Confession

I have a confession.
I want to be a photographer. Not a professional photographer that takes family portraits to earn a living. However, I want to have all the equipment, a studio space and the skills necessary to do that if I wanted. I still don't want to be a professional photographer, just be good enough to be.
My dream is to have a large, airy, bright room with studio lights, backdrops and other equipment. I want a studio. I want to be good enough to warrant a studio. I want to be good enough to warrant spending hours and hours working on photography.
That's my confession.
That's my dream for today.
I was just inspired by this woman's blog. She loves to shoot film and has a simplistic beauty to her images. I really feel inspired by reading through her posts.

Have I shared my current favorite still life shot with you? I don't take many shots that don't include my children so when I got to go to SLC and play with a Lensbaby I jumped at the chance. If you read MomShots then you already read about this. I love cross posts...

Thanksgiving - Day 6

My beautiful friend Maryanne, has been writing up daily blog posts about the things she is thankful for. I love it and I feel like I need to jump in and participate. Thanksgiving is one of the holidays that I tend to get caught up in the hustle and bustle and forget to take time to actually relish in the the chance to just "be thankful". Maybe this will help me with that.

This morning I am up before the rest of my family. I woke up at 4:30 and could not go back to sleep. I am thankful for the quiet. I am thankful for the peace. I am thankful for my laptop and the Internet, both helping me feel connected and not so isolated from friends and family.

I am thankful for my children and their unconditional love and trust. They are good examples to me.

I am thankful for Ben and his passion and drive to succeed and provide for our family. I am thankful for his creativity and ability to make something out of nothing.


What are you thankful for today?

A Yummy Pumpkin Treat

Tonight I made Oatmeal Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies. I took a recipe I found on Cooks.com and changed some things. It was kind of boring and I made it better. So yummy! My boys ate half of them before I was even finished baking.

2 1/4 c. flour (half white and half whole wheat)
1 c. butter
1 c. oatmeal (I used quick oats)
16 oz. can pumpkin
2 eggs
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. cardamon

1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1 c. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. chocolate chips

I creamed the butter, sugar and eggs together and then added the can of pumpkin puree. I added all the dry ingredients next and chips last.

Baked at 350 degrees for 11 minutes.

This is a keeper that I will make again! I would like to add raisins and some nuts to the mix. They were so delish!

Song of the Day - Count Your Blessings

Last night I had a mini melt down. Throughout the night I was woken up by every single member of my family, often multiple times. This morning Magnus reached up onto the counter and pulled a really hot bowl of porridge down onto his foot and burnt himself; blisters and all. Everything that can go wrong, seems to be going that way. I haven't been all that happy with my lot these last 24 hours.

On a Google search for instructions to make fabric pumpkins, I randomly went to a blog this morning that I had never visited before. Her first post was about counting your blessings. She had a few YouTube videos with different renditions of this wonderful song. Already one of my favorites, today this is my Song of the Day.

This is my favorite version, a ragtime rendition sung by a Swedish Salvation Army choir. It's just fantastic!

When you pray for help, it can come from random places.

Uly's Song

This is a recording of a song that Ulysses made up about the vowels, this morning at breakfast. He also sings a song about counting by 10's that he learned at school. So cute!!!

I also want to add that Uly is doing awesome in school. He is learning so much and has got on all of his spelling tests this year. He is reading through the books his teacher is sending him home with and is doing great at math as well. He is learning all sorts of cool science, music and art stuff too plus he is having a blast. We love his school and are really thankful that we have been able to send him there this year.

Teeth, Cats and Random Handsomeness

A sunrise walk at the beach, this past summer.

Where I taught the boys about how to find anemones at low tide and how to squish them with their feet so that they squirt.

We discovered a baby sea star and got to pick it up and see what its skin felt like.

And we discovered and discussed barnacles.

My desert babies were enlightened.

The Tooth Fairy has been here a lot lately. Quite a lot lately...

We've also been enjoying a litter of kittens. This is my first time ever experiencing that and it has been a lot of fun. We have five. A couple are spoken for. Does anyone else want one? They will be old enough to give away on October 30th.

This kid just constantly amazed me. His brain is so much fun. I am excited to see how he uses it as he gets older. He has such an awesome and powerful imagination. Gar, my sweet little 4 year old...

A cute little smile from my niece, Lala.

Another cute niece, Cora.

Well Summer is over and school is in full swing. I need to start taking photos with an Autumn theme now... Halloween is just around the corner!

What's the deal with Blogger's compression?!? These photos look awful compared to what's on my computer! Oh well. It's better than nothing.

Vaudeville is Alive!

We got to see a vaudeville show and I was able to track down a photographer who took a bunch of stunning shots from it. I had to leave with Magnus and missed the highlight of Uly's evening. Here's a glimpse of how much fun he had.

These photos were not taken by me. They were taken by Jorge Lausell.