Nerina has a new hat :)

Didi let me borrow her new lens and its absolutely stunning, and amazing! No words necessary. This thing is just beautiful (and super heavy).  Got to capture Nerina in her new hat for Disneyworld tonight.

Food(ography) for thought...

Recently, I've been finding time to cook some new dishes and I can't tell you how refreshing and fulfilling it has been. I've always been into cooking, but its always been a difficult task to juggle with an infant and toddler at home. I would ideally like to cook a new recipe every week and fortunately after some organizing I am NOW able to do so.  I re-organized my fridge (including a snack drawer for Nerina - pinterest inspired)...I plan out our weekly meals (not the weekends of course) and I frequently check Pinterest, Allrecipes.com, and a bunch of great food shows like Spice Goddess, Good Eats & Everyday Italian for ideas.  I also was inspired by a food cooking lesson I attended with some great mommy friends.

After all this work, I knew this had to be blogged about (mind you I been really bad about blogging). This post has a lot of technical work behind it.  First things first --majority of my pictures were on Instagram. I did a bunch of googling and found out a way to export the pictures onto my desktop.  The next step was how to post them on here without it being a huge space sucker. Well - I don't know about you, but I absolutely love photo-strips like the one's you get out of a photo-booth. After seeing this picture on Pinterest I knew this was the best way and the most thrilling way to post all my food pictures. I'm really having a tough time picking up Photoshop but I am becoming quite savvy with Lightroom (just got Lightroom 4 and its AMAZING)...anyways, I knew there had to be a way to do it. After a lot of trial and error I got the right size and shape for the photostrip. The next task was to put the names of my food on each picture - the hubby was kind enough at night to help me do this in photoshop.  I am pleased to share with you my results below :)

Enjoy!

Pictures from Instagram:

             

I've been bad....

Gosh, I have been so bad at posting. I don't know how other photographers do it.  I just can't keep up. Things have been super busy since I was on here last. We started off the new year with a pipe leak in our wall which turned out to be a huge time sucker. I'm happy to say as of last week we are finally back to normal and I can now go back to focusing my time on my kids & my photography. I have been clicking while I have been away but for this post I wanted to show you where we are today.

Milana is now 13 months!!!!! Can you believe it - 13 months. Here is a look at her now...

She has lots of teeth....

she has learned how to do peek-a-boo which is by far the cutest thing ever....

she closes her ears so she can't hear me tell her not to TOUCH things...

and she has the funniest pouty face when she doesn't want to listen...

My FIRST SHOOT!

WOO HOO! I booked my first shoot. The other night I decided I need to practice on people other then my own kiddos and what better way to practice then on my wonderful friends.  When I passed along the idea to my mothers group, they were thrilled and were willing to do whatever they could to help me.  My first client was my sweet friend Shilpa and her beautiful family.  We decided to do the shoot close by at a field in Union City.  She wanted to get some family photographs as well as her kids together and solo.  We booked a date and it was rained out!!! I was so excited but had to wait till the following week. All week I had such anxiety.  Even though the shoot was "practice". I certainly wanted to help my friend out and wanted to do the best I can to capture their family.  The night before was so nerve-wrecking...going back and forth getting ideas online and just practicing with my canon, I was a shaky mess.  I knew I had to just get out there and SHOOT.

First I met Shilpa and her beautiful daughter Anushka...gosh I was sooooo lucky. Such beautiful ladies, the camera loved them :)  They were both incredibly sweet and were open to all the ideas I had. I couldn't get enough of this lil girl...

afterward we were joined by my friends son and husband and got some fun shots :)

This beautiful family was soooooo fun for me to photograph.  They made me feel so good inside..were appreciative and grateful.... wow, with clients like this I'd be the luckiest girl ever!

Week 5/52 "Simplicity"

Simplicity...A simple beaded necklace.....a Mangalsutra

This necklace was given to me by my husband at our wedding to symbolize our marriage.  It is "the most revered token of love and respect offered to the bride during the marriage ceremony." The middle part with the diamonds is part of another necklace given to me by his grandmother.  It symbolizes family, love, laughter, happiness and unity.  It is so simple yet so dear to my heart.

Week 4/52 Imperfection

I stumbled across a few ideas for "Imperfection".  Each and every one of us has something he/she wants to fix...those imperfections are what makes us unique. In thinking of this weeks theme I wanted something more original. The main purpose of participating in this challenge was for me to think more creatively and expand my photography assets.

Here is my picture for this week.

This is a representation of my family - we may all not be perfect - but at the end of the day we are a FAMILY, that is imperfection at its finest....

Week 3/52: Inspiration

For me this week the topic was very easy "Inspiration".  My sweet girls bring me inspiration each and every day with their hugs and kisses. There is just something so sweet and precious of having your lil girl looking up to you with so much love in their eyes.