Must Have's...

Every now and then I get a list of things I want. That list of course isn't written down but instead, kept in a safe place.....my head!

If my husband saw my list, he would probably say "All I hear is 'I need this' between you and S." Yes, my daughter and I are girls and with that, we love to shop however, I'm not one to spend money without talking it over with my husband.

So, that list remains safely in my head...until I start to check the items off.

Here are my "must have" items right now:

1. I have Tori's 2 other books, so naturally I need this one!

2. And since my daughter is also a Tori fan, I need to get Tori's first children's book!

3. Yes, it's that time again.....my VS bra!



4. I'm not complicated. A simple N.Y.C. lipstick will work for me but in the color "Cafe", please!

5. Christian artist, Chasen's newest CD.....

mainly because I love this song....

6. This super cute and sexy summer dress from VS

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So, what's on your list of "Must Have's"?

I'm Going For It

With my photography, I love taking landscape pictures. I really enjoy it. It's fun! It's relaxing! It's just calming to me. To go out and take pictures for a living, I want to enjoy what I'm doing. I don't want to be stressed and I sure don't want to start to hate what I'm doing.

With landscapes, I feel nature cooperates. I find the shot and just take it. I don't have to tell it to pose this way or fix any one's hair or wait. Take the shot and move on.

However, my husband said that if I want to make money doing this, I will need to at least take children's portraits. That my friends, is seriously stepping out of my comfort zone. For two reasons:

1. I'm shy. Okay, not shy with children but those children do have parent's. I have a hard time talking to people. I clam up and my heart races. I'm not comfortable being around people I don't know. I'm afraid I'll say something stupid or there will be that awkward silence. Yeah, totally hate that!
2. I don't know if I will have the patience with other people's children. Something about me you don't know, I have a lack of patience. You see, my child is easy to photograph. She's my child. I tell her to pose this way or that way and she will. She's photogenic too. If she don't do what I want, I can say "Get you're butt over here and do as you're told" cause she's my child! :O) With someone else's kid though.....yeah, I don't think that would fly if those same words came out of my mouth. So what do I do?!

Well, I have friends who have kids with a wide variety of personalities. I can practice of them! So, today I was visiting one of my friends. She has a little girl who's a couple years old. Perfect! So I asked her if I could borrow her daughter for a photo session and of course she was all for it.

I also have my BFF's two boys, one that is my daughter's age and the other that is 4 yrs old. They have personalities that will be quite challenging but I am up for it. I'm sure it helps being friend's with the parents though. With this practice time, I will give my friends a CD with copies of the pictures and me with the rights to those pictures for marketing, of course.

I am getting excited about this though. Very nervous though cause I do not want this to become something I dread. If it does, I will have to stop cause my whole thing about taking pictures is the joy I get from it!

To All Mommy Bloggers.....

Wishing all the Mom's out ther a beautiful day with all the special people in your life. I hope it's a day filled with love, joy and special moments to add to the many years ahead!

Happy Mother's Day!

Six Word Saturday!

Mother/Daughter Tea Today At Church!

Today at my church, we are having a Mother/Daughter Tea Party to celebrate Mother's Day. I will be spending this time with my mom and my daughter. We're to bring special items that reminds us of our Mom's and of our Daughter's. We're also able to share some special memories if we want but as it sounded all good and all a couple weeks ago, I've become quite nervous about speaking in front of all these women that I think I'm gonna chicken out. I'll probably have flashbacks of High School when in Spanish class while reading an assignment out loud....in Spanish, might I add.....everyone would be saying "We can't hear you. Speak up!". Yeah, I don't want to relive that moment all over again ;O)

I also wanted to write up a poem but I never got the time for that. This has been quite the busy month for me which I'll share for another post.

So anyways, it should be a nice time!

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Now head on over to Cate's and see what's going on with other bloggers!

Five Question Friday!

1. What is your worst memory of your siblings?

In the Summertime when my brother and I were home alone while my parent's were at work, my brother would more or less torment me. Yes, that's the way I recall it. TORMENT! One of the worse things is when he would chase me around the house with my dad's BB gun and pull the trigger, laughing as he proclaims "It's not loaded!". Yeah, those were not fun days.


2. What was YOUR naughtiest childhood memory? (Must be something YOU did, no pawning it off on someone else!)

Naughtiest? Really? I was a good kid....no, seriously...I was! Let me think here for a moment though. hmmmm??? Let me come back to this one in a minute......

Okay...back again. I just remembered. I was over a friend's house when I was like 7 yrs old and my friend's brother had a BB gun and he had it set up in the back and he was shooting the back fence. He said I could shoot it once so I did and it ricocheted and hit their neighbor's bathroom window and it shattered. Whoops. Then my brother tattled on me. What a brat..LOL! I didn't get into trouble though. :O)


3. Where do you like to go to relax?

I like to plant my butt on the couch, veg and watch TV. However, if I had to go somewhere to relax, the ocean really is a calming place for me. Something like Hawaii or Key West. Kicked back and just sit at an outdoor restaurant and watch the ocean, maybe drinking a smoothie or something.


4. What was the last thing you won?

Uh....I think maybe a $1 on a lottery ticket...LOL! I know, lame.

5. If you could be on a game show, which would you choose?

Oh, yeah...I like Family Feud or The Price is Right although, I have already been to The Price is Right and didn't get chosen cause I'm too shy. They interview you first. They take 2 or 3 people at a time and ask you random questions and then you move on. If you get called from the audience, then obviously you know you got picked.....and I didn't :O( LOL

Timbeeeeer!

First, let me first start this off by saying...I LOVE TREES!!! Yes I do, so please don't take me wrong here. {Just had to interject this taken from a comment I got on FB the other day about this}

So, we have this pine tree in our backyard.

Meet Mr. Pine Tree....

Nice tree. Very big, shady and good for nature.

However, when we bought this house, our neighbor (the one right there on the other side of the fence. You can see their roof.) came knocking on our door the first week we moved in. She was on a mission. She introduced herself and immediately said, with an attitude, "You need to cut that tree down in your backyard. It's ruining our backyard with it's roots." Okay, first of all, if you look in her backyard, all there is is dirt. Second of all, why didn't they talk to the previous owner about this?

So, since the lady was oh so not friendly, we had a different tree removed instead. :o) The one in the front that the roots were destroying the yard.

Six years later, we are finally having Mr. Pine Tree removed. Not for the neighbors sake though. Instead, for the sake of my daughter's playhouse which seems to be getting damaged by the tree.

You see, one of the limbs from the tree is digging into the roof. This has created a lot of damage. Because of this, it has shifted the playhouse.


Shifted it so much that now, we can no longer shut the front door (below, you can see the door is no longer aligned.) And when the wind blows, you can hear the playhouse make creaking noises. Not a good sound to hear.

Also, the other issue is that we seem to struggle with our grass cause the pine needles are always falling on it and apparently grass doesn't grow good with pine trees.

So, this past Tuesday we had the tree people come out and start working on cutting the tree down. I was feeling terrible about it. This poor tree....it had no idea that it was facing execution. Geez...that sounds harsh :/

This tree is so big that they couldn't finish it all that day. We had to reschedule, which was for today but they had an emergancy {blah, blah, blah} so they had to reschedule again. This time for next Tuesday. Good thing we haven't paid them yet.

Anyways, this is our tree currently....

And, the funny thing is, we are having this tree removed mainly because that one limb is causing so much damage, you know...this limb...

And that limb is still resting in that same spot as we speak. The whole reason we called the tree people and the limb is still there. I was hoping it was going to be removed so we can see if the playhouse will shift back into it's regular place so we can see if the door will close.

So alas...we'll have to wait until next week cause apparently the guys need that limb to climb the tree to finish it off.

Living On The Edge

I would like to consider myself a thrill seeker. Not so much so as some people though. I love roller coasters and the sky coaster at Six Flags. Some people go to the extremes. Like climbing walls of rock, like El Capitan at Yosemite or sky diving.

In fact, my husband and I have been on a couple of the rides in Vegas at the top of the Stratosphere. One of those rides is no longer there. It was the roller coaster. {I youtubed.com it and found it here, if you wanted to see it from a riders view.} The other one that we went on is Big Shot. When I went on that ride, what I expected was the exact opposite of what happened.

Expected: From seeing this ride at other parks, just not so high up in the sky....I expected it to slowly take you up to the top and then drop you.

What happened: It creeped up a few inches and then SHOT us up in the air, hence the name Big SHOT!

Let's just say, I screamed bloody murder! It's bad enough we were already 921 feet up in the air, but to be shot up an additional 160 more feet at 45 mph, and not expect it? Honestly, you would have thought I would have seen the people go in front of us. No! They had it in a way that you don't get to see prior.

Well, when they came up with the two new rides, I confirmed that there was no way anyone would ever get me on those two rides.

First, you have Insanity. It looks like a claw and at the end of each tip of the claw would be you, in a seat, looking down at everyone 909 feet below. Then it starts to spin you. Yeah, I don't think so.



Then, you have X-Scream. This one Rachael ray went on. That one takes you over the edge of the tower and looks as if it will keep going. Another one that I say "I don't think so!"



But have you seen the latest one? SkyJump! People just keep pushing the limits with these rides and I feel like I'm just becoming more and more of a woose! This is just nuts....or as the one ride's name is "Insanity!"

So, are you a thrill seeker? Are you like me or would you try any of these rides?