little dancer

This is my niece:

 

Her name is Cecilia, but we usually call her Cici. She's cute as a button.

Cici is also a little ballerina. Apparently she's branching out a little, though,  because when she came to visit me the other day she had something VERY exciting to show me.

You can't see them too well in the grass, but right there on her little feet are TAP SHOES. She was so thrilled with them, and so happy about showing them off, I simply couldn't resist an impromptu photo shoot.

And because she's just a little bit of a ham (what good dancer isn't?), she was only too happy to oblige in providing an array of "dance poses".

 She danced until her shoes fell clean off.

Then she made some silly faces at the camera. :)

After all this, she eventually became distracted by something shiny off in the distance, and ran off into the sunset.

Sarah and Ryan's Wedding

A couple weeks ago I had the honor of photographing the wedding of Sarah Guidry and Ryan Gueho! It was positively beautiful. Here's a little sneakpeak/sample of some of the photos I took that day - enjoy!

Merkle Family Portraits

Last weekend I had the opportunity to take some portraits for my cousin Lori and her family. Unfortunately, the weather had different ideas... Around 4:30pm I could see some rather dark and menacing looking storm clouds begin to roll in. Shortly after it started storming like nobody's business, and continued to do so for about forty-five minutes -- straight through our designated time to start. Thankfully, though, it was very scattered, and after a little while the rain lightened up and the clouds rolled on passed. As soon as it halted to a harmless drizzle, we ran outside and managed to snap some shots. We may still have to finish up another day, but I'm glad the shoot wasn't a total wash out! No pun intended.

This is such a fun family. I had a great time doing this shoot with them, even with the weather being uncooperative, so I thought I'd share a few of the photos I took that evening!

This is the whole family. From left to right: Isabella, Lori, Brendan, and Gavin.

See this young man standing here? I held him when he was a baby. He was the was the first child I ever babysat. Then I saw him this weekend, and he walked up to me, and I suddenly realized I was looking up at him. Holy cow, when did that happen?!

Isabella is SO adorable. She has the cutest, biggest smile, and a pair of the most pinchable cheeks a toddler could have.

 See?

Kneadin' it

So lately one of my favorite things to do is make homemade pasta. And by "making homemade pasta", I mean like actually making it. Mixing the dough, kneading it into a nice little ball, squashing it out flat, cutting it into some kind of pasta, and then cooking it into a fabulous dish. It tastes amazing.

Plus, it's fun!

The other day, I was joined by two wonderful friends of mine who also thought this sounded like fun, for a pasta-making-movie-watching girls night. So, the cooks are Dorissa:

And Karista:

(I feel this photo sums up her personality really well, for some reason. :D)

And Moi. There's no photograph of me, because I am the photographer, and I stay behind the camera. Unless you count this:

But I'm still behind the camera. :)

So anyway, back to the story. We weren't just making pasta, mind you. We were having a party. We had music, we were dancing, we were recording the Dorissa, Jessica, and Karista Cooking Show with Karista's laptop (which may or may not have occasionally featured really bad Italian accents). And somewhere in there we were cooking Spinach Lasagna.

Eventually, we did get around to mixing up and kneading out the dough. Am I the only person who thinks dough is pretty?

Look at that! See?? It's pretty.

After that we had to let it sit for 20 minutes, so we entertained ourselves by taking funny pictures with Photo Booth and making a music video with some trippy music.

Then we flattened out the dough using this nifty little pasta making contraption that hooks onto your Kitchen Aid.

And set it out to dry.

After all this we proceeded to make the innards of the Spinach Lasagna and mix it all together. And continuing to record our cooking show, of course.

We know what we're doing. We are accomplished chefs.

So yeah, we sauteed the spinach, made the cream sauce, and layered on our awesome homemade pasta along with some delicious mozzarella cheese (no cottage cheese, because cottage cheese tastes like dirty smelly feet).  After all this we popped that baby in the oven and proceeded to sit in front of it, gaze longingly through the little window, and drool profusely for about forty minutes.

After a tortuously long wait, the timer finally went off. We took it out of the oven. It was beautiful. It smelled divine. It looked so good, I forgot to take any pictures of it because I was too distracted looking at it. Mouths watering, anticipation building, we grabbed a spatula and made the first cut.

Wait.

No.

Did we...?

Oh sweet mercy, please, no.

I'm told my expression completely wilted in a matter of seconds. Know why? Because I remembered something that none of us had apparently remembered, only I remembered it juuuust a tad to late.

Cooking the noodles for your lasagna? Yeah. Kind of important.


I spent a good, long while after that in a deep dark spiral of humiliation, depression, and panic for my future. How could I do that?? Who does that?? Dori and Karista tried to console me with stories of their own cooking catastrophes, but I was not to be consoled. I couldn't help feeling sorry for the poor bloke that is my future husband, who would have to marry The Girl Who Forgot To Cook The Noodles. Or maybe I just wouldn't get married... Who would want to marry The Girl Who Forgot To Cook The Noodles, anyway?

Eventually, though, I came out of my pit of despair. It was, after all, pretty funny. I decided to channel a little Julia Child. I'd caught a real deal episode of her's, and in it she talked about how you couldn't be afraid of failure in cooking. Because, well, you fail a lot. Sometimes, she said, the souffle falls. Sometimes, the omelet breaks. Sometimes, you forget to cook the noodles. And it's okay.  I'd just take Julia's advice, and get back in there. We spent the rest of the evening cracking up about it and watching a Hugh Grant movie.

I still feel like I need to make a redemption spinach lasagna, though.

The other day, I went to St. Peter's church to take some photographs for their new website. I went to mass, and afterward I decided to take some time to pray. It's been really hitting me lately how every single "ability" or "talent" I have, isn't really mine. We like to think our talents are our own, as if it's some kind of compliment to us, but we couldn't be more wrong. God has graciously bestowed them on us. Now, I'm not saying I'm a particularly gifted photographer... Most of the time I cringe at my own work, because I always see how it could be better. I hope this isn't coming off as a vain ramble about how I think God's "blessed me with amazing talent" or whatever, because that's not it. Like I said, I'm my harshest critic, and I definitely don't look at my work and think I'm all that.

I still love it, though. And if God gave me the heart for photography, I want to get better at it for Him. I want to use it for Him, not for me. I want to praise Him, I want to worship Him, I want to glorify Him, with everything He gave me. Including my passion for photography. So when I began to take my photographs, I asked for Christ to lead my eye and help me to do that, both this and every time I pick up my camera. Whether it be for a church website, a wedding, or a senior portrait session, it's all for Him.

I didn't really know what to start this new photo blog with for the longest time. Portraits? Some landscapes? What? It's the first post, so it has to be good, right? But after this photoshoot, it suddenly seemed obvious to me that these photographs would be the perfect way to start off my new photo blog. Kind of symbolic of what's most important, and what it's really all about.

So, yes. Anyway! Back to the photoshoot. After that time of prayer, and after the crowd had dwindled away to about three people, I pulled out my camera and began.

I decided to start at the alter.

Which was kind of intimidating. I've only been up there once before.

That's one of the candles, in case you couldn't tell.


I was wandering around up there, taking pictures, when I suddenly  realized I was standing directly beneath the crucifix. I looked up, and was met with this view:

Am I the only one who thinks that is intense? I don't know, I'm pretty sure I gasped when I looked up. For some reason it struck me as really beautiful.

I took the photograph above without the subject knowing. I just found the beautiful surrender of the moment to be so moving. I do have her permission to use the photograph, however she will remain anonymous.

I love the Catholic Church. Have I mentioned that? 'Cause I do.

So anyway, that's it. Well, that's not it, there are more pictures, however that's all I have room to put up. Plus, if this post gets much longer I'm probably going to lose your interest. I hope you, whoever you are (who's reading this anyway?), enjoyed them, and that perhaps they blessed you in some way! There will be more soon. I'm typically awful with blogs and posting regular updates, but I promise to do better with this one. Really.