photoshoots and things...

I might have mentioned in the last blog that we stink at blogging. I might have also mentioned that we've been busy as heck. Chance has been working a lot, and I've been trying to catch up on work, as well as do about a billion other things.

One of the things I've been doing (well, at least attempting) is shooting some friends. Wait, that sounded bad. Photographing friends. Better?

I did a photoshoot with Candace Christiansen, our Realtor and friend, the last day of March. She needed some temporary headshots for business cards and such. I haven't shot portraits outdoors really (besides just playing around with Chance)...so it was definitely an experiment. But...it was fun for me, and free for her, so hey! It all worked out, I think.

We played around in the arboretum for a while,

And then we headed to Mayfield Park for some different (and better) scenery.




Finally, we stopped on Burnet Road for some of my favorite shots of the day.




All-in-all, it was a relatively good shoot. It made me realize my level of inexperience, and it solidified the fact that I couldn't ever be a professional photographer. It's way too much pressure for me (even though I was shooting in a totally pressure-free situation). I put too much pressure on myself to do well, and when I don't succeed (or meet my own standards) I get disappointed. Also, shoot- photography can get expensive! I shot with my Rebel XT, cheap-o 50mm f 1.8 lens, and the onboard flash - with a DIY diffuser I made from a film canister. If I had better equipment...more experience...anything, these might have turned out quite differently. Makes me respect the Hafners, as well as some of my other photographer friends like Stacy Reeves, Rachel Brooke Stricklin and Michael Cummings even more. But Candace sure is a perrrrrty gal. She was so much fun to photograph (and even more fun to grab a margarita with afterwards)!

I also volunteered to shoot my buddy Emily's maternity photos (I know, you hear a LOT about her, get over it - we spend a lot of time together). I had my concerns, especially since we were shooting so late in the game (she was a month away from her due date). I had even MORE concerns after our failed attempt at a shoot the previous day. We had gotten a very late start, Emily hadn't eaten and got sorta dehydrated/nauseous/terrible feeling, I got devoured by mosquitoes, and the light at the botanical gardens hadn't been what I thought it would be. We went out again that next day - hoping for better, and better we got. I've only edited a handful of these so far, but I'm sure one of us will post more of them on facebook (well, as soon as I give them to her). We shot for the better part of a day, but...I'm glad we did. We got plenty of good shots (although the ones of she and Charlie didn't turn out wonderfully because we ran out of light. Ohhhh well). We headed to Mayfield (one of my favorite new places), and shot a lot at her house, in her own territory. It definitely helped that she's absolutely freaking beautiful.














There have been plenty of other things going on...Em's baby shower (also late in the game, but fun, nonetheless), painting furniture for her nursery, my sister coming in town, re-planting our flowerbed and trying to fix our yard. And that's just the tip of the massive iceberg. Still haven't gotten around to going through the photos from our SXSW adventures back in March (but you SHOULD check out one of our new favorite bands that we heard during SXSW for the first time, Mumford and Sons).

Alritey. That's still all I've got for you. Pretty darn sure we've lost all our readership (and our credibility - well...maybe only from those of you who follow me on twitter). (:

Maybe we'll get better at this whole blogging thing. I think we're both just waiting for things to get less busy, or for something to change...but pretty soon we'll be giving up on that whole thing.

the pressure...

Well, looks like we got stuck NOT blogging again. Oops. I think somewhere along the line we started pressuring ourselves to post photos with every blog...and, well...there's a stockpile of them on my computer waiting to be sifted through. We haven't posted about SXSW yet simply because I haven't gone through the photos. I haven't even begun sifting through photos from March, and I think there may still be some from February that need posting. I mean...we didn't even really discuss Chance's birthday trip to College Station and how much fun we had. But here we are, in April, coming up on bigger events (like Emily's baby shower and the birth of her baby boy - in something like 5ish weeks?!?!) - and we're falling behind.

I don't know why we pressure ourselves to add photos to each blog. Probably because its more fun to tell a story visually, and probably because we TAKE so many photos, we think we should!

I also have a tendency to want things to get posted chronologically. I think that's my OCD kicking in. I have a hard time posting events out of order. Yuck. It gives me the heebies.

I'm planning on setting aside some time to write a few blogs (but then again, I always say that, don't I?). Hrm. It'll eventually get taken care of. But once again, we've been busy with concerts, friends, Brewster scratching his cornea, photoshoots...shoot. You name it.

And right now, I should be working, but I'm blogging instead. I need to get my priorities straight, eh? Back to work for now. Maybe we should ask YOU guys what you WANT to hear about. Let's try it! Here's a list of potential blog topics:

+ March 1st trip to College Station
+ SXSW
+ Bands we've recently discovered (and love!)
+ Robert Adam and Casey in town/Soldier Thread CD release show
+ My photoshoot with Candace
+ Future furniture projects (but hey, I guess I'll post about those in the future)
+ House project updates
+ Some new finds on television
+ Good movies we've seen

...okay. That's enough for now. So what do y'all want to hear about most?

zoom-zoom

We have been a bit slow about getting up some pictures of our new car. But here she is:






Some of my favorite features:
Auto Audio Leveling: The volume of your audio automatically adjusts to the speed of the car.
Red lights on blue background during night driving.
Auto/Manual..It has the speed shift for when you want to feel sport and do the shifting.
Super comfortable seats.
Great Gas Mileage.
Very sporty look and feel for a 4 cylinder economy class car.

I can't say enough how much we love our new car. We are very thankful we were able to purchase one at a great rate and just have the general means to get a new car. Sometimes blessings are small. Sometimes they are really big!

i know, i know...

So, Brooke's been complaining that we don't blog enough - and frankly, I agree. I really enjoyed writing every single day in November - taking the time out to vent, or celebrate, or ramble, or whatever - it was healthy. Since then though, I keep posting and promising to you that we'll write more. My intentions really are good, but I just can't actually make it happen.

You might wonder what exactly it is that keeps us so busy, and in reality, I'm not entirely certain. I keep WANTING to blog - but things keep distracting me. There are so many things I could write about - but I feel like other things keep happening that keep me from it. Same goes for Chance - he keeps telling me he's going to blog about things, but he has way less time than I do. And...because I'm slightly anal about writing events down in order, chronologically, I don't post until after he's posted about such-and-such event...etc. Basically...we just suck at this whole blogging thing. But, we're gonna try until we get it right.

Anyway - I guess we have been pretty darn busy. Since the end of February, we've purchased a new car ('09 Mazda 3) - which I KNOW Chance wants to blog about (and show you pretty pictures of our new baby)!!! We took a road trip to College Station for Chance's birthday - hung out with friends there, and celebrated his 25th. We've also had several friends turn a year older - in fact, Emily's b-day is coming up on Sunday. Let's see - what else...our AC went out at our house (had that fixed). My computer keeps overheating, but I keep putting off trying to start the whole repair process. We started digging up our overgrown flowerbed in the backyard and had a slight accident involving a pickaxe and some pvc pipe - causing a geyser in our yard and no water for 20 hours or so. I helped Emily paint her baby's room, and hung out with her parents, sister, brother, and his girlfriend last weekend. Chance has been pretty busy with work (adding an additional 2-3 hours a week on to his already 50something hour work week). Oh - and SXSW is coming up next week, so we're trying to get ready for that (planning a schedule, and getting ready to have people crashing at our house). Oh yeah - and right now I'm sick (yes, again) with some fever and some major aches (similar to what happened in July '07 that made me feel fatigued for 4 months after that).

So yeah, I guess we HAVE been pretty busy. I'm just overwhelmed. So I'm sorry we haven't kept up with our blog very well. We really are working on it - or we will, when I stop being sick and things stop blowing up in our faces. Yup.