Been.Way.Too.Long.

I am so awake right now its not even funny. Energy vibes f-l-o-w-i-n-g! And I'm staring at this man sleeping at my side. He looks like such a little boy with his major bed head, all tangled up in the blankets and snoring away. And then I think about when he wakes up hes not a little boy. He's a man. A man who truly loves me and would swim through shark infested waters to bring me a glass of lemonade. He's a man who is slowly becoming a person that he himself is proud to be, let alone the rest of his family. A man who quickly takes responsibility for his wrongs and does his best to make them right. A man who fills in the gap and gives when its required and not required of him. A man whom I will be proud to have as the father of our children. I can't think of a better man to blog about, love and appreciate more. And I can't think of anyone I'd rather be married to for the last four years. Here's to Mat~the man of my life. I love you.

New Hot Spot

This old decrepid house is one of the coolest houses in Morgan Hill!! You have to go and take a little walk to get to it but all its missing is an ugly chair and a beautiful girl dressed ghostly white. Seriously. These are a few pics for a book I have to do for school.

Totally been in the mood....

I have totally been wanting to scrapbook but how ironic is it that a photographer doesn't have any photos to scrap? I seriously need to add an extra curricular activity to my life. Or kids....hmmmm....need to work on that one. MAT!!!!

In the meantime I'm working on creating a blurb book. I'm supposed to take around 500 photos to come up with about 40 photos for a book. It's a school assignment but I figure that if I have to spend the money on it I might as well create something that I can be proud of. I'm totally debating whether I should do this REALLY cool abandoned building (see Mason) and take a ton of pics there and see if I can get the bats, doing a set of old dolls that we have (their eyes, buttons etc--can totally see it in my mind), or if I should do a train depot and anything involved with the tracks. If you read this post, leave a comment--I'd could use the opinions. =)

In the meantime, if you have pics and want them scrapped--hand them over! I just might actually get the them....I guess I could work on my Christmas tree that I started last year...

If you want to get started...

I'm selling my Canon Rebel xti. Its in great condition and in the box ready to go. I'm asking $450 for it. This is just the body only.

I'm also selling my Tamron 28-75mm 2.8 lens. Its a great lens but I'm not as much as a zoom person as I thought I was. I'm looking to give a great deal but I don't want to give it away. =) So, I'm asking $300 obo.

E-mail me with any questions: deanna@urbanrosephotography.com.

Thanks!

Poor Girl!!!

This poor lady!! I would if this happened to me on my wedding day...but I'd have to admit its pretty hilarious.

Self Portraits

So one of my class assignments is to do a self portrait and so I decided to have a little fun. Thanks to Stef for the help of pressing the shutter button (gotta invest in a remote!!). These were taken with my new 40D and a 28mm lens. These were taken in the garage (we get beautiful light in the mid day) with my fleece set up. These other ones are just some of the other ones taken. I can't get over how crisp and sharp my eye looks in the one of just my eye! I STRIVE for that!! Thanks for peekin'!

This is Steffy~i heart the processing on this!!

How cute is this...

Well it seems as if most of my pics are coming from phones right now. Strange. But I couldn't resist posting this one. Aren't they adorable. Mat and his girl. He loves that dog so much. But when you get photos like this from her, who can resist??

So Stef thought it would be funny....

...if she decided to put on glasses and does her best impersonation of what I used to look like when I was a kid. And she came purty dern close! IT IS SO FUNNY!! Who does she think she is?!?! Just wait...some day these glasses will be back in style...



Sad thing is apparently they're in stores already! Whaddya know. My mom really damaged me with these things.

A couple more late light...

So I was coming to the end of my due date and had to get a couple more "non-commercial" photos for class so I went downtown to the bus/train depot but did NOT like them so I got a couple of the clock "tower" downtown. =) I LOVE the way the light hits the building. Even in B/W it makes the building look beautiful.

Late light

Jaleesa was so kind to volunteer for me to practice my late light shooting for my Photo class. It's a B/W assignment and this is what we came up with...

Why it means so much...

So I'm a fanatic, weird, pushy and whatever other adjective you want to insert. About what? Getting out of debt. I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT IT!! For about 2 1/2 months Mat and I have faithfully created and tried our best to stick to a budget. Still learning and realizing that there's no such thing as a perfect month, we keep pushing through and have been able to pay hundreds to our  debt. Our goal is to be debt free so that we can be in a great position to invest and buy a home. But the biggest thing in all this is the PEACE that we feel. If we go off budget we know that its not going to break us and we have a peace knowing we have a baby emergency fund. Everything we do is in cash--in our minds building and bowing to the great FICO isn't worth the lack of peace and the stress of making ends meet. It feels so great to be united with Mat on one of the biggest issues and causes of divorce in America--our finances. I wish I could describe how great it feels to be ONE with him.

You may have noticed the tracker on the right--yep we are $27,800 in debt and here is the breakdown:

• Citicards (aka Stupid Debt #1)=$2,100! 
  
• Providian (aka Stupid Debt #2)=$4,700!
• Nissan (aka Stupid Debt #3)=$12,000!
• School Loans (aka Myth: You Can't Have a Student without a Loan)=$9,000
• TOTAL: $27,800.00

We've have had a whole paradigm shift about debt and how its "supposed" to work. Truth is...its not worth the risk and we do NOT want to be slave to these banks the rest of our lives. Proverbs 22:7 says "The rich rules over the poor and the borrower is slave to the lender." We're done being slaves. We're done working for our money only to have to give it to someone else because we couldn't say no to ourselves. We're done. We are living like no one else.......so later.....we can live like no one else. Join us as we celebrate our journey to freedom!!

3 Little Ladies

I had my cousins over for the last two weeks. Oh-my-god I was so tired when they left, but I had so much fun with them here. We went to the park, the Tech, the IMAX, bought school supplies, lost shoes, learned skates etc. We had fun. Totally am so jealous of all the hair they have!!! Aren't they cute?!?

Camping

Last Friday I took a bunch of the girls on a very spontaneous camping trip. We had totally planned to do something else but ended up at Mt. Madonna. We had a lot of fun. We roasted marshmallows, ran out of hot chocolate water (Nicole tried to warm up water over the fire CONVINCED that the thermos would heat up the water on the inside EVEN THOUGH the whole point of a thermos is to maintain the temperature of whatever is INSIDE of it despite the temperature on the OUTSIDE), slept on the hard ground with a pillow and a blanket or in the back of Kandice's truck, told not very scary ghost stories and got kicked out of our stargazing position by the rangers (poor Steffy's knee). Then we packed up the next morning and headed back home. Poor Jaleesa and Nika were so tired because they had been on the beach all day (we almost lost Jaleesa but God kept her from a rip-tide **yikes**). Anyhow, totally have to do it again.~side note~ The picture of the group Nicole looks really great....................................................................................she was really stuck in the tree.

***starting new topic***


Steffy started driving lessons the other day. HAD to get a picture of her in her STUDENT DRIVER car!! I remember when I took driving lessons and we went on a back windy road and at the first turnout the instructor had me pull over and ALL these cars went past (so embarrassing because of the huge yellow sticker on the back)--so Steffy had to suffer some humiliation. Isn't she cute!?!

I'm Legal

Hey I'm legal!! I can now be taxed for all the work I do. Three cheers for taxes-- hip hip eeewwwww!!!!

School...and all that Jazz

Well surprises of all surprises--guess who changed her major again!!?!? =) I actually met this lady who was the Chair of the Art Dept and she said she never got her BA. She went to, and I may have this backwards, it was either 9 schools for 11 years or 11 schools for 9 years but she went straight to an MFA. And she said one thing you don't hear a lot of professors and especially Chairs say--that completing school if you have a career or if business is taking off for you may not be what fits in your lifestyle at that time. And it was all about the life style. She didn't say to never finish!!--but if my photography took off then just finish school at my pace. I know I've definitely not been the cookie cutter four year student. You know on the myspace page where it asks you about me?? I know it may sound a little stupid but it took me a long time to finally come up with that section. I won't say everything was time wasted, there are times that I would do if different but now I finally get to do something that I truly love. And I'm not too shabby at. Still have a lot to learn but that'll come with time...and lenses. BTW--my birthday is in two weeks...

Auuuugggghhhhh....MISSING FINGER TIP!!!!

Okay so its actually not the whole finger tip, but somewhere between a dowel rod (see picture) and a piece of cabinetry is Mat's finger tip. He had this nice hole in his finger tip. Poor guy. It happened on Thursday while he was working and we've been doing follow up hospital visits all day today. The dowel rod went straight through his finger and into the hole in the cabinet with the glue and PINNED his finger to the cabinet piece. He had a MINOR surgical procedure to to push the bone down cause it wasn't lying flat and used a tiny stitch to minimize the exposure of the bone. They can't really close up what's not there anymore so his skin just has to grow back. I'd post a picture but I haven't gotten it yet, Phil has it. Anyhow, just posting about my poor baby.

THIS IS WHAT WENT THROUGH THE TOP OF HIS FINGER AND OUT THE OTHER END. THANK GOD IT WAS MINOR DAMAGE TO THE MUSCLE, NERVES AND TENDONS!! I'll have to post a picture of the cabinet part--he did keep that!


Well I'm off to dinner with my sisters--Olive Garden!!

Lina

Happy Birthday to Lina!! She's 17 today so I had to get at least one picture done just for her. This is my favorite of the bunch! The rest will be posted on my Sneek Peek Blog later this weekend. Enjoy!

Aren't we handsome?

Well he is at the very least. We went out a did a shoot--just the three of us. Me, him and the tri-pod. This is one of my favorites from the bunch. If you click the pic you can see some more.

Hark! A Lark! Flying through the Park!

Yahoo comes up with the best subject lines! This is my continuation to become more photographically minded. I must have sounded really interesting-- stark [adjective] in the bathtub asking for my camera. My feet and back were hurting so bad from walking barefoot and being tense while I work on sewing my first dress. Which is quite an adventure in and of itself. I promise, more thread has been undone and thrown away than actually sewn onto the dress itself. I hope it's wearable. So after this I wanted some...."relief."

Ashaleeee

Ashley is probably by far one of my most favorite people to take pictures of~she's super relaxed in front of the camera and manages to come off sahweeet! Anyhow I took all three of the beautiful ladies out the other day~ you can see their pictures here (they're totally fun to do pictures with!!!), and picked out this image to do a play out with textures, vignettes and all that jazz.

In an effort to become more blogger and photographically minded...

I've decided to participate in the 26 things challenge. Yea me!! So here are my first efforts (haha no pun intended) at my first 26 things. # 6: Effort! The backyard is being done right now and so this is my interpretation of the word. Enjoy!

A Grad Announcement

Well I finally did reach that 25!! Yay me!! =)

But, alas, that isn't the topic of this post. Just wanted to show off a couple of Senior Announcements that I designed. One was for an actual client (Kandice) and the other is for my portfolio. Kandices is almost 100% self created. Her patterned background is actually Stef's bed cover that I took a picture of. All the paper and aged look is self created also. On Ashley's the patterns are mine and the foliage brushes are credited to DesignFruit. Super talented that guy! Without further adieu...

Senior Announcements

Can I just say 25?!

Today I did my weekly weigh-in and so far I've lost 24.8 pounds...so why can't I lose those LAST 2 OUNCES!!!?! LOL. That's my goal for this week--I am bound and determined to lose 2 MEASLEY ounces. I must! Once I do I will post again with the biggest font/celebration I'm allowed. Wahoo!

Oh yeah, and I just bought a skirt that was a size 8!! I've had to give away a lot of my other clothes because I've "under grown" them. lol. Size 8--I haven't worn that since Freshmen year 10 years ago!

Sigh...life's good.

I think we were tired...

This is hilarious! I think it'd been a loooooong day...

My New Favorite Drink

I have discovered a new drink that I love!! I HATE water all by itself but need to drink it so I normally flavor it or drink a lot of ice tea. But today I was thirsty and stopped by to get something to drink and saw these new drinks that I've been seeing around called FUZE. They are SO GOOD!! Some of them look gross (like dirty water ewww....) but they're really good! Try one...

Breath Taken Away...

I HAD to post this picture of Rachel. Its going to be my first photo on my website! She turned out SO pretty!! And she was on a trampoline!! I wish I could remember the lighting I had on these...

SO JEALOUS!!

Took this picture of the girls and the sund hit Lina's hair so prettily (another Deanna word) that I had to post. I'll get some more edits up soon.

Latest Photo Shoot

So I'm still doing the post processing on this shoot but this is quickly becoming one of my favorites. Ash photographs beautifully so we got some really nice shots of her. This was overexposed in color but voila!! its beautiful in black and white. I love happy accidents!

$750 GONE!!

Yeah!! We're doing it! Mat has been working two jobs and I've pulled in whatever money I can get, add some taxes and we've paid off $750 in debt. I know this isn't major bucks but we're just getting started. We've taken care of our "little, annoying" bills. Its seriously so energizing, motivating and a major relief that we're getting rid of our debt. We living like no one else so later we can live like no one else. If we buy it its because we have the cash for it. I'm SO looking forward to posting updates on our progress! Next up...St. Louise Hospital, but look out Citicards because you're next!

Charleston Chewy is Chewy, Louie. But not too chewy.

I hate titles so that came off of Yahoo! Its been raining crazy here (we had hail today) so in between the weather I took some pics and edited them. I'm loving Lightroom and have been working on my b/w conversions. Along the way I came up with a new light urbanish (completely my own word) look that I tried on a couple of Stefanie's pics. Here, here.... to see the black and white ones click HERE. I'm posting the colored ones up here. Sorry if they look a little off, I'm still working on getting my monitor calibrated but may just have to quit editing on a laptop. Sigh... such is life.

(Light Urbanish)







(Light Urbanish)

(My FAVORITE!!)