I met Katie’s family during one of my holiday mini-session days this past winter, and happily, I will be seeing more of them since I will also be photographing Katie’s sister’s wedding next year.  Katie and Andrew’s wedding will always be memorable to me because in order for me to take photos of Andrew seeing Katie for the first time, they had him blindfolded for the entire limo ride to the place where we were meeting.  I found it humorous, but also felt terribly for poor Andrew!  Luckily, he seemed like a pretty laid back guy who goes with the flow and it didn’t phase him.  And in the end, we were able to capture a few “first look” shots of Katie and Andrew seeing each other before their ceremony.

Before pictures taken at- Monroe County Office Building

Ceremony + Reception Site- Midvale Country Club

Flowers – Kittleberger

Dress- Bridal Belle

Hair- Diva Design Studio

Dessert- Savoias

Music- Encore Entertainment

One dollar can buy lots and lots of things.  Especially on a friday, at a garage sale.  Today was the beginning of garage sale season for me.  I like to carefully fold all of my dollars and put them in my pocket. . . just imagining all of the wonderful treasures that are out there waiting for me.  I stopped at three today, and thankfully, they didn’t disappoint.  I chose carefully though and only stopped at a few that had the things I thought would interest me the most.  Mainly boys toys and boys clothes.  Photography props ranks pretty high on the list as well, but I didn’t find any listings for those.  I found this skateboard today for Brayden for a buck.  He’s been asking for one for about two years now, so I thought he’d be almost coordinated enough to try it, now that he’s nearly five.  He loved giving it a shot, though mainly he worked on his “trick” which was to slam his foot on the back of the skateboard to make it flip in the air.  Talented, I know.

What a precious little girl she was.  We took lots of snack breaks, but she kept falling right back asleep again.  The ring she is holding in the last picture is her great-grandmother’s engagement ring–and her great-grandmother is the one she is named after.  I love meaningful images.

This momma is getting to be an expert on dressing her kids for my sessions.  I love when they show up and I open up the van door and see these perfectly coordinated, but not too matchy children–and then they bring me coffee and a bagel to top it with a cherry.  You don’t get much better than my friends, Jami and Rodney.

All of my married life, I have been Wegmans snob.  Who wouldn’t love a grocery store that has the ultimate shopping experience?  Millions of choices, never a long waiting time in line, people who load your groceries into your car if you want them to, fun carts for the kids to ride in, a kids club where the older kids can play while you shop?  Really–it doesn’t get much better than that.  Also, Wegmans has great store brands.  We buy mostly name brand stuff and we buy the rest as Wegmans brand stuff–which in my personal opinion is right up there with the name brand.  Most Wegmans groupies would argue the same point.

But Dave Ramsey says we should live on a budget.  And Dave Ramsey makes us a put a set amount of money in an envelope in the beginning of the month and tells us not to spend any more than that set amount.  Unfortunately, shopping at Wegmans buying all name brand and Wegmans brand stuff doesn’t quite cut it with the money in my envelope.

And then God gave me a sign.  And another sign.  And another AND another.  I have never talked about a different grocery store so much in my entire life.  Four separate friends discussed shopping at a different store with me in the past month and all of them pretty much were saying, well, duhhh??? don’t you shop at Aldi?? you save soooo much money.  

And this is where the battle begins.  Aldi is one big gigantic generic store.  But today I did my entire list of shopping there.  I bought everything generic, and I struggled with it the entire forty-five minutes I was there.  I don’t think I’m a snob–I think I’ve just always had this stereotypic view in my head that no name food = bad food.  One of my friends at craft night the other day said that they promised they would try everything they normally buy at least once, and if they didn’t like it after they tried that one item, they wouldn’t buy it at Aldi anymore.  So that’s what we’re doing.  I guess.

It was an entirely different experience.  The store is small.  You have to pay a quarter for your shopping cart (but you get it back at the end if you return it to the place where carts go–a rather good system for making sure people put their carts back).  And you have to bring your own bags and BAG YOUR OWN FOOD.  That part killed me.  Bag my own food?  Sheesh.  But to be honest, I probably saved about fifty bucks on my shopping.  I guess that’s worth five minutes of bagging my own stuff.

First of my mini-sessions for the day–this family drove a long way for the session, and I always appreciate a client who will do that.  I feel valued, for sure.  We had the park all to ourselves–little did I know hundreds of people would be showing up in just a little bit for some area lacrosse games.  I was happy to have the quiet for at least a little while.

I posted a few pictures last week on Friday. . . here are a few more.

Can’t wait to share some adorable pics tomorrow of Brayden’s preschool play last week!

We do love when our weddings don’t start until the afternoon–which is usually how most of them go.  Start time is typically after lunch, so we can get some other things in during the morning, which is always nice.  This past Saturday, we didn’t start until 2–so I actually painted our entire family room before we left.  The boys hung out and did really well not touching anything that was wet.  As soon as I have it decorated a bit, I will post pictures.  We used yellow for the first time ever, so it’s a bit adventurous for us.  I definitely like it. . . it’s happy and bright and it sure beats the dark green that was in there before (which we had painted the first time we lived here).

We ended the day with a little fire–roasted a couple of marshmallows and ate some s’mores.  I know James is always thrilled when I post pictures like this.  It totally makes his day.  Or not.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of those beautiful friends in my life who are moms!!