happy friday!

this has, all around, been a good week. the wedding planning is coming smashingly, and my schedule is filling up fast in nearly every other department. but i like busy-ness.

this weekend, i'm looking forward to getting my house a bit dressed up for fall. i pulled out a selection of silver taper candleholders and a pewter-toned vase that will look fabulous with some harvest-colored flowers. last weekend, i happened across mini pumpkins at the grocery store and brought home two white ones (i have a new thing for white pumpkins) and an orange one. i've also been thinking about making some tin-can luminaries for the front porch, which i think will really look cool with carved pumpkins aglow! i'd also like a wreath... joann's - here i come! :)

i guess that's it for me today...

kayden turns 4...

i can not BELIEVE i forgot to post these! not sure what i was thinking!! i mentioned last week that my little-bitty nephew (who's not so little-bitty anymore) turned four... we celebrated with dinner, cake & presents at our favorite restaurant:

and my favorite:

hello again...

i've been quiet lately - just busy! but busy is good. i like busy - i thrive on busy, and being that fall is my favorite time of year, busy is coming naturally to me.

my biggest focus right now is a family wedding that i'm helping to plan... i love planning - parties, events, you name it. this is right up my alley - i wish i could do event planning full time, really! so, i'm having a great time, but it's keeping me - you guessed it - busy!

and i'm getting into the spirit of the season... well, the holiday season, anyway. right up there with my love of event planning comes my love of planning just about everything else. (surely i've admitted to you already that i start thinking about christmas in May, right??) so, in addition to the wedding planning, i'm thinking already about halloween, thanksgiving, and my favorite: christmas.

and of course, there's other stuff going on here and there. we have tickets to see the closing night of Wicked on sunday - you can bet i'll be smuggling my camera in for that one. if you think i'm excited - you should see my mother. i already had to strongly discourage her from dressing up as one of the characters...

and a few photo shoots coming up which i am super excited about, including one with a has-not-yet-been-born baby girl whom i can not WAIT to get my lens on!!

and what would my life be without a little crafting happening? :) here's my favorite from my latest batch of cards:

ta-ta for now!

good stuff...

is happening all around me...

• hopped on the scale this morning and was delighted to find that i've lost another pound & a half! good thing! after struggling with a plateau and some bad-behavior in the last few weeks, it's been hard to get back on the wagon. but i've been trying - and it's apparently working! total: 32.5 lbs.
  
• today is my nephew's 4th birthday... i had every intention of posting a picture of me holding him just a few days after he was born, but laziness took over last night and i forgot to upload the photo. tomorrow, perhaps. :)
  
• i have a very big opportunity coming up soon, but it's hush-hush now. i'll post about it later. maybe. ;)
  
• for the first time in months, i've felt sincere, honest joy in my heart. the kind of joy that only comes from loving and serving the Lord. i've missed this joy when i was busy serving myself. i'm so glad i've come out of that.
  
• we launched a new service at work this week. we've been developing it for months, and it's finally in private-beta. the service, called "Groupee" is a free social networking that allows it's users to manage their own personal content in one central location. "content" is described as anything you might want to share on the internet. photos & photo albums, blogging, online community interaction (think messageboards, but on a personal level) and even podcasts. the service is in an invitation-only stage right now, but if you're interested in getting in on the ground floor, it looks good for me to have as many people sign up as possible. ;) shoot me an email at kate_thaete@yahoo.com and i'll see that you get an invite!
  

ok, that's it in terms of share-able news right now. more later. :)

feeling autumnal...

tomorrow marks the first day of fall, and every inch of me is feeling autumnal. i'm personally looking forward to seeing the green trees turn to orange, the days grow a little shorter, and the general coziness that comes with the regularly bad weather. and my crockpot. my poor, abandoned crockpot has sat unloved since late last winter. i think i'll make use of it this weekend. my arsenal of favorite recipes will need to be shaken up a bit, as i trade my favorite cilantro-laden summery mexican dishes for more comforting, hearty soups and casseroles. fall decorations will make their way into my livingroom and settle in until after Thanksgiving. and a trip to the pumpkin patch will happen in early october for no good reason other than the need to photograph my favorite fall colors.

it does seem the weather is a bit early though. the last couple of days have been spitting rain, and today's climate even included winds that shook the lamp-posts. this is what autumn is all about for me - the coziness on the inside while the weather does it's "thing" on the outside. i say, bring it on!

they were serious when they said "highly flammable"

i've got a headache. and while that in and of itself hardly warrants a dedicated blog entry, the events that followed, i feel, are worth sharing.

the lights in my space are all controlled on one switch. turning them all off darkens the whole lobby, but having them all on - especially the obnoxiously pink ones - was contributing to my throbbing temple. mentioning this in passing to my mother, she suggested we unscrew the bulbs from the lamps that were bothering me and asked for a papertowel to protect her fingers. dubious, i followed suit, using a paper towel to unclip the halogen directly above my desk. it plopped out of it's casing, and hung from the cable. it was definitely warm.

i craned my neck around, hoping to determine how we might disconnect the bulb from the socket, and it was then that i noticed my right hand feeling awfully warm...

the paper towel, clutched in my fist, was on fire. i panicked, promptly forgot all of the "fire safety" lessons from my gradeschool years, yelped and waved the paper towel around in the air, somehow assuming that enough of a breeze might extinguish the flames. (flawed, i know.) the flames engulfed the paper towel, and bits of ash floated through the air.

but it's not enough that i did this in front of my mother. my other boss entered the room just in time to see the flames, and (thank goodness) provide some real instruction for stamping them out. and even better, the rest of the team was coming back from lunch - walking through the front door just in time to see me stamping (and no doubt, yelping) like a mad woman. by the time the fire was extinguished, about half of our staff was lingering nearby.

so, needless to say - we were unsuccessful in disconnecting the bulbs. the switch is now flipped to the "off" position, and the lobby is dark. and that's fine with me, because it sure beats the heck out of explaining the fire to the first fire team on the scene...

can't you see the headlines? foolish woman burns down 12-story office building with paper towel...

a quick one...

busy day today, and i'm on my way out the door... wanted to share a quick layout i did this weekend...

a few pictures...

i shared a photo last week from a maternity shoot i did recently for a friend... i was quite pleased with how they turned out, so i'll share a few more:

she was such a good sport - totally open to my ideas, and even came with a few of her own (see first image!). we had a great time together - i was nervous at first, but i just can't help but be comfortable around her. she's an amazing woman - she and her husband mean so much to us, and have been role models and mentors for us. she, like me, is a total photo-nut (and scrapbooker!) so i was so happy to be able to provide her with a huge selection of fun images she can use to scrapbook her pregnancy and even a few to decorate her home.

some weekend miscellany:

• i'm practically stalking my mailman, laying in wait for an order of prints from snapfish for scrapbooking. i tend to stockpile photos - i order every 4-6 weeks, and when the package comes, the new photos go into a pile of photos that are there to be scrapbooked. some photos will never leave the pile: i'll lose interest in them, or have scrapped similar photos already and no longer feel the need to continue with my idea, and they'll go to a box of prints that i hope will become of use somewhere down the line. anyway - my pile is severely lacking in freshness.
  
  
• today is payday, which means my bi-monthly mad money is burning a hole in my pocket. i'm dreaming about new Autumn Leaves buttons, and some of the Bazzill shaped-edge cardstock. love those scallopped edges. of course, it's new to me, but it's been on the market for a few months now. the story of my life: always just a step behind fashion. *sigh*
  
  
• i heard a rumor that Michael's has some really cool printed ribbon in their $1 bins. if you haven't checked it out lately, you should. i'm gonna. :)
  
  
• my local scrapbook store is having a cardstock sale right now... you can bet a decent percentage of my mad-money is going there too. ;)
  
  
• tomorrow is my bi-monthly yardwork day. after the massive destruction that ensued during our last yardwork day, i've got clean-up to do... sawing down huge limbs, raking up lots of leaves, etc.
  
  
• i feel like canning something. strawberries maybe? i have 4 lbs of them in my fridge, but i don't realistically know what that would - literally - boil down to...

okay, that's it. happy friday!

my husband says i'm a domestic diva...

and that's really the only opinion that matters, right?

a week ago, matt's mom gave me a huge box of pears from her pear tree. she'd canned as many as she could stand, and was tired of looking at the remainder, so i inherited them. they sat on my dining room table for days before i could decide what to do with them (luckily, they were picked a little green, so they hadn't spoiled.)

i seem to do best with recipes that don't require the fruit to be in any recognizable format at the end. sauces, jams, purees, butters. plain old canned fruit requires cutting skills and some level of attention to detail in the peeling & paring - which i hate. i'd rather hack it all to pieces and then run it through the blender.

so that's what i did. 4 pints of "pear honey" (not really a honey - but a sweet spread), 4 pints of "pear sauce" (like apple sauce, but not), and 1.5 pints of "pear butter" (like apple butter, but not). got them cooked, canned and sealed in about 3 hours. and boy, was i tired. the sauce & butter came out fabulously - oh man, are they tasty (way better than their apple counterparts, if you ask me.) the honey, however, needs to be cooked a little longer. on some other weekend that i'm feeling ambitious, i'll open them up, cook them to more of a jelly than a syrup, and then re-can. at least the hardest part is done already. :)

but i didn't stop there. a few of these yummies will be in christmas gifts, so i wanted them to have a unique, creative label. after some internal debate, and wishing that i owned the label stamp set that Stampin' Up! makes, i came up with my own clever idea:

the leaves are from the Target $1 Spot (a box of about 60? for $1!!). i punched a hole in the end, added an eyelet, just so the leaf wouldn't tear, then cut a 1.25" circle from a striped pattern (from Flair Design's new Autumn Splendor line, the same stuff i used on my big monogram). pasted the patterned circle to an Avery keytag, added a Prima flower and brad, and wrote in the contents & date. i strung the keytag in front of the leaf on some ribbon, and voila! domestic divaness achieved!

almost as good...

as being in print...

click. third row down, second from the left.

that layout was picked up for Memory Makers Magazine Idea Gallery 7, but was bumped to the website when they ran out of room for me. oh well. almost as cool. :)

monday miscellany

foremost on my mind today, as i'm sure it is the majority of americans, is the 5 year anniversary of 9/11. i don't have any words of wisdom or comforting, reassuring thoughts to share, but i would be remiss to not mention that it's on my mind today.

in spite of the somber mood revolving around the date, i'm resolving to start this week out better than the last. last week was hard on me for a handful of reasons and my emotions were in a big tangle. after some heart-convicting prayer yesterday and a deep discussion with my husband, i came to realize that i just don't rely on God the way i should. i don't 'believe on' Him for the things i want or need. i'm pretty self-sufficient. to a non-believer, self-sufficiency is a good thing. to a believer, self-sufficiency destroys faith. so this week, i'm working on bringing my focus back to the Lord. i know that my change of focus will make this week better than the last. yay for hope!

saturday, matt & i went to visit his mom and spent most of the day with her. it's so nice to just hang out on a casual basis with no plans, no party, no other visitors. we talked alot, we helped her clean out her shed (ok, he did most of the work!), we ate, we prayed for eachother and for our family. i love being close to her. she really is a wonderful woman, and has faced a lot of challenges in her life. i love her very much.

i left them for a short time (which is why i got out of the worst of the work!) ;) to do a photo shoot for my sister-in-law. the kids weren't very interested, but we did okay with what we had. the weather was beautiful - full sun - which sucks for photography, but at least we got some good color. a few of my favorites:

somewhere along the way (by his grama, i'm sure), david was taught to freeze and say "cheese!" any time a camera pointed in his general direction. that made it rough for my style of photography, so i had to get him to say other words... "pickles" and "macaroni", etc. that disintigrated into david listing words that he thought were funny. i love watching that kid crack himself up. check out that last one of him. he looks so grown up. :(

kassidy is on the move. definitely a toddler, and she's quick! she had a toy cell phone with her that she wasn't interested in putting down... until she gave it up when she found a dead, withered leaf... (whatever floats your boat, kid!) her big blue eyes are absolutely killer.

that's enough for today... more tomorrow. :)

i told you i was craving halloween patterns...

i managed to make 6 cards and a tag last weekend from less than 3 sheets of patterned cardstock (and of course, plenty of solid cardstock). i love stretching my supplies. here are a couple of my favorites:

{btw, in case you're curious, the patterns are Theresa Collins for Junkitz.}

lots going on this weekend: a photo shoot tomorrow with my neice & nephew, visiting with my mother-in-law, kid's church on sunday, and the usual chores and grocery shopping. and somewhere in there, i have to can about 20 lbs of pears that my mother-in-law sent home with us last weekend. i need a nap just thinking about it!

today seems to be going a little slow... i hate slow days, especially slow fridays...

i shall return monday, hopefully with more photos. ;)

some fun to share...

i had a little shopping spree on saturday that took me to joanns for a few "basics". i was wandering through their woodcraft section and i noticed that they'd added a wall full of alphabet stuff. they used to carry one very plain font, but now they have all shapes, sizes and materials. i noticed a single 24" papier-mache capital T, the last one on the shelf, and i took it home with me. (even matt was impressed.)

at my local scrapbook store, i raided their section of halloween/fall themed papers. among other things, i brought home some of the new flair paper. i combined the two, and made this:

love that these papers match the subtly-autumnal theme in my living room. matt got home from youth group on sunday, and noticed it right away - finished and already hung up on the wall. he took the time to appreciate the details and complimented my work. big brownie points.

fun with plexi...

i came home friday night feeling exhausted, ill and ready for a three-day weekend. (good thing it WAS a three-day weekend, huh?) i walked in the front door and the smell of taco seasonings filled the air. the table was set, complete with table cloth and a single rose & fern in a little vase. matt was making taco salads, one of our favorites. (and i thought he didn't pick me up from work because he was just being mean!)

so, after our lovely, peaceful dinner i thought about how nice and still a photography subject that rose would make... saturday morning, i got up early and used the ambient light, my new plexi-glass, and my favorite black backdrop, to take a few photos... i was surprised - and pleased - at how the color turned out straight out of the camera... and i love the reflection i got:

the flower itself is not as crisp and clear as i'd like it, but oh well... after i did my usual saturday morning routine (coffee, breakfast, playing in my craft room) i packed up my gear and headed to the local cemetary to photograph these beautiful lily pads:

would've waded into the darn pond to get closer if it weren't for the impressive growth of algae. i wonder if i should keep a pair of rubber boots in my trunk? wouldn't that be a sight.

would you pray for our family? some rough stuff is happening on matt's side of the family right now, and there's nothing we can do but pray. would you join us?

it's been kind of an emotional week. i'm thrilled that it's friday, and that i have no plans for the long weekend. a to-do list, sure - but no real plans.

a little taste of my list:

• clean studio
  
• scrapbook store - look for fun, new halloween paper lines
  
• joanns - grosgrain ribbon is on sale!
  
• michael's - get more rhinestone brads.
  
• photograph lily pads at local pond (tried to do this last night, but they flowers had already closed up for the evening!)
  
• work on christmas gift for mother-in-law. (yes, really - i start early.)
  
• finish proofing photos from last weekend's maternity shoot - and deliver proofs.
  
• work on recipe book.
  
• buy mats for frames; frame & hang latest photos.
  

and sharing one of my favs from last weekend's shoot: