Saturday, February 27, 2010

At Home with Sean and Rhea

Sean and Rhea are expecting the arrival of their new baby very soon! In fact, Rhea's baby shower is today, and I'm late getting there! I couldn't stand it--I HAD to blog about her pictures.
She is so stinking gorgeous!

We started out at their house and little Cyprus was hilarious. She was so full of energy.
Then Rhea and I went downtown to get some more pictures of just her. We had a ball.


Lord, please let me be this smokin' hot if I'm ever pregnant again. Yow!!




Cyprus and Daddy were kissing Mommy's belly, and Cyprus just giggled and giggled. I don't know if Baby was jumping around or if it just tickled Rhea's belly, but Cyprus was highly entertained.


Sweeeet!



Woohoo! Hot stuff. I can't wait to meet this little guy when he arrives! Congratulations, Sean and Rhea.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Nola and Jason

Here's a sneak peek at Nola and Jason's wedding on February 20! Cheri and I had a great time with this sweet couple. Nola's gorgeous, but her flower girls nearly stole the show.

My sweet Izzy was the leading culprit.

Beautiful Nola with Sydni, Izzy and Cambry.

Cheri got this fabulous photo of all the guys!

Nola and Jason didn't know it, but a friend had these water bottles custom labelled just for them.

Congratulations, guys!


Sunday, February 21, 2010

KJ and Enosh

We had a gorgeous Sunday afternoon today! We usually eat over at the Halls' house, but today we ate at home. Sophie stayed with us while her parents took her Mimi up to Austin (she's visiting from Albany, GA). I spied little KJ on the sidewalk and invited him over to play.

Then I realized, it was the perfect chance to photograph him and his baby brother, Enosh.


These kids are absolutely gorgeous!! They live next door to us and they're MOVING! I'm so sad!! They're going to Houston, and we're moving a mile down to road at the end of March. So, sadly we are parting ways. I'm glad I was able to get these photos for their mom and dad before they leave.


Sweet brothers! They love each other.

I met KJ the day they moved in next door. He came right over and introduced himself. He's 5.

You can see why it's easy to fall in love with him. We went swimming later this afternoon and had ice cream. He was NOT happy to go back home and have to get ready for bed. After all, it is a school night.


That's all for now! I'll post photos from Nola and Jason's wedding this past Saturday soon!

Friday, February 19, 2010

Calzones and Interior Design

It's Friday, lovely Friday, and I'm at home. We have no food and in honor of Hannah's wishes, I made calzones. Doubled the recipe. We have 6--2 each. :)

Recipe:
Dough

2 1/2 c flour
2 tsp salt
lots of Italian seasoning
1 packet of yeast dissolved in 1 1/2 cup water (added a tsp of sugar to activate it)
1/2 cup oil (I use grapeseed)
mix together, knead, let sit an hour

Filling
ham diced
mushrooms chopped
1/2 a red onion
fresh spinach
2 roma tomatoes
container of skim ricotta
2 eggs
lots of Italian seasoning
fresh basil
crushed red pepper to taste

I pulled knots of dough out of the big lump and rolled out individual lumps to make 6 personal-size calzones. I brushed them w/ oil, cut slits and baked at 425 for 25 min. The bottom rack didn't look as done so it baked another 5 min.


Meanwhile, I sifted through my old Domino magazines to find the ideas I have for my new house which we'll move in to on March 30. Woohoo!! This very morning on my way from a friend's house, I stopped by an estate sale and purchased a cane back chair for $40. My first acquisition! So excited.


The yummy filling above.
Below, a chair I reeeeelly reeeelly want but it's from Target and I don't like their quality. Mebbe I can find some similar fabric??

My dream room. This is what I want my house to look like, minus the fake deer and obviously I won't have amazing soaring ceiling and windows that tall. Or a fireplace. Or hardwood floors.


This is a great idea: I want a bench to go right in the front of the house for us to stow shoes underneath and lay purses, jackets. homework, et al for easy grabbing in the morning.



I love this cut out design behind the bed. I want to do that somewhere in my house.


Here's my new chair!! It's in great condition. I will paint it, though.

In my room with my beautiful, beautiful Afghan rug. Thanks, Matt!!


Calzooooooones!! Clark Lee eat your heart out!!


Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Barstow Cooper Wedding

My good friend Cheri and I photographed Suzanna Barstow and Daniel Cooper's wedding on Valentine's Day. It was held at the spectacular Villa Antonia in north Austin. Suzie made a beautiful bride, and even though the weather was SO COLD that the event was moved inside, she still glowed.

One of the great things about getting married on a holiday is, you have fun ideas for decorations. They had sweet little tins filled with Conversation Hearts. This is probably my favorite photo of the day.

Suzie and her gals were a lot of fun!

Because of the terrible weather, we didn't have much opportunity to take photos before the ceremony. So we sneaked the bride and groom out of the reception for a quick photo shoot. They were so relaxed and happy after the ceremony, so it all worked out great!

Congratulations, Daniel and Suzie! And I hope you readers had a Happy Valentine's Day, too!


Thursday, February 11, 2010

Scherenschnitte


That's a funny word, isn't it? It's German, and it literally means scissor cutting. This past week I had my art students at Kids' Club do a little scissor cutting to make valentines for loved ones. Theirs were very simple, and I decided to try a little cutting on my own. Here are two that I've done. I think the Girl in the Garden is more successful (the scanner cut off the outer border) but I used a dull Exacto knife, so the lines weren't very clean.

This one I did last night with a utility knife which had a new blade. Much easier cutting. I did make a few mistakes. Gluing it down to another piece of paper was really botched--the paper wasn't flat so it buckled in some areas, much to my chagrin.

It is a pretty fun activity and only takes about 20 minutes or so to cut one out. I didn't even draw a design, I just cut along with the knife, thinking of what to do as I went. Which also explains some of the mistakes I made, not taking into account far enough in advance where some cuts needed to be made or not made.

Happy Thursday!

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Wednesday Night

We had no food in the house and I really needed to cook tonight. Problem was, I had no idea what to make. I knew we had 4 boxes of orzo (pasta that looks like rice), some frozen chicken breasts and a bag of frozen acre peas I'd brought back from Georgia at Christmas (they've never heard of acre peas in Texas).

Well, Hannah and I were in Wal-Mart getting bunny supplies when I thought about dinner, so I grabbed a bunch of veggies to broil and toss w/ orzo and figured I'd improvise with the chicken.

Clark Lee to the rescue! He was on Gmail when I was at home, so I IM'd him for advice. He suggested a rub of spices on the chicken and then a reduction using red wine vinegar once the chicken was cooked. Clark! It was fanTAStic. Lanier liked it a lot.

We all ate quickly, barely dignifying my extraordinary meal with the admiration it deserved, ran Hannah to youth group and then hit the Y to work out.

Broiled Vegetables with Orzo

1 orange bell pepper
1 green bell pepper
1 red onion
1 large tomato
2 anaheim peppers (banana peppers)
1 squash
italian seasoning

I sprayed the pans with oil, chopped up the veggies in big bite-sized pieces, lay them on the pans and sprayed with oil. I sprinkled Italian seasoning and broiled the pans separately at 500 degrees for about 10-12 minutes total. I boiled the orzo in salted water, drained, and dumped in a bowl and doused it with grape seed oil. Add the veggies, stir. YUM!

Chicken Breasts with Red Wine Vinegar Reduction

3 chicken breasts
fresh ground black pepper
sea salt
oregano (dried)
parsley (dried)
celery seed
chopped onions (dried)
garlic powder

I sprinkled all that stuff on the chicken breasts (using parsely b/c I ran out of oregano). I added some grape seed oil to a pan, sauteed the chicken on each side about 2 minutes, then turned down the heat to low, covered and simmered not quite 20 minutes total (10 min on each side).

Remove the chicken from the pan, scrape up the juicy bits, add red wine vinegar (I dunno, a fourth of a cup?) and turn heat to medium to cook off some of the vinegar. We let it go a couple of minutes and then spooned it over the chicken n stuff. OMG it was so good!! Thanks, Clark.

Sunday, February 07, 2010

Spend the Night


I am typing with my right hand, holding a slightly whiny infant with my left, while Izzy, age 2, asks me where Hannah is. It has literally taken me 3 hours to post this blog: editing the photos & uploading, then typing.

Welcome to having small children!!


My friend Amanda needed someone to keep her kids while she went up to Austin for the night. I volunteered to keep the smaller two. Sydni, age 6, went elsewhere. I figured it was a perfect chance to photo Josiah before he got too big. He's 4 months old. We got him around 7:30pm, but we had Izzy all Saturday afternoon.

Obviously a sunny day demands a visit to Landa Park. Izzy had a great time!
She loved the monkey bar.


Then we looked at the river...

Happy Josiah! He was so active I couldn't miss the chance to photograph him. He smiled & smiled at his big sister.



Just hanging out at bedtime.



They slept well! And I survived. :)

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