Come check us out this Saturday!
If you are in Houston, come see our booth this weekend:
Yale Street Arts Market
Saturday, Dec. 2, 2006
10 AM – 6 PM
548 West 19th Street
(in The Heights)
If you can’t drop by or don’t live in Houston,
you can still check out our website and buy prints!
Thanksgiving Re-cap
I hope everyone had a safe and peaceful Thanksgiving weekend with friends and family. I know I did…
Thanksgiving Day: Our friends Susan and CJ came over to our house so Kenny could fry a turkey. The weather was great for it and the turkey was yummy. It looks rather crisp in the picture but believe me, it was actually very tender and juicy (Kenny used an injectable garlic & herb seasoning). It was a nice, laid back day with no hurries. We had good conversation and the food was all yummy.
Friday: My old best friend from high school was in town and she organized a casual lunch with a couple of other girls from our high school. We met up and it was nice to catch up. I had not seen one the girls since the day we graduated back in 1991! She was our valedictorian and she looks great, has started her own business and is expecting her 2nd baby.
Friday night: We headed down to Sugar Land to a welcome back dinner for a friend who is a Navy Reservist. He is hopefully back for a while now! Afterward, I left Kenny at home and headed into town for some salsa dancing. I wouldn’t have gone out but there was a local casina rueda group I wanted to meet. It’s a great group (I’ve joined) and I look forward to going to some of their free weekly classes.
Saturday: This was our 2nd Thanksgiving but this time with my Mother. We had glazed spiral-cut ham instead with her (her choice) and it was another nice, unhurried day. Heck, we all took naps afterward! LOL After my Mom left, we once again stayed in and watched a movie.
Sunday: We slept in and got some rest then headed in for some shopping. Kenny bought me some much needed jeans and I knocked a few gifts off my Christmas list. Woo-hoo! Barely got home in time to go to salsa training class! Ack!
How was your long holiday weekend? Are you as stuffed as I am?
Holiday Theme
Holiday WordPress themes that are widget-ready are hard to find – there are only a handful. I am not completely in love with this but it will do for now… (:
(If you can’t see the new holiday theme, scroll down the sidebar and select “Christmas Gifts” from the theme selector menu).
Rueda dancing, turkey dinners and Houston history…
Yay, another weekend update!
Friday night: Met a salsa classmate for dinner (we had Cuban) then headed to Plaza 59 for some salsa dancing. A nice group showed up from our class and we were even able to squeeze in three rounds of rueda or casino salsa onto the really crowded dance floor. I had a lot of fun and left at 1:30 AM tired but happy.
Saturday: Made it to the post office to mail an eBay sale before heading into work to take calls at the “turkey call center”. I work for a large cafeteria chain and we are selling turkey & ham packages for the holidays. It is an extremely busy time for that department so they ask us to help out when we can. I have been helping throughout the week as well.
Saturday night: The phones rang non-stop at the call center and I was so tired by the time I left (I had been there for 5 hours). I didn’t care what I did that night as long as I didn’t have to think about it so our friends joined us for an evening of Mexican food and Battlestar Galactica.
Sunday: I hadn’t had an opportunity to go on a GHPA tour yet and there was a free one this day so Kenny and I headed downtown to Allen’s Landing. The walking tour was very informative and the weather was perfect. I really need to try to take their tours more often. Houston has more history than one might think and the GHPA tours are a great way to find out about it.
Afterward we did some shopping (got this cute mini lava lamp for my desk at work), grabbed a quick dinner to go at the Dessert Gallery and headed home so I could grab my stuff for my salsa training class.
Still no time to really settle down all weekend which is frustrating me but I’ll deal!
All about me…
I hope everyone is doing well… I do try to quickly read through everyone’s blog on a regular basis but I often don’t have time to leave comments. They watch our internet usage here at work and at home I am typically working on post-processing my photographs so I don’t blog-surf as much as I used to.
I know I fill this blog with weekend re-caps and movie reviews and other mundane stuff but I wanted to write an entry that was a little more personal. You read about all the stuff physically going on around me but what about me?
Well, “me” is doing fine. Overall I am happy but I am also…
… anxious about the upcoming art festival on Dec. 2nd. There is still so much to do to get ready and the prints I want to sell aren’t even ordered yet!! I did spend last night finding the original files, re-naming, tweaking my list. I added a few images I took in the past couple of weeks that weren’t in my original list and I am excited to see them all come in. I have a handful of my test prints matted and they look so great!! I also framed a few to use as displays and made some prototype photo card sets. I am happily surprised at how nice the cards look and feel really good about those.
… content at work. I am settling down here and I am recognizing more and more faces around the office. They seem to recognize me as well now. I guess it helps if your face is up on the intranet because you are “employee of the month”. Yes, I was given this distinction and I am really enjoying the great parking spot!
… unsure about my ability to teach salsa. I am still going to training but my confidence was blown a few weeks ago. I can learn the steps and am technically proficient but I don’t know if I will ever have that “style” that makes a good dancer a great one. I had a good class yesterday though so I will continue on with training.
… excited about my photography. OK, back on this topic but only to say that I have really been having fun with my camera and have been taking it along with me more often. Some of my favorite shots have been photos I took in the past month or two.
… disappointed in my weight gain. Yes, I have gained back almost all (but not quite) of the weight I took off over a year ago. Thankfully my clothes are not as tight as they were back then but that is no excuse. I will deal with that when I am ready mentally though. Not at this moment, not today.
And I am now less than a month away from turning 33. Wow. Thirty-three. Where has all the time gone? I feel so unaccomplished for my age. I hope it’s just the tired me talking right now because I know in my heart that even though I am not a company executive nor am I a mother of some great kids I have done a lot in my life and will continue to do more… maybe that is why I am so upbeat about the photography? It makes me feel like I am accomplishing something and it helps build up my esteem about my photography abilities. I have no illusions that I will ever be a truly professional photographer – I don’t want to be – but at least this little hobby of mine can help me get a little extra cash for my effort and bring a little local recognition.
And because I don’t know how to end this entry I’ll leave you with another image I took at the Dallas Arboretum a couple of weekends ago…
Out alone, taking long walks around town…
I was able to start this post this weekend so I am able to get this recap out in record time! Woo-hoo!
Friday night: I heard Natalie MacMaster being interviewed on our local NPR station and decided to do something I have never done – go listen to live music alone! So despite the storm warnings I packed my blanket and headed down to Miller Outdoor Theatre. The storm did indeed blow through but not after letting me sit and listen to some great Celtic music rain-free for about an hour and 15 minutes. At that point though the rain finally started to fall and all of us out on the lawn grabbed our stuff and skedaddled! Afterward, I had dinner by myself at Barnaby’s Cafe and read my book… it was a rather relaxing evening despite the storm getting me a tad wet (my umbrella had been destroyed with one gust of wind on the way to the car after the concert).
Saturday: I woke up early to meet CJ & Susan for breakfast and to pick up our flowers from my garden club’s bi-annual flower sale (our fundraiser). Since Kenny was still out of town till Saturday night, I needed their SUV to get all the pallets of flower home. We barely fit though and had to put flowers in our laps!
After they dropped me back home, I headed out to Hobby Lobby and Target for some photo print supplies. We want to frame some of photos as a display for the art festival next month so I was looking for some affordable but nice unique frames. I also want to sell sets of blank cards with my photos so I went looking for those supplies as well. 
Since I was out and about I had brought the camera and headed to the Museum District. I visited the CAM (I hadn’t been there in a while) then walked around the area and took pictures. The weather was perfect – low 70’s with sun and clear blue skies with a slight breeze. Another great day to myself doing stuff I wanted to do, not having to be anywhere to meet anyone. It was great to know I had no time constraints. It was a good day.
Saturday night: Waited for Kenny to get home. His flight arrived at 8 PM so I watched TV, worked on some photo card prototypes, worked through the pictures I had taken earlier that day…
Sunday: Kenny was home so we slept in a little to let him recover. After lunch I took Kenny to the convention center so he could check out the gun show. I parked nearby and walked the streets of Downtown with my camera. Timing worked out perfectly because by the time I was ready to head back to the car, he was done with the show as well. Together we ran some more errands, headed home and went to another Sunday night salsa training class.
I had an absolutely lovely weekend. And it wasn’t because Kenny was out of town; it was because I didn’t have any social obligations to be anywhere! I was able to participate in some local culture that I hadn’t done in a while and the weather was gorgeous – even the storm was refreshing. Just a lucky combination and I am very appreciative of the time I had!
PTO, art opening, sisters & flowers…
Earlier this year we thought we were going on vacation this past weekend but we were unable to do so. I already had requested the time off so I decided to go ahead and take it anyway even if I wasn’t going anywhere! So I took Friday off as well as Monday and Tuesday (yes, I am home right now). Anyway, since I am at home I thought I’d give you the weekend recap before the week it is over! LOL…
Friday: Despite having the day off I offered to come into work for a short meeting at 9 AM (I live less than 2 miles from the office). It was indeed short and then I headed to my annual exam. Came home, took a nap, cleaned up my home office a little bit (I can see my desk once more). Kenny then took me to dinner at Houston’s for their yummy fries and prime rib!
Saturday: My sister called me Thursday night on her way to Dallas. She is an artist and art professor and had an art opening Saturday night at a local art space. She wanted to know if I was going to be able to be there. Since I was no longer going to be at the art festival on Saturday I thought about it and decided to drive up to see her. I arrived in Dallas early Saturday afternoon and spent the rest of the day with her. Her art opening went really well and I enjoyed the dinner afterward with the gallery curator, gallery owner and artists.
Sunday: My sister left before sunrise because she had a long drive home to Tallahassee. I slept in a little longer and despite it being overcast and gray, I decided to stop by the Dallas Arboretum to take pictures. I ended up spending two hours there and took so many pictures. It is a beautiful place and larger than I had anticipated. Even though the sun never came out it was pretty good for picture taking because there were no harsh shadows on everything! The pink rose to the right is one of my favorite images from the day.
Sunday night: I made it home in time for salsa training.
Postponed till December – save the date!
As some of you may or may not know, Christine and I are going to be selling our photographic prints and we are getting things in order to do so. We hit a snag though. We thought our first art fair would be this weekend but about two weeks ago we found out we did not have a booth space like we thought. The show had been sold out and unfortunately, there was a communication breakdown between the fair organizer and us and to make a long story short, we simply won’t be there this weekend.
We are of course extremely bummed out about this but it won’t do us any good to go and stomp our feet and be grouchy about it (I’ve already ranted & raved to friends and family) so instead, I am going to smile and take advantage of the extra month we have to get ready because we are fortunately in for the December market – we are confirmed and we will be there with some wonderful prints for sale!
So mark you calendars and I’ll see you next month:
Fresh Photography’s Debut Show
First Saturday, December 2nd
10 AM – 6 PM
find me here too
