Give Thanks Photo Challenge

A new friend in my ward at church posted on her blog that she was doing a photo challenge (via Instagram) in November to show her gratitude. I've decided I'd like to do that too this month. What a fun, visual way to show my gratitude this month. Hopefully I can stick with it and I can post here every couple of days. Here's the list (I've got to catch up some):

1. Favorite Food
2. Something I can't live without
3. Bedtime Ritual
4. Family time
5. Family member
6. Captured Time
7. Household item
8. Beauty is
9. Happiness is
10. A Stranger
11. Clothing item
12. Favorite read
13. A gift
14. A blessing
15. Dinnertime
16. Technology
17. Relaxing
18. My work
19. I adore
20. Memory
21. Something old
22. Inspiring person
23. Favorite quote
24. A goal
25. Light
26. Unconditional Love
27. Quiet moment 
28. Hobby
29. A past time
30. You pick!

Botanical Garden

Exceeded Budget

I opened my email today to find this message from Mint.com:

Made me smile at the seriousness of the email for such a small infraction.

Tyczka Family Photo Shoot

Well I had my first ever "family photo shoot" at the end of May!!! I was so nervous about it, I mean I would feel horrible if I took a family out and totally botched everything. I prepped the whole week. The night before the shoot, I couldn't sleep and woke up every couple of hours due to nerves and both boys waking up. Haha!

The Tyczka family is in my ward and they are such sweet people. We had a fun time at the Boise Train Depot taking pictures. I gave them a heart attack only about two times (Once when I almost fell off my wobbly step stool, and second when I playfully jumped from a rock on the waterfall... they thought I was falling), sorry guys!

After the shoot I called my friend who is also newer to photography, but she has done many more shoots. She is such a pillar to me! We talked about nerves and she encouraged me to keep doing more photo shoots (apparently the nerve thing fades... that would be nice).

The photos took longer in the editing process this time for two reasons:

1-Brandon, my husband, was so sweet and let me purchase a photo editing software that I had just been trialing. That took a week or so to come in the mail. Thank you THANK YOU thank you hubba!

2-I took SO many pictures! 378 to be precise. Yikes! It was hard to be the one to chose which looked best, but I also knew that 6 pictures of the same pose is not needed. A lesson learned for sure, but I am happy to have more than less this time. It was more of a safety net for me and I think I got some real candid shots.

Well I'll stop babbling and let you be the judge. Here are some of the pictures from the photo shoot. But I cannot take all the credit!!! This family is absolutely adorable and it would be hard to take a bad photo of them!

 

We talked about how brown eyes are pretty too, and this little girl shows that well!

"I'm 3"

 

Not a bribe for photos... I like to think of it as an incentive

I was driving away and was so sad I hadn't gotten the shot above. Then as I was editing, I saw this and cropped it from a larger photo. This is one of my favorites for sure!

 Like I said, they are an adorable family. Thanks again for letting me capture this time with you!

My Willing Subject

Trying to work on my composition of eyes today. Here's my cute test subject for the day! Handsome Mason.

Love that rash? This boy eats so much "solid" food (I don't think jar food should be considered solid... more like mush) in a day that I don't know how to avoid him having a constant span of red dots atop that little chin. And I'm more concerned with eye practice today than editing each one of those dots out.

Love my Cutie Pie!