And now, a note from Marshall Erikson:

I never understood this little bit about the feeling guilty about return address labels(though I find myself singing Marshall's little songs in my head quite often... going down to the basement today, with my laundry and a roll of quarters....). Until today, when we got a donation request from a children's cancer fund, complete with personalized return address labels with a fall theme for Christopher Trementozzi. Ohhhhhhhh...

So there was this one time...

... that I woke up on Sunday morning to find a huge, puffy, itchy bug bite on my abdomen. It was bright red. And warm to the touch. About the width of two half dollars and the height of one.

Actually, why paint a word picture when I can just show you an iphone picture?

I do not like it. Not one bit.

We're actually only guessing it's a mosquito bite. It's the closest to pictures I've found online of "severe reactions" to that kind of bite. I guess normal mosquito bites aren't quite this bad? I wouldn't know, I've never gotten one (that I'm aware of), which is very surprising to Chris, since I've worked seven summers at a camp in the heart of Jamul. This one is far and away the worst bite I've ever had from anything, and I've been anti-histamining and cortisone creaming up the last three days. But it's still here, and still itching like crazy!

He makes us laugh.

Happy Friday, everyone! We made it through to another one!

My weekend will be consisting of a two-year-old's birthday party, taking the gigantic pile of recycling to the center (seriously, I'm not sure all the bags will fit in one car), Costco shopping for my Birthday: Family Edition coming up next weekend, photo editing pictures of the cute Cowen family, trying to make more headway with TPA 4 and the video that goes with it, and starting on my final PowerPoint presentation for my final week of class before I finally finish my credential.

Wow. I'm exhausted just thinking about it all.

I'm going to go start the weekend with a nap...

Birthday Time.

So I turned 27 a few days ago. And since I've been a terrible picture taker of my own life lately, I threw Old Faithful (a.k.a. my first Canon digital point and shoot) into my purse to document the day. (More on that first picture later.)

First up: the morning shot. This is how our mornings look. Chris or I let the cats into our room sometime after we wake up, and they run in and cuddle with us and try to get into the sink because they're weird little water babies like that. At some point of every morning, I look over and Chris is on the floor cuddling them. I know, awwwww. :)

(Please excuse our unmade bed.)

August 8 was a Monday, so we Woodmanites kicked the week off right by ditching our classroom and going to BJ's! We had the whole outside to ourselves, which was great because the outside is awesome.

This picture reminds me that I still haven't posted the photos from our rehearsal dinner last year, which was held in this same awesome outdoor area.

My co-worker friends know what I like. Alya, as she slapped this down on the table for me: "Drinks are on me this week." Love it! (And I've already used half the card.)

Phuong always likes to do flowers for special events, so I got this beautiful bouquet to bring home with me!

The kittens weren't so sure about it. Or at least, not sure why I set it on the floor to take pictures of it.

Jack says: "These flowers pain me, as they are blocking the way to my food dish."

One of my favorite presents? This awesome camera strap Melody Holz made me! I have coveted a cute patterned camera strap for so long! And look! It's in our wedding colors!

Sometime after my hot photographer husband came home from work, I said, "Hot photographer husband, how about taking some 27th birthday pictures of me out on this here porch?" And he said sure. Then he led me far away from our porch, down the street, and into a little grassy area in the Elk's Lodge parking lot. (And we left the front door unlocked while we were gone! Sorry, Paul B.!)

Sometimes it really pays to have a hot photographer husband. If you don't have one yet, I highly recommend it.

Sidenote: Why doesn't my hair always look like this?! See how both sides are flipping in? This is not what normally happens. 

This was a timer shot. Chris is giving me the "why did you just throw yourself onto the ground look?" and I'm giving the "these jeans are so tight, it's hard to sit like a lady" look.

That night, after homework and photo editing, we went down the street to Outback Steakhouse for dessert. And there we had what is going on my list of favorite desserts ever: the Sidney Sinful Sundae. I'm not even going to describe it. But it was so good (and so huge) that when I found I could only eat half of it, I was incredibly sad. So sad, in fact, that I totally boxed up ice cream, brought it home, and ate it after work the next day.

And it was just as good then.

Cuties.

We've been doing a lot of kid shoots lately until our "wedding season" starts in September. And for a long time, we only had families with boys coming to us for photos. These boys were generally in the 2-3 year old range, and while completely adorable, they were a little hard to get to sit still for some modeling. Sigh. 

So I was excited when a friend of Sarah and Kristen's (and I think she used to work with Chris back in his Long's college days?) asked us to photograph her two girls! Older sister was completely up for a little modeling session, and baby sister, while a little cantankerous throughout the shoot, did break through with a few grand smiles everyone once in a while. We also did an entire family session with the girls, their parents, favorite aunt, and grandparents, and I absolutely love the color scheme mom picked out for the whole group- purples, pinks, and blues look amazing for a family shoot!

We actually just did a second shoot for them, to celebrate big sister's fifth birthday, and I've been working on those edits for the past week or so- part of the reason I wanted to go back and look at these first shots. I'm logging off to finish those edits now, and then tomorrow Chris and I are off to Redlands again for another big family shoot with the Cowens!

This is a scratch free zone.

We finally got the Soft Paws from Amazon. I waited two days for the kittens to be sufficiently asleep before attempting to get them on. Jack wasn't too thrilled when he woke up when we were half way through with one paw. Sawyer could've cared less while we put them on; actually, Chris did Sawyer's all by himself. 

And we've been scratch free over here ever since.

And eventually they'll forgive us for the whole thing, right?

Next to Me Studios

So this evening (as my husband and I sit on the couches with our laptops, watching Netflixed shows, in our previously mentioned date night in), I did some research and used some of my internet skillz to figure out the whole blog button conundrum. The result? Two brand spanking new blog buttons, right over there on that sidebar. They link to our main website and to our blog (which ain't nothing fancy yet, but soon). So if you're a reader of this blog and didn't know that my hot husband and I have a photography business, well today's your lucky day. Please check us out, and if you want, you can even leave us a comment about how much you love us. You know, if you want. ;)

And if anyone's wondering where we got our name from, Next to Me was derived, after many months of not coming up with anything good, when I told Chris to listen to his vast collection of music for some inspiration. Check out Sleeping at Last, I told him. We played a lot of their stuff at our wedding, and they're quite poetic and romantic and whimsical. So he did. And the next thing I knew, he was leaning in and whispering in my ear, "Next to Me," and I heard the line sung right at that moment. It was love at first listen.

Next to Me means a couple of things to us. It's symbolic of the photos we take, the bride and groom who are standing next to each other in front of their friends and family, and the families standing next to each other making funny faces and loving on their kids. And it's pretty specific to us, as we are pretty much always next to each other, on our laptops usually, working on editing or homework or researching or just being creative in some way. So it fit in all these ways that we realized right away.

Our business has really taken off in the last couple of months. We've begun booking weddings frequently. We've got two engagement sessions this weekend alone. We generally have 2-3 photo sessions on our editing list at any given time. It's great fun, something we both love doing together, and we're excited to see what the coming year will bring us with our little studio.

So please check us out if you haven't already. And like I said, don't be shy about leaving us a little love note!