My New Toy!

So I finally broke down and bought a ring flash and I absolutely LOVE it!  I can’t wait to use it for my photo sessions.  It arrived yesterday and I got to play with it a little bit last night.  So much fun!

Looking forward to playing with this gadget

XOXO

Kim

Atkins’ Family Portraits

Well… this might become a family tradition…..though I didn’t do it LAST year I DID do it the year before.  I drag all of my studio photography equipment to my parents house for Thanksgiving and TRY to get some pictures of the kids (my niece and nephews).  I usually try to drag my brothers and their wives in there too.

I was able to get a few cute ones this year, though SOME were reluctant :p

Thad and Jenny were willing   My family rocks!  I love my bro Thad and his wife Jenny

My little baby nephew Cole was all smiles for the camera.  What a CUTIE-PIE!  How adorable is he?!

This is my niece Lilly and my sister-in-law Jenny.  Lilly was being a stinker and didn’t want to have her picture taken.  So Jenny was trying to coax her by being in the picture too.  I loved this shot.

Here’s the little stinker   This was the only picture I got of her looking at the camera.  She’s usually pretty good about me taking her picture, but I think having the backdrop and the lights set up really put her “on the spot”.  This is one of the main reasons I prefer to do on-location photography of children in a park or backyard and get candid shots.  Sometimes they just “clam up” and there isn’t much you can do but make the best of it   She’s still a little cutie-pie ain’t she?

TREY MAN!  He is SUCH a “cheeser”!  He didn’t want to do it at first, but then he wandered out and said, “Okay! I’ll go I GUESS!”  He stood there and said “CHEESE!” over and over again LOL!  He’s a good kid

Alas I had to post another pic of Cole because he’s so little and adorable and man…. they just grow so quickly!  I remember when Trey was this tiny.

I love my family so very much and I am so glad that they are willing to be my guinea pigs when it comes to me being a Shudderbug

I’ll be posting some of my OTHER brother and his kids when I finish editing them.

Hope you enjoyed!

XOXOX

Kim

‘Tis the Season…..

Well it’s that time of year, for decorating, crafts, baking and shopping!

I’ve decided to go through some of my Christmas decorations this year and get rid of some stuff so I can decorate more “simply”.  I’ve had a bunch of “mish-mash” decorations for years and years now.  A lot of hand-me-downs that are tattered, broken etc.  I decided this year to simplify my decorations by going with a plain wreath with green LED lights and two wire/ivy trees with white LED lights on top of the piano.  I decided to go with LED this year.  While they cost more upfront they use a fraction of the electricity as regular lights do.  I’m kind-of a Christmas light freak so I figured I would save where I could.

I put this decoration together the other night after buying these two little trees at Fred Meyer for $9.99 a piece.  The planter is a Pottery Barn planter that I’ve had sitting outside since this past summer with nothing in it.  It was a gift from a family friend.  The silver ornaments are leftover from a few years ago as is the ribbon.  I’ve decided on a green and silver theme with a hint of red.  I have a couple of other “projects” up my sleeve that I will be blogging about later (once I buy the supplies to create them).

I am almost done with my Christmas shopping this year and it’s only December 1st!  I decided to get a jump start and I did a LOT of my shopping online this year.  I’ve been really happy with the results.  I’ve gone out to Christmas shop only once and it was NOT on Black Friday (NO WAY!).  I only have one more person to buy for (whom I am waiting for to give me some IDEAS).  Other than that I have a couple of silly stocking stuffer things to get.  I am really happy that I will be able to enjoy December baking and doing crafts instead of running back and forth from the mall and shopping center

Speaking of CRAFTS!!!  This is a little project I started last week.  I’ve had this pad of Holiday scrapbooking paper for a couple of years now.  I’ve used a few pieces here and there for cards and whatnot, but I’m not really into scrapbooking so I’ve been trying to figure out ways to use this beautiful paper (either that or give it away!).  I decided to cut up the 12×12 sheets into little strips to fold and make gift tags.  But I couldn’t stop there!  I cut little white squares of paper and used my Holiday rubber stamp collection to stamp images onto the paper.  After that I used an old paint brush, some craft glue and my Martha Stewart glitter to jazz them up a bit.  I may have gotten a little carried away…..but I was having so much FUN with this!  Aren’t they cute?!?!

I think the snowflakes are my favorites!  Some of them I drew myself, like this one.  I just drew the shape lightly with a pencil and painted the glue on before sprinkling the glitter.  The photo doesn’t show how sparkly and glittery they are.  They’re really cute!

This snowman turned out pretty cute too!  This one is from one of my rubber stamps.  Unfortunately I had to stop using the stamps because my stamp pads were all nasty from being in storage.  The foam was starting to disintegrate and make the stamping process pretty sloppy.

This was a great project for my ADD personality.  It gave me something fun to do for several hours a couple nights in a row and now I have a nice little collection of hand-made gift tags!

Happy crafting everyone!  Have a wonderful Holiday Season!

XOXOX

Kim

Pecan Pie for Thanksgiving

Oh how I do love to bake during the Holidays!  I don’t like to cook (I can, I just don’t enjoy it as much).  But I DO love baking pies, cookies and pastries to share with and give away to my loved ones during the Holidays.  It really is a warm-fuzzy for me.  I turn my Pandora radio onto Holiday music, plug my headphones in and bake the night away.

That’s what I did for my Thanksgiving Pecan Pie this year.  It turned out DELICIOUS and it was fun to make.  I decided to document it with my camera this year.

• Preheat your oven to 375º
• Prepare a pastry for a 9 inch one crust pie
• 1/3 cup plus 1 Tbs shortening
• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 to 3 tablespoons cold water

I mixed the dry ingredients (flour and salt) together.  Then I added the shortening and used a pastry blender (which I highly recommend because it’s so much easier) to blend the shortening in with the flour and salt.  The trick with this pie crust is to blend and blend until there is no longer a “powdery” consistency in the flour.  You want it all to be absorbed by the shortening, until it looks like large crumbs.  Then I added 3 Tbs of water sprinkling it on one at a time and tossing with a fork.  Then I gathered all the dough together into a ball and squished it out flat.  I put it on my floured counter top and rolled it out to about 1/4 inch thick.

It can be tricky getting your pastry into your pie plate without it falling apart.  I usually place my rolling pin in the center of the pastry and roll one half of it over the rolling pin then I place my pie plate right beside it and use the rolling pin to drag it up over the plate.  Once I got it in the pie plate I pushed it down around the bottom before trimming off the excess leaving about an inch hanging over.  Then I folded the extra underneath before putting creases all the way around.

Next it was time to get out the BEAST (aka my kick-ass Kitchenaid) to mix the ingredients for the pie filling.  You can always use a hand-mixer or beater if you don’t have a beast like mine

• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup stick butter or margarine
• 1 cup Karo syrup
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 large eggs

I then mixed all the above ingredients until it was smooth.  After that I added the pecans.  The recipe calls for 1 cup of pecans but I usually just put the whole bag in and I haven’t had a single complaint yet!   I would recommend using a spoon or spatula to mix in the nuts as my mixer tends to pulverize them :p

I took the empty pie shell and put it on the oven rack and poured the filling in.  After that was done I made a “tent” out of aluminum foil to place over the top.  It’s my experience when baking pies with such a high sugar content they tend to burn or scorch on top really easily.  I baked my pie for the first 35 minutes with the foil on and for the final 10-12 I removed the foil so the top would brown a little bit.  But keep your eye on it once you take the foil off because it will turn brown really fast.  Bake your pie for 40-50 minutes until the center is set.  The pie is done when you give it a half-turn and the center barely jiggles.  It can jiggle a little bit because the pie will continue to cook after you take it out of the oven.

Taaaadaaaa!  A delicious Pecan Pie for the whole family to enjoy!  It was WONDERFUL!

Happy Holidays everyone!  Share your love and caring by baking goodies for your loved ones this season   The “Mmmmmmm!” sound is a gift in and of itself

XOXOX

Kim

It’s time for PIE!

So every year for the past several year I am in charge of pies for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I kind-of volunteered myself for the task when I offered to do it one year.  I had so much fun and the pies came out SO good that I’ve been doing it ever since.  For Thanksgiving I usually make pumpkin and pecan and sometimes apple too.  For Christmas it’s pecan and apple for sure!  Although I’ve been dabbling in the cheesecake department lately and last year’s cheesecake came out AWESOME!

Anywho…here’s a picture of my lovely pumpkin pies.  Tonight – I make PECAN!  YUM YUM!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  May you all stuff yourselves silly and content!

xoxox

Mr. & Mrs. Smith

One of my long-time friends Meredith got married on Nov 14th.  I was blessed to be part of her wedding party as a bridesmaid and happy to take some pictures of this wonderful event.  It was a very long day as all the girls met at 9am to get our hair done and I left the hall after helping clean up around 10pm.  But what a fun day it was!

This is Meredith and her maid-of-honor Jen at the salon where we all had our hair done.

The Bride’s lovely bouquet.  Her Mom Jan did all of the flowers for her wedding.  Everything was beautiful!

Meredith getting ready with the rest of the girls.

The beautiful Bride posing with her bouquet.

Meredith and one of her OTHER long-time friends and bridesmaid Elissa Dean.

Meredith and Alex posing for Alex’s sister Angie.

The Bride and Groom.

They’re a perfect match!

Smooches!

Beautiful Bride.

Holding her bouquet.

Handsome Groom.

What a party!  We had so much fun and I was really happy she asked me to be one of her bridesmaids.  There will be more pictures of this blessed event in the future

Meredith’s Last Night Out as a Single Lady!

This past Saturday was Meredith’s Bachelorette party.  We had SO much fun and thankfully I didn’t drink enough to be hung-over the next day   We all met at Meredith’s friend Elissa’s house so we could roll out in STYLE in a white stretch limo.  From there we went to Los Pinos in Orting, AWESOME FOOD!  If you ever decide to go there I highly recommend the Tacos de Carne Asada!  YUM!  After dinner we went to a pub called The Royal bear just to waste some time before we were ready for our reservation at The Longhorn BBQ in Auburn.

The Longhorn BBQ has Duelin’ Ivoryz!!  It was SO much fun!  You can request songs and give them some cash and they duel back and forth and change the lyrics sometimes.  It was actually really entertaining.  We drank a lot of beer, did some dancing and screaming and had a really good time.

It was a LONG late night out… but I had so much fun hangin with these girls!  Meredith is getting married this Saturday!  I’m so excited and happy for her!

xoxoxo

What a Long Week

I am so very tired right now.  It’s been a really long week at work and now that I’m sort-of in charge of the retouching stuff I have WAY too much to do and not enough hands to do it.

Seriously, I would totally clone myself right now if I were able…. but me and myself wouldn’t probably argue and not get a long and then we REALLY wouldn’t be productive and get anything done.

Between answering phone calls, emails, doing test images and trying to retouch LARGE amounts of images for clients there just aren’t enough hours in the day to get all I want accomplished.  This new “position” at work is going to test me to the very core of my being.  I’m not sure if saying this out loud is a good thing, but I’ve never been in a managerial position or had to take charge and prioritize things for myself and my clients.  I’m not saying it’s a bad thing.  I think this is a great opportunity and thankfully my boss Alex is very supportive.  He tells me (in his Chinese accent), “YOU CAN DO IT!” with a big grin on his face.

He’s been helping me through the emails and the issues we’ve had the past couple of days.  It hasn’t been anything major, but there have been a few “pain-in-the-ass” clients I’ve had to deal with.  Today was a rough one, I felt so scattered and disorganized and at the end of it all I didn’t feel like I accomplished very much at all.

We are in a transitional period since letting go of one of our employees and there are a lot of organizational things that need to be rectified.  I spent a good hour organizing the email inbox which had over 900 OLD emails in it.  The work flow will probably have to change a little at some point, but who knows when or how.  Right now I’m just trying to get through client orders and test images so I can get caught up.  Once that happens I can worry about the “other” stuff that isn’t quite as important.

I’m absolutely wiped tonight.  I was totally amped when I got home because it was such a hectic day.  My brain was still at work when I got home and I was still worrying about all the shit that needs to get done.  Which is silly, because I’m home now and I can’t do ANYTHING about it here.

Ah well, tomorrow is Friday and I’m going to work my little fanny off to try and make a good chunk of progress on my “to-do” list.  THEN I’m going to TRY not to worry about the rest of it over the weekend

 

Time With Family

A couple of weekends ago my family got together to celebrate the October/November birthdays that are all close together   We had some nice family time and great food.  I snapped some pictures too!

4 generations in this photo – My Grandfather in the the back on the right, my Father in the chair in the front, my Brother Thad in the back on the left and My nephew Cole on my Father’s lap.

My absolutely adorable baby nephew Cole being held by Papa Tim (My Dad).

Lil Miss Lilly Jo was all dressed for the October festivities.

Trey doing what he does best – playing with cars in Nanna Kathy’s hallway.

My baby nephew Cole being snuggled by his Daddy – Awwwwwww!

My Momma, brother and nephew posin’ for a pic.

Lilly trying to figure out how to make the toy saw work on the wood floor!  Maybe she’ll take after Papa Tim and be a Handy-Girl!

A.D.D. at it’s all time LOW? or HIGH?

Ok so my brain is freaking out.  I NEED stimulation right now.  It’s been a while since I had a project to hyper focus on and provide me with stimulation.  The last couple of weeks I’ve tried to “chill”.  Watch movies, go to the mall, go shopping, get stuff done around the house.

I’m seriously going through withdrawals like a crack-addict with no crack.

It’s the weirdest sensation – I’m not comfortable in my own skin, I’m twitchy.  I feel like I NEED to do something but I don’t know what.

Several ideas pop into my head – I can do some artwork on my computer in Photoshop, but WHAT?!  What do I draw?  What do I paint?  Where to start?  I can work on my therapeutic art journal… but what do I want to create?  I’m fresh out of artistic ideas.  There are chores I could do around the house… but that doesn’t sound stimulating at ALL!

I guess I’ll open up Photoshop and see where it takes me!

CIAO!