Fall Adventure

We decided to escape the obnoxious heat today

and headed up to Lynx Lake in Prescott 

Only an hour and a half away

yet a major difference in temperature

(reason # 241 Arizona is a great place to live)

  

After a two mile hike and some delicious food later,

it's time for sweats and a movie.

I'd say this adventure date makes up for last two weeks of missing coffee date nights, 

right?

DIY Padawan?

I take the (more than) occasional trip to the one and only

pinterest

You know it and love it, just like me.

And if you don't know it yet, you will love it.

There are many benefits to "pinteresting"
1. Makes online hoarding doable, acceptable and even somewhat cool
2. Gives you plenty of yummy recipes
3. Makes you feel capable of being crafty


I have been feeling in a "fallish" mood and stumbled upon this little, fun pretty

I was determined to actually do a DIY project so off I went to hobby lobby to get the goods.

half wrapped "D" and my photo of inspiration

After lots of hot glue gun burns and some frustration, here is what I ended with

I have yet to decide if it is too many patterns all at once. 
It's funny how you second guess EVERYTHING when you decide to put it on the internet.

But for now, it's on my door :)


Honestly though, too many hot glue gun burns to not hang it somewhere.

Pooped Padawan

I'm pooped!

Within 24 hours I went up to Chino Valley, AZ with my mentor and jedi, Liana (from A Moment In Time Photography), to shoot my first wedding and then woke up and shot my first newborn photos!

Phew!

Here is some knowledge I have gained in the past 30 hours

I need to build up stamina. 

Seriously. Shooting a wedding is like running a marthon. Except you are also carrying heavy camera stuff everywhere and doing squats while not taking any breaks.

I think I'm gonna start running marathons and lifting weights. 

Which leads me to my number 2. 

I'm weak.

Like super duper weak.

My arms are so sore today and my big girl camera doesn't even compare to the mother of all cameras that Liana was carrying.

(I did use her mother lens at the reception for a little while but I had to change it...my arms were so tired! I was too scared I was gonna drop it and cause a scene and never be invited to a wedding shoot again)

Insane, right?

Lighting always changes.

ALWAYS

Even if it is only 10 steps in the opposite direction.

Gr.

Dancing people are hard to capture....

The ratio of not bad photos to "blurry blurs" is about 1:80.

I had to apologize in advance to Liana for all the photos she was going to need to delete.

I'm meant to be a zumba instructor

It was really hard to not get my groove thing on during all the fun music.

Eventually the awesomeness of music with a great beat broke me down. I couldn't contain myself.

If you ever want a dancing photographer, you know where to go.

Newborns like to smile for the 2 seconds you put down the camera

Hopefully some out of the 400 I took, she will at least have two opened eyes :)

Babies are faster than you think

All their cute, slow, baby-like movements?

No.

You would be surprised at all the blurry hands and feet I got.

But maybe that is just because I was on manual and should have adjusted something.

Windows "Fix" doesn't cut it

I'm getting ready for big girl editing stuff.

Wedding hangover is real

...and it's not the drinking kind

It was all so much overwhelming fun, I don't know how to contain myself except for fall asleep out of exhaustion.

But, hey..
I haven't even had Zoila for 3 months yet and I already got to tag a long for a wedding with a legit photographer

Holler!

Flag

Flag

We have some visitors staying with us.

We all took a day trip up to Flagstaff, AZ today to do some sight seeing.

We got to pretend we were ancient Native Americans all day.

Attempting to pronounce odd Aztec names (and other hard to pronounce northern AZ names)

and planning retirement homes.

Here are some of our highlights!

 

Some chilly weather, sight-seeing, and photos?

A good time was had by all.