More Connor and More Glazed Actions

Just to demonstrate these glazes, here are a few more of gorgeous Connor boy.

A strawberry glaze - this is the only one I used full strength, since it was so appropriate with his pretty-in-pink mama.


This one is blueberry flavored and I reduced the opacity quite a bit, but you can tell is has a cool-ish cast.


This one had a vanilla glaze and then I turned it black and white.



And here's a colored one with vanilla flavoring.


Fun, huh! Hey Nan, I'm going to try textures next. Look out Photoshop, here I come!

Emma and new PS actions

The lovely little lady is Miss Emma. She was one of 4 babies I got to photograph last week - isn't she sweet?!




Another thing I worked on this week was finally getting some actions to run in my PS Elements program, so I'm including some "glazed" photos from the action set "CoffeeShop Sweet Bakery Glazes II" from CoffeeShop free actions.


I love them! You can tint the photo in vanilla, blueberry, strawberry, green apple or honey and they're all soft and glowey - perfect for babies. I turned the effect way down, so these aren't super extreme, but I really like the look. Let's call it my newest favorite thing.

They look cute with little fingers and tosies too.



We didn't have the best light that day, but I still think we got some okay shots of this sweet little gal.

Women and Horses

My friend Donna from work asked if I'd come and take photos of her family as a birthday present for her mom. Donna is a horse girl, like me, and wanted the horses in the family photos, of course.



Her son, Nathan, also has chickens and they wanted a picture of him with his Naked-Necked Turken, Rex. (Short for Rexasaurus, I think.)



Isn't he handsome?!


It was almost sundown when we took these next to their home and I thought the desert looked beautiful in the evening light. Donna and Molly were beautiful too!

There's a special connection between women and their horses....





We also had to include Sadie, Donna's little rescued puppy mill Chihuahua, even though Sadie gets rigamortis whenever she's picked up. I still think it's cute.


And this is Miss Cocoa, their cutie patootie little Mustang mare.


They hadn't had a family photo taken in a long, long time, so it's great to get that done. It was so fun to do and Donna seems happy with her photos, and that makes me happy too.

To quote Pioneer Woman,

"I love my dadgum camera!"

Introducing...... Connor! (and his mom and dad)

So my good friend Jenna's sister, Kelly, had a big, beautiful baby boy last week and we got to go down and take his pictures a few days ago. His mama is tiny and stayed tiny all the way through her pregnancy and so everyone was pretty surprised when she gave birth to a 9 + pound linebacker masquerading as a newborn baby.

And he has these gorgeous dimples and was SUCH a good boy for his photo shoot.

I think I'm in love....


And so are his mom and dad, I think.


("hey Dad, you're all prickly!")


Is this a beautiful family, or what?!


Congrats guys! It was so fun, and I loved meeting your sweet boy.


More to come.

Little Miss Allison

Yesterday, I went to St. George with my friend, Jenna, to take pictures of her sister's new baby. As we were getting ready to take new little Connor's pictures, Jenna set 4 month old Allison down on the floor for a minute. She started "talking" to her mama and I hit the deck and quick snapped these shots. I didn't have time to compose them very well, but still love them.



So here's Miss Allison 4 months ago...


and here she is now.


Isn't she beautiful?


So I guess these are the bonus to our Connor session. You gotta love those "Kodak moments".

And then we went to Tai-pan trading and lost all reason finding fun props to put poor, unsuspecting babies in.

Connor's to come tomorrow......

A Bumper Crop of Little Girls

I've said it before, babies always come in clumps. And around here lately, practically everyone is having girls!

So here's one of the big bunch of girls born here lately - more to come....



This little sweetie is Miss Candice. She's 5 days old today. She has super long fingers and toes. Her toes were especially fun and adorable and precious.


And here again, I'm lovin' the ones with Mom. I especially liked these in black and white, but had to include a color one to show how pretty Mom's eyes are.

Have you ever seen such a light, amazing shade of green?

(Mom's are never happy to be included in the picture, and always say how if they knew they were going to be in it they would have fixed their hair, makeup, whatever. But I'm afraid that if I warn them ahead of time, they'll chicken out altogether. I know they'll be happy we did this --- in the long run.)

They tried for years to get this kiddo, so are very happy to have her. And I'm so happy for them. Congrats you guys! She's perfect!

Beautiful Bailey

At the Sanctuary where I work, we offer summer internships to college students. We've had some really wonderful interns from all over the country. We even had one come stay with us for several weeks and we've kept in touch with her ever since.

One of our interns this summer was a vet tech intern named Bailey. We just love Bailey! I don't know what it is exactly that's so cool about her, but we were in absolute mourning when she left last week. She is smart and fun and great with the animals, but she also just nice to be with. You know what I mean? She just has a good feeling about her.

And she's also an absolute dollface. Friday was her last day and I asked if I could take her picture. She said she'd never had anyone want to take her picture before, which surprised me because she's such a cutie. We took her picture with Felix, who was one of her favorite horses (and one of mine too).




Her fiance flew out to drive home with her. I hope he realizes what a lucky man he is.


We'll miss you, Bailey. Hope to see you again soon.

Soup Contest!

Every 4th of July, our little town has a big celebration. We have a free town breakfast with pancakes, sausage, bacon and eggs. We have a parade, a program, a water slide and free swimming at the town pool.

We also have a soup contest. I know, it's kind of weird to make soup on one of the hottest days of the year, but it's a heritage thing, our town's nickname is "souptown" and soupmaking dates back to our town's founding fathers.

So we have this contest and everyone gets to come around and sample all the soups and then judge them. I've always loved judging the soup contest, but I've never actually made soup before. But a gal who was involved in putting on the soup contest called me up and invited me to participate this year.

At first I laughed, "Ha! Who would ever think that I would enter a cooking contest!" But then I got to thinking that I did know how to make a pretty good soup - thanks to Pioneer Woman. So I borrowed her cauliflower soup recipe and went to the contest.

And boy were there a lot of yummy soups there! I am continually impressed with the good cooks in this town.



Anyhooo.... I got 4th place! Which is so much better than I expected, considering how good all of the soups were. And several people told me they voted my soup #1, so that was nice. I can't really take credit, the credit goes to P-Dub, or P-Dub's mom, I guess, but it was till fun to get a prize in a cooking contest of all things.

And here's what I won. And I'm tickled with it, so there.

I live in a beautiful place.

I was driving home the other day when I noticed how pretty the sunset was. So I pulled over and took it's picture.



Nice, huh.

And I didn't photoshop them at all, except to resize them for posting.

Overdue baby pictures

Not that the baby was overdue - I took these a long time ago and am finally getting around to editing and blogging them.



This chubby little girlie was chubbier than most babies I do because she was a little older. Now shes' growing up and getting skinnier again, but at 2 months, she looked like the Michelin baby. Isn't she precious?



I love this one because she was a little bit cross eyed. How cute is that?



Can you tell I was in the mood for black and white again. This is one of the last bunch that I took with my old camera, and it's interesting to look back and see how they are different from the ones I'm taking now.

This little kid is such a good baby. I LOVE good babies, they're endlessly fascinating to me, since 2 out of 3 of my own babies were really so not good, the exact opposite of good, in fact. But not this kid, she is extremely good natured.


My favorites are often the shots with the mothers in them. Gotta love that baby love.

Sorry these took so long, Case, just love that kid!

I love my sister!

Actually, I love all of my family and they were all here this weekend. My parents, all my siblings, all their children - it was GREAT!

But more about that later, this post is about my youngest sister, Sharon. Isn't she lovely?


Over the last couple of years as I've been trying to learn to take better photos, Sharon has been one of my best photography subjects. She is so cooperative and beautiful and fun. My other sister is also very beautiful, but is a busy mother of 4 and lives much further away, so I don't get to take her pictures as often.

But before Sharon left to go home today I talked her into a quickie session with Brynn and this is what we got.



And yes, this is her real hair color.

In my family, there are four kids and we all have different hair/eye color combos. I (the oldest) have brown hair and brown eyes > then Laura, who has blond hair and green eyes > then Sharon who has red hair and brown/hazelish eyes > and then Scott, who has blond hair (I think - he's been shaving it all off for years) and blue, blue eyes. All from brown hair/brown eyed parents.


I hated my brown hair/brown eyes growing up, but now I rather like it on my own children:

Can you tell this kid loves her Aunt Sharon? All my kids do, she's a very fun aunt and they're very close with her. Isn't family grand?!

But Sharon is our red head, or as Mom would say, "auburn". I've always loved her hair, it's such a nice, dark, rich read - very pretty. She's a runner and a hard core Ultimate Frisbee player, so she spends a lot of time in the sun and has all these lovely summer freckles.

She is also a manager at a health food store and she hooks me up with any kind of health food that I need. She brought me some aloe vera juice this weekend which is being shown to help lower blood sugar in type 2 diabetics.

Anyhooooo, Sharon, if you're reading this, I love you. You are so beautiful, inside and out!