day 112 : beautiful bride

day 112: Today I helped out a friend and shot with her at a wedding she was photographing. The bride was absolutely gorgeous and she had beautiful flowers as well. It made for quite lovely photos. This is one of my favorites so far.

day 111 : play ball!

day 111: Ben's office softball team had a game tonight. Of the 30 or so members of the team they barely scraped by with about 8 of them showing up 15 minutes late for the game. They are not organized, not well practiced, and they not surprisingly lost by a 15 point margin tonight. But it was still fun. I would have played... but I was in a dress. Next time I'll join in.

day 110 : it's alive!

day 110: Not only are (most of) our pepper plants still alive, but they are now starting to grow some actual real peppers... which shouldn't be surprising but yet I'm still quite excited! Ben and I are by no means skilled gardeners so I'll be pretty impressed if these things turn out to be edible.

day 109 : i love lamp

day 109: I have been SO busy the last couple of days that it's been hard to get out of the house to take a decent photo. It's been a challenge to find things in the house to photograph (that I haven't already shot in the last 4 months). This photo reminded me of anchorman.

day 108 : nap

day 108: It's nearing the end of the month and about time for a self portrait. This is one of Rita's favorite spots for a nap.

day 107 : trash

day 107 : This afternoon I met up with some fun photographers and some very cool former brides for a "trash the dress" photo shoot. I'm not a big fan of shoots where the dress gets totally ruined to the point of being unusable (I'd rather a bride donate her dress to a great charity like brides against breast cancer) but I do think that a little dirt (or water) never hurt a dress and I had a lot of fun shooting these. Here's one of my favorites.

day 106 : a two-photo day!

day 106: Today was too fabulous and photo-op filled to be captured in one single photo! This morning we were lucky enough to get a private behind the scenes tour of the three baby tiger cubs at the Wild Animal Park. They are 6 months old and not really "small" anymore, but they were amazing to see up close and personal. We got to watch one of the trainers feeding them. It was a very cool experience and I'm so glad we got to go!

After the morning at the WAP Allison, Mark and I ran around a couple of downtown Encinitas parking lots to take some photos. Mark is pretty hilarious when he's acting as a portrait subject... he definitely comes up with poses on his own. This was what he came up with when I asked them to sit up against a wall.

day 105 : home sweet home

day 105: Allison and I had a blast on our cruise but all the late nights and early mornings were starting to catch up with us so I was happy to be back on dry land. We spent most of the morning napping on the couch with Rita, but she also got to take part in her favorite activity... watching people cook. She is ever hopeful that something tasty will fall from above.

day 104 : fun at sea

day 104: The last day of the cruise was a "fun day at sea". We were still hoping to keep the spending to a minimum so instead of shopping, gambling, or drinking (the major activities proposed by the cruise line) we wandered around the ship and took photos.

day 103 : ensenada

day 103: On the third day of the cruise we landed in Ensenada. Instead of walking around we decided to take a shore excursion and ride up to Rosarito to lounge on the beach. Since we were going to be in the sand all day I didn't bring along my camera. I took some photos back on board later in the afternoon. This one is from the deck of the ship.

day 102 : avalon

day 102: First stop on our cruise was Catalina Island. Since the major selling point of a cruise for us was the all-inclusive part, we decided not to go with any shore excursions and just to roam around instead. We tried out the beach for a while but were surrounded by strange giant bees so we changed plans and explored the city a little bit. Avalon is teeny tiny and so are the houses. This small house had a very strange collection of bird houses out front. The boot reminds me of my good old Texas days. Yeehaw!

day 101 : the cruise is on!

day 101: To celebrate our summer birthdays, Allison and I took a cruise to Catalina and Mexico. It was a fabulous trip and so nice to get to spend some sister time.

we interrupt our regularly scheduled programming

to bring you this message from carnival cruise lines : OUR WiFi IS TERRIBLE!
Allison and I are on a girly birthday cruise and had hoped to update our blogs with our laptops and wifi, but the connection is FAR too slow to upload photos if we want to do anything else at all while we're onboard. I'll catch up with a mega post when we get back in town Friday. Stay tuned!

day 100 : happy fathers' day!

day 100: Allison picked this photo to be my super-fab 100th post. We went to Disneyland for fathers' day and while we were waiting around for said father to arrive, we took some photos of the jungle cruise shop merchandise. Want a pillow?

day 99 : car picnic

day 99: We planned to meet friends at Hollywood Forever tonight, but the cards were definitely stacked against us. After circling for parking for a half hour we found out the gates were closed. We decided to head to Santa Monica to catch a showing of La Vie en Rose instead. We entered a garage that claimed to have 12 available spaces where we circled from top to bottom for about 15 minutes. Once we finally found a space we rushed to eat some of the food we'd brought for the picnic and ran to the theater only to find out it was the wrong one... and too late to make it to the right one. At which point we gave up and watched Pirates of the Caribbean instead. That is a looooong movie.

day 98 : thank you!

day 98: After work last night some of my coworkers and I went out for a drink at a local bar. Thank you so much to everyone who came out and for all of the kind words. It meant a lot to have you all there. We will definitely keep in touch.

day 97 : mmmm sushi

day 97: Ben's softball game got canceled so we decided to have a night out instead. We had some tasty sushi in culver city... mmm veggie rolls.

day 96 : hard at work!

day 96: I have been hard at work updating the vector art/illustration website that I run tinyfacedesign.com to make it better and easier to use. It is still in need of a couple adjustments, but it has a brand spankin' new contact form that I'm pretty excited about (I know, I'm a nerd) and I think it's looking pretty good. Yay tinyface!

day 95 : what's mine is yours

day 95: This gate is at the entrance to a duplex in Manhattan Beach. I'm going to take a guess here but it *seems* as though each half of the gate is owned independently (one half for each unit) and that one of the owners repainted and the other didn't bother. Now if it were me, I would have offered to repaint both halves while I was at it... but maybe they like it this way.

day 94 : dirty dishes

day 94: I love our place but it has a couple of "quirks", one of which is that there are upper cabinets above the sink. The cabinets make it really hard to get in and wash large dishes, and completely block out any available light, making it impossible to tell if your dishes are actually clean. Enter Ben's handiness and our under-cabinet lighting over the sink. Clever and he does the dishes... what a great husband!

day 93 : perfect pair

day 93: I am lucky enough to have a great older brother who I've always looked up to. He is dating an amazing person who just happens to be one of my best friends from college. They are such great people each on their own but they also make such an amazing couple together. They were visiting California for the weekend and let me take them out for a photo session. I had too many favorites to count but this one especially jumps out at me.

day 92 : too cute for words

day 92: We went to the park today with Valena John and Isaac. He didn't seem to love the playground and he didn't want to roll down the big grass hill ... but he sure seemed to enjoy pushing Ben down the hill. Here he is just after giving Ben a good shove.

day 91 : lucky charm

day 91: I've heard of sports stars having superstitions or lucky charms they carry with them to help them play better. I doubt any of them carry a fork. Maybe it was less about luck and more about the lack of a convenient trash can, but Cecilia carried this fork with her throughout our entire game of bocce ball.

day 90 : tasty but temperamental

day 90 : I baked a cake this evening for an office birthday party that we're having tomorrow. The cake itself is pretty straightforward if you can follow a recipe, but the buttercream I make is a totally different story. It involves whipping egg whites, boiling sugar and lots of other wizardry. Made correctly it tastes like fluffy beautiful goodness. But one degree off on the temperature and it turns to a greasy, curdled mess. Thank goodness for candy thermometers.

day 89 : too tired to choose

day 89: I have been working on homework for the last 5 1/2 hours straight without a break (and it's still not quite right... how frustrating!) and I am much too tired to run through the pile of photos I took today to find the best. Here's the first one I shot today...

day 88 : cylindrical ice cream nostalgia

day 88: While waiting for my car to be done getting an oil change, Ben and I wandered into a drug store that happened to be selling Thrifty ice cream. For those of you not familiar with Thrifty ice cream, it's delicious (and dirt cheap) drugstore ice cream that I used to get as a kid (back when the drugstore itself was called Thrifty, hence the name). The best part? They use a scoop that produces cylindrical ice cream instead of the standard sphere. Ah Thrifty... so tasty.

day 87 : ultimate sam

day 87: We went to watch Sam's ultimate frisbee summer league game tonight. The field was horribly lit and my flash is much less than sophisticated... but I still got some fun action shots. This is my favorite one of Sam.

day 86 : nu-grape

day 86: Ben and I ate at the Bay Cities Italian Deli for a late lunch this afternoon. The wait for a sandwich was a half hour at 4 o'clock, and they got Ben's order completely wrong, but it was still delicious and worth a trip back. Especially because they have a crazy selection of old-timey sodas. Mmm nu-grape.

day 85 : pepper feast!

day 85: We cook a lot. And we buy a lot of red peppers to cook with. Today we decided we're done with buying peppers and instead we're going to (attempt to) grow our own. Here is our new pepper plant... ready to be transported to its home in our front yard. I can taste the delicious peppers already!

day 84 : mmmm ice cream

day 84: I'm addicted to ice cream. I love it. Today was a very very long day and the perfect afterwork remedy was some HGTV and ice cream (eaten with a tiny spoon of course). Delicious.