Natalie and Brandon's wedding day

Ok, I'm going to be making a few changes in everything I do, and specifically for the blog, I'll tell you what I'm changing.

Many of you know that I shoot many weddings with Ashley of Ashley K Photography. Up until now, we had never put any kind of logo on those images, so now you'll be seeing a logo on the images that I shoot for her.

Also, I will be posting less images. Sometimes, I include way too many and it can be kind of overwhelming. So I'll just post my absolute favorite ones.

Um, what other changes? Not sure yet, but that's it for now.

Enjoy pictures from Natalie and Brandon's wedding day. They have wonderful friends and families that love them and they were fun to be around! I think the flowergirl and the ring bearer really stole the show, though. So cute!!

As usual, check Ashley's blog for more pictures from that day.

This is the ring bearer with such a mischievous smile!

Meet the groom.



Natalie wore some beautiful shoes on her wedding day. Very classy!


Mischievous again!

The flowergirl is ready to get this show on the road!

The bride and her father right before walking in. They were listening to "A Page is Turned" as it was sung.

There aren't words for this! So cute. If I were as mischievous as him........

Seriously!!!! So cute!!!

This was the funniest moment for me!

Thursday thoughts

I had a few 'DUH" moments yesterday.

I can't remember all of them, but here are a few.

*I was at Costco picking up a few things and I proceeded to the check out line. When I got there, I unloaded my items on the belt behind the people's stuff in front of me. The cashier attendant was pleasantly talking to the customers in front of me as I unloaded my stuff and I pushed my cart forward and to the left to continue with the line. Sternly, she said, "Ma'am, the cart goes to the right." Oh, you mean, like where the arrow is pointing for carts to go? Yes, that's what she meant. DUH.

*I then headed over to Bed Bath and Beyond to pick up a few things and I was particularly looking for kitchen towels. At the point that I decided to look for the towels, I was at the back right part of the store. So I pushed my cart all across the back side of the store to the left side, and then around to the front. Found the bathroom towels. Kitchen towels.....? No. I asked someone that works there, and he walked me all the way back to...................the back right part of the store. Exactly where I'd started thinking of looking for them. DUH.

*Same store, I went to pay for my items. I used my debit card and swiped it through the machine. Didn't work. Hmmm........what's the problem? The attendant looks at me and says, "You swiped it backwards." *sigh* Thanks. Oh, you mean, I should swipe it like the little picture shows?? Sometimes it's one way, sometimes it's the other. DUH

*Same afternoon, but now I'm at Office Depot in my long string of errands. I'm paying (wow, almost all these involve the moment I have to pay for my items - maybe that's a hint). I swiped my card, and I know I did it the right way. Now, we're both just sitting there, and I'm waiting and I'm staring at the attendant, waiting for her to do whatever she needs to do to finish my transaction. And she's looking at me............waiting for me to hit "OK." DUH

*Finally, back in my car. But I'm so tired of smelling car-ish fumes, gas or oil, maybe? Not sure. But dang, why does my care all of a sudden smell like this? It's like I'm sitting on my hood with my nose to the hood crack. So weird. Hmm......why does my AC say that it's bringing in air from the outside? Which also means it brings in those smells during rush hour............. DUH. And yes, I know that it's 'Fresh Air,' but not during rush hour.

Back to your regularly scheduled DUH-full days............

"Confessions of a bad wedding guest"

I found this article online and thought it was a really good read for those that can relate.
The link: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26758428/?GT1=43001

Last month, on a flight to a friend's wedding in Chicago, I sat next to someone even more clueless about weddings than I was: one of my fellow bridesmaids.

“I bought these great open-toed sandals,” she cooed. “They match the dress perfectly! How about you?”

Hmm, didn't she get the e-mail from the bride insisting we wear closed-toe pumps? Turns out she hadn't gotten her dress altered either ("It'll be fine!"). Plus she'd forgotten to RSVP to some of the wedding-weekend events. And she was shocked to hear that I'd gone to the trouble of preparing a toast for the rehearsal dinner. In short, she was a disaster. But I had to smile. She was just like I used to be.

Before I got engaged last May, I'd broken every rule of wedding thoughtfulness. It wasn't that I didn't care about the bride and groom or that having good manners wasn't important to me. I consider myself a caring friend: I send thank-you notes promptly, I never show up to a housewarming empty-handed. But somehow, the world of proper wedding behavior had eluded me.

It wasn't until I started receiving piles of lovely engagement presents (before we'd even decided to have an engagement party) that I realized I should have given some myself. And it wasn't until my own bridal shower, when friends who couldn't attend made sure they still had gifts waiting for me at the hostess' home, that I learned I should've done so, too. I'd actually arrived at one friend's "game theme" shower with a waffle maker. She'd opened it, paused, and politely said, “Well, this will be a lot of fun to play with.”

I never bought off the registry, reasoning that personal gifts like, say, monogrammed robes, were more exciting than china. "What an original idea," brides would write in their thank-you notes. Now, after spending hours selecting items for my own registry, I find myself slightly miffed when guests don't use it. Why do they think I've gone to all that trouble? And that idea that it's acceptable to send gifts up to a year afterward? No one told me that, though technically acceptable, procrastinating until months after the wedding is disappointing for the bride and groom.

Occasionally, I'd forget to send in the response card until the bride's mother followed up. At the time, I didn't see the big deal. After all, I'd told the bride a million times I was coming! Now, after eagerly awaiting the mail each day so I can tear open those little cards and begin table arrangements, I marvel at my thoughtlessness. With the wedding a month away, I can't remember my vows, let alone which friends told me what. And when guests ask to bring dates, I bristle. Our numbers are so tight I couldn't invite some of my cousins. How could I squeeze in someone's new flame? But then I recall how once, days before a wedding I was in, I begged the bride to let me bring my new boyfriend — of six weeks.

“Fine,” she snipped. “If it's really that important to you.”

I spent the entire wedding locked in his arms, neglecting my bridesmaid duties. Soon after, the boy was history, but I'm reminded of him and my poor judgment whenever I see the two of us in my friend's wedding photos.

Ultimately she got over it; perhaps she'd committed her own faux pas, too, before she was a bride. Or maybe she just preferred to focus on the ways her day was special. I'm mortified by my past behavior, but thankful that this friend and others let it all slide. And now that I'm in their position, I'm trying to do the same. Don't get me wrong: Having to e-mail guests for their RSVPs makes my blood boil. But I know that someday they'll be brides and grooms themselves and discover that there are actually pretty good reasons behind those wedding rules we've all (cluelessly) broken.


This content was written by Zibby Right and first appeared in Modern Bride magazine. For more weddings tips, visit Brides.com

Media Monday

I'm back on schedule! Yes, power was restored late Saturday night so I'm very excited about it.

I realized that I'm still talking about it and most people reading this may have mentally moved on. The thing is that we in Houston haven't really moved on yet since we're still affected by it, whether at home or work. We either still don't have electricity, or we know someone who doesn't, or we don't have electricity at work, or things in life are still modified because of the storm. I went to the grocery store last night and couldn't buy anything in the frozen section (not that I was trying to, but if I wanted to, I couldn't.) All the frozen aisles were blocked off and empty. It's just things like that that show us that we're not back to normalacy, even if we have electricity, water, and no flooding.



Anywho.



Two movies I've watched lately: Mama Mia, and P.S. I Love You.



I've never seen Mama Mia in any capacity (movie, show, Las Vegas show, etc.) so I didn't really know what to expect. I liked it enough, but maybe not enough to buy the DVD. I like musicals, don't get me wrong, but there were times where I wish she would have just said it rather than sang it. Oh well.



P.S. I Love You was so sad!! And had something of a surprise ending. I liked it, and I might consider getting the DVD, not sure yet. I think Hilary Swank did well with her character and Lisa Kudrow was hilarious.



Interestingly, these two movies have something in common, albeit cliche. The main female character is dealing with something and she has two friends to help her along the way. And one of them is funny and kind of into herself. Ok, I don't feel like getting too analytical about the movies or comparisons, so that's the end of that.

Rumor has it...........

............that I might have electricity now. I'll have to go home today and confirm that. If so, it's very exciting! 8 days.

I found this link to some pictures from the storm and the damage and such and I thought they were very captivating and interesting. http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/09/the_short_but_eventful_life_of.html

*Sigh*

Things aren't looking great.

It seems my zip code has been pushed back to 'After Thursday Sept. 25' status.

Here's the map: http://www.centerpointenergy.com/staticfiles/CNP/Common/SiteAssets/doc/Est_Restoration_ZipCode_Esize_091908.pdf

I'm in the darker blue area up in the north area.
We'll see.

Lessons learned during Ike

A few things I learned over these days for future situations:

PREPARE!!!! I can't stress that enough. Some people didn't prepare for this storm after what happend with Rita (the massive evacuations when the storm went in a different direction.) Even if it isn't that bad, you can still drink the water bottles, or save the supplies for something else.

Prepare your yard - trim the trees, pick up branches, cut off old branches, etc. Remove any items from the yard that could potentially cause damage or be damaged.

Prepare your car - make sure you fill up the tank! That's so important because without electricity, our gas stations can't operate. So I'm having to drive further to maybe find gas and to fill up tanks to bring back for the generator.

Prepare ahead of time for your job - I had to think ahead of time of the things that were supposed to be going on this week and what I could about them if I didn't have power or supplies. So I had to look up several phone numbers to keep handy, and write down my calendar, and things like that.

Prepare your house - Know where the candles and matches are. I know it seems like an obvious thing, but get them out so you don't have to be looking for them in the dark. Have plenty of trash bags handy. Buy things that you might run out of. I'm running low on shampoo so I've been rationing it. I could have just picked up a bottle ahead of time and not worried about it. Do laundry before the storm hits so that it's not piling up and so that you have on less thing to worry about.

Candles really are a good gift. I ended up only finding one candle in my room because I havent' received any candles of lately. Please don't bombard me with candles or anything, but I'm just saying, candles are a good gift.

Yes, it's inconvenient, but it's not the worst that it could be. Some people actually do this for fun - it's called "Camping."

Hurricane Ike

The Night Before........
I finally went to bed around 2am as I listened to the storm roll in and start howling. Power was lost around 245am on Saturday morning. I was very aware of the time we lost power because as soon as it happened, the smoke detectors started beeping very loudly every few minutes, then each hour until it finally stopped. Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep that night.




Day 1

I was awoken at 7am by a call from my dad since he's out of town on business. This was probably the worst hour of the storm so I couldn't go back to sleep. I decided to take a look around my parent's house to see how it held up. Standing in the middle of the first floor, there was a strong difference between the front of the house and the back house. You could tell there was a hurricane going on in the front part, but more like a thunderstorm in the back side.
I walked around and found water in the front living room and the dining room. I started getting towels out to dry up the water but it was a futile attempt. After an hour and a half of wringing out towels, I hadn't made any progress as it got worse. I gave up and tried to go back to sleep for a little while.

So on this day, there's no electricity, no cell phone signal, but we do have water. I think I would rather have water and go without electricity (if I have to choose.)

After a visit from the neighbor, I spend the day moving out all the furniture in the front room, pulling up the carpet, cutting out the padding, and trying to dry some of the carpet in an a ttempt to save it. Since my dad is out of town, I'm next in line in terms of physical strength.

Wow. There's lots to be confident of in that last statement. Ha.

The rest of the day was hot, humid, and rainy off and on. Basically, it was a steamy day and I was doing lots of physical work so I was tired and hot by the end of the night.

This was taken during the storm from the front of the house downstairs. The trees you see in the street are just like the tall ones you see everywhere else. One of them snapped and fell over and brought the next two or three trees down with it. Fortunately, it didn't land on any houses or cars, but it blocked their driveways and the street.


This is the detention pond behind the house. It's not ever this full.

You can see the trees swaying back and forth by the fence.




This is my progress after the first day.


Another picture during the storm from a different angle. You can see the trees swaying back and forth. As you can see from this picture, the street leads up to this house. And as evidenced from the trees, the wind and rain barreled down the street right up to the house, like a tunnel. So my parent's house received the brunt of the storm. (Is that how you spell 'brunt?') And I think that's why it received the damage that it did on the front side of the house.


We went on a walk around the neighborhood to get some fresh air since the house was stifling. The neighbors had already started cutting up the trees in order to carve out a path to the street from the garage. But look at how the tree was completely uprooted. These trees are big! And this was a very common site everywhere in the neighborhood and surrounding areas.



Another tree that was uprooted. But it was amazing to see that most of the trees didn't land on houses or on cars. Not to say that none of them did, but the majority didn't. It was really amazing.

More uprooted trees.

And another one.

The street access to the detention pond is right next to the house so we're very aware of the doors during storms. But this time, they were torn off from the hinges. The one on the right is hanging on by the middle hinge.


Day 2

To add insult to injury, it rained again Saturday night and it wasn't a light rain. It was a pretty heavy thunderstorm. There were about five seconds of thunder like nothing I'd ever experienced before. My bed shook for those 5 seconds - truly frightening.

Again, didn't get much sleep. Living on a diet of dry cereal, pop tarts, and water. And still no electricity. Therefore, it's very warm at night and uncomfortable to sleep.

I spent the day pulling things out of the garage because of the water damage that occurred there. Water came in from the ceiling and doused the shelving with water so things needed to be removed and dried to give the shelves the chance to dry out.

During these days, we received many calls but most of them came from people in other countries that were watching the news or reading the newspapers. Calls came from Colombia, Venezuela, Germany, France, and Spain, and there may have been others, but those are the ones I'm aware of. We appreciate everyone's concern for our safety during this time.

The other concern during this time is that there are two refrigerators in the house, both with meat and perishables. So we went on a 'Save the Meat!' campaign. Oh, and did I mention that we don't own a generator? Our neighbor let us borrow a small generator for the regrigerator, which is why we were trying to consolidate the two appliances into one. We went on a rescue mission and packed up all the meat, a cooler-full, and took it out to my parent's land in Waller. There, we were able to cook some dinner and relax for a little bit since the stress of damaged food was lessening.

These are some of the scenes in the area. Trees have fallen everywhere over the power lines and into the roads.

These were all taken while I was driving so they're not the best composed.







This is one of threes in the house that fell on the house. From what I hear, you have to wait until the insurance company can come out to see you before removing it. Not sure if that's totally true, but that 's what someone told me.



Day 3

Still no electricity, but God sent nicer weather our way and the temperature went way down. It's UNHEARD of to have 60 or 70 degree weather in September in Houston. UNHEARD OF. So it was nice to be able to enjoy the nice day.

The UPS guy made a stop by the house and the mailman did, too.

I learned how to start a generator. Definitely a life skill to remember.

Day 4

Still no electricity. Picked up and headed over to Ashley's to get some work done. And calling friends. And texting friends. And taking pictures in the area.

Day 5

Still no electricity. Picked up and headed over to my cousin's to get some work done. Many business are still closed, but I'm realizing that many people already have power. Some people didn't lose anything during the storm, or only lost power for an hour. Some only lost power, some only lost water. Some lost both. But by this point, most people have it all back.

Not this area. No sireee, bob.

And traffic lights are still down.

Day 6

"Sixth verse, just like the first. Another day - much, much worse." You may have to be a girl scout to know that reference. And no, it's not much, much worse. It's just still inconvenient. I'm thankful that things didn't happen any worse. Still no electricity and I picked up and went to Susan's to work for the day.

Day 7
Today.
Still nothing. A lot of people have power back, but not us. You're able to send a text to the radio station or something and they can give you a report on your zip code. Here's what I received:

As of 11pm Wed night, Centerpoint says this zip code will have power 80% restored sometime after Mon Sept22 due to extensive damage.

So that's where I'm at.

I hope this really long entry didn't bore you, or you skipped over it.

Day 7.....

......and still no power.

Baby Kelley's 1 year session (almost)

Heeee's baa-aaack!! This little guy makes his photographic presence on my blog again because he's just so darn cute! I went to the hospital the day after he was born (I wasn't blogging back then), then his 3 month session, his 6 month session, his 9 month session, and now his 1 year old session (actually more like 13 and a half months).
We finally met up and started off shooting at a park and then headed over to the art museum area to finish off. He was so happy and happy-go-lucky the whole time so it made my job waaaaay easier. And he's so darn cute! Did I already say that? I'll miss seeing him every three months, but alas, they must grow up.

To see the rest of the images, go to my website http://www.karellephotography.com/ and click on 'Digital Studio' on the far right. From there, follow the instructions and look for Baby Kelley's 1 year session. You'll see the images that are on my blog and the rest of the images.


Fun times with Daddy!







We did a few 'walking' shots........


.....but Baby Kelley was wondering what I was doing back there as they walked away.

What a cute little family!












This is such a fun shot!







I can't even begin to describe what his parents were doing in order to get these laughs and smiles. I wish I'd had a video camera on the side.

This idea came up around his 6 month session to have him photographed with Dad's high school letter jacket. So cute!!









And we had a birthday cake for him! These are so fun!






This is the best look!!