{ a little monday fun }

Just thought I'd share one of my favorite random things ever. Seriously, it's hilarious... in fact, its my very favorite kind of humor. Come on, hit play... it's less than 4 minutes long...

Happy Monday!

{ what I want to BE... }

I recently heard (from an awesome photographer named Mike Larson) that your 'to-do' list should never supersede your 'to-be' list.... meaning never prioritize task above character.

This is SOOOOOOO difficult! How many times have you just wanted to finish up the dishes before you had to be somewhere? And then you end up being late? Was getting that chore done really more important than being on time? Probably not. Would you rather be a reliable, punctual person with a few dishes in the sink.... or the person people always have to wait for? Kind of a no-brainer, huh? But what kind of things are on your 'to-be' list? How can you be the kind of person you want to be and still get the day-to-day things done? I honestly don't know yet, but I'm making it a point to find out! And I think the best place to start is with my 'to-be' list. So here we go (in no particular order, I'm not that organized!):

I want to be:

Happy

Reliable

Creative

Loved

Loving

Healthy

Considerate

Generous

Punctual

Quick to laugh

A good wife, friend, daughter, sister, auntie, etc....

A great mom.... some day

Tolerant

Fair

Relaxed

Confident

Inspiring

Strong

Organized

Fun

Spontaneous

Content

Successful

I'm sure I'll come up with more things, but I think that's enough to think about for now. I guess the next step is learning how to make decisions based on my 'to be' list instead of my 'to-do' list.... I'm taking all suggestions on how the heck to do that... anyone have any advice? What's on your to-be list?

And cuz pictures rule, here's a new one from my awesome bride/friend/future in-law of an in-law's bridal shower:

a long portrait... of me.

Ugh! Being in front of the camera is scary... I don't like it! That said, it's amazing that my friend Kiera Faye not only got me to pose in front of the camera, but she got me to pose for a camera shooting video... yikes!

She wanted to try her hand at a 'long portrait' and it turned out so cool. She was playing with the live video function of my Canon 5d Mark II and I gotta say I'm going crazy with the possibilities of my camera. Who wants to play? Anyone want to be my video guinea pig?

Anyway, keep an out in the next couple months for more of Kiera's handy work... she'll be doing a promo video for me. Whoohoo!

Long Portrait: Amanda Patrice from Kiera Faye on Vimeo.

Vegas inspiration and a new outlook.

So the last couple days have been a whirlwind of fun, learning, sleep deprivation, and junk food. In fact I'm exhausted and my poor body is screaming for a vegetable or a piece of fruit... something, anything healthy. But that'll have to wait just a bit longer....

On my way home from taking my husband to work I got this crazy energy and inspiration (maybe it was the Lady Gaga CD I was bumping or maybe I'm finally going loopy. Or both). I just felt like I had to make an announcement so that 1.) people would know what was coming up and 2.) I would be held accountable for actually following through with my intentions.

Now I know it sounds like something big is coming, but it's not really. It's a big deal to me and it's going to be tough, but it's going to sound ridiculously simple and obvious to most other people. But none the less, here goes: I am going to start being myself. I need to start learning how to be me in the most honest and simple way. I need to stop filtering what I think, write, say just because I think it would be dumb, trivial, embarrassing, or irrelevant.... or scariest of all: judged.

Now you may be saying... uh that's it? And yes, that's it. The photography trade show I attended this year in Vegas was amazing. I went with amazing friends and saw amazing photographers speak and give lectures. I learned unexpected things and got inspired in ways that I didn't see coming (hence this random blog post).

I've decided that this will be my year of character development and reputation building and working like crazy. I want to shoot every single wedding I can get my hands on, meet every newborn, snap every photo I can. I want to connect with people, make friends, document people's stories. I plan on putting myself out there and learning not to be afraid of judgment. I want people to get to know the real me and either NOT LIKE ME or BECOME MY FRIEND. I will blog about whatever I want whenever I want. I will allow myself to go off on tangents about how much I love Thai food and Mexican wrestling. I will be myself.

And hopefully I'll get some blog readers that care and feel some sort of connection with me, my randomness, or my photography. But if not, at least I know my Mom and Pappy (hi Chief!) will read what I write. And that's fine too.

And since photos are my favorite here are the only photos I have from my big photography convention is Vegas (and I didn't even take them):

Yes, it's a photo of a photo. My scanner isn't working, haha. How funny is this one? It's my favorite from the night.

The other two awesome ladies are Stephanie Ann in the middle and Amanda Lynn on the right (yup, the other Amanda Lynn from Fullerton LOL). They are the best and some of the funnest dance partners ever.

Haha, the one on the top left is pretty hilarious too... we obviously weren't ready for that one.

The other two girls are Alice Hu and Connie Chung.

{ bleh..... and music }

Twitter and Facebook have been lit up with people saying they've gotten sick this past week and I actually remember thinking that I was so lucky I had a great immune system..... JYNX! My throat is on fire and while I was pouting on couch wishing for the homemade chicken soup fairy to come I rediscovered one of my old favorite music videos.

I've seen this video a million times, but there's just something about it that still gets to me. The animation goes so perfectly with the feel of the song and it always changes my mood.

Radiohead - Pyramid Song from Wes Dorris on Vimeo.

Anyway, happy Friday to all you un-sickies out there! And for the sickies- drink your weight in green tea and watch a movie... that's my plan for the day :-)

{ catching up on Christmas }

Ok... it's January 2010. But I'm just blogging Christmas... I'm just a bit behind, huh? I couldn't skip this post, though.

As some of you know I've been taking care of the same nutty group of kids for almost 6 years now. I'm not a nanny... or a babysitter... I don't really know what my official title would be, but I run a teeny daycare at an office. The parents bring their kids to work after school and I make sure they're fed, watered, and happy (not always an easy task, but it's a pretty awesome gig). Along with their parents and my best friend, Sarah, who also takes care of the munchkins, we've made quite the little family and I love those kids to pieces. It's been so amazing to see them grow from babies to kids that are already way cooler than me.

Anyway, every Christmas we get a tree, decorate everything, eat lots of sugar, and have a 'pajama party' to exchange gifts. This year the kids are finally all old enough to play amongst themselves so I could nab a few photos here and there.... here are some of my favorites:

Awe, aren't they cute?!

Top row: Natalie (a part time guest), Parker (my oldest), Wyatt, Seth

Bottom row: Hunter (my goofball), Andie, Zane, and Hayden (party crasher lol).

Whoohoo! Party!

Seth is all equipped to fight crime... apparently Zane and Hunter were bad guys... but then they made up :-)

Zane's bed-head is out of control... just a little. Oh, and that other little guy is my nephew Zack. He loves coming to 'work to play with the motorcycle kids.'

Seth was being sooooo careful with his fancy 'cup.'

And... my favorite! Some details:

Sugar anyone?

Well that's all for now! Keep your eye out for my New Years post coming soon.

{ my weekly top 8 }

Ok, here we go behind schedule again... sigh. Better late than never, right?

Well everyone, get ready for the 2nd ever installment of my Weekly Top 8. This random weekly post is my way of putting the 'real me' out there on the web, and giving people the opportunity to see what I'm all about. I'm not so great at just writing so I've gone with the ever popular (and probably overdone) survey approach... let me know what you think :-)

Fave of the week: I have to say one of my favorite things about my nanny gig is the silly things the kids say... with a straight face. You know, things that you generally wouldn't casually say to other people like, "Hold on, I gotta go poop and pee real bad," or just random statements like, "When you bake fish when they're dead, it's super yummy."

So the other day when I was driving with 5-year-old Zane I had to laugh when he said to me, in all seriousness, "Amanda, I have my arm out the window so don't flip the car over ok?" Uh, sure Zane, I'll wait until you pull your arm back in and put your helmet on. Whatta dork.

New thing of the week: I was lucky enough to shoot my first winery wedding this week! It was not only ridiculously gorgeous, but so so so fun as well (oh, and not to mention stupid hot, oh well, huh?). The food was fantastic, the wine was amazing, and the super cute DJ taught everyone the dance moves to Thriller. I'll post photos of all the fun-ness soon, stay tuned.

Quirk of the week: Ooooh, Josh just walked by me with a stack of fresh, clean laundry (that's right! Josh does the laundry... I cook and do the dishes, ok?). It smells soooo good! I just told him I wish our imaginary maid would wash our sheets every night... and you know what he said? He said, 'That's weird that you like the smell so much." Huh? What's not to love about a bed full of Downy freshness every night?

Irk of the week: Plantar fasciitis (thanks for the spelling help there, Google). AKA Crazy-heel-pain-itis. My feet ALWAYS hurt... it is the bane of my existence (other than how many calories are in a bottle of Blue Moon). Any time I don't wear soccer mom shoes I pay for it. And my old lady flip-flops with arch support from the ever expensive Walking Store just don't cut it. Plantar fascia inflammation, I hate you.

Blogger of the week: Daniel Tosh. I love you. Your show (Tosh.O Thursday nights on Comedy Central) is the funniest thing I've ever seen. Your blog is great. I want to marry it. Here's a clip that had me and Josh laughing for like 10 minutes... and then another 5 minutes 20 minutes later. It's a bit inappropriate... so consider yourself warned.

Tosh.0	Thurs, 10pm / 9c
Motorcycle Granny
www.comedycentral.com
Daniel Tosh Miss Teen South Carolina Demi Moore Picture

Laugh of the week: Ok, this was shot with my phone... don't judge on the photo quality! Haha. Anyway, when I got to work with the kids last Monday I saw this crime scene. It was horrific. I didn't know the kids had gotten big enough to pull a crime of this magnitude off.

Honorable mention: Sigh. Sometimes my day job is really tough. Like when I have to pack all 6 kids up and take them swimming all day at an awesome pool stocked with lots of awesome toys, and judge silly dive contests. Bummer for me.

Random photo of the week:

This week's photo comes from a couple weeks ago when an old high school friend had me photograph her whole family (25 people!). We hadn't seen each other in 9 years and it was sooooo weird seeing her all grown up. I have to say, though, that it was even more bizarre to realize that, if I thought she was all grown up, then that meant I was technically grown up, too... Ugh, adulthood is still just odd to me sometimes- I don't feel like I fit the bill yet, and that's ok by me :-)

{ my weekly top 8 }

Ok, so I've been meaning to start this weekly post for a while now... it was supposed to debut yesterday, but better late than never, right?

This is my top 8 of the week... my random weekly post that is supposed to give you a little glimpse of, well, me. It's also supposed to be a little funny, but I'll let you be the judge of that - I guess it'll depend on what my week was like :-)

And, of course there will always be a photo at the end as a reward for all your hard reading.

So here we go:

Fave of the week: Josh baked! For those of you who don't know Josh- he's my hubby. And I don't think he has ever baked. Ever in his entire life. I can't even ask him to stir the spaghetti sauce every once in a while so I can run an errand (I tried that once, and I can home to a horribly stressed out wreck that had been standing over the pot of bubbling sauce sure that the bits of parsley were in fact burned pieces that had hopelessly ruined our dinner). Anyway, the yummy treat? Brownies... from the box, but delicious nonetheless. He even delivered to the couch, complete with a tall glass of milk. Yesssss.

New thing of the week: Yoga. Not exactly new, it's kind of on the old side, but it's new to me. I've always been a big believer in yoga, and I used to practice it regularly, but life has a tendency to get in the way of things and I kinda, sorta dropped it. Keep an eye out for a calmer, better balanced, more hippyish me.

Quirk of the week: I enjoy cutting nails.... a lot. I was actually overjoyed when Hunter (one of the little munchkins I take care of during the week) let me cuddle with him and cut his fingernails- simultaneously. I know there are other weirdoes out there who like it too... speak up.

Irk of the week: Time. You suck. Where do you go when I'm not looking? I could really use you right now.... jeez.

Blogger of the week: BlahBlahBlahger I love her photoFANatic blogs... just read it!

Laugh of the week: I love my iphone. I'd marry it if I could. The kids at work love it, too... especially the new voice recording application (ok, and they love the 'fart for free' application. It's gross, but so funny). Anyway, we spent a good hour taking turns telling silly stories to each other in the dark the other day. Here are a couple highlights... just give 'em a quick listen, they're short and sweet.

... Ok, I'm so so sad. I can't get it to work :-( Anyone know how to use an Mpeg-4 online?

Honorable mention: I had two awesome photoshoots this week... one was with my most awesomest sister-in-law, Karen and my nephew, Zack at the Circle of Orange. The other was an engagement session with one of my favorite couples, Kenny and Shannon (and Sophia, their little pixie of a daughter) in Laguna Beach. I can't wait to post photos... Stay tuned!

Photo of the week: this is the announcement I just made for my super new little client Jazelle (and her parents, of course). Her baby shower, bedroom, and everything else to do with her is jungle themed so I came up with this simple, girlie safari design.

{ yosemite - part 1 }

Hello everyone! I've managed to turn work into play this week with a trip to Yosemite (I have a beautiful wedding to photograph here on Thursday, can't wait!). It is soooo gorgeous here, I can't put my camera down... Here are just a few of the photos I've taken so far-

this is actually the same photo... which version do you like better?

{ my family }

Over the weekend I got a much needed family fix and just thought I'd share some of the photos I took on my 'weekend off.' I never seem to be able to keep my camera in it's bag for long when Stella and Lucy are around, though... they're way too cute! Happy Birthday/Father's Day, Papa! And Happy 50th... er, I mean 35th, Aunt CC! Love you lots...

These cupcakes were ginormous! Stella was a hot mess by the time she was done attacking it...

The birthday VIP's in their super cool, undorky hats...

And the amazing swimming poodle fresh out of the pool...