedding, so we have planned to have one in Little Rock at a hotel on the river so that all of our friends and family could be there.

The wedding date is Sept. 11. Yes, I said Sept. 11. The only other day in September that our venue was available for happened to be on my Dad's 50th birthday and I didn't want to invade on his big day or vise versa. 

When our event coordinator told us about the Sept. 11th weekend, I said, "Why not?" and we chose that day and have decided we're taking that day back and making a good memory out of it. How about that Lifetime?

My grandmother was a little weary of the date of the wedding, so I told her because I was in the Army and I lost many friends to the war in Iraq afterward that it would be a sort of celebration of their lives too. She liked the idea of that and now all is well in marriage world.

Any who, back to the engagement pics-- I love pin ups, so I went for a 40's style shoot. I left my red feather hair piece at home, three hours away and I didn't have time to put my hair in barrel rolls, so I did my best with what I had to work with.

Enjoy!

xoxo





Sunday, May 16, 2010

I Want To Ride My Bicycle (!!!).

I have an unhealthy obsession with anything vintage. It's somewhat out of control; so much that when I saw an old beach cruiser bicycle rusted beyond repair laying over on someones front lawn, I knew I had to have it.

I made a mental note of where I saw it and the next day I went on foot to collect. I knocked on the door and told the lady of the house that I loved her bike and she told me to "take it" and that I did.

While walking it home with two flat tires I met a very nice, elderly woman who told me she rode a bike like this when she was a kid and she suggested that I buy Rustoleum and primer the bike with it before I paint over it with my color of choice. I thanked her for her suggestion --it was a good one.

After I got the cruiser home, the first item on my agenda was to air up the tires to see if they were salvageable, which they weren't because they were too corroded. I pulled them off and chucked them in the garbage.

Next, I pulled at the rusted chain and it came off in my hand, so I chucked that too. Then I set out to my local shop to purchase some Rustoleum and make my previously owned treasure shine with glory once again.

I bought a silver primer color and a blue top coat and went home happy with my purchase. Once home, I coated the cruiser, which took two cans, then I let it dry.  I finished with blue because it was the bike's original color. After I did this, I realized that I wanted/needed new white wall tires to spruce it up a bit and I went right out and bought some along with a new chain, pedals and handle grips.

I got back home and tried to replace the pedals without luck. I was very frustrated once I realized the pedals were so rusted they wouldn't even crank the chain mechanism. My son and I took a hammer to the pedals, as well as some oil and after no time we had the pedals moving again.

Speaking of that damned chain --it's going to be the death of me, or it will cause me to throw this bike angrily from a very high cliff (I have probably never been this angry at any inanimate object... Ever!).

The chain I bought was too short, so I took it back and got a longer one which didn't fit in place correctly. I returned it and bought the first style chain again, but this time I bought two. I got them home and luckily I had been smart enough to buy a chain repair kit (it saved part of my sanity), which helped me link the two chains together.

Once I did that, I had to shorten it to fit --at that point I had a mini-meltdown because the chains wouldn't link back together. What the hell? This is the only thing keeping me from riding my bike. One tiny link in a chain. Thinking about it again is making my heart beat faster and I just want to kick the shit out of the cruiser. Why can't I just ride my goddamned bike? Because the universe is against me, that's why.

Hopefully, I will get this fixed soon, or I am saying "fuck the bike" and buying a brand spanking new beach cruiser.

Here are some pics of the cruiser, the first is from the day I picked it up and the second was from the following day. I haven't taken any updated pictures of progress because I can't stand to look at it anymore.

xoxo


Sunday, May 9, 2010

Mother Lover

As you all know, today is Mother's Day and this has been the best one yet.  I woke up to breakfast in bed, which included eggs, bacon, jelly toast, sliced strawberries and whipped cream.

I also received a dozen pink roses, which my son, Jax, proudly picked out himself, thanks to his awesome Dad. We watched movies/ T.V. all day that included episodes of Fraggle Rock, as well as It's Always Sunny..., SLC Punk and Seven Pounds, in that order- It was perfect. (Jax didn't watch a few of those.)

But, Mother's Day didn't start for me today, it started yesterday. I got a new tiller for my flower beds (what? say something!). Andrew went grocery shopping for me, Jax's team won their baseball game (they're undefeated), we went to the driving range and to the batting cages. All in all, it has been a great weekend and I love my family so very much!

Now it's storming, which will make for perfect snoozing tonight. Again I say, what a fantastic Mother's Day!

Pictures of my MD loot to follow.

xoxo
The Picture says:
My Mom is the most wonderful Mom in the world
Her name is: Tena (Tina)
She is as pretty as: A Flwr (Flower)
She is: 36 years old (28)
She has: Brown eyes and Brown hair
She weighs: 15 pounds and is 53 feet tall (130/5'5")

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Geocaching is way cool

Recently I watched a movie called 'Splinterheads' and the main character went "geocaching." I decided to Google it and boy am I glad I did.

A week later, I took my son, Jax, geocaching for the first time; it was a very interesting experience because we had no idea what we were looking for. Thankfully, www.geocaching.com  has linked coordinates (longitude/latitude) to upload to your personal GPS. After setting five different coordinates, Jax and I set out on our adventure.

The first set of coordinates took us to a dirt road next to a small wooded area. The name of the geocache site was called "stumped," so I figured a stump is what we would be looking for. Because I had saved the coordinates into the GPS, it didn't give me the actual longitude and latitude, just a flag of the destination.  We looked around a log, wood piles, and trees without luck. In order to keep Jax's attention, we decided to move on to the next geocache site.

I ended up parking too far from the point, which made it about a two-mile walk down the a trail. Once we got to the destination flag, the grass was up to my hip, so actually finding the geocache became a feat and once again, we moved on.  After no luck on the next two geocache locations and Jax's mood decreasing, I decided to take us back to the first site. By the time we had gotten there, I had figured out how the GPS will show my location, with coordinates, and that worked to our advantage. The coordinates took us right back to the log, but we came from a different angle and just as we closed in on it, Jax saw the geocache under the log.

I hadn't thought about looking under it. This was our first geocache and we really didn't know how hard the geocache's are hidden, but the fact we found something really boosted Jax's mood. We signed the paper log and traded a Jordanian Dinar for a plastic dinosaur. Jax thought it was a fair trade and named his new dino 'Geo', after our new found love of geocaching.

xoxo