The Blog - Page 1191 of 1273

Along with our recent blogging face lift with new background and brand spankin’ new pages (a room-by-room project gallery, Etsy store full of thrifted finds you can buy and an updated house tour), you may have also noted a few professional photos of yours truly peppered throughout. We had our much-anticipated and long-awaited (at least for me) engagement photo shoot.

You know how every bride has her “thing?” Well mine is photos. There is absolutely nothing that matters more to me than the photos from our wedding – They are the only things to last beyond the actual day, after all. So I thought long and hard about my choice of photographer. The choice came down to two INCREDIBLY talented photographers in our area, but I eventually chose Katie Stoops. She is an award-winning photographer whose work has been published in a cookbook (which you can peruse and/or purchase here) and has been featured in Southern Living Weddings, Martha Stewart Weddings, Brides and many more! I love that we can go to Barnes & Noble, flip open a glossy wedding mag and see our wedding photographer published!!! Who knows? Maybe you’ll see her photos of us in there someday 😉 Kidding…

This is Katie along with her husband, Dave, and two dogs:

(Photos are by Adam Barnes – yet another local photography GENIUS. He did my sister’s senior portraits several years ago and anyone who can make my broody little sister smile is miraculous. Check out his full blog post of the Stoops’ here)

As you can probably tell, we L-O-V-E her and I couldn’t be more pleased with our choice. She’s a down-to-earth gal who adores her dogs (and ours too now) – What’s not to love? The kicker was that, during our entire engagement session romping around in the grass and climbing onto brick walls, she somehow understood John’s odd humor. It was meant to be.

So when we got a package of our prints and photo DVD at our front door with her seal on it, I was ecstatic and decided to fill our house with the pictures right away (at 6:42 in the evening – sorry for the terrible nighttime, indoor lighting).

When I hung photos in our stairwell gallery last month, I had in mind to eventually replace the photos with our soon-to-be taken engagement shots. So moments after popping the seal on the envelope, I had the frames off the wall and ready to be re-filled.

Here’s what we had to work with after I laid everything out on the kitchen counter:

I popped a few of the 4×6 prints in frames I had lying around (…who am I kidding – JUST for this purpose) and then I put the 8×10’s into the big frames from the staircase. I wanted to fill the collage frames I have up in the stairwell matted for three 4×6 prints, but the orientation of the frame was meant for horizontal photos, which we didn’t get many prints of. So I just left those as is and filled the big 8×10 frames.

I didn’t get any photos of the new prints up on the wall because by this point it was after 7:00 at night and there was absolutely NO natural light to speak of. But trust me when I say that the stairwell is looking pretty schnazzy now. I adore walking past our new portraits every day.

And since I’m nothing if not excited about this whole thing, I thought I’d leave you with several more shots and the back story behind our shoot locations.

John really wanted to wait until November (he’s a cold weather type of guy) to take our photos and I eventually relented because…Well, because I love him! Although I was dreading the chilly temperature, it turned out to be a beautiful day. The first location was at our home where we got to show off our completely redesigned living room (more on those photos to come) and of course the other main man in my life, Rocky the dog. After that, we headed over to Old City Cemetery for the rest of the session. I know you must think we are crazy to take our engagement photos at a cemetery but this historic landmark is just stunning with its antique buildings, rolling hills, metal archways and hundred-year-old trees. We couldn’t have chosen a better location and the afternoon went by way too fast…

Katie did a beautiful job capturing us that day and I canNOT wait for see what she is able to give us from our wedding day in April.

Thanks for letting me gush!! Oh and this was totally unplanned, but today is Katie’s birthday – Happy birthday, Katie!

If you have any professional photos of yourself gracing the blogisphere, please share! I love looking through crisp, clean photography…

P.S. Katie posted about our fun photo shoot over on her website too – Check that out (with a few extra photos) here.

(In case you didn’t catch on, photo credit and copyright for all images goes to Katie Stoops :))

Ever since I saw this post over on the Young House Love blog, I knew what I was getting my mom and future mother-in-law for Christmas…

My mom has collected Cat’s Meow figurines for as long as I can remember. Part of the reason they are so special to our family is that our first cat was a black cat named Belle, and we always associated the signature black kitty printed on all Cat’s Meow homes and building with our Belley-Boopster (one of Belle’s many odd family nicknames). Now having spent time over at John’s parent’s house, I noticed that his mom is also a collector of Cat’s Meow. All the signs were pointing to a custom Cat’s Meow piece for their Christmas gifts.

But let’s talk numbers…A custom Cat’s Meow to replicate your personal home comes out to $69 apiece. This seemed like a LOT of money until I saw that you could get a multiple keepsake discount if you bought more than one. In this case, each one would cost $49. Not a huge difference but that extra $20 in savings sealed the deal in my mind.

After waiting until it was time to start thinking about actually ordering the pieces for the holidays, I got my pen and order form ready and started to read the fine print. The words “Multiple quantities must be of the same design” broke my heart a little…I wanted two different designs, so my idea was now out the window. I was about to scrap the whole plan when it suddenly occurred to me that I have a degree in art (and a father who is a professional wood craftsman) that should have been employed from the get-go.

I looked through dad’s wood scraps in his shop and found a piece of poplar (or pine – I always mix up the two) that would do just fine, then penciled on the shapes of the two homes for dad to cut around. A quick turn through his saw, and we were ready to paint. Here is the beginnings of the one for my mom:

With as steady a hand as I could manage, I was able to get the base coat on the majority of the piece. I just used some acrylic paint I had on hand, so the grand total of this project (including scrap wood from my dad’s shop) came in at $0 – Not bad when I had originally been planning on spending about $70!

The painting aspect of this project ended up being a little more involved then I had anticipated, but I think it was just because of all the detail work. I am not a painter by trade (I draw graphite portraits) so all of those tiny windows and color changes were enough to put this very impatient girl in tears. But (trust me mom, if you are reading this) it was definitely worth it in the end.

This is a photo of John’s childhood home that we asked his dad to send us for reference during the painting process:

And here’s my version of the Cat’s Meow with its first coat:

The rest of the process was just a lot of layers and coats to get the paint nice and smooth so you couldn’t see the wood beneath. Did I mention this project required a lot of patience?? Again, it was so worth all of the effort in the end.

Here’s a detail of the little black kitty (my favorite part)!!

The details definitely aren’t crisp and the lines definitely aren’t straight, but based on the happy gasps and plentiful “Thank you!”s from the two main ladies in my life, I feel like this is one of those times when “it’s the thought that counts.” I am very happy that I decided to DIY these little keepsakes and I am so pleased that my mom and John’s mom loved them – That’s really all that matters.

What kind of gifts did you guys DIY this Christmas?

(Photo credit for Cat’s Meow “My World Keepsake” image: here)

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