The last day of April.

This was the day I found a new app that made my photos dreamy and dramatic. And I love both of those things.

April the third

Well, my pictures uploaded backwards, so we'll start with the end of the day! Chris and I met his co-worker Jasmine for appetizer and drinks at the Riviera. We talked photography, work, and tater tots.

Earlier that day, I went to Bed Bath and Beyond to finally load up on some much-needed spice containers. Our cabinet had become filled with little bags of spices from Sprouts that had no permanent home. (And I still had a bunch of 20 percent coupons to spare, as you can see.)

I also got rid of tons of old spices we had. I hear spices are bad after like six months, and I'm sure most of the spices we had in there were at least 3 years old. I won't ever buy in bulk again, unless the jar it comes in is super cute. (Like the organics brand at Sprouts. Love those glasses.)

Got a new pair of sunglasses. I apparently left mine in the abandoned field near Courtney and David's house last night. Sigh. I totally broke the 'No Dumping' rule!

And to start off the morning, we had Jack's wake up call. It's hard to escape it.

And there we have it: April 3rd in reverse!

March the second

Today was ridiculously productive. Somehow having a good four hour chunk of time, along with four backed up episodes of Grey's Anatomy on sidereal does wonders for productivity. I finished most of the most recent book interior I've been working on for awhile. With the completion of my research paper last night, that's two of my big projects done. Woo-hoo! And my next big projects are photo editing families, which is just so much more fun than research papers and book design.

Since Chris worked late tonight, I even managed to get to some much needed chores. The kitchen is once again clean and the sink is clear. Our floor is vacuumed. I've got more clean clothes than I had at the start of the day. It's good to clean.

Another big productive thing that happened today was that I finally figured out where all the hair ties I give Jack end up going. Jack loves hair ties. He will amuse himself for hours with a single one. But inevitably, he loses them, within 24 hours. It had gotten to the point where I had to go buy new packs at Target because I no longer had any for myself. So he had gone through three in the last day alone, so I began searching again, even though I've looked in every nook and cranny of our little condo already. They're really aren't many places these things could go. I was searching behind the TV stand, in all the cords from the TV, DVD player, Wii, etc., and I noticed, in the glass of the stand, the reflection of black and brown circles. Jackpot. It still took me a bit of time to figure out where the reflection was reflecting from, and after moving some of the consoles on the bottom shelf, I finally found them. They'd been sliding under the glass and getting stuck under the stand. So glad to finally have that mystery taken care of. And Jack was overjoyed to have ten hair ties all at once. Though he's probably got them all stuck under there again.

Here's the whole setup. Can you spot the hidden hair ties? ;)

February the twenty-ninth

It was cold in our house that night.

Our little cat people

Our cats have always been raised by humans. The people who fostered them before we got them said they were found at about ten days old with no mama cat in sight. They were bottle fed by the foster parents until they were big enough for food. They were also, apparently, half raised by the couple's giant dog.

All this is to say, our cats are super social. They are not your ordinary cats, who like to go find their own quiet place to sleep the day away, and only want to come out for food when it's convenient. Our cats want to be in whatever room we're in. If we move rooms, they move rooms. If we have to keep them out of a room we're in (like the office, because they get behind the desk and reek havoc), they wait outside the door for us. They come with us to the kitchen, the garage, and the bathroom. They sleep next to us, on us, or curled up in the crooks of our arms.

Tonight, while I worked on my research paper at the table, Sawyer decided to hop up for a nap. As he dozed, he occasionally reached out to touch my face. Then he fell asleep with his arm in the air. Somehow he still looked comfy.

Jack did the same thing a few weeks before, just without the arm straight up. These guys are so ridiculous.

February the twenty-seventh: Rainy Day

The end.

February the twenty-third

Today's picture of the day is brought to you by the produce section of the Rancho San Diego Ralphs. As nothing of great interest happened to me today (and I really don't want to post another picture of my cats... I feel I'm still teetering on the verge of crazy cat lady), I decided to photograph the most interesting thing I purchased today.

What is it, you ask? Your guess is as good as mine. It didn't have a label, but I found it nestled with mustard greens and collard greens. I thought it might be a purple version of one of those, but the leaves don't really match. It looks more like kale leaves, actually, but the regular kale was nowhere to be found around it. It doesn't really matter anyway though, as I'm just going to use the bunch for a green smoothie tomorrow. I might use some leftover leaves to try making baked kale chips for the first time, too (if it really is kale), but I got a small bunch so I don't think much will be leftover after the smoothie. Mmmmmm, smoothies....

February the twenty-second: Leaf Watching

The story of today:

Chris asked me how my day was. I rattled off a list of things I'd done, including tutoring, my CA professional development meeting, what I had for lunch, leaf watching with the cats, working on homework, and taking a nap.

Sometime around 11pm, he was surfing through his Instagram feed and started laughing out loud. "You really did leaf watch with the cats!"He had found the above picture, and was highly amused that this was an actual event I had photographed during my day. What can I say? I liked the colors of the porch, wood floor, Sawyer, and my shoes. Seemed like a perfect photo op to me.

February the twentieth: The day we celebrated the presidents

On this delightfully extended weekend, Chris decided we needed to get out of the house to do something. So after stopping by the hospital to drop off lunch for our friend Emily (whose son Everett is being monitored at the hospital for a case of bronchitis), and after a quick house cleaning/editing some sneak peak newborn pics for Jen and Justin, we headed northeast to Ramona. Our goal was to find good shoot locations. We found diddly in this regard. However, this is a cool tree-enclosed path we found at the base of Iron Mountain.

After Iron Mountain, we stumbled on a park that looked promising, Dos Picos, but as luck would have it, we pulled into the parking lot right when they were about to lock the gate. Everywhere else we found that looked cool was surrounded by barbed wire. Darn you, you selfish people who own land that just sits there becoming overgrown with weeds glistening in the sunset that only benefit a photographer!

So the only pictures I got today were at Iron Mountain: Chris trying to capture a pretty weed, and the landscape facing the sun.

Sunday Funday

Picture(s) of the day for February 19th

Since Kris and Becky were in town, Chris and I lugged our sorry behinds out of bed early (for a weekend), and met them in North Park for breakfast. Because Chris is trendy like that, he picked a hip, tiny cafe called Parkhouse Eatery. It turned out to be pretty cool, but I'm glad we got there early: otherwise, we would have been standing in the street waiting for a table, like the poor schmucks you can see in the picture below. Sorry, poor schmucks. I did feel a little guilty as we sat around talking for about half an hour after they'd cleared our plates, but hey, we got up early (for a weekend) to get that table.

Kris and Becky wanted to walk around Fashion Valley for a bit before getting in the car for their long ride back, and we stopped at Robbin's Brothers along the way to get our rings cleaned, since it's so close to Fashion. Since I now have a cool camera phone, I took a shot of the bathroom door, something I've always wanted to do at Robbin's Brothers because of this:

(This morning, Chris asked me in a weird voice: "Do you know you're tweeting pictures to Next to Me Studios?" And I said "Yes, of course, I think I know where I'm tweeting, sheesh." And he replied that Robbin's Brothers had re-tweeted my picture tweet, which we both thought was pretty cool. And also? Free publicity to a diamond ring store. Heck yeah. If that's not awesome fortune for a photographer, I don't know what is.

At home: I tried to mimic Sam the Cooking Guy's salt and pepper shrimp, only it came out awful because I used the same amount of salt and pepper that the recipe for a pound of shrimp called for, even though I only had about 15 shrimp left in the bag. Because I'm a smartie like that. Chris came in and discovered a shrimp on the floor, that Jack must have jumped on the counter to get and disliked enough to knock it off and then run away. Chris rinsed away the salt and pepper and broke it into pieces and then Jack was all over it. Sawyer, on the other hand, kept looking at Chris like, "Are you freaking kidding me? I'm not eating that," every time Chris held it out to him. I think he's very sensitive to the garlic smell. So Jack ate the whole shrimp by himself.

Later that night, Ryan came over and the three of us had a good old fashioned camp out at the dining room table with our laptops. I got through almost half of Trinity's newborn photos while we dined on carrots and broccoli, Trader Joe's cookies, and delightful peach champagne. Chris also taught me how to use the remote on our new cameras, but those are pictures for another day. The cats, meanwhile, spent a rewarding night creating epic scenarios involving the two bags Ry brought with him. I don't know why we spend money on real cat toys.

February the eighteenth: Trinity's newborn shoot

One of my favorite types of shoots is newborns when the newborns belong to our friends. I don't know why, I just feel much more comfortable squishing our friends' babies into cute poses than I do with stranger's newborns. Weird, huh? 

Trinity was splendid all afternoon. She slept soundly almost the entire time and let us dress and undress and headband and re-headband her the whole time. And did I mention she's so little and squishy? I want to go back and do a whole second shoot with her because she was so darn cute!

February the second

There is not an ounce of pink or red in this photo, but for some reason it makes me think of Valentine's Day. I think it's that shade of blue mixed with cream in the sky, and the richer blue tones that show up in the shadow of the trees. Whatever it is, it makes me happy inside today.

When I got home today, it was just in time to see the late afternoon light start pouring in the west end of our house. We have this tall double window over the stairs and it lets in gorgeous oranges and yellows that my camera can't even capture. I tried, but it ended up looking more pink. The kittens seem to like lounging in the warm light from that window; this is where they usually are waiting when I get home.

Things I'm excited for in February:

1. Finishing one of my tutoring commitments and getting to come home semi-early on Mondays and Wednesdays (and not be working until 7pm in Imperial Beach).

2. Starting my Master's classes. Not looking forward to the homework, but definitely loving the idea of being immersed in technology ideas to better my classroom.

3. Seeing what Cody's designed for our new brand and website. (Very, very much.)

4. Meeting the newest Aubrey baby, who should be arriving any day from here to Valentine's!

It may be the shortest month, but it looks like we'll be packing a lot in!

February the first

1. Impromptu dinner (tried a new white bean dish; it called for way too much olive oil, which is why it's seaping out of the beans in the pic. :( But the shrimp came out okay.)
2. Dark chocolate almonds during editing... I feel fatter already.
3. Empty classroom. Today was delightfully kid-free. (For the most part.)
4. Chris scrutinizes the latest office project: how to mount six sheets of 3x2 corkboard for a massive bulletin board.

January the twenty-third

Picking out preliminary design ideas for our new business look. You may have heard that 2012 is the year of the dragon, but it is actually the year of Next to Me Studios. Oh, yes.

January the 21st

It rained a lot today. When that happens, the cats sit up on the windowsill and go on rain watch for us. Then they get cabin fever (not that they're ever outside when it's sunny out either), rum amock, get into cabinets, and generally freak out a bit. I had to lock them up in separate rooms for awhile so I could get some cooking and baking done without Jack jumping on top of the fridge for an aerial view and Sawyer scaling my legs for a view at all.

But since I've been sitting at the kitchen table, downloading more fun apps for my splendid new iphone and editing some of Jen's maternity shots, they've been snuggled up on the chairs next to me, dead asleep.

Well, they were until a couple minutes ago, when I absentmindedly scratched Jack behind the ears and he took it as an invitation to climb up onto my lap.

Then he moved to a half on the table, chin on my mouse hand position, and that's about where we are now.

January the 20th

To sum up: Friday, computer back ups, new Big Bang Theory episode, and cute kittens.

January the 19th: Better than Christmas + my birthday.

It's iPhone day, hurray! I've been downloading apps and taking pictures up to wazoo. Definitely in love with the thing. Chris loves that I won't be bugging him for his iPhone now. Yes, it is a very good day for both of us.

January the 16th

We had fun with Jen, Justin, and Zoey doing Baby #2's photo shoot. Zoey was a leeeeetle crazy, but not so much that we couldn't get a few real smiles out of her. She seems to have gone from super duper shy and not wanting to look at the camera to super duper fun and thinking it's a game to not look at the camera. Two is a definitely an interesting age to photograph.

January the eleventh (the one with post-Christmas)

There were a few things on our lists this year we'd really been hoping to get but didn't. So a couple weeks after Christmas, Chris and I both put in orders for the things we simply could not live without. 

For Chris, it was more camera gear. A freaking ridiculously sturdy tripod, a new camera bag to take on minor trips, and... something else that I forget now. But it was important to him.

For me, it was my iphone accessories! I still have 15 days (and counting) until I actually can buy my phone, but I wanted to be prepared for that blessed day two Fridays from now. I got my Speck fabric case (it's summery!) and an armband case for when I go running. It will be awesome to run without clutching my ipod in one hand and my phone in the other.

Like how Sawyer camera bombed my photo here?

January the tenth (the one with the hedgehog)

Sawyer loves my socks. He's learned how to paw open my sock drawer and take them out, too, which means we find socks all over the house. Even in the kitchen sink. (Although, technically that was Jack who left it there, since Sawyer can't figure out how to get up on the counters.)

A few weeks ago Chris I loaned my old roommate Jenna some of our snow clothes for a trip she was taking, and she recently returned everything in a couple bags. Our nosy cats got into the bags, of course, and Sawyer fell in love with a pair of very soft, very thick, very expensive snow socks that were folded inside each other. For about a day, he carried those folded socks around the house, slept next to them, batted them around. I decided he needed his own little sock-sized stuffed animal.

Enter the hedgehog.

Found him at Target the other day. Just about the size of a pair of good snow socks folded inside each other. So I bought him and tossed him in front of Sawyer when I got home to see what would happen.

I think he likes it:

Disclaimer: After the first 45 seconds, it's much of the same. Please don't feel you have to watch all the way through. I'm just too lazy to throw this video in imovie and cut it down.