Featured in Better Homes & Gardens!

posted on: October 31, 2008

Better Homes & Gardens Real Wedding Feature

Congratulations to Jessica & Ben who had their Organic Creamery/Farm Wedding featured on the Better Homes & Garden's Real Weddings!! Check out the article and see all of the unique touches that this couple included in their Jewish ceremony and relaxed reception...
http://www.bhg.com/crafts/weddings/real/organic-farm-wedding

To all of the couples out there who are itching to be featured in a magazine... here's what magazine editors are looking for:
- Beautiful, clean photography that's not overly photoshopped with great lighting, composition, and attention to detail (ie. get a great photographer and your wedding will look fantastic no matter what!)
- UNIQUE details! If you've seen it before, they've probably seen it before a hundred times! For unique florals or decor- let your florist go wild with their imagination! Give them a color palette or just a few words to describe your personal style and let them interpret it as they see fit! Give your vendors creative freedom and they will create beautiful work for you!
- Different locations! At this point, the magazines have pretty much published all of the "normal" wedding venues. They're craving a different spin on the wedding day- so think outside of the "box" like Jessica & Ben did! Choose a place you love, that says something about who you are as a couple. You'd be pretty surprised at the places you can have a wedding these days!

One Minute Vacation - Cabin in the Woods

posted on: October 28, 2008

This time of year is pretty stressful for a lot of people (myself included). That stress leads our immune system to break down, causing us to get sick, or to have high blood pressure, or to stay up late with our mind racing about what we need to do next. We'd love to get away from it all and just relax, but we fear that getting away would just make us stress about everything that isn't getting done.

So, I've come up with a way to take a mini-vacation right at your desk!! It only requires one minute of time, your eyes, your ears, and a few deep breaths. Just sixty seconds of imagining yourself in a more relaxing place can do wonders for the mind and body... if you need more than sixty seconds, simply repeat.

For this one minute vacation, let me take you to my mom's back porch overlooking the woods where you'll see the autumn leaves falling and hear the wind blowing through the trees... click play and relax for a few seconds...


What's your idea of a vacation? Maybe I can bring it to your desktop for you!

RSS Reader vs. Bookmarks?

posted on: October 23, 2008



RESULTS

Here are the results of the poll after one hour of being online, and then after four days of being online....


The benefit of an RSS feed over bookmarks is that you get told when new information is available on your favorite blog, rather than checking in only to find that it hasn't been updated. So, it helps save you time, and it also helps you follow more blogs all at once because you're really only seeing the ones that are being updated. There's a little subscribe button on the side of my blog that helps you get my blog in a variety of feed-readers. A lot of people like the Google Reader, because they already use Google on a regular basis. I like Bloglines because it allows me to keep various folders and share my RSS feed with others.

Here's a video description of what RSS feed readers can do for you...

LOVE IT: The NEW Polaroid Guest Book for Weddings!

posted on: October 16, 2008

When Polaroid announced that it would no longer sell its iconic instant film, you just knew they were coming up with something super cool to complement the new digital lifestyle. With so many guests having digital cameras and cell phone cameras now, why not just let them print a picture from their own camera? But it would be such a hassle to set up a printer and make sure it has enough ink. That's why you're going to flip over the new PoGo Printer- inkless, wireless, bluetooth and pictbridge enabled, this is one super tiny hand-held printer! The secret is in the ZINK photo paper and each photo is a 2"x3" stick and peel so that you can slap those photos instantly into any album. Seriously, this little baby looks like a ton of fun. I feel like going to Target, Best Buy, or Urban Outfitters right now to see if I can play with one in stock! Check it out!!! (only downer is that it's NOT compatible with iPhone - BOO!)

Psst.. You can get one from Amazon for $99



NOTE: Due to the size and type of printing, my guess is that the quality is not going to be stellar on these little prints. However, if you're just looking for something fun and you like techno-photo novelties, this is right up your alley!

Five years and still in love...

posted on: October 9, 2008



I can't believe it's been five years since Alex and I got married! Where does the time go? I've seen many of my couples go on to have a sense of settling down and maybe even having children, but somehow that still seems so distant for us. In the five years that we've been married, we've lived in 4 different homes, in 3 different states. I can't say that I ever imagined this to be the normal post-marriage lifestyle! I thought life would get slower... calmer... more relaxing.... more predictable... yet each year has brought about new surprises and big changes- always keeping me on my toes with running shoes on!

I'll be shooting a wedding out of town for a great couple on our anniversary date (Oct 18), but decided to carve out this weekend so that Alex and I could spend some much needed time together. Working from home is both a blessing and a curse - as I'm sure many people can agree. While I am technically home Tues-Thurs, I'm generally working around the clock just to keep everything moving forward since Fri-Mon are non-stop travel and shooting. The move this year has proven to be much more time consuming that previous moves for a lot of different reasons. One of which is that Massachusetts is a great state that likes to take care of its residents, which means tons of forms to fill out and hoops to jump through in order to be a responsible citizen and business owner. To all my friends in Michigan and Indiana - be thankful that things are easier than they could be! The boxes you saw in my moving post? Yeah, they're still there- and it kinda looks like some of them exploded in various places around the house, but that's a project I'm not planning to tackle until January- after I've taken care of my clients. Anyway, I digress..

One of my goals for this year was to make more time for my husband, family, and friends. Last year I pretty much neglected everyone that was important to me because I let my business consume me in a very stressful way. While I still have more work than time this year (which became unavoidable after moving in the middle of peak wedding season), I have made it a bigger priority to take time for family and friends, which has actually helped me be more productive and keep things in perspective better. I think the single biggest improvement this year is that my husband and I have made it a point to spend dinner together as often as possible, which is a big improvement from last year. Even if it's just an hour and we really don't talk about anything important during that time, it's a chance for us to do something relaxing together and to enjoy each other's company without a computer in between us. In the first few years of our marriage, he used to wish that I would go to bed on his sleeping schedule, but he's a morning person and I'm a night person - so I find it hard to sleep when my mind and body are still in the mood to be productive. It took a few years of debating this back and forth, but eventually he respected my need to work late into the night, which allowed me to spend an extra hour with him during his awake schedule. Of course I would love to be on the same sleeping schedule, but my biological clock still hasn't come around to that idea yet - then again, it's much easier when I'm not trying to cram in more work than I have time for, which is why a weekend for us to focus on each other is so important to the health of our relationship. On one hand it's kind of sad that it takes an Anniversary for it to happen, on the other hand, thank goodness for Anniversaries as a reminder that we need to spend some extended alone time together!



While this may seem like pretty personal information - I think all couples experience something like this that deals with a set of expectations they may have about how married couples are supposed to be together. Everyone is different and brings a different set of expectations to the relationship. Sometimes those expectations don't show up until you start living together, or until you have new jobs, or until you have children, but they're always there and you're always much better off if you spend a little time talking about your expectations with each other when something doesn't seem to be happening the way you thought it should, rather than banging your head against the wall wondering why or when the other person will get on the same page. Marriage isn't a contract you sign on your wedding day - it's a constant negotiation that requires a lot of hard work, compromise, and trust. After 5 years, Alex and I still don't have each other all figured out, but we do keep on trying to better understand one another and appreciate each other's point of view.

With every wedding I photograph, I also get a wonderful message and reminder of what marriage should aim to be. I think the last ceremony I photographed made a great point, by asking us to replace the words "love is" with "I am" in the very famous 1 Corinthian 13 passage, so that it would read like this....

I am patient, I am kind. I do not envy, I do not boast, I am not proud. I am not rude, I am not self-seeking, I am not easily angered, I keep no record of wrongs. I do not delight in evil but rejoice with the truth. I always protect, always trust, always hope, always persevere. I never fail.


The kicker was this... if you read that and feel a little guilty that you aren't really good at some of those things- than you know what you need to work on- for yourself, and for your relationship. I think at some point in time I've felt that I wasn't enough of each one of those things, but I know that I'm not perfect and that it's a process of learning and growing- always striving to improve. I feel lucky to have Alex who also understands my good and bad, and who loves me anyway.


Each year Alex and I trade off planning our anniversary. This year it was my turn and I thought we'd combine two of our favorite things - Alex's love of Cheese (the groom's cake at our wedding was a wheel of Smoked Gouda- see above), and my love of all things Autumn. When it comes to those two things, what better place to go than Vermont (especially when it's such a short drive)! Sure enough, this is going to be peak timing for fall color in Vermont, and there's a Cheese Trail to help us navigate from farm to farm...



As of right now, we're just going to be spontaneous and see where the road takes us for the next few days. While there's sure to be cheese and fall color, I'm also hoping for a little hiking, apple picking, horseback riding, and it would be a dream come true if we did a hot air balloon ride (but Alex is not so fond of heights- so that one could remain a dream.) If you're following me on Twitter or on Facebook - I'm going to send updates with iphone pictures along the way. Alex and I are going to try to refrain ourselves from computer use in order to maximize our time together (VERY hard for both of us), so I will return any messages late Monday or Tuesday. Thank you so much for understanding while I try to be a better wife!! Special thanks to Andry Sander for preserving our wonderful wedding memories!!

Have You Missed Your Voter Registration Deadline?

posted on: October 6, 2008

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This is NOT the year to get to the polls only to find out that your voter registration has expired, or that you've moved out of your voting district, or that you can't vote under your maiden name, or that it's too late to send in your absentee ballot. With less than 30 days until the election on November 4th, it's time to take your United States citizenship seriously and participate in this thing we call democracy. Here are voter registration deadlines and information links for some key states...

MAIL-IN REGISTRATION HAS ALREADY PASSED FOR THESE STATES!
*Check the individual sites to see if there are any terms that allow for late registration*
District of Columbia - http://www.dcboee.org/
Florida - http://election.dos.state.fl.us/
Illinois - http://www.elections.il.gov
Indiana - http://www.state.in.us/sos/elections/
Louisiana - http://www.sos.louisiana.gov/tabid/68/Default.aspx
Michigan - http://michigan.gov/sos/0,1607,7-127-1633---,00.html
Missouri - http://www.sos.mo.gov/elections/
Ohio - http://www.sos.state.oh.us/SOS/voter.aspx
Pennsylvania - http://www.dos.state.pa.us/bcel/site/default.asp

To find out when your state's registration deadline is, visit http://www.usa.gov/Citizen/Topics/Voting/Register.shtml or google: (your state)+voter+registration.

If you're already registered to vote - GREAT! Now make sure you can actually get to your designated polling location on November 4th before your polls close! If that's not a possibility for you because maybe you commute for work, or maybe you'll be out of town for school, or maybe you're just likely to forget- make sure you get an absentee ballot to send in.

Or... just don't vote... (warning: contains potty-mouth language ;-)

October Desktop Image

posted on: October 1, 2008

Every month I try to post a new image that is suitable for displaying at desktop size and resolution. Click on an image to download a copy and freshen up your desktop!

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I love fall and all of its beautiful colors!! This is my tribute to the colors found in the leaves of autumn.

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