S.L. Smith Photography

Crazies

What kind of crazies buy 18 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies????

These crazies:

Good Lord!  Will somebody please fix my jacked up brows???  Both of them are messed up and have bald spots due to scars from TWO different accidents I caused trying to be a gold medal gymnast in my bedroom when I was a kid, but that's a story for another time...What in the WORLD possessed us to buy EIGHTEEN boxes of Girl Scout Cookies.  We do this every year and say "We'll freeze them, then they will last a year".  Last year they lasted exactly 34 days, yes, 34 days.  I just think about them sitting there in the bottom of the freezer, all cold and delicious, and I can't help myself.  Then I trick myself into thinking if I get rid of them  eat them, they will be out of the house and then I don't have to worry about trying to fight off the urge to eat them anymore.  That is a great plan until 3 days later when I can't get my pants over my hips and butt...because that's where Girl Scout cookies live after I eat them, my hips and butt.  Apparently they multiply after you eat them because how does eating 1 pound of cookies equal 3 pounds of hip fat????  Is there a 12 step program for Girl Scout Cookies????

The Lost Files

I was cleaning out my folders on my computer today and I found folders and folders of images that I had never even touched.  For some reason, I just downloaded the and then forgot that I had them. 

These are photos from Thanksgiving Day.  The company my husband works for holds a huge Thanksgiving Dinner for soldiers who are stationed here in town, but far away from their families.  I volunteered to help dish up their food and wait tables for the event.  It as a blast meeting these guys and girls.  What struck me the most about these freshly scrubbed and uniformed men and women was how YOUNG they were!  Since when did the Army let 15 year old kids enlist????

There was a huge spread of food for them, prizes like Wii consoles, X Boxes, cameras, phones, tv's...the works.  These kids were ecstatic.  There was also entertainment and a live band.  The band was great and even let some of the soldiers up there to sing... there was some good talent there.  It was great to see these happy faces that day.

This guy was a great singer.  He even had a little fan club there.

I didn't have my wide lens with me, so I couldn't get all of the soldiers in the pictures, but there was a lot of them.

There was a cool display of vintage airplanes there.  I took these for my hubby.

Then I had to take a couple of myself before I left:

Team Up Thursday-Peace

 My sweet and creative friend Melody/Hip Momma/ Rockin' A Photography came up with the great idea of teaming up with another photo friend and collaborating your photos based on a theme.  She is calling it Team Up Thursday.  It would be so fun if you could find a friend and join!

Amy Craft is a friend of mine who is a terrific photographer and will get a blog soon...right Amy????  You really need to see her photos.  The one thing that I always notice in her photos is that her light is amazing.  I am obsessed with light!  Amy and I have decided to team up and will leave a team up photo here every Thursday.

This week, Amy chose the theme of "peace".  Her photo is the top one.  She caught her two boys in a rare moment of peace together.  I don't know about sisters, but with brothers there is hardly ever a quiet moment, so this was a great catch.  See what I mean about her light?  Yummy!

This is an old picture I took awhile back of my fingers on the fret board of my guitar.  When I am desperate for peace, I close my door and pick up my guitar.  It has the calming effect of meditation and prayer for me...it's like a drug!  It took me awhile to get this shot.  I had a hard time trying to hold the guitar with one hand and my heavy camera in the other hand while getting this picture in low light (hence the grain).

Anyway, if you want to see more team up photos go over to Melody's place .  Check back again next week to see what Amy and I have come up with and please, feel free to leave a comment for Amy or I.  Hope you can join us to play!

Walmart Clown

I fear  don't love clowns, but this commercial that was shown during the Vikings game had me laughing so hard I had to catch my breath and wipe the tears off my face.

Not Good

I recently had a good laugh over a series of emails with some friends in which one of the subjects was my very brief and terribly embarrassing attempt to train in the world  of competitive kick-boxing.  I was humorously bad at it and probably pretty entertaining to watch in a "Jersey Shore" kind of way...you know..."this is so bad, but I can't stop watching"!  I get lots of ideas to try things, but this was one of my ideas that I never followed through with because I was just so bad at it.

In these emails, my friend Lori said "I honestly thought, boy, she does it all!"...and that got me thinking that I don't want to give the perception that I can do it all.  I try a lot of things and am mediocre at most of them, pretty good at some of them, and very bad at a lot of them.  It got me thinking of all the things I am bad at and I found it pretty funny:

1) Swimming (picture a seizure in the water, really).

2) Sports that involve other people ,hence the reason I was bad at kickboxing and why I like things like running.

3) Sports that involve balls, bats, rackets, sticks, pucks. While other people go towards the ball, I am more of a duck and cover ( and sometimes scream like a lady) type of girl.

4) Shopping. It gives me hives.

5) Style.  I have know idea what looks good on me and how to put an outfit together.  I need major help in this area.

6) Decorating

7) Hobbies that involve very fine motor skills like sewing, embroidery, origami.

8) Spatial relations.  You know that test they give you in school, when they ask you which way the gear will turn or what that flat piece of paper will become when you fold it on the dotted lines?  I still can't do those. This explains why I can't sew (patterns confuse me) or do origami (I never understand which way to flip the paper).

9) Math

10) Bookkeeping for my business

11) Taxes

12) Paperwork

13) Baking.  I LOVE cooking, but do  NOT enjoy the measuring that has to be used for baking.

14) Keeping my mouth shut (I am getting better)

15) Coordinated dance routines (this is another blog post all together).

16) Rollercoasters ( I know this is not something you do, but it's something I refuse to do.  I have this thing called 'fear of dying').

17) Folding fitted sheets.  I try and try and I even read Martha Stewart's method for doing it, but I still can't make it work.

18) Technical reading.  It might as well be in another language.  That partially explains #17.

19) Talking on the phone.  I am terrible at talking on the phone and always feel like I have to come up with stuff to talk about, which is usually not very interesting to the other person.

20)Accepting help

21) Accepting  compliments.

Regardless of all the things I am bad at, I still try them.  This year I will be working on a more streamlined method of  swimming so that people stop jumping in the pool in an effort to rescue me.I'm not drowning, that's just how I swim people!

Caught

We were doing homework like we do everyday after school.  Caleb on one end, Abby on the other, and Jackson doing his pretend "homework" right in the middle.  Trying really hard to stick to my 365 project, I snap this:

Then I go over to the table and see something out of the corner of my eye that causes my breath to get caught in my lungs.  My baby girl, so not a baby girl anymore.  Now becoming this independent, opinion making, creative, self-expressive, strong young woman.  She seems to be causing my breath to be caught inside of me a lot these days.  My mind and my heart still see her as a 5 year old, but every once in awhile, I'll catch a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye and see her how the rest of the world does...and it leaves me breathless.

Blah!

Raise your hand if you hate tax time...

What plans do you have for your tax returns?  Anything exciting and fun?

The Clouds Leave

This morning I stepped out on my deck and saw this.  I loved the colors, the light, the way the sky was lit, but the earth was still dark.  I took these pictures just seconds apart and was surprised how quickly the light changed.  I had to keep slightly adjusting my settings...quickly.  The quick changes was a good reminder to me about how quickly our lives change and that nothing is permanent.  It is so easy, especially in hard times to think it will be that way forever, but then you look down for a second and things have changed.  I remember when Abby was an infant and it felt like I would have sleepless nights forever.  I felt like I would be changing diapers forever ..now she is just weeks away from being 10 and when I look at her I cannot believe she has changed so quickly and that I actually don't change diapers and I get a full night's sleep.

I loved the way the clouds were leaving in this image...the clouds always leave, just like in life. Things change, the cloudy days don't last forever.

Last night I came across this list I have been creating.  I don't do resolutions, but I have goals and dreams.  I am a huge believer in writing things down to make them happen.  It's always a good reminder.  This list grows as I have more hopes and shrinks as I cross things off my list.  How lucky I am to be able to cross things off my dream list because I have completed them!  Some of these are huge and nearly impossible goals and some are things I could probably accomplish tomorrow.  Some are deep and heartfelt and some are shallow ( I am human after all).  It is my list, it is my life.  Like the clouds, it is always changing.

This is the un-edited version of my list:

1.    Hold a baby chimp that wears a diaper
2.    Go to Santorini Greece and ride a donkey
3.    Travel up and down the coast of Italy
4.    Participate in some sort of extreme race
5.    Do a zip line in the jungle
6.    Go to Hawaii
7.    Sing and play guitar well enough to play in front of people
8.    Sing and play guitar in front of people
9.    Get hardwood floors
10.    Raise chickens
11.    Get a French bull dog or Boston terrier
12.    Become proficient at shooting my gun
13.    Create a photo  family recipe book for each of my children
14.    Learn tagolog fluently
15.    Take my mom back to the Philippines
16.    Learn to make pirogues
17.    Speak fluent Spanish
18.    Bring the kids to Alaska to see the northern lights
19.    Pay off our debt
20.    Get muscles like my body pump instructor
21.    Make awesome memories for my kids
22.    Go on more dates with josh
23.    Run faster
24.    Run longer
25.    Become a good swimmer
26.    Grow long Hollywood hair
27.    Complete my big project to help kids with cancer
28.    Be an example my children will be proud of
29.    Be someone my children want to be around when they are adults
30.    Live a life worth remembering
31.    Spend more quality time with my kids
32.    Sleep in a treehouse in the African Grasslands where an giraffe can stick his head in your window
33.    Be a grandma
34.    Visit the massai tribe
35.    Compete in the Amazing Race
36.    Change someone’s life for the better
37.    Become better and better at photography
38.    Lose all my inhibition and dance, laugh, and sing when I want to, no matter who is watching.
39.     Go on a helicopter ride
40.    make sure the people I love know how much I love them
41.    create a beautiful and calm master bedroom
42.    have a beautiful office space
43.    learn how to decorate my space
44.    visit more flea markets and antique shops
45.    take time for me
46.    grow my business
47.    nurture my marriage
48.    Own/lease a horse

Fruity

I wanted to share with you how I met my daily USDA recommendation of fruit this Christmas season for the months of December and January.  As we were driving to my parents house is Michigan, I begged, pleaded, and whined to get my husband to stop at Trader Joe's in Indianapolis.    It was only 15 minutes out of the way, but he is like the driving TASK MASTER and hates to get off course or delay...but since I planted the seed and suggested stopping months ago (by reminding him each and everyday that we WOULD stop at Trader Joe's  during our trip north) , it wasn't that hard to get him to stop for me.   I was sooo happy to be able to get some of my Trader Joe's favorites.  I don't think Josh expected me to buy quite so much because as I got in the car he mumbled something about 'u-haul' and 'next year'.  

As I filled my cart in the store I ran across these tasty little guys:

I LOVE this box.  I love the font, the snowflakes, the color, the texture on the font, ....

See that, it says "Fruit" on it.  So I know it is healthy.

I would have taken a picture of all the chocolates in the box, but by the time I got around to taking the photo, half of them had dissapeared.  They were delicious and filled with fruits like orange, cherry, pomegranate, raspberry, and cranberry.  So good and only $2.99!  I figure that between these fruity chocolates and the bottle of Purple Moon merlot ($3.99), I got my fill of fruit and anti-oxidants!

Now, before you turn your nose up at a bottle of $3.99 wine, don't.  I tested it out on my friend Kathy (who I consider to be a wine snob  expert) and she really liked it.  I mean, she must have, because we drank the whole bottle together and she said it was good.  I trust Kathy's judgment on wine because she knows about stuff like alcohol percentage and what glass is the right glass for the type of wine you are drinking....I don't even know if I had the right glasses, did I Kathy???? I'm hapy to drink my wine out of a plastic cup.

Anyhow, I think a box of fruit filled chocolate and a bottle of Merlot are a great start to a new year...and healthy, right?

Going Strong

I have fought against doing this project for years, but decided this year I would try to take a photo a day for 365 days.  So far I am going strong...but it has only been one week, so we'll see...haha. This is harder than it seems,but has so many benefits.  First of all, I am  taking pictures for me without worrying about clients wants and needs.  This is also a way for me to get out of my box and take photos of things I would probably never photograph.  I am sure this will stretch me creatively and give me even more time getting to know my camera. I also love that this project becomes an instant photo journal of a year in my life.  I am not sure what I will do with the images in the end, but I have a few ideas. I will blog some of them (the good and the not so good), but I will try to leave out the ones that are boring.  I'll try to blog more often, but I can't promise anything because sometimes I just get lazy busy.  Hopefully I can keep up with this challenge.  Wish me luck.

Here are some photos from the first week of January.  Nothing very exciting, just shots from around our house:

We started 2010 out with a visit to the E.R. and a week of dentist visits:

 

See the second x-ray???  That white spot you see in front of the teeth is actually the piece of tooth that broke off and got stuck in her lip.  Ouch!

A typical Dallas Cowboy Sunday at our house:

This one has a future in braces:

and comedy:

Until next time, have a great weekend!