The camera in hand and truth

This summer has been a quick and crazy ride. I had some guilt that I hadn’t picked up my big nikon since June. I used to be really great at packing it everywhere and snapping photos like a paparazzi. But I had other things on my mind, and instead of packing my camera I was packing either my research, laptop, homework, or all three with me where ever we went. I took photos with my iphone and captured all the moments I could.
And I reminded myself of a saying LK Ludwig had on her blog and the title of a class: “the camera in hand” is better than nothing. So some of my pictures are grainy or less than perfect. It’s going to be okay. I know it will right?

Mama guilt is rough. I had it when I started grad school and when I started back to teaching last fall.
It’s hard to be everything to everyone and do it all and do it well. I know some who can juggle everything and look fabulous doing it.
Me, I’m so far from perfect I can’t even see what it looks like.

I’ve been trying to eat healthier and be a good role model for my kids, what I’ve done since starting graduate school is gain 39 lbs. (I really didn’t need to be gaining any more weight as it was.) But it’s happened and I’m trying to work on that in my “spare” time. The problem is that this needs to be something that’s a part of my life and I need to look at it as more than just “extra”. Because this weight gain at 37 really feels like it’s slowed me down which is a first. I’ve been heavy a while but I’ve been able to still be active and do what I wanted. Now, I feel f-a-t and i’m trying really hard not to use that word in front of my kids.

I watched a friend go through breast cancer this year and endure horrible chemo treatments this summer. She is a young, healthy mama to three boys. Really one of those full of life people. And this treatment really knocked her back. She’s done with her chemo now, her hair is growing, and her health is getting strong.
And I think, what would I do if something happened to me if I couldn’t be there for my kids? What if my health went? And honestly with as much as I weigh that is a real problem that I’ve ignored for too long. I’ve been lucky so far, but is it really fair to me or my family to play roulette with my health? To gamble that I’m not going to get hurt or have health problems?
Time to take the blinders off and really see what needs to be done.

(non-flattering photo of me with a see no evil monkey)

And yet, why is this so hard? I’ve completed my thesis which I thought was impossible. I’ve met several challenges in my life and I’ve been able to conquer them against the odds.
But food, is so much more than fuel. It’s love, it’s celebration, comfort, a crutch.

So, I’m laying this out here in blog land. I will stop being mean to myself for gaining weight when I know better.
I’m making my health as big as priority as everything else. I’m working on that revolutionary diet called eat less, move more. Tracking what I eat, making better choices, walking every day no matter what.
It’s not a huge step, but it’s a step towards a healthier me.

wish me luck, this could get rough…..

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I’m still here

Wow! It’s been a while since I’ve been here! And now, summer is nearly over and I go back to work in a week! My big camera did not get used once, all photos are with my iphone, most with the Hipstamtic app which I adore!

We went to a hot rod show, saw the cutest pink car!

And this turquoise wagon!

Swim Lessons

I took mobile computing to new heights

We went to a horse parade

Took the cutest girl to a lavender festival

Played tourist locally with the kids, visiting an old train depot

Harvested from hubby’s garden

I went to Madison, WI (the farthest east I’ve been) for a conference

I have more to say and share but, I also have a paper due Monday and a thesis to revise.
Hugs to all of you! Hope you’re summer is going great!!
Em

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our daily life from a different point of view

Our little guy Jack loves to take photos. I keep my nikon d40 handy to help me take more photos. And Jack will pack the camera around the house and take photos. I have the strap on all the time and have taught him to always have it around his neck if he’s taking photos. I know it may seem a little absurd to allow a 5 yr old to pack my camera, but he’s pretty careful with it so we let him take a few pics.
So when I upload photos I never know what I’ll find.

lots of self portraits

always love his point of view

sister posing

me

things he’s interested in

sister

his trucks

lots of wiener dog butts!

love seeing his point of view, looking at things that interest him.

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thinking of spring

saw a few hints of spring, had to grab my camera.

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the abstractedness of nature

This is an idea that has been circling in my mind lately whenever I am outside.

I love to get close up to nature.

I’m love how the details in the natural world come out when viewed in a different perceptive and becomes a piece of art.

I love seeing little worlds emerge when I get in close. Moss and lichens growing on a fallen log, look like a perfect place to find a few fairies.

And I love how my little guy can make a forest for his trucks out of a patch of beets.

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self-portraits: yes I was there too!

When my babies were very little I was so obsessed with taking pictures of them, I wanted to capture each little moment because this was such a long time coming and I knew that I’d probably never have a baby again. But then I wanted photos of me with the babies, I didn’t care that I hadn’t lost the baby weight or looked like I hadn’t slept in months, I needed to document that yes I was there too! Since my husband was at work during the day, I was on my own and it was hard to get those sweet shots of mother and child nursing, rocking, or singing. Those pictures in my mind that said “motherhood” to me.

August 2009

I got creative. I got really good at taking shots of us with arm out holding the camera. I used I propped the camera on a book, set the timer, set up a tripod and used the timer again. Then I started taking lots of self portraits thinking that I hated having my picture being taken, so I would just take a lot of photos to get over it. It seemed a little odd and I had to ignore the curious stares I’d get, but it got easier.

September 2007 photo booth

Another reason I like self-portraits is to capture a specific moment. When my babies were still babies, I would sometimes be packing them at the same time, a kid on each hip. This to me was one of the defining things about having twins. I wanted to capture it before they got too big. Even though they still want me to pack them both!

July 07

I could critique this photo, wonder why I thought that stripped shirt was a good idea! Maybe I could have taken it somewhere else in the house with less background stuff. I could think of all kinds of things. But instead I look at how I was strong enough to carry them both in the womb, I was strong enough to pack them both on my hip if needed, and I’m strong enough to take whatever comes my way.

I love this one I took at my parent’s farm, July 07.

July 07
I love the early morning sunrise on my face, I’m looking east to the Teton Mountains, and I’m wondering if I will ever live there again. This is home, my roots, and I always hope that the road I’m on will take me back there.

Looking through my library I’m almost embarrassed how many self portraits I’ve taken in the past few years. I forgot I had an entire album of these!

me

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leaf hunting 101

(aka “how to get out of the house before everyone goes stir crazy!”)
Here’s what you need:
1. snacks for you and kiddies. We had bags of cheerios, m&m’s, peanuts and water bottles
2. camera, you might get some special photos!
3. paper bags to collect

Today was starting to look like a pretty crappy day. Last night we’d had a horrible windstorm (that I slept right through) and we had a rainy, dreary day yesterday. So this morning I was puttering, cooking down the last of the summer tomatoes to freeze, herding kiddies, looking at the work I needed to do and felt my mood just going down the tubes. I decided to put the tomatoes in the crock pot to cook for a while, got all of us dressed, made up some snacks and water bottles, gathered my camera and paper bags and announced we were going on a leaf adventure!
I took the kids to one of my favorite places in Boise: Municipal Park with the MK Nature Center nearby.

I even gathered some chestnuts to fill a hurricane for a pretty decoration.

We fed the squirrels some of our peanuts,

took lots of pictures, walked, talked about fall, and just enjoyed this little spot of sweetness.

pretty leaves changing colors

Talking about the water cycle

Big Fish

Semi-blurry photo of the three of us (using a rock as a tripod)

I admit I took almost 200 pictures, in about 2 hours.

But I got some great shots
my girl

my boy

I feel so refreshed, recharged, like things are much more manageable, like I can handle this crazy life.
If you are in need of a bit of refreshing I encourage you to take the time and go for a leaf hunt!

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finding little worlds on a monday morning

This post on Shutter Sisters inspired me to grab my camera and find something special in my backyard at this moment. When I first looked at my backyard I thought there was nothing special just a lot of kid toys, grass in serious need of mowing, beds in need of weeding, and bushes needing a trim. Then I looked down and found tiny mushrooms (since we’ve had more rain than we normally get) and thought of little worlds. And as I crouched in the wet grass I remembered when I was a little girl and I thought mushrooms were a magical place where teeny tiny fairies lived and how I liked to play in the old lilac bushes in our yard where it was a special little world just my own. Funny how something so simple can spark a sweet memory.

Just a reminder that there is always something special to find.

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“quality” photography

I’m behind. I hate to use that word because it sounds so much like “caught up” and that invokes guilt over not getting all the scrapping down that I should. But I just haven’t been into scrapping, and I haven’t been taking near as many photos as I normally do.

From 2008 scrapbooks

Now my parents would laugh at this because they think my kids are the world’s most photographed kids. For October I’ve taken 163 photos, and a little bit less than that for September. And when the kids and I were at the farm last? I took less than 50 photos, and very few with the grandparents or other family members. That’s totally slacking for me. A normal trip to the family farm nets at least 50 photos a day! Anyway, for me that’s not a lot of photos and the quality is less than I’d like. For me quality isn’t the technical aspects of photography it’s the variety of everyday shots of life I have. Do I have a lot of just one kid? Have I caught on camera how Jack peddles like a wild man on his trike? Did I get pics of Clara in her princess dress playing soccer? Or have I taken any photos of my hubby lately? Have I taken any of myself? These are the things I measure for quality. And looking at my photos so far I don’t feel I’ve met these self-imposed standards. Probably silly, but there it is.
But as I review the last couple of months I guess I really haven’t missed anything. Just going through a stage, I’m sure it will pass.

Of course, right now I’m consumed with potty training one of my twins. That’s pretty much my whole world right now.

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Photo Freedom

I bought Stacy Julian’s new book Photo Freedom after a friend of mine read it and highly recommended it. I have read it all the way through twice and I’m still picking my way through it as I have time. This is big, it’s revolutionary, and will really help you get your photos organized! That being said, I am not going to review the book, it’s too much to go over. If you go to Amazon you can read excerpts and reviews there. What I will share is how I am implementing these ideas.

First thing to know about the whole “Simple” philosophy of Stacy and her magazine is that being “caught up” is not the point of scrapping. Cathy Zielske also talks about this make believe place in her Clean and Simple Scrap booking:Part two (which I love!) This makes sense to me because if you are continuously taking pictures you will never be done, you will always have new photos to take and new stories to tell. That is what is so terrific about scrap booking. The second thing to know is that you really don’t have to scrap chronologically. Which is cool because I never have been this way, I just scrap as I go and as I feel like it. BUT I store my layouts in chrono order and all my digital photos on my computers and hard drives are all by date. This makes sense to some degree, but when you take an average of 10,000 pics a year it can really get overwhelming!

So now on to Photo Freedom. Stacy uses four general categories of: people we love, all about us, places, and things. This is the foundation of her whole system and she explains in detail how she breaks things down within these categories. I will warn you that this book can overwhelm you if you try to adapt all of the ideas into your current scheme. I got stressed about re-organizing my scrap books. But I think I have found a way that makes sense to me and my family. I did not do baby books for my twins, I know too many people with these partially filled out books sitting in boxes in their homes. After their birth I started a large 12×12 album for each kid where I could include all the bits of info and memorabilia included in the traditional baby book. I don’t want to brag or anything but my babies are a little over two and their first two years on this earth is pretty well documented in their albums. I have friends who have teenagers and have scrapped nothing about their lives, this is okay. I like to scrap, this is my fun. And these are my first babies, probably my only babies so I wanted to really put the effort into preserving these early memories as they occurred.

Now, here’s the bad part of my system: Prior to the year 2006, very few if any scrap book pages have been made. My husband and I were married in 1995, we didn’t have babies until 2006. In between we graduated from college, worked, traveled, lived in different places, had hobbies, and took pictures of these things. But if you look at my pile of albums, it looks like our lives started when we had the babies. Which is when our lives took on more meaning. So, by organizing my pages I can see there are big gaps in the story of our family. I don’t feel obligated to scrap these old pictures, but I feel the need to tell our story as it has evolved.

And here is where “category drawers” come in to play.

I have adapted this to my own system but I did get the 5×7 file drawers and labeled them as the four main categories. Now, as I find packets of film pictures (all over my house) I sort the pics into the categories, I have made my own dividers with card stock and my file punch from Stampin Up!

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