April Photo A Day: Week 2

Here is my second week of the challenge. And I totally did not just take all these photos today. Well, not all of them anyway...ahem. 

Day 8: Inside Your Wallet

Nothing at all except old Starbucks cards...sigh

Day 9: Younger You

Oh the '80s! Love my mom's hair and her Michael Jackson sweatshirt...

 Day 10: Cold

Our cold-hearted Kitty. Cold as ice...

Day 11: Where You Ate Breakfast

Breakfast was a vanilla latte

Day 12: Stairs

Day 13: Something You Found

Many years ago I found this old copy of the Hobbit on my parent's bookshelf. It's from 1966. 

 Day 14: How You Feel Today

Tired. As usual. 

April Photo A Day-Week 1

Oh man, I am late in posting this (posting anything, really). I feel like I haven't been online in forever. The Easter weekend was awesome, and I have been busy in the real world, so the blog has been neglected. Please forgive me! 
Anyway, here is Week 1 of the Photo-A-Day challenge. As expected, it's a mix of real camera and phone camera...I am sure you can tell which ones are which. 
Day 1: Your Reflection

Cleaning house day
Day 2: Colour

Day 3: Mail

Day 4: Someone who makes you happy

Day 5: Tiny

Hard to focus on a flailing 8-month-old!
Day 6: Lunch

Mmm...spinach and bacon dip...drool
Day 7: Shadow

April Photo-A-Day Challenge

I have decided I want to finally commit to a photo-a-day challenge this month! So I am going to attempt to do the one from Fat Mum Slim. 

As I am sooooo behind the times and own neither an iPhone nor an iPad (gasp!), I don't have Instagram. So, you can follow along on my Twitter feed (do you follow me on Twitter?? If not, and you want to, click here). Also, I will do a weekly roundup of my photos on Sundays here on the blog. 
This is mainly a challenge for me to try and use the DSLR more and play around with it, however there will be days when the trusty ol' Blackberry will be used, so it will be a mix. I am hoping that I will be able to actually stick to the challenge, and not give up halfway like I normally do with things I try to commit to...*ahem* yoga twice a week?!?! *ahem*
Are you also doing the challenge?? Leave your linky so I can follow you! 

Our Baby Photos

I'd like you to meet someone special. Her name is Kinga and she is a genius with a camera. She runs Images By Frost. Check out her website to see some fabulous eye candy. 
 Hubby met her while in Thailand, and when the time came to choose a wedding photographer, he mentioned Kinga. We took a look at her website and fell in love with her photos. Even though she isn't from our city, we booked her anyway. She is awesome. 
We did our engagement session with her 

Our wedding

Our "Trash the Dress" in Banff

And finally, our baby photos. I love them so much!! I know every mom thinks this...but I have the cutest baby in the whole wide world! 

So, when I asked Kinga if I could post the photos on my blog, not only did she say yes, but she also offered an insane giveaway! 

Please Note: This Giveaway is now closed!!

She is giving away a FREE Kiddo photography session (a $399 value!!), which includes:

- One hour creative photography session

- Private online gallery with your images

- Complimentary 8x10 Fine Art Print

- Memories to last a lifetime :)

Soooo awesome! A little disclaimer: Kinga is in Edmonton, so in order to claim the prize, you have to be in, or willing to travel to, Edmonton.

To enter:

• Leave a comment below and tell us how old your kiddo is (or how old you kiddos are...) and "like" Images By Frost on Facebook (those ones are mandatory to enter, folks).
  
  
  
  

  For bonus entries, leave a comment below if you:
  
  1. Follow Images by Frost on Twitter 
  and/or
  2. Re-tweet the following message on Twitter
  "Win a FREE kidd-o session with @ImagesbyFrost at http://twe.ly/kesb"
  and/or
  3. Share this giveaway on Facebook

As always, you don't have to like or follow me, but if you like what you see around here, feel free to show some love :)

 The giveaway will be open until Friday, October 21 at 6:00pm MST. One winner will be chosen randomly from the comments posted using Random.org

Good luck!! 

Makeover Alert!

So, you may have noticed that things look a little different around here. I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I wanted to attempt to makeover the ol' blog. For the record: I did not, in fact, make it over. I found someone to do it for me. Someone who is much more talented than I. Someone who (most likely) did not have to spend 3 hours trying to get some page element to move over 1/3 of an inch to the right. Who is this genius, you may ask?! Why, it's Kim at 733 Blog Design! (insert applause here) 
What do you think of the new digs?
I did, however, do the photos in the banner. Well, and by "do the photos" I mean I arranged them and Hubby actually took them. So pretty much, I "did" them. Anyway, that was a fiasco in itself. To be honest, it is so incredibly difficult to take decent photos with crap lighting, but we tried to make it work. The fiasco part was the addition of Kitty. Why would I think that anything involving Kitty would go smoothly? We had a sheet hung so you couldn't see our insanely blinding orange wall (see photo in the sidebar for photographic evidence...the other walls opposite of these lovely orange beauties are red...I still can't believe we never painted when we moved in. Sigh.). Well, Kitty refused to stand on the sheet. She really wanted to be BEHIND the sheet though. And she also wanted to attack it, and "surprise" us by jumping out and attacking us. Except we weren't surprised at all, because she is a cat behind a white sheet. And she didn't jump out at all, because the sheet was too long. So basically, she just moved the sheet forward, and then got her claw caught in it and couldn't move. So she sat there with her paw stuck in the sheet and purred for like 7 minutes. 
Please excuse the quality of the photos...we didn't have time for things like "focusing". We were too busy being baffled.

Everything is A.O.K.

Things take a turn...

Surprise!!

She sat here for 7 mins. Purring. 

End result. 

Did I mention she is really pretty? 

Our Mini Shoot with Blue Lemon Photography

As mentioned in my previous post about our DIY Mat Photos, we really wanted to have a nice big photoshoot for this pregnancy, as well as for newborn photos as well. Unfortunately, the reduced income that comes with having the baby has kept us from that. 


So, when a friend posted about Blue Lemon Photography's mini shoots, I was incredibly interested. Marie has this brilliant idea that many families want great photos, but it's just not in the budget for everyone. So she holds mini-shoots, where she sets up in an outdoor location and you can book a 30 minute mini-shoot with her, all for an incredibly low price. It was EXACTLY what we were looking for! I loved our DIY shots, but I also wanted some with Hubby in them (well, more than just his hand). This was such a great opportunity, and to top it all off, Marie was shooting in the same place where we got married. It was meant to be. 


Here are a few of my favourites from the shoot:

 

Marie was fantastic to work with, and we had a ton of fun. Head on over to Blue Lemon Photography's Facebook page to see more of Marie's work, and to give her some love. Calgary friends might want to be on the watch for another mini-shoot marathon...hopefully she has another! 

Our DIY Maternity Photos

Photography is really important to Hubby and I. There is nothing more stunning than a gorgeous photo. We really really wanted to do maternity photos when we found out we were expecting, but it was just too expensive to fit into our budget. Which made me really sad, since this is our first pregnancy, and I wanted to have some photos to show to our little guy when he grows up, and to look back fondly on when I get old and grey.

Hubby thought we should try and do some ourselves, and I was totally on board with the idea. Photography is one of his hobbies, although he primarily does travel photography, and so doesn't have too much experience with portraits. I wan't too worried about this aspect, however our equipment was rather lacking. Hubby's camera is a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT. It is quite old (complete with a bandaid holding the battery in), and has been around South East Asia in a backpack quite a few times. We also only have an old flash from Hubby's dad, and no studio lighting whatsoever. Armed with these challenges, we set out to try and take some photos.


The only place in our house where we could get suitable lighting was right in front of our bedroom window in the morning. We have linen curtains, so we just pulled them shut and shot in front of the window. It made for some cool light effects, and we just had to edit out the seam where the 2 curtains met. Easy-peasy.

He also enjoys playing with photos in Lightroom and Photoshop, so after we took the photos, he fiddled around to get the look he was trying to get. I think they turned out great. So thankful to have such a talented Hubby! It is even better knowing that all they cost us was a little time and effort. 

I love this one! 




Here are some of Hubby's faves: