Where to start?

As you may or may not have noticed, I’ve been gone for a while. Oh, I’m still here, I just haven’t been here. I have no excuses, but hey, this is my blog—do I really need an excuse? The longer I stay away, the easier it is to stay away. And now I feel like I need a really big-deal post in order to return. If that’s what you’re expecting you might as well bail now, because there’s nothing too exciting here.

You may or may not wonder what I’ve been doing during my absence. Let’s see what I can remember . . . .

I did a photo shoot for the daughter of one of my co-workers. She was a sweetheart, and she loved these beads. I even made the tutu—can you believe that? It was super easy (otherwise I would’ve had to outsource), and I may have to make some others in different colors.

My mom was in town for a few days, and we took her to the dump. She was begging us to take her there. Who wouldn’t want to visit a pile of trash? Well you see, this dump is just a little different. Oh, there’s trash there, of course. But on Sunday afternoons, they open the place up as a scenic overlook:

You can literally see for miles in all directions. They have those binocular thingies like Mount Rushmore or the Empire State Building (only these are free!). And believe it or not, there are picnic tables and playground equipment. At the dump! How cool is that? Even the local Amish families like to spend time there.

Don’t worry about Mom—we did other fun things while she was here too. We took her to dinner, did lots of shopping, and she went with me to a camera club meeting. The speaker that night was Bob Caputo, who’s worked for National Geographic for 27 years. His photos were amazing, of course, but he also had great stories of how he goes about capturing them.

Speaking of camera club . . . we meet twice a a month, and one of the meetings is a competition. I entered my first competition last week, and I got third place! I was pleasantly surprised. Good ol’ Maggie!

Remember the Blessing of the Animals that I mentioned last year? It’s coming up again next weekend, and J.P. and I are taking portraits to help raise money for the rescue. Last year we used the blue backdrop as seen here:

Since we’re always going for repeat business, I like to mix things up a bit from year to year. But I didn’t want to shell out big bucks for a backdrop that dogs will most certainly pee on. So last weekend I bought a HUUUUGE paint drop cloth at Home Depot and painted it in the driveway using a couple colors from HD’s “oops bin” and a couple colors that were left over from projects around here. It didn’t turn out half bad! Maggie begrudgingly helped me test it out today. Since I probably won’t post again this week, she and I will just say it now: HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!