Hawk Landing

Had one of these land on our porch this morning. I was sitting at the dining room table working on my laptop and I happened to see this HUGE bird land on top of my hanging flower basket. It landed on the arm that holds the basket. It was facing me through the window and all I could do was stare back! It was so amazing cause the bird was so HUGE! I am just in love with birds, especially all of the hawks we have around here. Ramin will tell you, anytime I see a hawk flying around I say "There's the hawk!" and I always say THE hawk as if there's only one :P I love them. So anyway, at first I didn't think it really was a hawk that landed because I thought his beak was too small. But after doing some research looking at birds trying to figure out which bird it was, I realized that it really was hawk! I wish I had the camera with me, but I didn't want to move from my seat for fear I would scare the bird.

It was a cool memory. Maybe I'll catch him again someday ;)

Wanna help?

I finally created a blog button for the Atmina blog :P It's over there to the right. Yeah yeah I know I'm slow. If anyone is willing to share our business on their blog, please let me know and I'll send you the html code for the button :)

Thanks!

A few of my favorite things

I am so anxious to really spend the time and effort on getting the photography and invitation businesses up and running. I know it will take time and I need to have patience. So I keep myself satiated by visiting other sites and blogs to get inspiration and keep my excited!! Maybe you'll find some of these places fun to explore around:

Lolliblog
Snippet & Ink
Cake Wrecks
Amy Atlas - candy buffets!
TomKat Studio
Zenadia Design

WOW FINALLY!

So I have some good news to announce (no it's not that kind of news yet :P) - But it is good news for the business :) Ramin and Chris spent all day Saturday with me creating the website for Atmina. Please check it out HERE. Isn't it so great?!?! I am so excited about it, especially because I LOVE the home page with the rotating images. I also like our portrait galleries. We went with a simple back theme with white font so it's simple and easy to read. We also have hints of mint in there as well. I just love it! They did such a great job for us.

The other piece of news is that I bought us a new camera!!! Jill is currently in Chicago right now on a trip so she has no idea. We've been wanting a new camera for a while right now but couldn't really afford it right now. But as I read some of the ads in the paper yesterday I realized that we could do 0% interest financing at some places. Ramin LOVES Best Buy and suggested we go there since they have 18 months no interest! This way we'll have a while to pay off the camera as we make more money.

So that's the news - I can't WAIT to surprise Jill when she comes home! She will be so excited and happy - I'll make sure I take photos of her using her new camera :P I'll give her a strict rule though of learning to use it properly AND taking extra special care of it :P

Flowers

So as you all know...I just LOVE posting pictures of my flowers. It's probably silly considering my flowers are not NEARLY as glorious as most of the other flower gardens out there. I always admire lovely flower gardens throughout the neighborhood or as I'm driving by someplace. But you know why I'm so proud of MY flowers? Because *I* grew them! I grow a lot of flowers from seeds and while this year I mostly used petunias, I've been able to watch them grow tremendously!! That is why I'm proud of my flowers!! So here's the story of this summer's flower garden!

This is one of the MAIN plants I grew from seeds this year. And for the life of me I cannot remember what the name of these flowers is. I can tell you this...I've been watching very closely for a good opportunity to photograph them because they only bloom for like a day or two and disappear! I was really lucky to get this many blooms sprouting at one time! This flower plant was growing all summer and only recently started sprouting it's flowers!

6 at once!! Amazing!

This is the delphenium. You might remember the picture of it from earlier in the summer. It sprouted very nicely in early Spring. I had it out on the front porch and I thought it started getting too hot for it out there so I moved it to the back porch in the shade. It almost died right there. I've found it needs just the right amount of sunlight, so I moved it to the garden table which gets mainly just evening sun. And now it's growing amazing again after I pruned it down! I only took this picture a few days ago and it's already grown much more - new blooms will be sprouting on it again and I'll be sure to take more pictures!

My 3 petunia pots out front. I'm proud of these because they weren't doing so good in early Summer. The big pot was so sparse most of the summer. I tried just moving it back a few feet and guess what? It started growing like crazy! Just a few extra minutes a day of shade or something has really made a difference for the flowers in that pot. Isn't that so weird how flowers work! They really do have a life of their own and you have to figure out what they like and don't like in order for them to thrive :)

My favorite petunia pot. It's probably obvious why it's my favorite :P

The 3 main pots on the back porch. I added in some of those little blue/purple flowers in with the petunias and they are cute. I think they're not great for pots though. I've seen many flowers with them and they do much better in the actual ground. I have a feeling they are spreaders and like to spread their roots around.

The garden table. More petunias, blue flowers and the delphenium.

So here's a story for you! I water the plants every other day or so, depending on the heat outside. One day over this past weekend I went to water my favorite petunia pot out front! As I poured the water I saw a quick scampering from something. I've seen this before, lots of creatures like to live in my flowers :P This time though, it was a very green praying mantis! You can see from the two pictures below that I got it pretty good with the water - you can see droplets on it's back.

So I hurried and got the camera to snap some shots. In this one below I was pretty close to it. I think that combined with the fact that I had just tried to drown it really pissed the thing off :P After a few seconds of photo taking the thing actually FLEW at me!! Like right into my face! I honestly didn't even realize praying mantis' could fly!!! It was so weird and funny.

And after it flew/lunged at me, it landed on the driveway. It just stayed there for a few minutes and I gave up watching it and went back into the house :P

I'm always pruning the petunias. Every time a flower on them starts to wilt and shrivel, I'll pull it off. I've had to watch myself a few times because I've come close to grabbing some weird insect hiding out in the flowers. Ahhh the joys of gardening!! I love it!

Update

So, this week has been busy. Chris and I both took Wednesday off because my mom went into surgery that morning. She's had some problems for many years but only recently was the cause found. She had a rather large pelvic mass in her abdomen. She decided not to biopsy it until after it was taken out. It turns out that it was only a fibroid mass attached to a ligament - fibroid masses are usually non-cancerous. So all is well and she is doing really GREAT! She spent 2 nights in the hospital and I've been helping her when I can. She already says she feels some relief from her related pains she's had all these years. We're all very happy things turned out so well.

Because I took Wednesday off of work for mom's surgery I've been staying at work extra long hours the other days to make up the time. It's been busy and eBay is super crazy right now with things constantly changing.

I also went to an orientation for my master's program Thursday night. I am SO excited to be starting school again. It's so weird because while you're in school all you can think about is getting done with it, but after having a semester off I'm totally ready to begin this new chapter. These classes are so much more specialized and totally what I want to be doing as a career so I am just so excited to get going! My first official class is Tuesday :)

My schedule will actually be very light compared to what I was doing in the last few semesters of my undergrad stuff. I'll still get to work the day shift at work, but on Tuesday and Thursday nights I'll head up to the U from 5-8 pm. Not bad at all!

So that's the update. :)

Good Deed

So the other week, exactly 2 weeks ago to be precise, the garage door was accidentally left open overnight and Ramin's golf clubs were stolen. So was Chris' snowboard and sub-woofer, plus some change out of his car. What horrible luck. Guess you can't trust any neighborhood anymore.

Anyway, last week Chris and Ramin decided to put out some flyers on the community mailboxes asking for any information about the stolen loot. As they walked around the neighborhood they also took Belle for a walk :) It was good for her. There also happened to be this stray dog wandering around and it came up to Belle for a minute and sniffed her and ran off. About 5 minutes later a car pulls up and asks Ramin and Chris if they'd seen a big white dog wandering around. It just happened to sound like the exact same dog that they had just seen. So they told the lady in the car what direction the dog ran off in. Another 5 minutes goes by as they are heading home and the white dog shows up AGAIN! So this time Ramin and Chris take her by the collar (at least she had one) and walked her home to our house. And behold the pictures of what this beautiful dog looked like:

This dog was named Tiny Malone according to her dog tag and she was THE SWEETEST thing. She was also impeccably groomed!! And she was HUGE!!! Just look at the size of her compared to Chris! She was so sweet. When they got home I came outside to see her and I gave her a bowl of water. She has so much fur she was dying of thirst after running around the neighborhood! Ramin called the owners and told them where we lived and it took them about 20 minutes to come pick her up but it was great taking care of this beautiful dog for a short while. Turns out she is a Great Pyrenese. I don't think I'd ever want to own one, I can't even imagine how much fur she sheds, but she was so sweet and laid back. I feel good Chris and Ramin brought her back so we could make sure she got back home safely. I just hope she doesn't get out again :P

New/Old Passion

It's no secret I want to have my own invitation business. I've been thinking about it for almost a year now honestly. I've done so much research on what is out there that it's almost overwhelming. Nonetheless, I do know that when I do start my own projects (once the photography thing transitions a bit more to Jill and when I have more extraneous money), I'd like to incorporate handmade stamping into my invitations. In the invitation business, everything is either digitally printed or letterpressed. Digital is cheaper but doesn't offer the handmade feel and letterpress offer the extreme handmade feel but is hella expensive. So I think I want to combine the two. The whole reason I even wanted to do invitations was so I could use my hands and have fun compiling all of the components. I actually like mundane work like that. I always have, ask my mom who used to take me to work with her when I was young. If you needed labels made and stuck on folders, I was all over it!

Anyway, so I've been researching a lot lately about what kind of stamps I'd like to incorporate. I think I'll use my blog to sort of show some of the things that inspire me. Or maybe I'll start a whole NEW blog just for inspirational things - I already follow a lot of blogs dedicated to that sort of thing. So for now I'll just post the few I've found already that I LOVE! I actually have a lot more to post, including stamps from Tim Holtz (note to family, anything gift related should be from Tim Holtz - man I'm the easiest person to shop for hehe).

These stamps I found from Somerset Studio. They create an awesome mixed media and paper magazine. I've purchased it a few times in the past but never really had the will to do much. Now once I get the right supplies I'm totally ready! These stamps here are totally my kinda style!! What do you think?

While I'm thinkin about it...

I heard this song on the radio today. It's my all time favorite song. It has many good memories for me, most of which only Chris and my Dad would understand and remember :) Anyway, I love this song and it's very special to me. It's not only the actual music but the lyrics as well. It's helped me get through the hard times in life. I've talked with my friend Lisa before about songs we'd want at our funeral. I want this song played. Anyone even remotely close to me understands and would appreciate it. Not that I'm planning to have a funeral anytime soon (knock on wood) but I think it would be a great song for everyone to remember me by.



And I'd also like this song played because it's my second favorite song and it makes me cry whenever I listen to it. I can remember when Chris and I used to sit in Dad's car for hours and just listen to this 8-track play over and over, Steve Miller Band's greatest hits. I loved all of the songs, but these 2 really have a special place in my heart and evoke strong emotions for me.

Anything Goin On?!?!

I've been trying to think of an update but honestly, everything is the same as it has been for the past 2 months - BUSY!! Work is very busy (in a good way of course) and so has the Atmina business. We're coming up to a slower period because we haven't got many scheduled appointments. But we're welcoming the break I think. We're at the point where we REALLY NEED a new camera. And we've already got our choices narrowed down - it will be either the Nikon D5000 or the Nikon D90 - basically very similar cameras. We've done our homework and talked to various photography stores about the cameras and looked at things online. For our price range this is the best we can get. And speaking of price range, the only way we'll be getting this new camera is if we qualify for the business credit card we applied for at Chase. I've pretty much got everything business wise taken care of for Atmina. Checking account, sales tax license, business license from the city of West Jordan and now we're in need of some funds. Don't get me wrong, we've made money so far but a lot of it has gone to more urgent supplies, like creating our OWN backdrop for the studio. An associate at Inkleys gave us the idea so instead of spending $125 for one of theirs that we weren't too fond of, we decided to make our own with supplies from Home Depot :P And it cost less than $100. Jill is in the process of creating it.

Anyway, enough about the business :P Then again, I don't have much to talk about. You might be wondering how I'm going to keep up with things once school starts again in a few weeks. Well I've thought about that. We're hopefully going to find an assistant for Jill to take on photo shoots, and she's going to have to do a lot of them herself. I will probably still have time to be the editor and run all of the business aspects, I just won't have time to be going to all of the shoots. I guess we'll see how it goes as it comes.

I'm now working for eBay at home 2 days a week. I think I posted a bit ago that we've had to move buildings as things expand and we've been crammed into tiny rooms with folding tables for our desks. So our awesome boss got us all laptops and now we can work at home a few days a week. So I work at home Mondays and Fridays. It really helps me out because I save those few hours each day not having to get ready and pack a lunch and drive back and forth. I'm able to actually be MORE productive at home since there is less distraction (hey I like to talk to co-workers :P) and I enjoy just being at home. I hope I'll be able to keep up this routine once school starts as well.

Anyway, that's an update. I'll try and get a picture update of the garden items sometime this week. I always LOVE showing off my plants :P