I Need Your Help...

For my BFA project I'm restoring old pictures of my family and taking new pictures that relate to the new ones, almost like a genealogy of sorts. It is titled "Through My Mothers Eyes." For class on Friday I need to have a few samples of what will hang in my gallery show. I'm having a hard time deciding between printing black and white or color images. Here are a few sample images I've shot so far, please please please leave an opinion!

  

 

 

Color... or Black and White?

My 7 Things

So over a month ago Leslie McCabe tagged me to write seven things about myself that people may not know about me. I completely forgot! So I decided to do it now. Here are my seven:

1. I love shopping. What girl doesn't right? But I only like to shop the sales rack. I somehow get such a thrill out of getting things at steeply discounted prices. This has raised a few problems come Christmas time because I like to find great deals on clothes for Miles. Which generally means non-refundable so no present seems to be a surprise. I want to make sure he likes it first, or it will be the right size. I'm not compulsive. If something is on sale I won't buy it just because it's on sale, and I also don't just go shopping for the heck of it (most of the time). I usually go with a product in mind. Mike and Les showed us this website called geartrade and I'm addicted. All of Miles birthday and Christmas presents were pretty much from that website. It is amazing, check it out!

2. I love the smell of a baby's hair. It just smells so sweet, like heaven. It just makes me want to kiss them! I've held babies whom I don't know, and I don't know their parents, and the effect is still the same. Baby hungry? Probably. 

3. I was homeless for 2 weeks. Well not technically, but still I was homeless. When Miles and I left for Sacramento last summer unengaged and unmarried I had no where to live. I had no job which means I couldn't pay for an apartment. And I couldn't find a job and I couldn't find an apartment, so all day I would sit in the parking lots of hotels and use their internet to do apartment shopping, plug addresses into my GPS and take off to look at apartments. It amazes me how ghetto Sacramento can be. Then Pinnacle and  Mandy came to my rescue and I got to move in with her, but not until after I signed a lease with another complex. So I went from homeless to having two apartments in one day.

4. I get the worst homesickness of anyone I know (except maybe Jen). One semester I couldn't even listen to that Michael Buble song Home because I would just start crying and couldn't stop. I love my family. I love being at home and just talking with my mom. Given how I was in high school, who would have thought! My mom, sister Jen, and nephew were here this weekend and I'm surprised I didn't have a nervous break down when they left. 98% of the phone calls and text messages I send are to either my mom, dad, Jen, Nikki, or Miles. 

5. My entire life I have always wanted to visit two places: Italy and Greece. Miles and I met during fall semester of '07 but didn't start really talking until that Christmas break. I had just been called to be the Relief Society President of our singles ward so I had information about each member of our ward (where they were from, their birthday, where they served their mission etc.) Given that I knew pretty much nothing about him, I looked him up and I was so so so excited to see that he served his mission in Rome, Italy. Now I am pretty much guaranteed to see at least one of the places I've always wanted to. We're actually planning a backpacking trip for this coming Christmas break... and guess where we're going. ITALY AND GREECE!

6. Ever since I was a 12 year old girl I have wanted to get married in the Washington DC temple. Well wait, no I was kind of a feminist growing up and didn't ever want to get married... so I guess ever since I was 17 and had a huge change of heart I wanted to get married in the DC temple. I love it. It was the first temple I ever went in. (It was my temple district when I was 12 before Boston and Manhattan temples were built). But because DC is 6 hours from my home, I then became fixated on getting married in the Manhattan temple, only one hour away. In fact, I made a dirty deal with Miles to get married there. He tried changing my mind, but the deal could not be refused. Then when we went to visit his mom this summer, his step-dad Todd convinced me without even knowing it to get married in the Oakland temple instead. We were not even engaged at the time, so he wasn't trying to sway me one way or the other. He said "you wouldn't want to get married in the Manhattan temple though would you? You can't really take pictures in front of it and I'm sure you want to hang pictures in your home of you and your husband in front of the temple to set a good example for your children." I was sold.

7. I set Miles and my temple date before he even proposed, and without talking to him about it first. I know that probably sounds slightly psycho but it's not like we hadn't discussed getting married. We had. I just knew what day I wanted to get married and I wanted to reserve a good time. I broke the news to him at Ihop that night. He was surprised, and then said the worst thing possible to an extremely giddy and excited girl, "Don't tell anyone until I've proposed to you." UMMM hello the most exciting thing in my entire world just happened, we had a wedding date, and I couldn't share in my joy with anyone! I think just to torture me he waited 2 more weeks to propose. I almost had a breakdown of excitement bottling it all in. 

I tag Jennifer Lake, Ariel Wilkins, Noelle Neel, Samantha Schiller, Britney Snarr, Lindsay Rondo, and Bria Lee to tell seven things about them or their families that people might not know.

Miles wants to add just three things about himself (apparently he's a shy blogger):

1. I love to check the mail. I like to find surprises and I like to hear from family. Even though there's no birthday or holiday coming up I always check for personal cards. The mission made me this way. Checking the mail was the best part of the day on my mission. I liked getting packages with American food from my family.

2. I prefer winter clothes over summer clothes. I like to layer and I like wearing hoodies. I like it on girls better, I like it on guys better, it just looks better. It's not that I prefer winter over summer or cold over hot, I just like winter clothes more.

3. I'm more in love with my wife now than at any other point in our marriage or engagement or when we were dating. I constantly learn more about her. She understands me and she thinks I'm the funniest husband. I love her because we laugh together and we cuddle a lot. I love waking up next to her and kissing her. I think everything about her is cute, even when she's scrubby she still looks so cute. I love her the most because she is my best friend.

(That is word for word. I typed while he spoke. #3 may or may not have made me teary eyed.)

Snowboarding Fridays

We have been having a lot of fun snowboarding this season. I'm able to keep up with Miles (on good days) and so far have been injury free! What a relief from last year. And I've even done some box slides and hit a few jumps. I'm no where near as good as Miles, but I'm feeling pretty good about this season. I can't believe how well my sister Nikki's been doing. It's her first season but she's picking up so fast! It's been so fun spending every Friday with her. I will say that I am extremely impressed with how little she complains. I need to be better about that.

Here are some action shots of Miles doing a few tricks. Unfortunately I can't bring my good camera with us, mostly because I'm afraid of falling and breaking my good camera, so the picture quality isn't great. But you get the gist that my husband is awesome.