In Bidness

I've had several people asking for photoshoots and after a pep talk from a friend in the photography business, I took a dive in.

Check it!

Strebel Photography DOT Com! YEAH!

No Ordinary Jamboree

So there I was, sitting right where I wasn't suppose to be on Friday night.

And there HE was, sitting where he wasn't suppose to be Friday night.

Thank God we were home when we were suppose to be elsewhere. Thank God the sitter wasn't here alone with the kids.

It was 11 pm, an hour I normally sleep. I was looking through etsy-damn etsy and its distracting ways- when I heard a rumble sort of noise and wondered WHAT THE HELL Geoff was doing in the garage.

Rumble, boom. BOOM!!!!!

Does he seriously need to be working in the garage this late when the kids are in bed?

CRASH! BOOM!

I take my eyes off of this cute knit hat with super long ear flaps and fuzzy soft looking yarn that would look so cute on a newborn when I notice Geoff is in his office ACROSS the house from the garage. As in NOT in the garage. As in, NOT making the noise.

"Geoff?" I timidly ask as I walk toward the laundry room. The noise is loud, getting louder. Something in our garage is bigger than a breadbox and I don't want to play 20 questions to find out what that "something" is.

"Geoff, seriously, GET OVER HERE! Something is in our garage!"

Used to my overreactions when seeing something as small as a mouse run across the road, he doesn't move.

The noise got louder.

"Geoff, get over here! Meaning NOW!!!!!!!!!"

He walks over, the noise gets louder, I yell "BRING YOUR GUN!!!!!!!"

Hearing "gun" he walks a little faster, hears the commotion and then runs toward his gun.

Meanwhile I lock the door and push my weight against it, because you know, I'm hardcore like that.

Geoff returns with his gun in hand and I can tell he's nervous. This is no ordinary 'bird got trapped in our garage' noise.

He opens the door slowly, gun leading the way.

And there it was, a black bear sitting on the hood of our jeep like he is always there on a Friday night and what the hell is our problem?

And after 29 years of my life wanting to see a bear, can you guess where my camera was?

In the car. In the garage. With the bear.

True story.

Photoshop is my Bit@h

I'm shooting a wedding on Friday (First one, yay!) and hosting a baby shower on Sunday so I've been a wee bit, uhhh, busy?

Of course I have all my usual mom stuff like cleaning and butt wiping and you know.

So when I started looking at what we are going to do for the shower, I wasn't sure how much I believed in myself in terms of designing all the party decor. The theme is "Picnic" but more so watermelon picnic. The inspiration came from Hostess with the Mostess. (Are you as addicted to this site as I am? People take their parties VERY seriously these days!) But when I focused on the picnic part of the party, the decor was kind of lamo and there WASN'T any of that general picnic looking stuff at the stores but when my friend brought up this party, I think it was the watermelon part of the picnic she liked so now I'm focusing on watermelon for decor?

Anyway, as I got down to business I thought, I am OVER my head with this design stuff. For serious.

I emailed Melissa (The girl that did my lemonade party stuff.) and told her I would pay her, PLEASE HELP but her sister in law had to go and have babies yesterday with NO regard toward my feelings. Pfft. So I sat down with photoshop and we had a talk. We bonded a bit. After an hour I figured out one problem that has been annoying the hell out of me since I installed photoshop. Soon we were like BUDS, we were like, happy hour going, get caught singing in the shower without being embarrassed, riding on each other's back and slapping each other on the a$$ sort of friends.

And here is a preview of our long life together

and the party too I guess.








If you have any awesome watermelon baby shower ideas, let me know, I have until Sunday! Love you guys more than rice crispy treats!- holly

Wild Thing

One of these kids is NOT Sawyer...

We had a rough morning over here.  To cheer me up, I bribed, errrr, TALKED Sawyer into doing a mini photoshoot. I LOVE mini photoshoots fueled by chocolate.

Vintage Inspired Jewelry Giveaway!- Closed

WINNER- Blue Violet. I sent you an email, you have 48 hours to respond. Thanks everyone!


Confession: I've been a little addicted to jewelry lately.

Actually, not just a little, it's a problem. It started with a little Stella and Dot obsession after winning a giveaway. Then I bought the Petra bracelet. Check it out. It's ROCKIN'!

Then Geoff bought me this super cool gold and silver chainish type necklace on vacation. And I ADORE it. And wear it everywhere.

So, you see how my husband fed my obsession a bit? SEE THAT?!

Then I started looking at Etsy shops and found Pinking-Edge Designs. At first I clicked on a few pictures, then I started drooling a bit. Then might have stalked her shop. Shhh, don't tell. I'll stop talking and let the pictures speak:

Lockets! LOVE lockets! This piece is one of my favs!

Or this Flowers and Friends necklace. I die!

I have a soft spot for pearls and flowers:

But not only is this stuff totally cute with a cool vintage vibe, it's also reasonable! Almost everything in her shop is under $30. Do you see why I was stalking her store like a crazy person? After a few love notes to her shop, Kay said that she wanted to give one of my readers something $30 or under.  AND, it's totally your pick! So you can go stalk her shop with me! Yay!



RULES:

MANDATORY
Go to Kay's shop Pinking-Edge Designs and tell me what your favorite piece is in a comment below. Please include an email address.

EXTRA ENTRIES (Please leave a separate comment on this post for each entry you completed below.)

1. Follow my blog via Google Friend Connect
2. Post on your facebook page
3. Like this post
4. Post this giveaway on twitter (Up to once a day.)

Giveaway closes midnight Sunday night August 21st. Winner will be contacted by email and has 48 hours to respond. Thank you and happy winning!

Kisses

Me to Sawyer, "Sawyer, kiss Charlotte Goodnight."

Sawyer after kissing Charlotte goodnight, "Charlotte, now kiss me on my BUTT!"

Nice Sawyer, real nice.

Operation Selfish

My friend Melissa wrote me asking if it was cool if she designed a blog head thingy.

I mentioned her before, she DESIGNED all the decorations for the Lemonade Stand Party. And I swear every time she emails me I find out some incredible talent so I'm going to get her to quit her job and do the stuff that she LOVES doing and get paid for it.

So, seriously, if you want the most awesome-est birthday banners, invites, menus EVER, get in touch with her. (She has no idea that I'm writing this and forcing her into business so DON'T tell her I sent you! K?)

But that isn't why I'm writing, I'm writing because I was looking for a picture of me and the kids for the banner and guess what?

That picture doesn't exist. Seriously. Okay, I think I have TWO, one of which I took on my mac and got deleted when my hard drive crashed and the other I took OF MYSELF with my iphone when Charlotte was two days old... and lets face it, I'm not pretty after labor.

I have a BAZILLION of Geoff and the kids so now I'm getting sad and ask him to take pictures of me sometimes too because I'm their mom and if someone digs up our city in a bunch of years and finds pictures, I want MY FACE to be connected with MY KIDS. And that crap happens you know, we dig up cities and look at faces carved in stone and, well, put two and two together. So can't a mom have a picture with her kids? So he got all defensive and says he has to be TOLD to take a picture where I want him to just think we look cute and take our damn picture.

Soooo, I think I'm going to try to take a picture of my own freakin' self every day for a week. I was going to say a month but we all know I'm not that motivated right? My goal is to have ONE decent picture of ME and my two babies before they are eighteen.

Because we all know I'm not getting any cuter here.

BVI Charter Sail Trip Part 1: The Conch Penis

conch: 1. A tropical marine mollusk (Strombus and other genera, family Strombidae) with a spiral shell that may bear long projections and have a flared lip. (freedictionary.com)

Basically an edible snail that lives in the sea. All snails are hermaphrodites and the conch is no exception. When the conch is a dude, it shimmies his penis out of his shell, around and into the female conch shell then proceeds to give her his conch juice. Because the penis has to travel a LONG distance, they have HUGE man parts! HUGE! I've seen them before. Sometimes other sea life will feast on the conch penis while he is trying to get lucky but it's no thang cause that sucker can grow back. No joke.

Strange that I know so much about conch (Thanks to a conch tour in Turks and Caicos.) but stranger that I will throw down conch fritters like no one while armed with such info.

Two years ago we chartered a catamaran in the Virgin Islands and it was an AMAZING trip. You can read the super details while I pretend to write for a travel magazine in part 1, part 2, and part 3. This year we went without our kids. Leaving our kids behind was as awesome as it was not. Every couple including us had kids that were left with their Grandma. Before this trip, I couldn't WAIT for a vacation with JUST my husband; we called it our "Finally Honeymoon" but while there without our babies waking us up with cuddles and kisses, it was hard to bear. It wasn't 24 hours before we talked birth stories and vaginal tears with each other so we filled drinks for our empty hands to hold and dared each other to jump naked off the boat daily to keep our minds off the kids we left behind.

"Finally Honeymoon" soon became "Tour de Conch Fritters" because I can't get enough of those hermy sea snails. Now that we are back and I've gone 24 hours without said fritters, I'm getting shaky. Conch is no joke.

I like them mashed to hell, rolled in a bunch of stuff and FRIED. We ate them at every stop. Geoff asked our second to last night if we HAD to have conch fritters, wasn't I tired of them? I refrained from explaining that conch is a natural aphrodisiacs and HE should be the THANKING me but then knew he might expect some place to put his man parts that night... if you know what I mean.

And thanks to those damn conch fritters and countless rum drinks, I gained eight pounds in ten days.

While squeezing my fat A$$ in a thong, SPF 50, a hat and a shirt on almost at all times, I still couldn't escape the intense Caribbean sun and currently look like a New Jersey Shore cast member.

Snooki would be proud.

It's a good thing our boat crew totally rocked and was more than willing to put up with my drunk reenactments of popular Broadway musicals. As my new "J-Friend" would say, "Bless their hearts."

Will post more later this week about the trip and my new favorite place, Cow Wreck Beach. Love you all and I'm happy to be back!!!

Getting my Jib ON!

We are at it again. Just a teaser before we strike it big, buy a boat, homeschool the kids and get a boob job.

Kidding... about the homeschool part.

Okay and the boob job, geeze, way to call me out like that!

Grandma flies in Wednesday and Geoff and I fly out Thursday. Ten days in the Virgin Islands without my babies. It makes me tear up thinking about leaving them but I've got a thong to rock, we're going to look so European.

And check out our sweet ride:


I love you all more than Smores while camping.

See you in the nextish week!