Possibly My Greatest Accomplishment Ever...

....my wedding favors. Yes, that's right. This is going to look crazy for a second, but this is everyone who came to our wedding:




These photos were taken in haste the day before our wedding. As were individual portraits of each.

Like this.

 

And this.

And this.

Actually, THESE portraits have been cropped. So there is no carpet background or occasional limb of mine.

This is me taking 120+  pictures in haste.

I really disliked wedding planning. But these personalized wedding favors were something I knew I wanted to do from early on. And so starting sometime in January (for our August wedding), I tracked down pictures of all of our guests and got to work. The generic male/female bodies made things a bit easier. What I worried about most was offending someone with their portrait. Of course, there were also a few people who I had never met in person. I totally relied on their photo being an accurate representation of themselves.

So I'm on a mission now to crop all of the individual pictures and make some sort of "cool" collage. (Better than what was slapped together above.) One of those photo collages that look like a picture of something from far away would be awesome. Not that I know how to do that.

Charming Your Guests

I just went to one of the most delightful bridal showers I've ever been to. It was very non-traditional, which I very much enjoyed. There was no awkward opening of gifts or silly games. (The games were fun and consisted of mad libs and blind wine tasting.) Just lots of eating, mingling, and some drinking. Like the song actually: "...eat, drink, and be merry."

For the party favors, they had a make-your-own-wine-charms station. So fun! And I will definitely use these. I did, however, forget to be social for the 20 minutes that I sat making my charms. I was extremely focused.

My creations:

 

My one complaint is that the dim lighting made me think that the beads on my leaf charm were green. Clearly, they were not. Oops. Oh well.

For the Kids

Completed 2005

16"x20"

Acrylic

During the year I lived at home, between college and the real world, my nephew V. and I spent a lot of time together. Specifically, we spent a lot of time watching Shrek and/or Monsters, Inc. So for his 3rd birthday I painted him this picture of him and Sully. Stopping by their house this weekend, I was pretty happy to see it still prominently displayed in V.'s room. (He's older now, and I'm pretty sure he has moved on from Monsters.)

As I was leaving his room, this caught my eye...



Seems we have a budding artist. Win.

Since I was already poking around the kid's rooms I stopped into N.'s. Mostly I just wanted to snap some pictures of her wall. (I also delivered her picture this weekend. Not sure if she liked it or not because she gave me a look that said, "You're a weirdo.") 

 

 
Ignore the creepy doll

As you can probably infer from the pictures, mostly everything in her room is pink. So we lucked out when we chose the paint color! The flower-mural-thing was my baby gift to her.

I'm reminiscing as I write this post... and feeling really old.

By the way. When I asked V. what his favorite subject is in school he told me math. Double win.

Deep Creek in Pictures

This past weekend Mike and I spent a few days at Deep Creek, Maryland with his family. The tropical storm had made its way out by Friday afternoon so, despite the torrential downpour during our drive up, it turned out to be a beautiful weekend!

The opening NFL weekend also gave me some time to fiddle around with my camera. (Not that I dislike football. But I DO like to multi-task.) I found some great photography tutorials via Pinterest (wish I had bookmarked those) and learned quite a bit in three hours. I at least now fully understand the aperture and shutter speed relationship. Did I have my white balance set to incandescent while out at the waterfalls? Yes. Oops..

Lots of sunset pics. My overall goal in this one was to capture the duck.

What good fortune. A duck AND a boat!

Swallow Falls

I was really a fan of these tree roots, but I don't think this photo did them justice.

Mmm.... roasting hot dogs on a campfire.

Mike's Favorite Things II

Completed 2011
16"x20"
Oil

Lucky Mike gets another painting. He's been asking for a painting of a Colombian flag guitar forever. (See Colombian flag here.) So I've kind of owed him one. Well... "owed" in the way that a wife kindly does something for her husband occasionally.

I threw the Rubicon in the background as a tribute to his old Jeep.

...And now that I'm looking at the painting, I'm realizing there is something I need to fix.... oops. Hopefully no one sees what I see.