lost tooth...(Humboldt County Childrens Photographer)

big news

In kenzie's words.....
"My Dad pulled my tooth out. I was very sguiggly before he did that. It was bleeding a lot and it hit him in the head. My dad used his strong muscles to flick it out. The tooth fairy came and brought me a doll named Amy. In the morning I was happy. Now my smile is really cute, the lady at the hot dog store told me so."
Makenzie 5.5 years.

(Humboldt County Childrens Photographer)

Colson and I went exploring today. We were looking for this old train tunnel that I heard about. We set off in the morning and it was soooooo foggy. You couldn't see 4 feet in front of you! Needless to say, I couldn't see/find the tunnel but we stopped at the tracks to play around. The weather was so crappy that I got a ton of grain and terrible clarity. Poor Colson had chicken skin the whole time. You can really see it in the close up of his bear. He was such a trooper though. There was a goat tied up near by that was keeping his interest- as was the pez that was hiding in his pocket! I will be going back here when the weather is better and playing around much more and hopefully getting some keepers.

new greeting cards

I designed a new group of greeting cards for sale. So far I have 3 stores who will carry them but of course you can purchase them through my blog as well.

Imagine always having the perfect card on hand......you can get my everything card pack for only $50. This is a pack of 20 cards that can cover any occasion. You get 4 birthday, 2 baby, 2 maternity, 4 wedding, and 8 other all-occasion cards. All this for less than $2.50 a card- that's cheaper than Hallmark!!lol. No more last minute trips to the store to grab a card for that birthday you forgot!! You can send a payment via paypal to mirandarenner@frontiernet.net. Be sure to leave your mailing address for me to send them out. Let me know if you have any questions....

10 days.......(Humboldt County Childrens Photographer)

Ten days since I last posted. I am so sorry...those of you who emailed, I promise I will get to you soon!!Life has been so busy this week. I finally finished the greeting card line. I will post them here tomorow. It feels good to get them done. Brian got shipped out to a fire so I am a single mom for now. Of course fire season comes during my busiest time of year and takes away my child care!! I am scrambling to get people to watch my kids so I don't have to reschedule any shoots. Whenever he leaves, I makes me realize what a great team we are together. We have such a great system worked out. He has his things that I hate doing and he is so good at and vice-versa. I HATE brushing my kids' teeth- so he does it everynight. I hate taking out the recycling- so he does that etc. Now I have come to terms that teeth will probably only get brushed once a day and garbage won't get out on the curb on garbage day, and in real life, that is o.k. It is just kind of an empty feeling around 5:00 and we know that we don't have daddy to greet at the door. The good news........I get super lax about having dinner at the table when he is gone so I usually end taking the kids on "photography journeys" in the evenings. This means that we can go explore for some new fun shooting locations. I always get my creative juices flowing during this time. I will post some new stuff tonight/tomorow.
m

coming home...(Humboldt County Childrens Photographer)

I spent the weekend scrapping with the girls at a cabin in the woods. It was so nice to do those things you never get to do at home; drink a cup of tea while it was still hot, read some pages of a good book, stay in your jammies all day, to flip through the tattered pages of a great qoute book, to stay up way too late knowing that if you wanted too, you could sleep in in the morning. It sounds like the ultimate dream right? Well it was fabulous- but in real life, I missed my family soooo much. I thought about them and what they would be doing at home at that very moment. I called them and tried to get details about their day, or Kenzie's soccer game, or did they take their vitamin etc. They told me what was going on, but I still felt like I was missing something. It was so good to get away and relax, but it was even better to come home- to come home to a sink full of dishes, to come home to the kids fighting, to come home and find that I had 19 emails to return, to come home to the very life that I would pick for myself if I could pick any life in the world.

Above is a collage that I made with on of my all time favorite qoutes. I used the ecletic collection papers from the shabby shoppe. I will print as a 16x20 to hang above the bed to remind me what really makes me happy.

A B C...(Humboldt County Childrens Photographer)

I had such a good time putting this book together. I used an easy template from Tina at http://everyday-moments.blogspot.com/. It was so cheap and can be used in so many different ways. I used those hard cardboard board books form Oriental Trading Company and just glued each page on and then sealed it. . I ended up making one for each of my babies since they were so easy!! Thank You Tina!!

more from this weekend

I really didn't get a chance to have my camera out a whole lot this weekend. My brother and his girlfriend Ann let me take a few at sunset but other than that I didn't get many photographs. On the way home Brian and I were reflecting on how lucky we are to have so much family around us. We are scattered around the state a bit, but we always make time to call, email, or visit. Granted we do have those family members that we would rather not claim but I have been pretty lucky in that respect. I was worried that when my one of my two brothers got married, he would start spending holidays and such with his wife's family and start not seeing us as much. In real life, our family just grew to include hers. Now we have this awesome blend of her parents and ours. The smartest thing my brother ever did was bring her into our life. She feels more like a sister to me than a sister in law. I did not get any pictures of her and my brother this weekend, wich is a shame since we were celebrating their 1 year anniversary, but I posted a photo of them from their wedding so we all could reflect on their special day a year ago.

Happy Anniversary Matt and Celine!

this is my favorite of my brother and his new girlfriend

we sat around the pool and the boys played guitar. They are a bunch of talented musicians, so even them just messing around sounded beautiful
papa took kenzie out to fly a kite on the hill. you can barely see her at the bottom!

Mojito Madness!!

So we spent the weekend camping with family to celebrate my brother and sil anniversary. We had the best time. It was sooo relaxing and beautiful (key to relaxation:we chose not to bring Colson!) Rex the Mojito Master kept the bar flowing all weekend. I had to share this awesome recipe for his Mojitos. They were so crisp and refreshing.......very easy to polish off 7 or eight of them! I will post more picts from the trip when I recover a bit.

put some fresh mint in a glass..Master Rex grew his own of courseNow a very important step....you must fork the lime. Squeezing the lime is not sufficient. You must fork it to release the limes full potential
then you add bacardi..
now some simple syrup.

(I think the label was written after testing the recipe out)
add a smidge of club soda

Now you must release the power of the mint...Sounds mysterious doesn't it.. really you just smooch up the mint with a stick
and now

Enjoykeep in mind that the recipe was written after sampling a few!!

The Glasses Phase?????...(Humboldt County Childrens Photographer)

Not quite sure what is going on in that little head of hers. Kenzie has been going to many "meetings" lately. These usually consist of her sitting at the table coloring and then bossing us around for awhile until the meeting is over. There is a certain dress code for these meetings. She must wear her meeting glasses at all times -just some old frames of mine. She also uses her meeting voice.....very deep and stern! Colson is not a big fan of her meetings. He usually just makes farting noises and funny faces until Kenzie gets fed up and lets us all go. It is like a constant movie around here!

A day without sis..

Colson doesn't quite know what to do with himself now that Kenzie is at school. He talks about how much he misses her and how he wants to go pick her up right now but in real life I think he just misses having someone to torment. It is nice seeing him explore his creative play by himself. He watches home movies, plays with trains and gets into all the things of Kenzie's that she never shares with him.