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All the Single Ladies!

I(we) don't really write on this blog anymore, but the post I wanted to write didn't quite fit with my new blog.  So, here goes.  One of the blogs I like to follow is called Kelly's Korner.  She is has a big heart for singles (as do I) & she wants to see all her (and our) fabulous single friends meet their matches.  I have several wonderful friends that are single and just amazing women.  So, I asked them if I could put them out  there.  Shannon said yes already, so I'll start with her.

This is Shannon.

  

On the right ok?  Isn't she beautiful?  I like to call her Malibu Barbie.  Can't you just see her in a sarong & a big lily in her hair??  She is a little on the quiet side until you get to know her.  She is has shown herself to be an extremely giving, encouraging, tender-hearted person.  She is a faithful friend & has a heart to serve others.  She loves the LORD and is very active in her church & Bible studies.  We are in an accountability/encouragement group together with a few other godly girls.  2 of us have young children & she is always encouraging us to bring our kids with us to anything we do.  She plays with them, holds them & just loves on them.  That means a lot to me.  She has a big heart for children & I think it's precious.

 

So, with that said, here's my entry to link up with Kelly.  This post may evolve as the day goes on if the other 2 ladies decide they are ok with me putting them out here as well!!  

Mamas

When we were planning to have Katie, we prepared for her birth by attending a Bradley (Natural Child Birth!) Class. In this class, I met 2 fabulous women: Kanya and Hasson. Strong Christian women that are so encouraging, down to earth, beautiful and funny. Today we got together with all our kiddos and played at the mall play area and had lunch together. Such a blessing. Thank you LORD for these precious ladies!

A friend and I have decided to do Weight Watchers together to lose our post-baby weight. We just finished our first week. I lost 3.6lbs & she lost 5! Needless to say, we are encouraged. I think my goal is 110lbs. This would be 5lbs more than what I weighed when Spencer and I got married. I will reassess when I get to 115. And, oh yes, I will get there.

Great deals!!!

Calvin Klein Bras at TJ Maxx (they have white and beige) $12.99

Baby Bella Maya booties at: http://www.mom4life.com/catalog.php?item=1411 $10

3 1/2 months

Katie is 3 1/2 months old today and such a joy! She can put weight on her legs, roll over, grasp at things, laugh out loud and today she said, "ga, ga"!!! This is such an exciting time. My heart is full.

Check out the New Bow Band for Katie

Cloth Diapers

I chose to use cloth diapers for Katie. Partly to save money, partly to be less wasteful, partly because they look cool and are comfy. Several of my friends are using them as well and they aren't our mother's cloth diapers. No, we use those for burp cloths! My experience so far:

1) They are cute, but I wish I would have kept to the girly colors. I feel weird putting the blue and green ones on her

2) The sprayer makes a big ole mess and hardly removes any of the poopie

3) You must prewash before you wash

4) You must dry the inserts in the dryer for a LONG time if you don't want them to smell like pee pee

5) Soak the poopie ones in hot water and detergent (I use a small office-sized waste basket) for a little while, then wring out & put in the diaper pail with the rest

Those are just a few of the things. It's a learning process, but they really are pretty easy to use. They have saved us a lot of money and we are WAY into that right now.

Katie's pretty cute in them too!

New Frame for Etsy, Happy Birthday to Me & Katie's 3 months!!

Here's my latest frame for Etsy. Today I'm 32 & Katie is 3 months. Yay!

My little Katie Pie--11 wks old

2nd Frame for Etsy Shop

Here is the frame I made today. Let me know what you think.

Latest Etsy Addition...

So, I started a little shop on Etsy called "Belle Delish." There is a clickable icon to the right that will take you there. This is my attempt to contribute to the income as I stay at home with Katie. I put a couple of my older paintings on there to get started and today I made this frame.

Holy Cow the LORD provides once again:

Check out the insane amount of formula that was donated to us yesterday!!! $600 worth!!! It will last us like 5 1/2 months!!! Once again, the LORD provides.

Testing blogger mobile. If anyone still looks at this, stay tuned. We're going to try it again now that we have a baby. For those of you who didn't know, we had a baby.

Well, thats that...

So we finished tiling the shower only three weeks after tearing the walls out of our bathroom. If you're thinking about doing some tiling and have never tired it before, take some advice from someone who's been there, hire someone else to do it.
If you're still thinking about tackling the job yourself (regardless of my timeless wisdom) do yourself a favor and forget talking to the guys at Lowe's, they're a bunch of idiots. Maybe give Home Depot a try.

Look, We're Handy! (or crazy)

Jacqueline and I have been planning to renovate our bathroom ever since we bought our house two years ago. We've been back and forth between hiring the work out to a contractor (smart) or doing it ourselves (...). Well, today's the day for action. We woke up this morning and took a hammer and steak knife (yeah, we used steak knives) to the drywall and made a huge mess in the tub. Yes that is our bath tub in the above image. We're going to attempt to install the cement backer board as soon as I get back from Sonic with a Diet Coke with vanilla. We hope to have the whole thing done by tonight because Jacqueline is an optimist and I believe in miracles.
I'll post some pictures of were we're at when we decide to give up later.

I FINALLY GOT TO USE IT!!!

So it's been a WAY long time since I've made a blog entry but this ones a doozie. It's now 5:05 am Thursday morning and the police have just left our house.

Our dog woke us up this morning around 4:15, barking hysterically in the kitchen. I got out of bed in my shorts to quiet her down. Jacqueline was freaked out but I wasn't worried because I'm a man and we men know that there's never really an intruder in the house, (thats why we're always so willing to go check on it). So I'm walking down the hall trying to adjust my eyes to the light when I see him, the dude in my laundry room.

The laundry room is separated from the kitchen by a glass pane wooden door with a dog flap at the bottom, which this guy was sticking his head through. The door was locked, but the frame has warped with the humidity and now will not fully shut. He didn't know that yet.

The guy starts to yell at me about someone trying to kill him and that he was being shot at. He wanted me to unlock the door and let him in. By this time, Jacqueline was standing in the hall behind me. I told her to go get "that thing" which was my new code word for the gun in the night stand. Now the guy is back on his feet and pushes on the door which instantly opens for him. joy. I push it back and tell him to stay in the laundry room. By this point, I'm not sure wether he's the threat or if there's someone else in the yard or street with a gun or if he has a gun.

I snatch the phone and dial 911 as I dash to the bedroom and grab my gun, (Smith & Wesson 38 special, thanks grandpa) and head back to the kitchen where the dude is trying to come in the door again. I point the gun at him and tell him to back up into the laundry room. This was WAY more exciting than I imagined, like...roller-coaster exciting.

By now, I've told the 911 dispatch the situation and my address and start asking the guy questions (at gun point) about where he came from and who was chasing him. The cops where here in about four or five minutes and for some reason were not aware that the guy was in my house. I put my gun down when I heard the officer come in the door and he walked into the kitchen. He instantly drew his gun on the intruder and started yelling at him, again, very exciting. At this point I returned to my bedroom and put some clothes on.

They take the guy out on my porch and start to question him. He said that someone was chasing him and shooting at him. The officer told me that he had been parked close by for over 30 minutes and never heard a thing. Then they realize they guy has a warrant. Next they discover that he thinks he's in California. That's right, the guy is B A N A N A S.

For some reason, he hid all the stuff in his pockets behind my washing machine. A pack of smokes, his wallet, a cell phone and a piece of paper with the Salvation Army's address on it (a block from my house). Why would anyone take the time to do that if they were running for their life? Weird. They end up taking him to the hospital to check him for drugs and have him evaluated for a case of the crazies. I'll be checking the Washington county arrest site tomorrow to see if he was charged with anything.
I'll surely never check on a noise without a gun in hand again.

I hope this blog entry makes sense, I'm really tired and its 5:47 in the morning.

New blog for my Images

I started a new blog where I plan on journaling my photography. Here it is...

http://smpphotos.blogspot.com/

Check it out.

Need a little motivation

So I got a new camera for Christmas and I want to be more proactive with my photography. I hope to update this photo journal at least weekly with images. I’m currently pursuing a journalism degree from the University of Arkansas with an emphases on photojournalism. I work at a portrait studio, am a staff photographer for the Arkansas Traveler and I’m starting to get into wedding photography on the side, so it’s sometimes hard to find the motivation to get out behind the camera on my own time. Here are some of the first shots with the new Canon 30d. I also bought a 580ex flash head that can command my old 420ex wirelessly. The shot of Jacqueline and Gracie was my first attempt at the master/slave setup with the 420ex to the right, bouncing off the ceiling. The tower shot was taken at Lake Fayetteville and the other shot of Jacqueline was taken in our kitchen with the 580ex mounted on a flash bracket.

Look what was in our backyard last night...

National Geographic, here I come

So I started officially shooting for the Arkansas Traveler this last week. I took an assignment to shoot some people working in the agri department with the gro green project on the north end of town. The story came out in the first issue of the semester (Monday the 21st) and one of my photos made the front page. It was cool going to class on Monday and seeing thousands of people picking up a publication that I contributed to.

UofA International dinner

Jacqueline and I attended the International dinner held at the UARK Bowl this weekend to shoot some pictures for a friend. While I was walking around taking pictures of the people there, Jacqueline mingled with the students. She ran into the editor of the Arkansas Traveler, (the school newspaper that I was hoping to do some work for) and mentioned that I was a photographer in the journalism department. He found me and let me know that he needed photographers and that I should meet up with him on Monday to get some assignments! He even asked if we could use the stuff I was shooting at the party in the next paper. All in all, the event was a blast and I got an awesome connection out of it. If you guys have some spare time on your hands, I highly recommend investing it in an international Student, it's well worth it and they're a blast to hang out with.
Find out more HERE
Here's some of the pictures from the party.

Superman's Dead

WARNING:
If you haven't seen Superman Returns yet and don't want any spoilers, STOP READING NOW! I'm going to talk about the movie and give a major plot point away.
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Lets begin.

So I went to see Superman Returns with Jacqueline and my parents tonight. I've been waiting for this movie for months and am quite the Supes fan. Sadly, I left the movie feeling slighted. Thanks to one glaring fault in the plot line, the whole character of Superman falls apart. Here's what I thought of it.
I'll start off with the good points by stating that the movie is absolutely stunning from an aesthetic standpoint. The effects are awe inspiring and the cinematography is thoughtful and well executed. They couldn't have found a better man for the lead character, Brandon Routh is the spitting image of Reeve, especially as Kent. He did seem a little young for the role, but I didn't feel that it was all that distracting. Superman's character was done well, Brandon did a good job portraying the soft spoken hero. Kevin Spacy is the icing on the cake, perfecting Luthor.
As much as I want to love this movie, I can't. Anyone who follows the comics, even a little, knows that Superman is different from the rest of the superheros. While it's true that he's more powerful than the rest of the DC heros (or the Marvel heros for that matter) his main strength has always been his spotless moral code. Superman stands for what is good and pure in all instances. If this is true, (last chance to avoid spoilers) WHY DOES HE HAVE A CHILD OUT OF WEDLOCK? Superman returns to metropolis to find Lois in a relationship with a live in boyfriend and a child, which is all fine and good since Lois is indeed mortal and imperfect. Later, we find out that the child is really Superman's, a product of a steamy night "spent with Superman" as Lois puts it in her article. Regardless of what your personal views are of extramarital relationships, no real fan of Superman should swallow this as something he would do or is even capable of. Batman sure, but never Superman. Even worse, DC gave them the green light on this and Dan Harris wrote the screenplay! Is this supposed to be canon now? What about Clark marrying Lois like in the comics? Do we forget that? What did DC have to gain from creating a bastard Superboy and scandalous Superman? Is this all just a cheap ploy to make an easy jump off point for a sequel? Not that I wouldn't watch it.

High altitude = good health?

I noticed something while I was working out this week. I like to use the elliptical machine for about thirty minutes when I first get to the gym (ok, that's really the only work out I do) and watch the TV. I almost always get there just in time for Martha Stewart, today she made the perfect chef salad with some lady. Anyways, the machines that I like to work out on have the metal squares set into the handles that can take your pulse and then show you your heart rate in real time. There's a little row of lights that start green, then yellow, then red. My heart rate is always displayed by the very last red light, blinking just as fast as it can. I'm pretty sure this means my heart rate is to high. This all changed last week. My heart rate has been in the green the last 5 times I've gone to the gym. I'm not talking about the top part of the green, close to the red, but middle green. This change took place the first time I worked out since returning from Mexico. I wonder if walking and working in the high altitude conditioned my body to run better? Is that possible in just 8 days? Anyone know more about this? Anyone had his happen to them? Anyone understand LOST last night?

New look, same tired content.

So I've been playing around with the blog template today at work, instead of working. I'm thinkin it's pretty neat.

HAPPY MONDAY!

I've been converted

I once was lost, but now I'm found. Was blind, but now I see... Here's my testimony.

I was raised in a non-apple household. We started out with a Tandy computer that could run old sierra games that came on 10 to 15 floppy discs. Later, my parents got an IBM that ran windows 3.1, I guess they didn't know any better. I started high school and things spiraled out of control from there. Windows 95, Windows 98, I even dabbled with Windows NT. By the grace of God, I never had it bad enough to load up Windows ME. I've been on Xp for the last 4 or 5 years now.

Sure, I knew people who owned mac computers and led very happy, fulfilled lives, we called them mac freaks, apple thumpers. I've always thought "that stuffs not for ME" and "I'm glad you're into that, but I'm having too much fun with Microsoft". Truth was, I didn't have a clue what I was missing. Not until someone sat down with me and walked me though the conversion process. I can't remember his name, but he works over at MegaByte and was very informative. Thanks dude.

I've been an apple thumper for a few weeks now, I bought a 20" iMac with 2gb of ram and the intel duo-core processor followed by a 30gb iPod.

I'm learning more and more everyday, reading my O'Reilly manual and memorizing new shortcuts. I'm constantly amazed by what this piece of technology is capable of. My heart aches for my friends who haven't come to the same realization as I have. The sad part is, some will never take that first step.

Pictures from Mexico

I made it back from Mexico on Saturday. We had a great time hanging out with Mark and Roxanne (the missionaries) and I got to meet several new folks from the Grove. Here's a few of the many pictures that I took during our stay (I shot about 250 total). Click on the pic for a larger image if you want.