Willing Models

We spent an hour this morning trying out my new studio lights. It's only been a day and I'm already in love! They are so much fun to use and I can see how they are really going to change/improve my photography. I have lots of plans for them. There was a miscommunication when I ordered them and somehow I ended up with only one light stand, not the two I thought I ordered. So these were done with only one light, hence the shadow on one side of the face, which is kind of cool. When I get both of those lights going though it is going to be magic! I'm also jittery with the anticipation of shooting outside with them. The battery pack that the company sells is $300, which after buying the lights themselves was too much, but handy dandy awesome husband Darrel is going to fix me up with what I need. (Isn't he great?!)

It's really amazing what you can get your kids to do for a few jelly bellies. I actually got a portrait of Jack looking at the camera, hooray! Julie was a bit cranky today so we didn't attempt to take her portrait, that will have to wait for another day.

Now only to clean out a section of the basement to become more of a permanent studio set up for me.
Life is good!

Time Well Spent

Darrel took the boys along on a round of golf, Julie is sleeping, and I am scrapping. I'm supposed to be sweeping, changing sheets, cleaning the bathroom, but I haven't been. hehehe

It Always Has Been About the Shoes

Apparently Julie likes shoes too.

Reality

Lily, my beloved friend who I haven't seen in seven years, (*sigh* I fear that I will not ever get to Japan to see her -at least until my kids are grown), posted recently on her blog about reality. Life as it really is. I admired her for it, the being real, not always putting up the cheery, happy pics and ignoring the less than perfect things about life. I agree with you Lily about calling a spade a spade and not putting the "bling bling" on life. That really made me smile when I read that by the way.

I think I did do this more when I first started blogging, but haven't in a while, I kind of get on the roll of just posting pics, closing my eyes, mentally going "lalalalala, what I do not acknowledge doesn't exist" and going about the day to day grind. Not to be a downer, but mainly to show solidarity with Lily and be able to look back at this and smile on the less than perfectness about life as it is right now, here it goes, some of the rough and tough things about right now:

1. Eric. He screams and has breakdowns all the live long day. He is driving me crazy. I find myself yelling at him a lot. Which probably compounds his issues. It makes me feel like a failure at mothering. Like I'm so bad at nurturing that the only way my child can get attention is to scream and yell. Darrel says it is a stage, which is probably the case, but I feel like I need to come up with some sort of a way to change this dynamic or I'm going to lose my mind. (Or punch a hole in a wall.)

2. Spirituality. I feel stagnant, dead in some ways. I'm feeling so worn out, tired etc. that I just don't care, don't care about a lot of things, and it's been that way for a while. Particularly about helping other people, service etc. I have a really cynical attitude about it all right now, "like who's served ME lately???" Which sounds horrible, is horrible. And I can name very quickly awesome, kind, fabulous people who have been wonderful to us, so I can see that love coming my way, but you know, I'm just done right now.

3. Marriage.  Maybe it's the fact that we are seven years in, but man, this has been a tough year. If that's the case -that it is unlucky number seven, then I'm looking forward to Nov. 9 when it will be 8 years and we can move on. I don't think the flip of the calendar will bring the reprieve I hope for though. Just more talking, working, figuring it all out, plugging away at it. We are the same in so many ways, but in the ways we are different we drive each other cuckoo. I worry often that we are not going to make it.

4. Family. Douglas Coupland  was on to something when he wrote All Families are Psychotic. Mine is, well maybe not psychotic, but crazy yes. I can say that because the ones who aren't crazy read this blog and the ones who are don't, lol! I guess what is hard is that I really can't rely/count/expect/have much support there. And more than that, they don't get much from me. What sucks is that I feel orphaned.

5. Time. When do all these women who have multiple children, keep beautiful, clean and uncluttered homes, make a go of fulfilling careers, run etsy businesses on the side, attend Relief Society meetings, workout, etc etc do all the stuff they do? Seriously! I've seen their blogs and I hate them. Actually more like I hate me because of them, why can't I do all that stuff and do it really well? Why am I so ordinary, untalented, unaccomplished? (and fat?) I realize that this kind of comparing is dangerous, and is actually a sin, because  of the mental burden it can place on you, but really can't Becky Higgins show me her house in a complete disaster on that blog of hers? Maybe I should put a comment on her blog saying that SHE should do a reality post like this so I can feel better about my reality. *snicker*

6. Finding the Joy. Hand in hand with the issue of time comes the worthiness of what I spend my time doing. I love photography, it brings me a lot of joy. I put a lot of energy, mental, physical and emotional, into it. Even more so now that I've taken the baby steps of doing it as a business. So is the joy I get out of it worth the expenditure of energy -both for me and my family. The answer to this flip flops a lot for me. There's times when I think I should run full tilt with photography because you should do what you have passion for and there's time when I think I should make my little family and our happiness more of my passion.  Will the joy I feel with photography spill into other areas of my life and make us happier or am I just getting so busy that I'm losing sight of what's really important.

And  as Lily ended her post, "we do what we do." Life goes on. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Which right there makes me laugh, because I can never not laugh about that movie: the length alone, the crazy music, playing cards with Aaron and mocking that music"dowoowoo duh duh duh" hilarious!

Book Review: The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners

This was a charming little novel, well written in many ways but a smidge on the simplistic side. Ok, well more than a smidge. Deep Blue Sea is a story of two sisters separated from their mother, Lyra, for ten years. Post the death of their father, from a brain tumor no less, sixteen year old Pell decides it's time to go to the Italian island where Lyra has been hiding / vacationing and bring her back.  While offering some really interesting nuggets of wisdom the book does make 16 and 14 year olds, Pell and Lucy, wise, capable, wealthy, forgiving, etc. beyond on their years. They really aren't overly believable as characters. And okay, I know Lyra has some mental illness issues but on the other hand she made some really bad choices, you wanted to smack her up the head. I don't often feel that way about novel characters, but yeah, I did. Maybe it's just that she seems not real because her choices are SO irrational. Also it does seem that between this family, the family that's the girls' main support back home and Lyra's friends on the island, there is an inordinate amount of tragedy befalling everyone. How many tragic pasts can there be in one novel? That being said, I did quite enjoy as I read it. In fact I read it over the course of one Sunday afternoon and part of the evening (it is a quick read.) Think of it as brain candy and you too can be entertained for a short time. But if you try to delve too deeply into content, themes and metaphor you'll start to become annoyed.

Sweet Brothers

They don't always see eye to eye, these two, but they are good brothers for eachother. Love watching them together!

Craziness x5

A few of the outtakes from our family photos. These won't make it on the wall, but I do love them none the less.

Goin' Private

Hey,
Given that I now use blogger for a business purpose, I would like to be able to control access to this, my personal blog, a little bit more. If you are a family member, friend, or even acquaintance that keeps up with me and my family via this blog please drop me a line in the next week or so (kirstenaanderson@yahoo.ca) and I would love to add you to the list of invited guests.

Thanks! Kirsten

Harvest Days Trade Show

On Saturday I had a booth at the Harvest Days Trade Show. It was really fun meeting people in the community, displaying my work and getting my name out there. As any photog will tell you, it is a little nerve racking putting your personal work out there, that you've invested your time, talent and artistic vision in. But overall I had really positive responses. (Sorry for the three pics instead of one, I wanted to shoot without flash so that meant using my 50mm lens, and the booths were packed too tight for me to get in farther back than this.)

My other good news is I'm shooting a family session tomorrow, can't wait, it's going to be FUN!

Family Photo

Once again, we attempted the insanity of a family photo. As a photographer taking your own family photo is super difficult, you can't focus on just looking good, you're trying to entertain your children, compose the shot etc.The craziness was compounded by the presence of milliions of mosquitoes...millions I tell you! Many thanks to Marta for being the extra set of hands here!

I Stand Corrected

A month or two ago I mentioned here that they were building this place near us. I thought it would be too scary for the kids, I was wrong. Well, a smidge. At first they were a little timid of these life size, loud and moving dinosaurs. And then they were excited, running down the boardwalk to find the next one. It was a really fun family outing, we wished we had arrived earlier so that we could have spent more time. So, if you come visit us, we'll take you. How's that for a lure to our little town! Actually we are super sad that it wasn't open in time to take our family who visited last month, that would have been really fun. Oh well, there's always the next visit, right?