A Sneak Peek At Our Engagement Photos!

A few weeks ago on a bright and sunny Monday afternoon in March,  Wade and I met with our super rad wedding photographer Brandi with Lola Jo Photo Design to have our engagement photos taken.

We have been so excited to collaborate with Brandi on these photos because she was our first choice for our wedding photographer, and photography was one of the first major wedding details we nailed down after getting engaged.

However, I super duper hate getting my photo taken.  It's not because I hate how I look.  I just feel really uncomfortable being the center of attention.

There are Portias and there are Ellens on this red carpet of life.  I am an Ellen.

But our afternoon with Brandi went swimmingly and I think the results speak for themselves!

Scroll down for the big reveal!

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Keep going... it's worth it!

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Have I sufficiently created enough tension?

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BOOM.  Photo magic in your face.

Okay.... here are some actual engagement photos.

Needless to say, I am so pleased with the results and I can't wait for our big day to get here!

In other news, my wedding dress arrived and it fits perfectly so I can eat all of the hot dogs I want (within reason) up until my wedding day and it will be A-OK.  Huzzah!

Desert Island Discs

Have you guys ever heard of the show Desert Island Discs? Apparently it is quite an institution in the UK, having been on the air since 1942. Each episode the guest, or castaway, is asked to choose 8 records, 1 book (you are automatically given The Complete Works of Shakespeare and the Bible or a similar religious text) and 1 luxury item to take with them if they were stranded on a desert island.

For instance Ricky Gervais chose a coffee table book of art and a vat of Novocaine, Stephen King chose the collected poetry of W.H. Auden and a water hammock, and Stephen Hawking chose Middlemarch by George Eliot and creme brulee.

The great thing is that the guests are truly important, interesting people... politicians, authors, chefs, poets, and, of course, actors and actresses.

I have a feeling that if an American network ever chose to rip this show off the first guests would be either Pauly D or Tila Tequila.  One can only imagine....

FHM magazine and a bottle of ritalin? The collected poems of Jewel and a Mystic Tan booth?

So I started doing my one of my favorite things... thinking about myself. NO... well YES, but I started trying to decide what I would take with me to my desert island.

This is what I came up with.

Discs:

1. A Town Called Malice - The Jam

2. Bring It On Home - Sam Cooke

3. Soothe Me - Sam and Dave

4. Atmosphere - Joy Division

5. Blackbird - The Beatles

6. Temptation - New Order

7. Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon and Garfunkel

8. Fairytale of New York - The Pogues

Book:

The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

Luxury Item:

My pug, Henry... or at least a picture of him.

Genius At Work

This is what I did yesterday while being a bitch on the phone:

It's a picture of me and Christoph Waltz holding hands and eating ice cream cones.

In a Park.

The park is in a big city (see the skyscrapers in the background), but... wait! It's Paris! See the Eiffel Tour (the big black A on the horizon)!  Wow!!

How charming!

Also my dog Henry is with us, and he doesn't even need a leash because he is so well trained!

And I'm wearing high heels and they don't even hurt my feet a little bit! Look at my tiny waist!

I'm eating mint chocolate chip ice cream, and Christoph is having some weird Austrian flavor I've never even heard of.

You can tell how happy I am because I'm smiling, Christoph is so happy too, but it's hard to tell sometimes because he's Austrian.

We had a really good day together in the park, and then we went home to our cabin and watched Designing Women re-runs and made crafts with popsicle sticks and yarn.

What a great guy!

I Won't Quit My Day Job

Like most all white girls of my generation, I enjoy taking photos. Because of this I sometimes like to swap my endearingly-nerdy-trucker-hat persona for my oohlala-pretentious-artiste-beret persona... metaphorically speaking, of course (I don't own, nor would I ever own, a trucker hat. Blech).

I can't draw, as I have very clearly demonstrated,  so my artistic expression tends more towards the photography vein... mostly out of necessity.

I am not that great, guys.  I am the Tiny Tim of photographers, and Photoshop is my crutch (I think in this metaphor my inability to understand aperture is my tiny withered foot).  But, hey, it's fun and gets my creative mojo going.

Most of these are pretty old.  I haven't really used my camera in over a year (most expensive paperweight ever)... probably because while I was laid off last year I shut off my internet, and, you guys, what is the point of taking photos if you can't force everyone on the internet machine to look at them? I mean, really?

Basically, I'm sharing these in order to somehow trick myself into being motivated to take more.  Why I need to be tricked into doing something I enjoy I do not know or understand... such are the mysteries of me, I guess.

First, my pug Henry (the best dog model ever):

 

Some photos from a trip to Savannah, GA:

   

 

 

And some random bits and bats (aka If You Take A Picture of Something (Anything) Really Close Up, It's Totes Art, You Guys):

 

Maybe I should break out the old DSLR and do one of those 30 Photos, 30 days challenge thingamajigs? That might really cut into my sitting on my ass watching re-runs of Criminal Minds time, though.  Dilemmas.