Category: Happy

  • changes

    I’ve been quiet since Friday. 

    I’ve been introspective. And depressed. And busy.  

    We went to pick Porter up yesterday in Athens. Today, Jared and I cleaned house all day long to prepare for tonight. Our house is not embarrassing finally, if we have guests.  

    Tonight, we decorated for Christmas. My Rich’s Richie Bear and Priscilla Pig stuffed animals came out for the decorations for the first time in our married lives since Porter was an infant and too tiny to hurt them.  

    We got Nannie’s ceramic tree decorated. I pulled out my Rudolph collection of stuffed animals and Jared’s sweet Mama’s Christmas woodcarvings and stockings.  

    We ate dinner, the five of us having Jared’s famous grilled cheese sandwiches, and then we had an outing for milkshakes at Chick-fil-a because it is peppermint milkshake season.. Except for Oliver, who doesn’t like sweets, so he had an eight count nugget because two grilled cheese sandwiches were not enough for an 11-year-old boy.  

    And somewhere over the past week, I remembered that I missed taking pictures for other people and I’d like to be able to do it again. I really enjoyed the maternity session with the Cinelux lenses. 

    And so, things are in the works. A new page is on this site. There is a new domain name also pointing to that page and a new instagram site that has been held for about a year or more, waiting for something to do.  

    And yes, a new LLC has been filed for, waiting for approval. Business expenses will be kept to an absolute minimum, no new equipment is required.

    The idea is a completely artistic-driven portrait experience. One that I don’t pay to support, fees that support a living wage. Portraits will be made exclusively with my existing Cinelux and Minolta lenses, with my GFX50sII.

    I may never get a client and that’s okay, but I’m going to create the kind of art that feeds me. I have a clear artistic voice waiting to scream out in my head and it’s high time that I fed that vision.

    It’s time.

  • we have another dawg!

    Well, I don’t actually know that we have another Dawg. It’s not his top choice. But, Liam did get into the University of Georgia! Yay! So he does at least have one place to go next Fall.

    I am so very, very, very proud of this young man. He has worked so, so hard these last two years in particular, doing the International Baccalaureate program at Carrollton High School. And he’s done it while doing marching band, and learning to play the bass trombone, and I can’t keep up with the number of clubs he is in (and an active part of).

    Liam is a great friend to his friends, and he is just so very smart. His work ethic is the best of any individual I have ever known in my life. I worry about him quite a bit though, as he works himself too hard.

    This kiddo of mine has had a job every summer since he was 14 years old. He has more common sense (and financial sense) than anybody else in our household.

    He declared his prospective major as accounting at UGA but as we understand it he would have to apply to the Terry College of Business in his second year should he go.

    It has been a good day. I got some household organization situated during the day.

    And the Carrollton Trojans won! Next week is against Grayson at home.

    I don’t normally go down where the band parents are waiting for the band to come into the stands….lots of them stand on the track by the football field. But tonight before the game as the band was walking onto the field for pregame I went down and snapped this, of Liam:

    It’s not a great pic. I was in a hurry and frankly flustered to be on the sidelines and well. Whatever. I used Topaz to focus their faces.

    This was the shot of the night, though:

    It was nice to get out of the press box hallway for a little while. I snapped this shot of the band in the Amp before I went down to the sidelines to wait. The press box hallway is my hangout while Oliver does the instant replays and Jared helps with the broadcast kids on Friday nights.

    I snapped the pictures, but the whole point of going down was to meet Liam and give him a giant Mama hug. He’d texted in a big group text to let us know he’d gotten into UGA but he’d stayed at school between school and the game tonight. So I’d said congratulations, but I didn’t want to wait until he got home from the game for the hug.

    The hug was 100% worth it.

    It was a good day.

  • I love cinelux lenses!

    I did a very brief maternity session yesterday. As predictable, I am hopeless with poses, so I looked at my phone constantly. Here is what I came up with though:

    Jared says I will grow to resent being the free photographer around these parts. What I know is that I came home way not stressed at all about how these turned out, so when they turned out well I was just thrilled.

    It does beg the question though: can I really do sessions with only Schneider-Kreuznach Cinelux projection lenses on my GFX 50sII?

    Whatever the case, right now I do not regret selling the lenses I sold and I am very happy with my kit.

    And it felt good to spend all of about 15-20 minutes doing a session and come up with these as the result.

    Thanks so much to Kaitlyn and Jonathan for playing along with my experiment.

    This session just makes me want to book more sessions. Reach out if you’re interested in something like this!

    You can read more about me here.

  • more beauty navel-gazing

    ***This post contains affiliate links***

    So I wrote a hair post the other day, and I didn’t mention that pigtails are the newest hairstyle, just because it’s finally long enough for doing that. This is probably going to be my go-to hairstyle for the Fall 2025 just because it’s been a long time since I could and it gets it off my neck and it’s comfortable when I’m driving or sitting with my head leaned back against the car headrest or the headrest of the recliner.

    One thing that was not a thing the last time I had hair long enough to put up in any way, shape or form are hair coils. The Scunci ones in the link are probably going to last me a lifetime and pretty much satisfy all my hair styling up-do type things I will need to do for the foreseeable future. When I don’t put my hair up in pigtails, I’ll usually put it up in a weird little but type thing that I don’t know how to explain in writing but it’s not quite a messy bun– I don’t have enough hair for that– but I don’t worry about whether it’s nice looking or not. But it ends up being cute regardless.

    That last photo I posted in the last post, from summer 2021 when I was completely bald….it has been a severe process getting to pigtail-appropriate length. I’ve been a compulsory hair trimmer at home here for years at this point. Luckily, I’ve had a “put the shears down” moment and don’t feel so much like trimming every other week anymore now that the length is more interesting.

    In other self-care news, being 46 means that I have to pay attention to my neck because it is becoming wrinkly fast. I’m not doing anything drastic, but I do use Trader Joe’s jojoba oil on it, sparingly, to delay crepey skin. I use the jojoba oil after the shower in the morning and also at night before bed. I use whatever Costco cheaper face Korean liquid treatment stuff is in stock for my face, but I do like the jojoba oil for my neck.

    As for the glasses….that’s a thing these days as I age too. I opted for gas permeable hard contact lenses when I got my last eye exam to err on the cheaper side for my contacts. But having used soft contacts literally my whole life to now, it’s been a not-so-smooth transition and now I can’t wait to get home from being out so I can get my contacts out of my eyes. Some days the contacts don’t go in at all.

    When I had my eye exam last winter, I got Costco’s optical department to put new lenses in these Warby Parker Holcomb frames I had from years ago. It took a couple of weeks longer than ordering a normal pair, but it was totally worth it.

    And also….my thyroid issues or my psych meds one make my eyes drier than they used to be. Which makes the contacts rougher for long wear, too.

    Back to skin stuff though…. when I do wear makeup, I only use two things: this Bayfree Multi-Glow Balm is great both as a blush and as an eye shadow. And I keep at least three of these Neutrogena Moistureshine lip gloss tubes around the house at all times.

    So anyway, yeah….this is beauty care at age 46 for me.

  • new blog design, thanks gemini

    I’ve been working frantically on this blog’s page design for most of the past 24 hours. No particular reason, other than I felt like it.

    But I finally have the design like I like it! The navigation in the header was a bear to work with, and took some hardwiring with code to get it fixed, but I got it.

    And, for better or worse, I have decided to opt into monetization: at the bottom of this page you will find a “Buy me a coffee!” button, which takes to either a one-time or a subscription $5 page.

    I’ve talked about it in real life a lot but I use Gemini a lot these days…..I have a Google Workspace subscription leftover from my photo days, attached to this domain name, and I consult Gemini a lot since my version doesn’t contribute to the LLM learning.

    Gemini doesn’t do my writing for me. It doesn’t even usually help me come up with post ideas. I do run my posts through Gemini for impact feedback, and for help with typos. That’s it.

    But…..Gemini helped me design this blog!

    I had an old theme that I liked that I had paid for, but I became concerned about updates, etc. and security issues. I switched to the generic Twenty Twenty Five theme for WordPress probably back in March or April.

    But….that theme used a font that I liked so much that I hunted down the font and bought it to use with that previous theme in other places that weren’t licensed by the theme. So I had the font available, and that font is what is powering my current header.

    The color choice for the header though…..that’s a nod back to the blogging days of olden times. I came across a theme I liked using that color as a secondary color probably back in 2012 or 2013 or so. The really old days of blogging when I bought new themes like every other day, just because (I know, I know).

    That shade of pink though, it stuck with me.

    But then in March or April, when I decided to switch to Twenty Twenty Five, I knew I had to have help with the secondary colors.

    So, I fed Gemini the original pink shade hex values, and Gemini is the one that came up with the hex value for the bluish sage of the navigation header and links in my design.

    Gemini helped me suss out where the email subscribe button should go, which order the social media icons should be in, and where the “Buy me a coffee!” button should go.

    And, I have to say, I like this design pretty much as well as any design I have ever had for a website.

    Gemini even helped me tailor the language on Privacy Policy page.

    When I had trouble configuring the colors in the header, Gemini helped me figure out the code I needed to add to the “Additional CSS” box.

    This post is about the design of the blog, but someday I’ll write about other things Gemini helps me do– it’s a lot.