Archive for the ‘life in general’ Category

Crazy, nine weeks flew by!  I have one short week left until I return home to Reedley, CA.  Thankfully, I won’t have much time to think about how I had to say good bye to Percy because I’ll be jumping into my photography by shooting Peter and Elena’s wedding in Temecula, CA followed by Christmas pictures and baby pictures.  That reminds me, there are still spaces available if you’d like your Christmas picture taken.

I’ve been shooting and selling more stock photography through iStock.  I’ll tell you something, if I lived in Canada I’d work for this company.  I love it, what can I say?  Here’s my image that sells the most.

Enjoy … and remember to call for your Christmas pictures.

So I finished painting (mostly, I see a few places that need touch ups in here), the couch has arrived, I found brand new $5 curtains, I reupholstered a chair, bought a small coffee table, Percy gave me yellow lilies, we purchased a clock, and I frosted the glass in the door so people couldn’t watch us eat dinner in the evening.  Also, I took the extra square of carpet that was thrown in the guest bedroom and used it as a throw rug.  Now all I want to do in here is recover the cushions with cute fabric, get a good stand for the TV (It’s sitting on the floor, there’s a reason why you can’t see it), and cover the other end table with something pretty.  I think I would also love to put up some pictures or artwork above the couch.  Something big and lovely.  Maybe a fancy framed mirror?  We’ll see.

Here it is… come visit!

I’m here in Baton Rouge, LA.  It’s actually quite lovely, the weather that is.  No humidity (or if there is any, it’s very mild).  I’ve been enjoying myself and staying as busy as I was when I was back home in Reedley.

I recently purchased a new Wacom Intuos 4 tablet and I tell ya, that thing gave me some huge, enormous frustrations!  I finally figured out the problem after doing research and reading about how others have solved the same problem.  Wacom did a great job designing their pens to be sensitive but the extreme sensitive was driving me nuts!  I would hold my pen an inch above my tablet and it would select things all on it’s own.  I don’t cuss, but I was VERY close to cussing the other day.  Now that the sensitivity issues is taken care of (I altered the functions on the tablet and pen over and over to find a happy place for myself) I absolutely love it.

I’m taking down wallpaper in a spare bedroom.  The wallpaper was lovely once… I imagine.  But now it’s old, outdated, and too flowery and beige for my taste.  Thankfully the paper is coming off very easily and I find it quite great to sit there peel off the paper, wash the glue, and peel that off in large layers.  I love the tediousness of it for some odd reason.

Work is good.  See how good the Lord is, after a few short months of focusing on my business I’m getting phone calls and e-mails from people who found me online or heard of me through the grapevine.  I’m starting to book more and more weddings and I can only imagine where this will lead!  Praise God for his enormous, ongoing blessings!

All in all, life is good.  Percy makes me laugh more and more and on the serious side we’re laying all our concerns out on the table and working through those things.  By this, we’re learning a lot about each other.

I will post pics of the wallpaper and the progress of the room soon.  Right now I’m at a Community Coffee House and I forgot my little camera back at the house so I don’t have the images on hand to upload.  Therefore, stay tuned!

I’ve been working on my new website and getting more and more frustrated with it.  I think I’ll have to do something different, come up with a new game plan for it.  I tend to work on it for a full day and walk away from my computer in a fluster with high blood pressure.  (Okay, I don’t know about the high blood pressure but I’m just sayin’.)

On something more fun, I’ve been attempting to make these material flowers and I think they are beautifully fantastic!  (Thank you Once Wed, a simply beautiful blog I follow, for posting such fun, creative ideas.)

I’ve also been going to the gym.  I’ve failed in the C25K challenge but plan to pick that up again.  But at the gym I’ve been going to some sculpt classes and my muscles are all a bit shakey now.

This weekend, Lee/Palmer wedding & engagement pictures in San Francisco!  My sister is my second shooter and I think it’ll be  a pretty great time in mid-west California.  You’ll see pictures soon I’m sure.

I purchased the new MacBook Pro.

Now I have to figure out a way for the trees in my front yard to start growing cash instead of leaves.

I’m completely up in the air at this point.  See, I want the new MacBook Pro but I don’t want to spend all that money for it.  I would like a newer, faster laptop that I can actually rely on (my MacBook is getting more and more sad as each day passes).  I want the bigger screen so I can show slideshows without people having to get up close and personal with the computer.  I’d like to be able to quickly edit and run multiple programs without the spinning wheel of death looming after every click.

My question is this… is the Pro worth it or do I stick with a higher end MacBook?  Any insight would be wonderful!

Me too.  Well here’s the thing, I did my run last Wednesday before I left for my long weekend in Colorado.  Since I’ve been back I simply haven’t done it.  My question for you is this… since I haven’t been running for the last week and a half do I start my training from the beginning or do I pick up where I left off?

Any thoughts would be very helpful.  Is there any one who reads this that is doing the Couch To 5K Program?  I’d love to hear your stories!

So I’ve been working a lot with my business Jennifer Eileen and I haven’t been shooting or editing for myself.  Finally, at Union Station this past Monday I pulled out my camera and took some shots.  Today I got to play around with textures, colors, design, practiced with the stamp tool, and some other stuff.  Anyhow, I’m pleased to share my work with you.  Hope you like it as much as I do.

Alright, so I was supposed to do my jog on Monday but postponed it until Tuesday.  Yesterday I didn’t make time for it so I opted for today.  And I did it!  I had to convince myself to maintain this regime that I’ve begun.  Thankfully my love, Percy, has joined me on this endeavor and we’re attempting to train on the same days.  In the I hope we will enter a 5K together and also form a new habit in our lives.  The tricky thing about training with Percy is the distance between us.  With him being in Louisiana and my being in California we don’t physically get to train together.  We just end up calling each other before and after we’ve accomplished our daily task and we encourage one another.

So, day 4: 90 second jog followed by 2 minute walk.  6 intervals.  5 minute warm up and 5 minute cool down.

Check.

Isn’t this supposed to get easier?  While doing my little jog this morning I kept wondering how in the world I’m going to move on to week 2 if week 1 still seems like a struggle.  But I’ll stick to the program and we’ll see where it takes me.  It should take me down a few dress sizes.

It was a bit rough, I’ll be honest.  First off I was a little embarrassed to run in front of all those people at the park so I refused to begin when I was told to begin.  At the second round I joined in and completed the other seven.   At the beginning I think I pushed too hard to prove to the strangers that I can do this.  Silly me.  But I kept it up and accomplished almost all of the routine.

Day 3 of week 1 will take place on Saturday.

I’m planning on going on a jog once it cools own a bit.  I would have already accomplished this task for today by going to the gym had I had my vehicle.  But alas, my sisters car broke down this morning so she had to use mine to go to work.

According to weather.com it should be about 97 degrees at 7pm.  Maybe I’ll go around 7:30.  I know that I want to be home by 9 to watch So You Think You Can Dance and I don’t want to run by myself at 10pm in the park.  Too scary.

I’ll tell ya how it goes.

Nothing is better on a hot summers day then to enjoy some watermelon for lunch.

SYTYCD would have to be one of my all time favorite shows.  It’s simply fantastic.  I think dance is incredibly amazing and I used to dance when I was young.  Boy I wish I stuck with it instead of choosing sports, theater, choir, band, and yearbook when I was in High School.  (Okay, I still would have chosen yearbook and theater and I did love sports, choir, and band but I sometimes wonder what would have happened had I remained in dance.)

Anyhow, I just got back from the taping of July 1st airing of So You Think You Can Dance and it was fan-diddily-tastic.  But I’m tired.  Therefore, I am going to bed.

Good night moon.

So my sister and I just got back from house/dog sitting on the Big Island of Hawaii… I took some pictures at a Botanical Garden just North of Hilo and thought I should share them.  So here are a few… you can see the rest of them (along with more pics of the dogs) at http://jennifereileen.com/hawaii2 if you’d like.