Should Old Acquaintance be ... Remembered?

Hello, Long-Lost Blog World.

It certainly has been a while. Let me tell you a little story.

Once upon a time, there was a girl. This girl was very good at making plans, but terrible at following through with them. This girl loved to take photos and wanted to share them with people, so she started a blog. But, this project got thrown by the way-side (as so many well-intentioned projects do). So, as 2012 started the girl decided that New Year's Resolutions just aren't her cup of tea. I mean, come on, who can really do any one thing for an entire year? And if you can, kudos. So, after a hectic January the girl decided to make Birthday Month Resolutions, instead.

If you haven't already guessed, the girl is this girl. I stink at follow-through. It's the reason I lack in both blogging and bowling. Buuuut, I've decided to try shorter term goals. A month. A short month, at that. And I'm starting slow. One post per week. I have other goals, too. Important ones, like studying my bible and going to the gym a few times a week. But this goal, it's important to me too. Let me tell you about it.

I decided I needed specifics. I needed something to take pictures of, a photo project, as it were. So, I had seen one of my favorite bloggers, Mandy, of Harper's Happenings (yes, I read baby blogs and I don't have a baby, deal with it. Plus, she's completely hilarious and wears super cute clothes that I can actually afford) doing a photo challenge for the month of January that was created by Chantelle of fat mum slim. I had hoped and hoped that she would do one for the month of February too, so that I could join in the fun, and guess what? She did! So, I will be taking and editing a photo each day, then posting a week's worth here each Monday. yay! I'm also excited because these challenges might continue and I think I'd love to do another month with my cell phone camera instead of my big-girl camera.

So, check back here every Monday if you'd like to see some peeks at my photos and my life. I'm hoping that posting my photos each week will be both fun and motivating. If all goes well, I might get into a rotation of a few posts a week, but right now I'm just working on February! One month at a time.

Thanks for sticking with me, friends. Feel free to comment and tell me what you think about my monthly resolutions and this photo project :)

So much love,

hlm

Awaiting...

Ok, so, here's the deal. Two Sundays ago I took a lot of pictures at church for an event we like to call "Cheesecake Sunday." My church is a plant that was started three years ago and each year on our "birthday" we have Eli's cheesecake from Chicago and celebrate. This year we also had an art auction where we auctioned off all of the amazing work done by the creative people in our community. It was awesome. I took pictures because Kim, our Kids' City director, asked me to provide some pictures for a free local paper so they could run a story about it. Cool, huh? Well, I was waiting to hear back from her about when it would run or if it would officially run so I could share with the blog world and show some of my pictures from that day. Well, time is going on and I haven't heard anything so I'll just say that hopefully someday soon I'll be a published photographer (woot) and here are some of the shots from Cheescake Sunday. (This will come to you in two parts because it's a lot of pictures) :) Thanks for stickin with me!

Love you all!
- hlm

Oh! And I got this cool thing called "The Puffer" which is a flash diffuser (because my flash was pretty killer... no one told me this about Canons before I bought one). Anywho, it was so helpful and makes people look so much better with the flash! Yay!1. Some college students enjoying fellowship and cheesecake.
2. The president of Eli's cheesecake sent us the sweetest video message. Like ever. It was so cute. And they sang us Happy Birthday. Badly. Hilarious. :)
3. Mark, our lead pastor, eating cheesecake in front of us, like he does every year. :)
4. Just a snippet of the amazing art that has been created by our community.

4. The best cheesecake in the world. For reals. Yum.

Feel free to check out my awesome faith community's website at www.crossingsknoxville.com. I never want to be one who uses a completely unrelated outlet to push church-type-things, but this is something I thought was pretty exciting... So there ya go! :D

Noticing a theme

It seems, for whatever reason, that probably half of my pictures on this website are either of babies or desserts. I really wonder what that says about me as a human being. :)

Well, that being said, the desserts are a cute little cupcake from a superbowl party and some amazing birthday/Valentine's Day fondue dippers at the Melting Pot. Yum.

The baby is, as you might have guessed, Cooper. We had an impromptu photo shoot in the snow last weekend.

Thanks, as always.

lovelove,

hlm

More Hard Light...

This is another example of what Hard Light in photoshop can do to a photo... I think it just makes everything pop and brings out the fun quality that this picture already had... Next time I'll do a before and after so you can really tell :)

This is a sweet little 1st grader that was in my Field Experience classroom last semester. I had a lot of fun with those kids and they definitely taught me a lot. One of the girls I worked with was having a hard time with numbers and I got to pull her out to work with flash cards and after that we were best buds. Their lives are so simple and sweet. Kids are the best. :)

Ok, that's all, Thanks as always!

love,

hlm

More Snow...

Since good old Punxsutawney informed me that there will be 6 more weeks of winter (bleh) I decided to embrace it and remember the beauty. This is just a shot I happened to get in the middle of a bunch of winter festivities and I really like how simple the icy trees are, but it needed something. So I remembered another trick I learned from Pioneer Woman... I did no editing to this photo except sticking it into photoshop, creating a layer, and adding Hard Light. Man, it makes a difference. The whites are brighter, the green underneath pops, and the overall picture just looks more... cool. Yeah, I know, not a very sophisticated descriptor. Sorry.

Anywho, this is another one* that looks better bigger, so feel free to click on it and check it out. Thanks, as always, for your undying love... or maybe just for reading. Either way.

I still love ya :)

hlm

* I know on my huge catch up post there was a photo I told you to click on and enlarge and if any of you tried, you couldn't... I'm still working on fixing it. I have to re-upload all the pictures in a different size. I promise I will, I just haven't yet. Thanks for your patience. :)

Logos... Like more than one Logo, not "the word"

Silly Greek scholars. I guess that comes along with Bible college... You see "logos" you think John chapter 1. Ok, well, now that I've confused some, moving on. This is a logo (not a logos). Well, a potential one anyway. I was bored and sketching and thought this might be simple and cute for a logo for the site and eventually for my photography so I thought "hey, why don't I photograph my photography logo?" Brilliant, I know. So, here it is. What do you think? Too simple? silly? love it? hate it? I'm dying to know. :) Thanks for your opinions!

lovelove,

hlm

Always Playing Catch-up...

I'm sorry for being such a terrible Blogger. I try. I've never been good at doing things every day...

Ok, enough of my sad excuses. To the pictures:

6 pictures for today, to make up for all the time I've missed, but you have to forgive me because it's my birthday :)

Ok, here goes.

1. Pistachios. A yummy snack and fun to take pictures of. I love the little hint of green.

2. A lamp and brick wall at Remedy, a coffee place downtown. I don't know what I like so much about this photo I just think it's kinda neat.

3. My coffee (ok, sip of my husband's coffee) and yummy muffin, also at Remedy... It just looks like a cozy breakfast, doesn't it?

4. A tree outside my house last summer. I love this one. I think you get more of the feel for it if you click on it to see the big one. Do it! Did that help?

5. Chris Dorsten and a sweet painting. This was from a late-night worship gathering (I can't think of the right terminology...) called Encounter here at school. It was an awesome experience and I was glad to get to take some pictures of it.

6. A building in downtown Atlanta. This is one of the only times I've gotten to take some photos of some architectural stuff, and it was really awesome. I love the shape of this building and it's contrast against the sky.

So, what do all these photos have in common, you ask? Well, not much. Except that they were all taken when I was just starting with my own camera. I know I haven't been doing this for long at all, but these were all in the first few months. Anyway, now that I'm caught up I'll try not to get too behind again :) Thank you all for being patient with me and waiting for me to get my wit back... I'm sure it's just on vacation... I'll be more fun soon. :)

lovelovelove,

hlm (the birthday girl)