More October challenge

Here are a few more photos from my October photo a day project.

Day 5- Shadow (my chile ring on a book to create a heart)
6- thankful for (fambily)
7-light (down at the orchard after conference and two baptisms)
8- angle (barn)
9- red (my new red temple bag that I loooooove)
10- emotion (ughh I got so sick)
11-something close up

Today was 10-11-12 what a lucky day!!
Oh I guess it's tomorrow already but you get the idea. Tomorrows picture will be what's on the table. Hmmmm

October Challenge

It's that time of year again. It seems like this always happens in October. I'm participating in an instagram photo-a-day challenge. last year I did this for 365 days, every single day I took a photo so this is the condensed version of that.

If you would like to participate here is the list (it's a few days into it but you can just remember back and take pictures for that day :) I cheated a bit too, it's ok

 Day #1 Where you stood--I stood at the foot of my work bed, mostly because it was 1am and I just found out about the project and the other person posted about their bed too haha.

 Day #2 Lunchtime. Technically this is not a lunch, obviously. But I was taking senior pictures at Peace Arch park around lunchtime so I'm counting it.

 Day #3 This happened today. I continued knitting my cowl to sell at a little boutique and finished it, I also worked on homework....surprising.

 Day #4 What you read. This is what I've read (or will read) today. I'm trying to get a good balance of required reading and recreational reading, but they are all church related, even my homework kind of is this week :).

OK now I really need to go finish up that homework and whatnot I just love to take blogging breaks.

On the Bright Side

My camera after dropping it face down on the cement today. Awesome.

Yep, that happened today. Have you ever wanted to go back in time just 5 or 10 seconds? I had that feeling today. It was a VERY stupid mistake on my part.

on the bright side.....

Hopefully it's just the protective UV lens cap that's broken

on the not bright side....

I can't get the UV cap off, it is jammed onto the lens

on the bright side....

I got a lot of fun senior pictures on a very nice day

on the not bright side.....

I have 4 more photo shoots coming up in the next week

on the bright side......

I could take up painting and paint family photos instead of take them

on the not bright side....

I can barely draw stick figures

on the bright side.....

I have an excuse to buy a new camera

on the not bright side....

The camera I want is equivalent in price to that of a small vehicle

on the bright side.....

I have a really cute camera bag

on the not bright side....

that my camera was not in when I dropped it

on the bright side.....

Nicole gave me a fun sized laffy taffy to erase all my camera woes

Let's just leave it at that.

#

are you on intsagram? oh me too. Let's be friends. Although I have no idea what my user name is, sooooo.

There are these things that I never really understood until just a couple weeks ago these: #.

I don't twit or tweet and I think it originated there, I have no idea. But the point of the # is to link to a specific category that relates to your pictures. I don't always do this but it is kind of fun. Example: if you take a picture of a sunset you can hash tag your picture with words like #sunset #beach #orange #pink, etc etc....kind of silly but it's really fun to make up your own hashtags, which I seem to do often. It's fun though when you think you are making one up then you click on it and see other people who have used the same hashtag. Anyone can make a hashtag that says anything. The point of hashtags is to combine photos of similar things into one big group so others can see your pictures.

This brings me to the point of this post. I had (what I think is) a REALLLLLY good idea. Pretty much everyone now days has a smart phone, instagram just recently became available on Droid phones too. If you're having a party, wedding, event, etc....you can create your own #hashtag that would be specific to your event, tell everyone to take pictures with their phones and hashtag their photos to that events hashtag name. It would need to be pretty specific to make sure others aren't using that hashtag. So much better than the old fashioned disposable cameras, does anyone even develop film anymore?
(side note, I LOVE film and developed my own photos when I was in High School, like a boss.)

So that's my grand idea. Say your cousin Billy Bob Zoosman was getting married, your hashtag could be #zoosmanwedding2012 and everyone could put that tag on their pictures of his wedding and they would all show up in one place!! Fun.

Just in case you wanted to see some photos here are a couple collages of just a fraction of my instagram photos, I have almost 800 BTW :) I've been using it for several years and last year I took at least one photo everyday with it for my project 365. Cut me some slack. PS I found my username it's @aduhhp makes sense.

k I obviously love sunsets/sunrises/bridges/clouds/mountains/temples/pink 80's jackets. GOSH Tina, go eat your dinner.

Life. {& Pinterest #7?}

Sometimes life happens. Sometimes I don't get around to blogging (try to hold back your tears). Sometimes I forget that I 'promised' a Pinterest Thursday. Sometimes real life is more important. Sometimes real life is hard. Sometimes life makes me exhausted. Sometimes I sleep in until 10am because I literally cannot open my eyes any sooner. Sometimes I'm embarrassed about that. But mostly, I'm ok with it. 3 days out of the week I get very broken up sleep at work which is ok, so I shouldn't be ashamed when I have to sleep in a bit.

I think I say this all the time, but this month literally is crazyy. Last month seemed to drag on forever, but this month (last week in particular) there was so much crammed in, I'm ready for a vacation. There's just a lot going on with church all the time, work is pretty much the same as usual 5 shifts a week at the GH with 4 of those shifts happening on 2 days-actually kind of nice, Shelley doesn't have a job so I literally have her every minute of the week that I'm not at the GH. But it's ok, it's good to be busy.

This last weekend we had our YW New Beginnings. I think it was pretty successful, took a lot of time to prepare but it's worth it. We had minimal decorations (score) and lots of fun refreshments, fruit skewers, 2 kinds of cake pops, caramel corn, & chocolate hot air balloon suckers. We had some talks, watched a couple short video clips, we had a balloon release. We had all the people write their testimonies on a quarter sheet of paper then attach them to yellow balloons then went outside to release them. It was dark and rainy but in the end all the balloons floated away. We might do it again in the summer so we can actually watch the balloons ;). All in all it was worth all the time and effort, we have what I believe to be, the best group of young women, ever. :)Just my humble opinion. They all get along great, even though we're all combined in one large group, they make everyone feel welcome no matter what, they try hard to do their best in all their various endeavors, I consider them all to be my good friends. I get sad if I miss a mutual activity (rare) or don't see them on Sunday. They are all awesome.

Anyways that was a little random but that's alright.

So I guess I'll include my Pinterest post for the week here. Kind of cheating but whatever.

This last week my photo was chosen for a contest on the Totally Rad site. They are a company specializing in photoshop actions and products. I own them all. My 'recipe' was posted on their site then they posted it to Pinterest, so super exciting to see people pinning MY picture/recipe on their boards!! Not to toot my own horn, but it has the most repins and likes out of all the other photos/recipes :)

Straight from their site. Hollllla.

This is also from my pinterest board "I'm Hungry for the Games" to compile all my Hunger Games geek-outs I had to make a whole board...ridiculous, I know.

FYI

Here's the video to the song that I have playing on repeat, seriously LOVE it. It's my favorite TSweezy song ever.

The dude totally looks like Johnny Depp :). Also my favorite line is, 'don't you dare look out your window, darling everything's on fire, the war outside our door keeps raging on.' It makes me think of the world we live in, while we don't have a literal war outside our doors here, there are lots of battles being fought by individuals. We should just keep our homes safe and our 'doors' closed to the bad things of the world.

Pinterest Crafting #4

For this week's pinterest craft, I made a really neat holder for my small church books. I found the link last night and pinned it, then just made it in about an hour.

It's meant to hold the YW Personal Progress book, Journal, pen, and strength of youth pamphlet. However, I don't have the journal so I just put my YW camp for leaders pamphlet in there for now.

Then it folds over itself to make this cute little package:

I love it. I have a hard time keeping all my little books in one place and this is the perfect solution for me. It's not a big bulky case, it's just barely bigger than the books themselves.

Here are a few links if you'd like to make your own!!

Direct link to the directions/tutorial

My Church Board


My Sewing Board

On another note, on Monday I got to take one of the residents at my work on a fun overnight trip to Semiahmoo Resort. If you want to getaway, I highly recommend this place. Right now is their off season so we were given a free upgrade to a waterview room (which is another $80 value). It's so pretty up there I could have spent the entire time on the beach but it was pretttty cold.

All pictures were taken with my point and shoot, which I was pretty impressed with, much better quality than my old one, hurray!!


Next Week's Pinterest day....might be about New Beginnings we're planning for church..maybe. I spent an entire day last week paper macheing balloons to go with our theme. We'll see.

Oh ya!! This was originally going to be my Pinterest Craft for the week:

CAKE POPS!! Prolly not the cutest you've ever seen but nobody seemed to mind :). The half covered ones were for my family...the chocolate started hardening and I didn't have enough left anyways so they got the gross looking ones, they didn't care.

Stocking

It's almost Christmas. I know there's still almost two full months before but it always goes by super quick. With my brother being in Chile serving a mission, we have to get his Christmas package sent off WAY early too, we should probably send it next week so it gets there on time, last year it was a New Years package instead of a Christmas package :(.

I told him last year that instead of buying and sending him gifts for birthday's and Christmas I would just save the money that I would have spent and buy him an ipod when he gets home because the stuff I was sending was dumb little things and he won't have room to bring it all home anyways. Plus his baby ipod broke so he would be coming home to no music. Well for Christmas I decided to make him a few things. I bought fabric to make him a pillowcase (see last post :)) and tonight I made this stocking for him:

Last year my creative friend Taylor (I'd link her blog but it's private) posted pictures of two similar stockings she made for her brothers, one was getting ready to leave and one had one Christmas left before coming home. I loved them and I started thinking about them again the other day. After begging her for the 'recipe' she very nicely wrote me up a pattern and emailed it to me. Only problem is my printer won't print black ink right now...hmmmm. Well I just happened to find a stocking on my table downstairs so I traced it onto black canvas-like fabric and used a too small button down shirt for the top. I just made it up as I went and it ended up working for the most part. The top is a little crooked but he's a boy :D. I also used the skinny side of a real tie that was too short for anyone here. Then I found a gold button to sew on for the tie tack. And of course no missionary is complete without his/her tag.

It only took about 20 minutes and was fairly simple! Hopefully he'll like it!!

Also today, I took some senior pics for my friend:

Ya she's basically a pro. And a special thanks to the Chapins for letting us use their awesome green chair...that I pretended to loose so I could keep it, but I'm too honest for that :).

are you {Totally Rad}?

Is there something that you love to do but get frustrated because it's so tedious and repetitive? Maybe you wish there was a way to cut the time it takes you to do that thing in half. Maybe if you could cut the time in half, you'd be able to do MORE of that thing, or you'd just have more time for whatever else you're little heart fancies.

I've been mysterious enough I'm here to tell you the secret of how to cut the time it takes you to make boxed macaroni in HALF...kiddddding. You probably just got really excited sorry for deceiving you. What I'm really here to share is much cooler than cooking a box of macaroni.

It's a program that has literally cut my photo editing time in HALF. Let me take you on a journey.

Maybe about 4 years ago I made my first big purchase (besides my cameras). I bought photo shop. HOLLLA I was so excited and started editing my photos right away. The only problem was it was so tedious, if I took 100 photos in a session (that's a lie I take way more) I would chose let's say 20 to edit. Well I would have to do the same process on almost each photo before getting it to a happy place. After a month or so I decided that photo shop wasn't my best friend anymore, until! I ran across this fancy website for photographers. I don't think I even thought about what I was doing, I just bought their Totally Rad Action sets...both of them. My heart hurt a little at the price but let me tell you what, they were worth every darrrrn penny. I saw an instant improvement and was able to cut my editing time in half. They had wrapped up all the tedious-ness in the little details into one, easy-to-use button. Perfect.

Fast forward a year or two later. I got an email telling me all about a new Totally Rad product, Dirty Pictures. At first I wasn't sure I wanted to click it because, I'm a good LDS girl and the name made me nervous. But upon further reading and seeing pictures I realized it was a way rad photo shop plug-in to put texture on my photos. Once again, I clicked the little Buy It button. Gulp. Once again, totally worth it. I had just started getting into textures and it was taking me awhile to put them on my photos but now, I could do it with just a few clicks. DONE.

Now we come to present day. Just a month or two ago I was checking out the Totally Rad Facebook page and they were giving away something called Rad Lab. Of course I needed to know what this was, so I was back on the fancy website watching the video on this new product. Can you guess what I did next?


Well let's not talk about it, I'm an impulse buyer.


BUT once again I was thoroughly impressed. After working with it for about 34 seconds I realized it's potential. I could open up my photos with this plug-in and in just a few clicks make my own action recipes and run it on 20 photos in 5 minutes. Umm helllllo!! Before TR I typically spent 4+ hours in front of the computer for just one photo session. Now (depending on number of photos) I can have a whole session done in 45 minutes or less. DOH. It's a no-brainier. once again worth every penny. I sound like I'm sucking up but there's just not much bad I can say about these products. The time I've saved by using them is growing exponentially and I'm able to book more sessions and get them out the door much quicker. That's worth it.

Now I can have afternoon tea (I don't, but the point is I COULD), I can spend more time putting my rubber band ball together, I can finally shave my whole leg, not just the front, but mostly I spend time NOT looking at the computer screen for hours on end. My eyes thank you Totally Rad.

Some quick examples and a screen shot! Try to contain your excitement and keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times. (Sorry Disneyworld still on the brain)

This is what the screen looks like when you open Rad Lab. Instant reward, no more wondering what something will look like and spending 20 minutes figuring out just the right look. After you pick a look you like, you have the option to save the "recipe" for future use. That way next time you want to get the same look it just takes .4 seconds and one click.

Now here are some before and afters:

Edit took aprox. 34 seconds.

again took less time to edit than it probably takes you to clip 5 fingernails.

just a few extra photos. I have time to post them all because of all the time I save with all my Totally Rad products.

If you're a photographer, or if you think you're a photographer, or if you've seen a camera, or if you have heard of a camera, I recommend these products to YOU. Rad Lab has streamlined my whole work process and my social life thanks you. (Who am I kidding? I still practice hermit-like tendencies) The point is, I could be social if I wanted to now.


P.S.
RIP Steve Jobs. Thanks for inventing my computer and my iPad and my iPod. You were a genius.

Photo Deal

So I really need want to buy a new camera body so I can have a backup just in case. I've been getting more weddings and events that can't be redone if I happen to have a camera malfunction. Hence the want need of a new camera. Lemme tell you what, I don't think I could have picked a more expensive 'hobby' if I tried. Do you need pictures taken?

 Maybe you have a newborn baby who's just begging for their own photoshoot?

 Maybe you have a beyond adorable 1 year old who needs to celebrate his/her birthday in style?

(disclaimer: any age will do, it's not just the 1 year old's who are adorable)

 Maybe you have a family that really likes their pictures taken? Oh you don't? Well just bribe them with promises of chocolate and apple juice.

(Disclaimer: please note, this family did not need bribes, it's possible we needed hand warmers and hot chocolate when we were done but that had more to do with the freezing temperature)

 Maybe you're about to have a baby? Maybe you've been debating if you want to document this time in your life, trust me, you do. And guess what? I can help!!

 Maybe you have a family who actually beg to have their pictures taken? I can do those types of families too!!

(Disclaimer: these kids were dying to pose in front of the camera and were excellent posers)

Maybe you or your son/daughter will be graduating this year? Cuz I can take their picture too!! It's a good time to get it done because next Spring, they are going to be way more interested in their final days as a senior...and let's be honest, who knows what this crazy weather will do, we could have snow next June for all we know.

So if you can dig having your picture taken, lemme know!! You can comment or email: amandapeckphotography at gmail dot com and we can get an appt. set up!!

The deal:

1.5 hrs. for $100

1 hr. for $75

One location (or add $15 for another location) 

You will get ALL your pictures on a CD that you will have full rights to print however you wish. I will also select my favorites from the day and custom edit them, you will receive full rights to these pictures as well. 

(Disclaimer: Prices are subject to change but I'll leave 'em this way for awhile...)

It's a small price to pay to capture your family as it is in the year 2011. When we reach 2045 you'll be glad you did, trust me, I just hopped in my time machine and asked you...sorry if I just lost all credibility by referencing a time machine which I assure you, I do not own...

The 3rd Day

Hands are the subject for today's photo challenge. There are many types of pictures I could have taken, old hands, new baby hands, gloved hands, knitting hands, steering wheel hands etc....but I chose to take it literally and take pictures of my hands, as they are now, straight on, no fuss nothing special, just my hands.

I have to say I have small-ish hands compared to lots of people so maybe I'm a freak or something haha but I do like my hands. I don't think they are necessarily handsome hands (can hands be handsome?) but they are able hands. A few facts about my hands (try NOT to get too excited)

1. They are double jointed and can cause people to cringe in horror amazement. (Perhaps causing early on-set arthritis? Possibly)
2. My fingers are almost always capped with some sort of polish. Fingernail polish is kind of like the bowler hat but for fingers, not heads.
3. My ring finger requires a size 4 ring---meaning I get rings from the KIDS section...again freakishly small?
4. My other fingers are more accurately proportioned and I can get rings from the regular sections.
5. My  fingers tend to bend backwards not on purpose, that's just how they are.
6. I can knit, crochet, roll out dough, take pictures, high five, smack others myself in the forehead, pick things up, write, play the violin (poorly), sanitize and open pill bottles with these hands.
7. I like the fact that I can craft with these hands, it gives me something to do instead of fidget. I can change a ball of string into a hat or blanket whatever I want with these hands.
8. My hands/fingers are mostly always cold. I guess I have poor circulation.
9. I have weird pokey outy veins or tendons? on my hands that freak me out
10. I have a few scars on my hands and fingers from various endeavors such as going to a cutco knife demonstration and slicing my thumb with their TABLE knife. Another large scar is on my right pinky from who knows what.
11. I write with my left hand.
12. But I do most other things with my right hand. It's what happens when your family refuses to acknowledge the fact that your left handed and are in denial about it so they don't buy you left handed scissors as a kid, then make you switch hands to throw a baseball or bat or brush your teeth...(longest run-on ever?)

And last but not least, I just typed out this WHOLE pointless blog about my HANDS with my HANDS.
I am thankful for my hands and what they can do!!

I apologize if you really just read a whole blog about my hands, it wasn't intentional.

Day número UNO

Day one is a self portrait so this is my silly self portrait. I'm wearing Sam's 'awesome' sunglasses and waiting for Shelley to get off work.I'm prettttty gangster...hahaha OR NOT.

I probably won't post all my photos of my June photo challenge on the day they happen but perhaps thru the month I'll post a few here and there. This is also for my project 365 where I take a photo every day with Instagram. Killing 2 birds with 1 stone holllla!

30 Day Challenge!

I started this Project 365 on January 1st, so I take a photo every day using Instagram on my ipod. Well I've done pretty good and haven't missed any days but I'm having a hard time coming up with things to take photos of. I've decided since June has 30 days I'm going to do this challenge in conjunction with my Instagram 365. The only problem is June is the month of CAMP YIKES remind me to stop procrastinating and get that stuff finished up. So I might not follow this exactly towards the end of the month but that's ok I guess. As long as I take one photo a day I'll feel good about it.

Here is the 'program' if you are interested in following along. Maybe I'll post some of my photos on this blog but who knows, next month might be prettttty busy. I'm also going to be helping my grandparents redo their living room, kitchen, dining room and hallway.

ALSO Laura, you win the baby subway art hahaha!! if you want to email (of facebook) me your info you want on the baby sign that would be great. Congratulations!!

Totes vs. Sac's

I have a dilemma. I have a really hard time spending money on myself...well for more expensive things that aren't TOTALLY necessary. I have been wanting to get a camera bag for myself for awhile now and I've had my eye on these:

Shootsac's by Jessica Claire. I love Jessica Claire's photography and her bags are so sleek and non-bulky. She also has some really cute covers...The bag itself is like $170 then you have to buy the cover which ranges in price from like $39-59. Of course my favorite cover is on the more expensive side. So do I go with the less bulky but more expensive bag or do I go with Jo's Totes:

Which are a lot cheaper, $89, but more bulky (it doesn't show it but it also has a cross body strap)? I have to admit, if it was just a purse, it is "tote-ally" my style. And it has a lot of room on the inside for extra lens', flash, cards, keys, wallet etc...so it would be like an all in one purse/camera bag (plus, the inside fabric is hounds-tooth my favorite). My other dilemma is, do I really NEED a camera bag? I don't have many lens' just two...and I basically only use one of them. So it would hold my flash and extra SD cards...so is a whole huge bag really necessary right now? I hope to expand in the future and buy more lens' so it would be something that would come in handy in the future...will this go out of style by the time I get around to buying more lens'? If I go with the other one, I can change the cover if it goes out of style...

I'm pretty busy with photos lately and I have a wedding coming up and would love to have an all-in-one purse/camera bag to carry around but I hate the feeling of being weighted down. But it would be super handy to have everything close to me. I could even bring my other camera with me just in case ya know, better to be prepared. UGH decisions decisions.

I had talked myself into getting a shoot sac but now I'm really not wanting to spend that much money so I might just go with the Jo's Totes...why is this so hard for me? In the long run it doesn't matter at all and it's just money and 'stuff' so who cares right? I just make things into a bigger deal than they are ;). Maybe I should just spend that money on a photo workshop with one of my favorite photographers like, Blue Lilly or Jessica Kettle. OH my heck. I think I'll go with Jo's Totes...ahhhh too bad they are out of stock of all the colors I like so who knows if I'd even get my bag by June when I need it!?

Oh MAN!

DO NOT click on the following links:

Mila's Daydreams
One Mom's Imagination

SHOOOOOOT. How do people come up with this stuff? P.S. I give you permission to click on the above links after you take a few short breaths and promise me not to convulse with envy....

Ummm how about I go to the store and buy myself out of house and home to take photos like these? Sounds good to me! Actually lots of the props she uses are just from around her house. My mind is REELING. I wonder if anyone around here would be interested in letting me borrow a baby who really likes to sleep and doesn't wake up easily...

If I could do things like this, it could be great for business! haha...maybe the investment would be worth it...

They are just too cute.

Oh

My

Gosh.

My favorite: Princess and the Pea

I could do this...

I want to do this...

Any takers?

Maybe I could buy a doll and use it to practice...

I've also seen them with older kids...let me find the link...

Ok Click here now...

ya. I can dig it.

Mustaches and Onesies oh My!

So my aunt is having a baby at the end of February. I decided since her baby shower is next weekend, I'd better come up with a gift idea and fast! The first thing I thought of was a diaper cake. I haven't made one yet but I got some real good directions and hopefully I'm able to make a really good one! I also started a blanket to match the baby's room but who knows if that'll get done either! But just in case those don't get done, I bought a pack of plain onesies, some black puffy paint, and a roll of heat-n-bond. 

Here is the result of about 20 minutes:

Cat eye glasses Onesie

 I had wanted to use black shiny fabric and heat bond it instead but couldn't find any black shiny fabric. So I bought some puffy paint. Then printed a pair of cat eye glasses from the internet and cut them out. Then I traced lightly with pencil the outline and filled it in with puffy paint. Then made little dots with the paint so it's like a chain. I'm not sure how this will do in the wash but hopefully it survives ;).

A Onesie

 Next I decided to give the heat-n-bond a try. I immediately wanted to do a big A since her name is going to be Alexa. We have SO much fabric downstairs and we have a large pile of perfect size scrapes so I picked out one I liked. Then I used my cricut (you could also just print it out from your computer with a font you like) to cut out a large "A" which I then traced onto the back of my fabric, cut it out, then followed the heat-n-bond instructions. SO SIMPLE! SO EASY! SO CHEAP! haha the heat-n-bond was like 6 bucks for a huge roll, I got a 5 pack of onesies for 5 bucks and voila!

Heart Onesie

Then I decided since the A was SOO easy, a heart would be even easier, why not right? I just used a piece of paper and did the old kindergarten trick and made myself a heart. Then traced it onto my fabric cut it out and followed the same steps as before. This was done in like 2 minutes. This is miracle stuff I tell you!

Mustache on a stick anyone?

 These next two things are props I made for a photo shoot I have on Monday. My aunt wanted some pregnancy pics done so we are going to meet and do those. I wanted it to be fun and not so serious. I had been eying all these people with mustaches on a stick so I bought some felt and wooden sticks and used a little hot glue to make myself some. I made one for each member of their family so hopefully it's a fun photo.

Yarn heart

Finally I made this little heart out of a piece of cardboard I cut out (poorly mind you) into the shape of a heart. Then I grabbed some red yarn I had laying around and wrapped and wrapped and wrapped some more. It was a little more time consuming than one might think but I'm pretty excited for it. I saw a friend on facebook who made a similar prop for her photography and I LOVED it. So hopefully this will work out for Monday as well. I also bought some large and in charge balloons that I will have filled up with helium. SOOO excited for her baby shower and photo shoot!