Redondo Beach Portrait Photographer | It's All His Fault (or... How It All Started Here)

Over a year and half ago a friend asked me to take some pictures for him. I spent the afternoon in Hollywood taking pictures of an old stand up piano and a guitar. Because he nudged me and pushed me out of my comfort zone, I've started a new journey.

I found this image, from a later photo shoot with him for the same project, as I was cleaning up my external hard drive today. I love it.
It's one of my favorites, just a moment frozen in time. So much has changed since this pictures was taken...

Including the release of his album with the images of the guitar and piano on the front. It's an incredible instrumental worship CD that even calms Harrison, in all his strong-headed, excess energy. He loves listening to it.
And David pairs his incredible gifting on piano with the amazing talent of guitarist, Chris Pinnick, lead guitarist of Chicago from 1980-85.

You can check it out here and here. I highly recommend it!

Because David saw something in my pictures, we teamed together and I have since worked with other musicians as well. Thank you David, for believing in me and (albeit unknowingly) pushing me beyond my comfort zone and deep into a new journey of discovering an old passion - photography.


I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

SOOC Saturday | Trying on New Hats

Big Brother was home from college for Spring break this week. Harrison accosted him every chance he got to play or talk about a video game.

But yesterday we got out of the house as a family and headed down to Long Beach to find a little shop called "Hot Licks" Big Brother was looking for only THEE HOTTEST hot sauce to take back to college with him.

While there we had some fun at the hat shop too.

 Big Brother Spamming

 "Ahhh! I'm a Shark Head!"

The {hunky} Guy I Dig... need I say more? 

And the DEATH sauce!

There were a lot of tears when we got home, as the boys had to test everything. In some twisted way, they were tears of joy. 

Harrison and I? We stuck to the Mango dipping sauce.

Have a happy weekend! 

Team Up Thursday - Feeling Colorful!

It seems like months ago (11 weeks exactly) when Hip Momma emailed me to invite me to join in a new Thursday challenge. I absolutely love Theme Thursday, but life just took over and I slipped further and further from blog posting.

The new idea was to team up with partners and create weekly themed diptychs. Oh how I love diptychs! It's right up my alley! Alas, I was still mired deep in my own changes, illnesses and stress. I couldn't take on a partner quite yet.

But that was then and this is now, right before I was about to email someone to see if they would like to join, Megan let me know she had someone waiting. I don't like to keep people waiting if I can help it. So I partnered up with a very nice person from Australia! Cool eh?

Check out Joanne's blog and give her some big, warm blogging love! She is also participating in Tracey Clark's Picture Spring hosted by Big Picture Scrapbooking. There is always love for Tracey Clark and her creative soul!

Megan and Melody chose color as their theme this week and since I'm all about COLOR, we went with it as well.

Joanne is on top, I'm on the bottom. 

I'm back baby!




Hosted by Megan and Hip Momma

Redondo Beach Family Photographer | Mind Farts...

That is the name of one unpublished blog posts from the dead of winter. When it seems I got caught in my own frozen tundra.

Is that what it is? Frozen tundra? Honestly, I just like the way it rolls off my tongue.

I opened that draft - one of many. 
It was empty.

Apparently another victim of a reckless mind fart.

*****************************************************************************

But my season on the frozen tundra (because seriously, if the tundra is frozen you can't really be in it, you are just stuck on it. Literally speaking) was not with out accomplishments, I spent a lot of time behind the camera looking at faces in front of the camera.


Meet one family - the Graham Family, they are a wonderful family and Jen is an incredible digital scrapbooker, if you love to scrapbook, you'll love her kits!

I'll catch you up with some more over the next couple weeks as well as a peek at the latest maternity newborn session. LOVE THOSE BABIES!

Hope you enjoy this Jen!

Another Word on Change

This particular move from residence to another provoked a change of thinking and living in me. We really downsized and it feels good to totally declutter. Not that we were junk hoarders by any means, but we had some things tucked into closets and drawers that we just never used, did really care about and especially didn't need.

With this move, I insisted that we go through EVERY storage container and box that we had. There are things that had only been touched once in our 10 years together; and that was when we moved from our little beach house to our bigger (make room for baby) house. I know how to de-clutter. I know how to organize. I just DON'T always follow through with it.

Now, though we're in a smaller house [a.k.a. apartment] it's roomy enough for a family of three and it's not crowded with *stuff*.

This move as allowed me to get back into better habits - like making beds. I know, I know, I didn't make my bed every day - don't hate me. It was upstairs, out of the way, no else one saw it and, quite honestly, I wasn't the last one out of bed in the morning. [no, I didn't nag my husband to make a bed - sorry that's just not me]

I've also had GREAT success in getting laundry done!


Seriously!

Who knew that having to collect laundry from no less than four places upstairs then lug it all downstairs and outside really wrecked havoc on me subconsciously. Apparently I didn't. At the old house there seemed to always be - more. Just when you thought the laundry was done for Ah Day, there was MORE.
Not here, the washer and dryer are conveniently located in the hall close to everything. The machines are always clean, dry and ready to go; no spiders to contend with, no soot to clean off, no rain to deli - awesome!

I think I love doing laundry now!

In fact, last week I couldn't believe that I had FINISHED the laundry! It was washed, folded, put away and I was slightly unsettled that there wasn't anything left to do with it. I even looked under our beds and behind doors for something I may have missed. No basket of old rugs just hanging out getting dirty, no piles of laundry to fold.
It. Was. Finished.

I had to WAIT for days to do more!

Real Men Carry Easter Egg Baskets

On Saturday morning I left the house early to take pictures at the annual Easter Egg Hunt that my church hosts for the local community.

Harrison and the G.I.D. arrived later and shortly thereafter my hubby quickly noticed a reoccurring theme - Real Men Carry Easter Baskets. 

Yup, that my MAN in all his Easter-Basket-toting glory!

More Real Men

After the hunt, as kids temporarily abandoned their baskets for the the thrills of the playground (until they crashed from their sugar highs) the hubby pointed at baskets in hand and on the ground and saying, "I know the father of that one, I saw the father belonging to this one..."

BUT ...

Real Men don't just carry Easter Egg Baskets, oh no, they wear and carry multiple children.

AND they hula-hoop with their daughter.

BECAUSE...

they are Real Men.




Just be ready when they get a common cold...

The Silver Lining

It has been almost two months since we've been in our new home. This morning as we put up the last of the window coverings, Ken once again said "I wish we hadn't had to move", a sentiment that Harrison has expressed multiple times - for different reasons - torn at my heart strings all the same.

But - change IS Good and change does happen.

And God is always in Control.

Last week after I dropped off Harrison at preschool, I came home to work but first I opened the door to the patio and stepped out. In the morning shade the air was warm and I felt it seep into my very being. I looked out at the deep blue of the ocean where it touched the vivid, clear blue sky and felt a peaceful joy rise up in me.

At that minute I knew we were home.

When the Guy-I-Dig came home that evening, we sat out on our deck and watched the sun go down in the cool breeze.

"This works." he commented as the dust left from the last year began to fall from his shoulders.

Then we lit a fire in our fire place...because we could.


As for Harrison, he loves eating his breakfast in front of the window as he watches a calico cat's daily routine of laying in the sun on a rooftop near by then listening to the birds at the end of a warm day as he eats a favorite snack. Less and less he asks about the Emerald house and his room with the blue floral wall paper.


And how has this change affected me?

That's a story for another day.



Happy Easter.


"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?" 

Matthew 6:25-27