I have been MIA for a while, lol! But glad I’m back. I didn’t expect it but my photography hobby is really taking off. I have been very busy photographing babies and families lately. And I am really enjoying it so much that I had no choice but to let blogging take a back seat. I didn’t wanna give it up for good though for I find myself occasionally wanting to blog. So to give you some updates. I recently did our own family fall session. Not sure how the boys would take it so thought we’ll just do it in the comforts of our own backyard, lol! Saves us all the heartache in case the session won’t go well as planned. But thankfully, it went pretty good. We had some good ones and we all had laughs during the shoot. Here’s a few from that session.

 

My favorite 4 year old model of all time, lol!

 

I love the holidays! People seem to be more festive, cheery and wealthy, lol! I mean look at how crowded the stores and streets can get during the holidays. Apparently, holidays are a good excuse for most people to splurge, me included. As early as October, I have been shopping for my little guy. His birthday falls in December so he gets twice as much gifts as most kids, lol! Did I mention that I love to shop, lol? You can see me in the stores almost every weekend. And more often than not, I will get something for myself and family every payday, lol! I know, I’m terrible. I do manage to still save though but I will try to spend less and save more for year 2015.

Anyway, I was a little bit late in putting up my Christmas tree. But once I got done, I was pretty much satisfied with how it looked. I must admit I don’t have the gift of decorating so I pretty much just wing it, just whatever looks good enough, lol! For this year, I decorated our 7-ft tree with everything hot pink and accentuated it with something lime green and bright blue. Hubby and I love how it came out. It looked vibrant and festive. After dealing with some kinks with the Christmas lights (some are burnt out), with the help of my 4-year old, we managed to make our Christmas tree look nice and ready for the holidays. Of course, I took tons of pictures, lol! So below are some of them. I thought before I’ll take the tree down, I will share some pictures on my blog. So here you go….

This sweet little guy just turned four years old a few weeks ago. He got all his favorite construction trucks and a nice Thomas and Friend’s train set for presents. We didn’t throw a real party but we gave him a nice small construction themed birthday surprise. I thought this would be a perfect chance for me to practice photography at the same time let him enjoy his birthday. I used up a small space in his playroom and turned it into a makeshift mini birthday shoot setup, complete with construction themed backdrop and balloons. And oh, he loved his “little builder” birthday cake and 24 cupcakes with the same theme for his preschool friends that I ordered from Walmart. Below are some of the photos from two separate shoots that I did for his birthday.

Seven years ago today, I married the love of my life in a very small, intimate Christian wedding, witnessed by my sister and her family and my father-in-law. Like most married couples, we've been through ups and downs during our 7 years of being together. It's part of being married I guess. Two distinct individuals living together striving to have common goals in life, there sure have to be some adjustments to go through. Getting married is easy, staying married is an ongoing process. And I am proud of us for reaching 7 years. We survived the 7-year itch, lol!

I thought instead of sharing the same old wedding photos from 2007, I'd like to have some recent photos of us taken on the day that we celebrated our 7th year. So here we are, braving the crazy, windy Fall weather here in Montana, lol! Just to have some photos of us together which clearly we haven't done in a long while. So I set up my T3i with my new 85mm f/1.8 lens on my tripod, chose the 10second timer option ('coz I couldn't find my remote) then ran back and forth to my focused spot until we got at least 2 decent shots, lol! Whew! Yep, it was hard work considering the brrrrr weather but totally worth it!

Inspired  by Pinterest ideas, I glued 7 "copper" pennies (copper being the symbol of 7th anniversary) on a piece of paper representing the years that have had significant meaning to our lives. When I first saw this, I thought it was cute and very thoughtful so I decided to give this to hubby as one of my gifts for him. And guess what, he loved it!

Umm, the photo below?!? Just me, wrapping up the session with a solo shot in the comforts of our living room, lol! Couldn't take the "chill to the bones" weather anymore.....but I had to have a solo shot, right? LOL!

I sometimes have a tough time remembering how old I really am because the husband always tells me that I am 29, lol! Well, I was 29 when I first met him but that was like what 9 years ago, phew!

But anyway, I am now a year older and wiser hopefully, lol! These photos are taken by my hubby on my birthday. I initially didn't plan to have a birthday shoot but my mom kinda suggested that I should have one..just.. you know.. to have updated pictures on my FB page, lol!

As I've mentioned in my earlier post, the husband did give me an expensive brand spanking new lens. Probably not expensive to the professional photographers standards but to me, since I am just an amateur hobbyist, my Canon 85mm f/1/8 prime lens is an expensive, excellent portrait lens that I own so far. I could not stop raving about how sharp and great this lens is. I really love it despite the fact that I would need quite a lot of room to use this thing. This is like a perfect outdoor portrait lens for me. Below are a couple of shots using this lens.

I celebrated my birthday two weeks ago. Nothing fancy, just quality time with my 3 year old and hubby. I've never been into birthday parties anyway, lol! It was wonderful watching the two made a strawberry cake with pink frosting for me. Then I made some baked cheesy tortellini for dinner. I got a box of chocolates and card from my little guy. Like I've said it was just a simple celebration. However, my wonderful hubby surprised me with an expensive birthday gift though. I've always wanted to own an 85mm f/1.8 lens by Canon but I never thought it would happen sooner. I was really in cloud nine to say the least, lol! Just as I've expected, this lens is amazing. It's the sharpest and most expensive lens in my arsenal at the moment. I couldn't wait to try it out so I had a mini photo shoot with hubby as the photographer using my new lens on my birthday. And I am going to share those pictures on my next post. Ciao!

I know...I know...It's terrible! I have been away from blogging for what seems like forever. I don't even want to attempt to make up any excuses this time. I lost inspiration to write. Plain and simple! Yes, I have been busy...with work, family and my new found passion in photography. But I could have spent a little bit of my time blogging but I didn't because I didn't feel like it, lol! So there you go...Just the laziness and lack of motivation have gotten the best of me lately.

However, I am proud to say that I am back...hopefully for good this time! I didn't realize how much I've missed blogging until I just have so many things in my head and I wanted to express it with no holds barred and I thought wait a minute, yeah I do have some kind of a virtual diary where I can pour my thoughts out. So yeah, I am happy to be back..I have so many things to share. I will try to write updates more often that I had been. So please stay tuned, lol!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner. I love holiday celebrations but would prefer to keep everything simple and easy as far as meal preparation is concerned. Well, we wanted to have a whole turkey this time. We’ve had turkey breast before but I thought it would be a nice new experience cooking-wise if we would try a whole bird. So that’s what we had last Thanksgiving dinner. I have scoured the web for a good roast turkey recipe and I decided to give Alton Brown’s recipe a go. His recipe involves brining which was cool because I really wanted to try that. However, two days before Thanksgiving I have talked to my sister and I decided to follow her method of brining instead, lol! So anyway, I love how the turkey tasted. I could not believe how much difference brining does to the roasted bird. It was just amazingly juicy, tender and delicious.

Our dinner was quite simple and small. After all, it was just the three of us anyway, which was just as well because I didn’t think I’m ready to host a big dinner for friends and family, lol! I’m not really good at it even back in the Philippines. I hardly help as far as preparing food on Christmas and New Year, lol! I just thought it’s too much hard work. But now that I have a family of my own, I thought it would not be fair for my little guy and husband if I wouldn’t at least try to make a nice dinner for the three of us. It wasn’t that bad actually. I had some help from hubby and we were able to eat at a decent time. We were quite stuffed right after the meal. We were nappy but we chose to watch a movie on Netflix instead. It was a lovely, relaxed holiday for the three of us. Looking forward to Christmas now!

I love to try new food and new places to eat. So when I heard about Karmadillos, a Southwestern Mexican Cafe in the southwest corner of downtown, I thought I would give it a try. I went there on a Friday work week to have lunch and I thought their pork rice bowl was pretty amazing. The cafe itself is pretty small but they set up a nice dining area outside which makes you enjoy a hearty meal with a spectacular view of the mountains.

It is located on Reeder's Alley, an oldest piece of early Helena. The walk to the restaurant was actually quite interesting because to get to the place, you have to walk through an historic alley with pathway that resembles some kind of cobblestone. For some reason, it gave me the feeling that I was walking on Diagon Alley in Harry Potter books, lol! Alright, I don't know why I said that, lol! Going back to the restaurant I was talking about.

I think the menu is pretty much affordable. I have heard some great things about their rice bowls so that's why I tried them first. And I like it.

The first time I went there, I ate alone but since I like the place, I thought I'd invite hubby for a lunch date on one of his Fridays off. It's actually funny since we have not had much of dates ever since we had Caleb so it was kinda a weird but nice feeling to be able to finally go out and have brief but memorable dates again.

Oh wait, I guess I must have liked this place so much because I went back for the third time yesterday to have lunch, lol! I thought I'd go all out this time and ordered their dundee rice bowl with beef, pork and chicken. That was awesome! I felt like a tick after, lol! It's a shame that I had to go back to work and felt worthless since all I wanted to do was crawl under my desk and take a nap, lol! That was how full I was. Then when I went home I found out hubby stopped at Taco John's after work because he was craving for Karmadillos rice bowl and thought he'd find one there, tsk! Of course not! So he ended up getting some tacos instead. Du'h! So imagine how jealous he was when I told him I had lunch at Karmadillos that day. Haha!

I'm just so proud of hubby's first woodworking project for me that I couldn't help but brag about it on my blog. A couple of weeks ago, he completed a lovely Adirondack-inspired wooden lawn chair painted with Lavish Lavender by Sherwin Williams. I have always wanted to have my own wooden lawn chair specifically Adirondack style. And I saw one at Costco but thought too ordinary for the price. I got lucky that I have a handyman husband. He said he will build one for me. And I thought that would be fun. I helped him pick the color of the paint. I googled for some inspiration and lo and behold, I found this beautiful purple colored lawn chair that I thought I must have, lol! I was really excited and thrilled on how this project would turn out.

He had spent most of his weekends and a few hours after work for like almost a month to complete this project. I know he enjoys woodworking a lot so even that alone was really worth it.

Personally, I think there's really something special about a furniture that's designed and made specially for you. And that's exactly how I feel about the whole thing. I mean from the paint color down to the right angle of the chair's back was made for my comfort and style.

I really really love the way the chair came out. I know that hubby loves woodworking and he had done some pretty cool stuff before we met but I mean this is the first time that he has done one for me. And I must say I was definitely blown away. There's no denying that it was one great quality furniture and of course the labor of love was there. Aside from the lavishly pretty paint color, lol! I love how sturdy it is. It's built to last for a very long time. I am just so glad I didn't settle for a ready-made, cheap-quality chair from the store. This is definitely way more better. I can see love written all over this furniture, lol!

As I've promised, I will blog more about my new experiences as a working mom. I apologize for not updating my blog as often as I would have liked. While this has been a fun and exciting journey for me, things have been very busy as of late. But still allow me to take you for a ride to my new world.

At work, we are given two 15-minute breaks and a 30-minute or 1-hour lunch break depending on our choice. So I usually spend my morning break at Sweet & Savory. It's a cozy little cafe right across the street from where I work. Like Starbucks, they do have free Wi-Fi access so it's an added charm to this little place. I like the fact that they are not really crowded especially in the morning. It gives me some quiet time while I enjoy my cup of flavored latte while checking on Facebook updates, lol!

This is a shot of the cafe's interior. Actually, the upper level houses some of the private offices. The building is old as you may have noticed but still has that charm which probably makes the cafe a nice place to hang around.

This is another of my favorite from this cafe. If I remember it right, it's some kind of a frappe loaded with ice-cream, whipped cream and what-not, lol! So fattening but sinfully divine. I don't get this very often just because for some reason, my tummy feels weird after I drink this, lol! Nevertheless, it tastes so good.

On my afternoon breaks, I usually just stay in the break room. It's deserted most of the time so I kinda like that brief moment when I can just be by myself and play Candy Crush, lol! We do have Wi-Fi access at work too so occasionally I would also go on the internet to browse and FB. Oh yeah, FB is still so much a part of my life even if I am in the office. Funny but true! :)