I’ve been busy lately shooting fall lines for Little Skye Children’s Boutique. Which means it’s pretty hot and the models have to pretend they are loving the sweaters and hats and tights. But, Fiona rocked it out for me last week! We headed straight for Starbucks when the shoot was over and soaked up all the air conditioning we could! I’m lucky to have such cute models and a fun job that includes playing dress up. Even if it isn’t seasonally appropriate! 🙂
Babies and toddlers alike laugh at my jokes. 🙂
This session is from the archives. 2010! Doesn’t it seem like forever ago? That’s the beauty of pictures. Time frozen. As I type, I’m thinking about all the things I have to do today. Clean the floors, finish the laundry. I’m going to blink and have teenagers. One is dangerously close. 6th grade. How did that happen?
You know our parents feel the same way about us. They look at us like the little kids we once were running around their house and it feels just like yesterday. So, freeze time. Take pictures. Live your life and document it along the way!
Oh Joy! teamed up with Anthropologie for the launch of their new petite line. Last Thursday at the Newport Beach store, customers were treated to a preview of the collection. Of course, it isn’t a party without Sweet and Saucy. Sparkling wine and an array of appetizers rounded out the evening. I got to chat with Joy and she was as sweet as could be. So down-to-earth.
I was hired to document the evening, so here’s a sneak peek with more to come the Anthropologie’s Facebook page!
I was feeling rather ambitious last night. Instead of letting the heat squelch me, I let it inspire me. And by inspire, I mean make pasta. Brent just bought me the pasta making attachment for my kitchen aid mixer, so I looked online for the perfect sauce to accompany the pasta. I stumbled on The Italian Dish and tested the Bucatini all’ Amatriciana. It’s like a classier version of spaghetti and meat sauce. A version that stands up to 90 something degree heat.
If you don’t want to make pasta, and I don’t blame you…it’s a lot of work! just use regular thick spaghetti from the package. If you love food as much as I do, you’ll find it worth the effort and you should make bucatini. It’s basically a thick tube of spaghetti.
Here’s the recipe copy and pasted from The Italian Dish website:
Ingredients:
Instructions:
Bring a large pot of well salted water to a boil.
In a large fry pan, cook the pancetta over medium heat for several minutes until crisp but not brown. Remove the pancetta with a slotted spoon and reserve, but leave the fat in the pan. Add the olive oil, onions and chili pepper and cook for several minutes until the onions are just soft but not browning.
Add the white wine and cook for one minute. Add the tomatoes (I just use my hand to crush them) and the juice and reserved cooked pancetta and cook over medium low heat, uncovered, for 15 minutes. You want most of the liquid to cook off.
Meanwhile, cook the pasta until still a little firm. With tongs, remove the pasta from the boiling water and place right into the tomato mixture. Thoroughly coat the pasta with the tomato mixture. Turn off heat and add the cheese, tossing well. Taste for salt and add if needed. Serve immediately and pass extra Pecorino around.
I’m so excited to be back at Rascals to Rebels for a Back to School event! I can’t believe summer is almost over, but what better way to start the year than with great pictures of your kids. And hello, SO much better than the cheesy backdrops they use at school! It’s going to be fun, so don’t miss out. Head over to the store and buy a cute outfit for the photo sessions!
**The fine print details are…session itself is complimentary when you spend $50 at the store. The sessions take place Sept. 8 and 9 at the store. The event is for kids 12 and under with a max of 3 kids per 15 minute session.
When every other store on the street is an antique store, you have to stand out. This quaint little establishment is housed in what used to be The Stevi Star, the newspaper for the little population of 1,000 town I grew up in. The rooms each have different themed items and the whole side yard is filled with architectural salvage and garden antiques. Owning a place like this would be so much fun. I overheard the owner say that she likes to dumpster dive. How fun that all these treasures she not only curated, but took the effort to find them in the unloveliest of places.
The world needs more chubby babies and curly headed toddlers. There just aren’t enough.
One of the more idyllic things I did this summer was pick cherries in Montana and promptly make a pie. My mom’s neighbor has a cherry orchard. Just beautiful rows of cherry trees right next to her house. No big deal. Expect, yeah, that would be pretty stinkin’ awesome. Something to write home about. With a huckleberry pie under my belt, I was feeling the flow and ready to go for a cherry pie. We walked down to the cherry orchard and an hour later walked home with full bags ready to be pitted. If you haven’t pitted cherries before, it’s a labor of love. Knowing there’s a cherry pie at the end makes the whole process a little more bearable.
A month prior to visiting Montana, I was at The Pie Hole in Los Angeles with a friend. The cherry pie I ate there had such a unique almond flavor with a graham cracker crust, that I wanted to somehow incorporate almond into my pie. Here’s the recipe I used (slightly adapted to include fresh cherries) from Taste of Home. Instead of a graham cracker crust, it had a tradition lattice top crust. It was quite homey and just perfect for this experience!
Do you ever feel like you can see your child’s personality from birth? It comes out more during the toddler years and once they are in elementary school, you can predict how they’ll react to a certain situation. And it’s almost like first born children know they need to be responsible, middle children march to the beat of their own drum and the youngest wants to do everything themselves…don’t even think about helping them!
Jake is my oldest and he’s 11 and a half. That half means a lot right now. He’ll disappear for long periods of time in his room. If one of my other kids had disappeared for a length of time, I’d be checking the roof or worry about the art project I’ll need to clean up. But, Jake loves detail. He put together this lego rock band a few months ago. Brent and I always try to guess what career path our kids will take and we are convinced this guy will do something meticulous. Something only he will have the patience for. Because love is in the details for this guy.
