Thursday, January 31, 2008

Time to let go and always check your settings......

So as I invest more and more time into my photography, I've come to the realization that it's time to let go of one of my past hobbies......stamping.  I haven't stamped for my own enjoyment for probably two or so years.  I did make Betsy's baby shower invites late last year, but other than that my stamps haven't been used.  I forget how many stamp sets I have now since I did sell a few last year, but I think that I still have over 75 sets.......all of which are taking up space at this point.  So the time has come to say good-bye to the majority of them.  I'll still keep a few of the essentials and such as well as all of my cardstock, but there's really no point keeping all of those if I'm not going to utilize them.  Someone else should actually be able to enjoy them.  So when I get back from Syracuse, I'm going to make a list and put everything up for sale on ebay.  Guess I'll put any money I make towards a new lens or something!

So the second part of my title......always check your settings!  I took this pic of Lillian and had forgot to change the ISO back.......so it's really grainy, but I still love it....

I forgot to mention something I picked up last week that the UPS man delivered.........My Marta Locklear wrap for newborn babies........isn't it yummy!

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

A dreary day....

It's so yucky outside today.....one of those days where you have to turn on the lights on......I hate those days!  Last night was another stressful one for me and my mac.  I encountered another bug that dealt with Photoshop and fonts.  It took me awhile, but I eventually figured it out.  So far so good and everything is in working order again (knock on wood!)  I guess maybe I just have bad luck or something......or maybe it's just testing me to make sure that I made the right decision switching from a PC!!!!  Besides those two glitches, I love my Mac!  It has a beautiful big screen where I can do a better job editing my pics and my back doesn't hurt from leaning over!

Anyways, we're going to head to the store to get some stuff for the homemade spaghetti and meatballs we're making tonight since Nana is coming over!!  Lilly's been saying mama and dada over and over again, so I guess it was just a natural progression to saying Nana!  

Monday, January 28, 2008

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Lots to do!

The week ahead is going to be a busy one and a lot of it will be cleaning.  Let me tell you.......Lillian gets into EVERYTHING!!!!  I know, I know........completely normal for this age, which is why I laugh it off most of the time and pick up after her.  But this week, I wasn't in the mood and this place reflects it!!!  The stuff that I used to take shots of myself on Friday.......yeah......it's all still set up in the kitchen!  I was going to take it down tonight, but thought that I might as well get some use out of it tomorrow.  I have this chair thing that was at my grandmother house that I want to use for shoots so I thought that I'd give it a try.  I've just got all of these ideas running through my head that I've been jotting down as I prepare to go live with everything and it's been hard to get to bed early.  Anyways, tomorrow we're going to run to Home Depot to get something to organize Lillian's toys a little better.  I'm thinking of getting one of those plastic tower things with the drawers and painting it with chalk paint so that she can draw on it.  She's been drawing on everything lately.........thank god for washable crayons!  Oh and another thing that she does lately is dance, especially when she has shoes on.  She goes into the kitchen and taps her little feet.  I'm thinking of checking into some dance classes for her......or at least see what age they start at.  We just want her to be active and not one of those kids that sits in front of the TV all day, and thankfully so far she isn't one of those kids.  I'd say in total she probably watches 30 minutes or so a day of TV......just bits and pieces here and there.  Every now and then she'll sit down for awhile is something really catches her interest, but she enjoys playing more which I'm happy about.  I'm also going to finally call the library down the street to see if they have story time........I've been meaning to call for ages, but always end up forgetting!!!  So it's 11:30 now and I think that I'm going to head to bed in a bit........I stayed up until 2:30 a.m. Friday night.........haven't stayed up that late since college!!!!

Saturday, January 26, 2008

ARE YOU VISITOR 100,000?!


I can hardly believe that I'll be at 100,000 shortly!  So if you are visitor 100,000 (count is on the side bar), take a screen shot and send me an email with the attachment to carrie@carrieannphotography.com and I'll send you a $10 gift certificate to the store (digi or otherwise) of your choice!!!!  Just one lucky winner though (for obvious reasons!)

Friday, January 25, 2008

Yay!

so I found my camera bag (thank god) in the laundry basket.  I knew that I needed to take a picture of myself which is certainly not something I like to do.  Let's just say that childbirth hasn't been kind to me!  I have a double chin like you wouldn't believe........even when I was skinny I had a bit of a double chin going on.  If I could get rid of that I'd be a happy girl!  I've slowly been losing some weight and Dan bought a trainer for the bike so we could use it indoors since I love riding my bike.  I actually love working out, but I usually prefer to work out at a gym.  Needless to say I haven't had a gym membership since living in Buffalo and that was like 3 years ago.  Anyways......we booked our cabin for Bar Harbor, ME and one thing that we love to do there is ride our bikes on the carriage roads.  There are quite a few large hills that I know will be tough for me, but I'd at least like to get a head start with this bike trainer, and maybe in the process say goodbye to a little bit of my double chin.  
So, I had to take a picture for my photography business.  I thought that it'd be a good idea to have a picture of myself in the About Me section rather than a pic of Lillian.  So here it goes (this is totally like ripping a band-aid off for me.......sooooo painful to share these!!!).......



A little freebie......

So it's been awhile and I thought that I would share!


Please be courteous and leave a comment if you decide to download.......it only takes a sec!!!!


In other news, I've been running around the house trying to find my camera bag......I have no clue where the darn thing is!  I'm trying to take a self-portrait for my website and I'd rather use my remote if I can find it.  Oh well......maybe I'll try without it once Lillian goes down for her nap!  We're going to run to the bank today and Home Depot for a few things and I'll pick something up for dinner tonight for me and Lillian since Dan is going skiing tonight.  We're heading to CT for the day on Sunday to celebrate Dan's Grandma's birthday and then tomorrow we'll just be hanging out at home.  Anyways, hope that everyone has a wonderful weekend!!!

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Photoshop......



is here!!!!  And yet again, I have a TON of things to learn.......and I mean a TON!  I think that I have most of the basics with the Mac down pat and I'm completely used to it now, so now the real work with understanding and using all of Photoshop's tools is the next phase for me.  I picked up Holly's Eye sparkle and defog actions from Pink Ink today and I'm totally in love and so happy that I was finally able to get them!!!  Just being able to see my pics larger and create everything with a bigger screen and having a normal keyboard again has helped me out a lot.  I think that having the bigger screen is going to help me a lot when I get back into designing.......which may start sometime next week!
So other than that not much else is going on.  Dan stays after work each night playing squash and comes home with some really sweaty clothes!  He's lost a bunch of weight......typical man!!!  At least him staying late lets me wait to clean up Lillian's mess a little bit later!  She makes such a mess wherever she goes.  It's like some radar goes off letting her know when the place is clean and that it's time for her to get to work.  I gave up on cleaning out the lower cabinets a looooooooong time ago.  I'll worry about it more once she understands more.  Temper tantrums are also becoming more persistent.......happy, happy, joy, joy!!!  It seriously makes me laugh on the inside each time I see her drop to the floor and start crying.......I think it's the only thing you can do to keep yourself sane!!!!  Apparently she didn't meet her weekly quota, so she decided to play catch up and have a bunch of tantrums today.  So instead of running to the bank to get one of my forms for the State notarized, we stayed home.  Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day and we'll head out.  And maybe I'll take some pics of her too!

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Well, I'll be sending my paperwork out tomorrow for my Vermont tax ID and registering my business name and I'll be all good to go!  I have to file some tax stuff in New York as well, but at least the big stuff is out of the way.  My meeting with our accountant went great and he told me everything that I needed to know and the one form that I have to fill out........gotta love Vermont!  

Oh and my issue with the computer has been resolved (hopefully!)  I got a little reminder that there were updates for my system and the one that I downloaded for Leopard seemed to fix the bug.  You don't even want to imagine how upset I was over the possibility of not being able to use the Mac for the one thing that I purchased it for.  So tonight I'll finally get some sleep!  Oh and I've really got to mention what a wonderful help Jen and Jamie over at Portfoliositez.com were through all of this!  Me and Jen went back and forth several times the other day trying to figure out the problem and she was so helpful through everything!  So if you're in the market for a template/host for your website, I REALLY recommend them........and you can't beat the price!!!!

Anyways, the above pic is Lilly trying to get on the scale that I bought off of ebay for shoots (not edited......don't have photoshop yet!)  She wanted to get in on the action too!

Monday, January 21, 2008

First snag

Well I've hit the first snag with the Mac (and hopefully the last).  Apparently, there is some sort of bug in Leopard that messes with jpg files.  Some people are blaming Adobe Lightroom (which is what I have on the computer now) and others are blaming it on Apple.  In either case, neither party has come up with a patch for the problem.  The issue I'm running into is when I wanted to download a new pic to my website, none of my jpg's are available for download.  All of my previous pics were edited in Lightroom, so when I tried today with pics that I didn't edit in Lightroom I still ran into the same problem.  So, some of the fixes have said that I can edit the pic in Photoshop and then copy the image, thus losing some of the excess meta data.  If this sounds like a foreign language to you, it the same way for me!  I haven't the faintest idea when it comes to any of this stuff, so I'm just frustrated as a new Mac user.  I'll be taking Lightroom off the computer in the meantime, which is sad because I love it!

Anyways, tomorrow I'm heading to the accountant and I am sooooooooo excited you don't even know!  I must have sounded like a 10 year old when I was on the phone with him.......that's how excited I am.  Dan is taking some time off so I don't have to worry about her running around or anything and I can just focus on everything he's going to be telling me.  So shortly, I'll be official and I can start advertising and what not!  Isn't that exciting?!!

Friday, January 18, 2008

Some pics.....




So today I thought that I would try out some different props and when I went around the house, I remembered that Lilly tends to climb into this thing a lot so I thought I'd give it a try.  She wasn't loving being put in there, so I put some cookies down at the bottom and that seemed to work!  I also have an old scale that I got off of ebay that I did some test shots with her baby.  I just needed a little break from the computer and thought it'd be fun to test things out again!

Thursday, January 17, 2008

A public Thank-you......

As I sit in front of my laptop (which I dreadfully need to use for Word) getting my contracts and what not ready for the business, I realized how lucky I am. I've been through a few possible career paths in the past 10 years that I've been with Dan. I started off going to college for nursing. I decided to leave that school (which I had been accepted to the 3 year program) because I knew that Dan would be going to another school. Looking back, I probably should have stuck it out, but if I hadn't done what I did I may not be where I am now. And so we went to Buffalo State. I know I probably influenced Dan to go there with me and he probably should have gone to RIT, but it's the decision we made. I changed my major to forensic chemisty and ended up falling victim to an advisor that wouldn't listen to me when I told him that I needed to take Chemisty over since their Chemisty classes were obviously taught in a completely different manner than my previous school taught them.

I went from being on the Dean's list at my first school to failing........and miserably I might add!!! So after spending a lot of money on a private loan that I had to take out for my 3rd year, I realized that I needed to get out of school. Dan finished up his 4th year and graduated. I in the meantime got an office job, which didn't stink, but I didn't have a desire to sit behind a desk for 8 hours a day.......but at least I left their with a few good friends. Dan was then given the opportunity to transfer to MA which we were "told" would be a great move for us and that I'd never have to work again. This move, was yet again, another mistake on our part........but as with all mistakes you make in your life, you learn from them. I decided to give Medical Transcription a try as I knew that we would like to start a family soon and I didn't want to have to bring my child to daycare. Yet again, it was a huge failure. I again, felt like a failure.

And then I became pregnant with Lillian. I was so tired throughout most of my pregnancy and I can only imagine what it would be like if I had gone full term. And then when she came early, I felt like I was continuing the cycle of failure........yet again I couldn't finish something! Lilly though brought both me and Dan so much joy and I think that she has brought so much to our lives. She made us realize that no matter what, you need to be happy, not only with your home life, but with your daily life.

And so the changes began. Dan started looking into getting a new job, partly because we knew we could no longer afford to live in MA.........which I might add is one of the most expensive places to live.......which means that your employees salary should reflect that.............AND IT TOTALLY DIDN'T (sorry......needed to get that off of my chest!!!!!) When Dan was offered a position at Mack, I knew that we were headed in the right direction. We were moving back to where he was from and where we would be around more family. We've been here for almost a year, and there's still not a day where he has a day that even comes close to how tough it was out in MA. He loves his job.........and that's the way it's supposed to be! They treat their employees the way employees should be treated.

So Dan having a job that he likes was a check on the list. But what would I do? What could I do that would still allow me to still do my main job.......being a mom? Being a mother is my reason for being here. I can't even begin to imagine my life without Lillian. How could I live without her little messes that she creates wherever she walks!? How could I live without her blowing kisses to me? How could I live without the unconditional love that she gives me, no matter what? No matter what ends up happening with the rest of my life, as long as I'm able to be a mom, I know I'll be doing what I was always meant to do.

But......I still have the urge to contribute to the family. When I picked up my Nikon last May, I fell in love. I've always been slightly creative. It's the path that I SHOULD have chosen as a career path. But I didn't and I wasn't about to go back to college when I was just about to pay off my student loans. When I started getting comments on some of my pics at flickr (have I mentioned how much I love flickr.......SOOOOO much inspiration!) the lightbulb started flickering. Could I be a photographer? I didn't start seriously considering it until I was accepted to join a focus group at Pink Ink Studios (check out their amazing stuff here.) It's a bunch of other photographers in the same position that I'm in........just staring off and not knowing where to begin. We ask questions, we answer questions! It's been a tremendous help and I'll forever be thankful to Holly for letting me join. And it was then I knew that I COULD do it. I could do both things.......be a mom AND a photographer! I've still got some things to work on business wise, but to think that pretty soon, I........Carrie Ann Bombria will be a small business owner boggles my mind. And........I know I will put my all into it! And why you may ask is this time is it different than the other times? Because my heart is in it.

And through all of it, through all of my career paths, through the ups and the downs has been Dan. He's been there for it all just nodding his head saying "okay, whatever you want." This time, I know he's been the most nervous about, because lets face it.......starting your own business takes a few bucks. I've been able to buy some things on my own when I was selling digital scrapbook designs (which I plan on getting back into btw!), but for the most part it's been him helping me along. He's been there through everything, and whether he realizes it or not, I'm forever grateful. If you don't know Dan, know this..........Dan is a hard worker. He puts 110% into everything he does, no matter what (even when working at that yucky lala job!) Up until this point I've been more of a 40% kinda gal.......not proud of it, but at least I'm admitting to it! Still have some things I need to work on, but I'm getting there. Starting this business has been different for me. I'm probably at 90% right about now.......the other 10% is when I revert back to my old ways but then I snap out of it. I'm not even officially a business yet (will be within a couple weeks though!) and I'm already feeling a huge boost of confidence. I still have a ton of things to learn in the photography field and I mean a ton. But it's finally something that I WANT to learn, and for me that makes all of the difference in the world.

So in the end, my public thank you is to you Dan...........thank you for giving me the opportunity to be happy with my career path and for giving me the chance to finally start walking that path.

Whew............that was a long thank-you............lots of things I needed to say and get off of my chest! Anyways, time to get back to the yucky laptop! I'll be posting a freebie tomorrow I think if I'm able to find the linkage and what not! Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!!!

Love her!!!

So you know how MTV has been shoving new artists down your throats each week as they introduce us to their music?  Well I love last week's pick!!!



Sometimes when I watch the Hills I think to myself "why in the world are you still watching MTV.......you're 28 years old......time to grow up!"  But then I remember that my generation grew up with MTV!  I really only watch The Hills and The Real World (which is soooooo far from the REAL world!)  Most of the time when the TV is on we're either watching Noggin (even though Lilly really only pays attention when the Backyardigans and Blue's Clues is on) or we're watching something on Discovery or TLC......or my fav.....Bravo!  We really don't watch any shows from the major networks so I don't have the faintest idea about Desperate Housewives or Grey's Anatomy (shocking I know!!!)  I will admit that the TV stays on for probably 5-6 hours during the day, but it's mostly for background noise.  Lilly enjoys playing more and I've been busy on the puter getting things ready for the business.  Anyways, that's enough rambling for now.  Be sure to check out Kate's video!!!

Just a little ramble....

I don't have any pics yet today but we'll see what Lilly lets me take!  So I'm so excited about a couple of things!!!  First, we're planning our first family vacation!!!!  You'd think we'd go someplace we've never been, but when you love a place so much, you can't help but keep returning!!!  So we're going to (here's a big shocker) Bar Harbor, Maine again!!  Me and Dan have been there 3 times, twice camping and once in the cottage we rented for our honeymoon.  With Lillian still being a little too young for camping, we decided to rent a cottage again.  Our plan at this point is to go back to where we honeymooned but a different cottage.  They're right on the ocean on the other side of the island and they were really great there.  Here is the cottage that we'd like to get here.  We're going to go in the late spring, early summer which is something we've never done before.  Bar Harbor can certainly become REALLY busy during the summer with everyone visiting Acadia National Park!!!  I'm just excited to be able to bring Lillian up there.  I know we should probably visit someplace different some time, and although I'd love to go out west, I think I'd like to save that trip until we're done having kids and they're grown.  So at this point, it's about bringing Lillian to a place that we love.

In other news, my Mac will be having a new occupant soon.........CS3!!!!!  I'm so excited you don't even know!  You don't even realize how much you rely on photoshop until it's not on your computer.  Anyways, that's my big news........not to exciting for you.......but really exciting for me!

Oh and I'll be posting another freebie soon so be sure to come back!!!

Monday, January 14, 2008

Snip, Snip.....

Well the time came where I had to do something about Lillian's bangs!  I cut them a little short, but hopefully they'll grow pretty fast.  I didn't want to bring her to the hairdresser just yet, especially since the hair on the top of her head needs to catch up with the hair on the bottom.  I took a teeny bit off of the top in hopes that it will grow a little faster, I guess we'll see though.  These are Lillian's very first pigtails!  Isn't she the cutest.  Her hair was a little choppy at first, but I was able to clean it up once she sat in her high chair for lunch.

Last week I started telling her the story about her belly button and how her and mommy used to be connected so that mommy could give her lots of love.  Well ever since then, she likes lifting her little shirt and pointing at her bb!!!  She not quite able to say it, but she does say two words that begin with b.  She's been doing a lot better with her words and saying a lot more lately.  Momma has become a lot more pronounced as has Dadda.  She's just growing up way too quickly and she really needs to slow down for me!!  Although if she were to start going to the bathroom in the potty I wouldn't complain!!  Anyways, we're just catching up on laundry today so nothing exciting.  Hope everyone has a wonderful week!!

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

For Aunt Betsy.....

Lilly playing with her kitchen.....


Isn't she beautiful?!!!!  I have Lightroom and my camera software loaded......the two most important things at this point.......although photoshop would come in really handy for sure!  But I don't have any pics of Lilly on this computer so I guess I need to start taking some.  It's a bit gloomy out today, not that it matters much since Dan has my car today.  So today I'll just take that course on CD about the Mac and hopefully learn a few things.

Oh and if you're reading this and you live around me, be sure to take advantage of my no session fee promo that I'm holding for my first 10 customers......I already have some booked and once I start advertising they'll go pretty fast!!!!

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

It's here, it's here!!!

It took me awhile to get the internet hooked up, but it was worth it!  I'm kinda glad that I didn't get the 24" screen......it would've taken up the whole desk!  So I've got some software to install and such and try and learn a few things about this thing.  Oh......and her name is Hazel......it just popped in my head so I thought it was meant to be!!

And I think I gave the UPS the biggest smile he'll receive today!  He said "man you look happy to see me".......happy is certainly an understatement.  I look forward to the places Hazel will take me!!!!

Monday, January 07, 2008

Just a couple of pics.....

A boring weekend so just a couple of pics of Lillian.....


Friday, January 04, 2008

It's been a looooooooooooooooooong day!!!

I probably should have taken a nap today but I didn't. Last night was a rough night for Lillian......probably another molar coming in. She wanted to play as soon as we hit the bed and we only ended up getting two hours of sleep. You would think that with the lack of sleep that she'd be a little mellow today........nope.......not Lillian!! She's been getting into everything and making a complete mess of what was once a clean house! So with Lillian running around, crazy me thought that it would be a good time to set up my lighting so I could start practicing. She wasn't in the mood to sit in front of the backdrop, so instead I used Lillian's new best friend, her baby doll.......


I still need to practice and such, but I thought that this was a good start. I'm not too sure what we have planned for this weekend. I was going to get my hair cut since it's way too long and too hard to manage, but I forgot to make an appointment so I guess it'll have to wait until next weekend. Anyways, I hope that everyone has a wonderful weekend!!

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Come to mama.....

I think that when the UPS man pulls into the driveway to deliver me this next week.....
I'm going to give him a big hug!!!!!!!! And then when Dan gets home I'll give him an even bigger hug for letting me get it! I am SOOOOOO excited you don't even know! My Dell just isn't cutting it anymore and the thought of how slow it's going get in the future brings yucky la la thoughts to my head! I'm going to be cleaning the desk off this week since there won't be enough room for the printer with the big 20" screen. If I had all the money in the world it would've been nice to get the 24", but I think that the 20" will suit me just fine! And I'm really excited about having a normal keyboard again. My dad has the 24" iMac so I've used his a number of times so I know some stuff, but I'll certainly have a bunch of other stuff to learn. With all of the issues with Vista, I knew this was the best option for me. And with 2GB and it only being used for editing photos and the internet, it should be WAYYYYY faster than the Dell. Anyways, just had to share my happiness.......time to think of a name for her, but I'll have to meet her first! A new car and a new iMac in less than a month.......aren't I the luckiest girl around!!!

Spread a little cheer.....

Well I thought that I would share one of my kits since I'm no longer selling at a store right now rather than just having it sit on my hard drive.....



THIS LINK WILL ONLY BE ACTIVE FOR 48 HOURS!

Sorry you missed it! Be sure to bookmark my blog for future freebies!

Anyways, lots to do today! Hope everyone has a wonderful day!

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Back to normal....

Well Dan is back to work today after having two four day weekends! We just chilled out on Monday and barely managed to stay up till midnight to watch the ball drop......how sad is that?!!! Then yesterday I really had to get out of the house so we decided to take a drive to Rutland......there's really not much to do there, but with the weather we really didn't want to go exploring in the middle of a snow storm. Dan decided to take us to Killington to get something for his skis......talk about a mistake!!! I was nervous the whole time.....mostly because of all of the people that don't know how to drive in the snow!! So we made it out okay and once we got back into Rutland we went to Ponderosa Steakhouse......I haven't been there since I was an early teen and even then I had only been there once or twice! Not too bad for $6.95 each.....could've been much worse! So Betsy has been asking for pics of Lilly in front of her new kitchen that she gave her for Christmas, but the photographer in me isn't happy with the shots. So I'm going to take some pics of her either later today or tomorrow with the kitchen in front of a backdrop. In the meantime, here are some pics that I took of Lilly the other day in front of the window....