happy earth day

lots of little earthy tidbits popped into my head when i thought about writing today. a day like today has me taking a look at our life, at our footprint, at our waste. ironically, our power went off for an hour and a half this morning. i am glad no one but my family saw the embarrassing, frantic lunatic i became. my husband, the electrician (ha, yea) said there was nothing he could do and i swear i reacted like he told me his new passion in life was snakes and that he was bringing home a 9ft. boa constrictor whether i liked it or not. shock. horror. it was bad folks, bad. but, we did play with playdoh, my most hated childhood pastime. i'm learning to get over it. the point is, we sat in a room together, lit by the sun, all together with only the sweet sounds of two playdoh high kids. oh wait, wasn't i supposed to be going somewhere positive with this? all the time actually, i am thinking about the ways i'm falling short. the things that i really feel deep down are important, that i just can't seem to implement. somehow buying locally seems way more expensive, as do farm shares, and then i know if i had all this fresh produce in my house, i either wouldn't know what to do with it or it would sit in the veggie drawer until someone noticed a smell. when i think back to the kind of grocery shopping i did when we had just jack, when we were still so young, when we were still shell shocked. it was terrible. TERRIBLE. but we still aren't eating enough fresh produce, we are not cooking enough dinners. i just can't seem to find the balance in it all. and top it off that i just despise the kitchen in this apartment. i have all these dreams for our new place. all the junk we'll abandon, fresh, living, growing, green plants all over the house, a kitchen with light. a girl can dream. and then i'll feel inspired and motivated and happy. this will surely solve all problems.

no. but we do have this dream of one day owning a little old house on a good patch of land. and we'll build a chicken coop and have chickens. leo requests frogs, pigs, sheep and a cow too. i'd be happy to just start with chickens.

but until these dreams can come true, i need to make more of an effort now to try and find a way for what's important to me to be a part of our lives. and keep apartment hunting.

in line with earth day, i'll be photographing the great cloth diaper change for the diaper lab in Somerville. tomorrow is also my husband's birthday. being the lovely assistant he is, he's offered to come along to be my right hand. a man who will spend his birthday with cloth diapers. ladies, i am lucky.

and finally. we spent a day this week with our friends who are family, Leah and Milo. they are so earth friendly. every time i leave from a visit with them i wish we could move to a tucked away little cape house. with a nice garden, plenty of room to sun dry cloth diapers, and there are so many great local farms around them. they are also my most outdoorsy friends. my kids are always guaranteed a nature walk with Stellapuppy when we visit. the cape has so many amazing trails. again. want to move. i wish the two year old had been a bit more cooperative so i could have like, taken a few pictures of the amazing swamps we walked through. instead, he insisted on being carried and then walking and then being carried and then walking. 30+lbs folks...make up your mind! however, if miss new england would get her act together and grace us with some damn warmth that would probably help the whole being outside thing.

we started the day hanging out around the house, letting babies nap and nurse. while the big kids pretty much experienced love at first site. the adorable little girls are courtesy of new to us friends. Avery is the gorgeous blonde bopping around with my big kid and Evan is her gorgeous little sister.

then, we packed up and headed out for our walk.

and when we returned, we were cooked delicious macaroni and cheese with broccoli and headed back to boston. add this to the list of things milo does now, he eats!

look at how he goes in for the kill. this kid knows his way around food.

thanks for playing Milo!

and cheers to the next earth day. as with new years resolutions, i always hope to incorporate more of these things that are important to me in my life with my family. what earth friendly habits do you resolve to add to your life?

xo isabel

the adventure continues

a little over a year ago, i stopped talking about how badly i wanted to take my photography to the next level and blew through one tax return to start my adventure. never in a million years did i think i'd have the courage to book my first session. never in a million years did i think i'd have the courage to book a paying session. never in a million years did i think that in just the short span of a year, i would improve as much as i have. never in a million years did i think i'd have the courage to photograph a wedding, or set myself up for 6 families i've never met before to meet me at a park in unpredictable new england april for mini sessions. but in just one short year, i have done all of these things. i have completely surprised myself. right before i shot my first wedding, last weekend, a friend posted something totally cliche and corny on my personal facebook page. you know how sometimes you read one of these things and all of a sudden you're totally welling up and feel completely embarrassed?! that's what happened to me. the line read "you are what you've been waiting for" and it was like a tiny little brain grenade. the kind of thing that you think you're done thinking about and like 45 minutes later you slap your knee and exclaim "damnit! it's just so true!" sometimes the pressure and the exhaustion and the stress of having had a baby and getting married before pretty much any part of me had even begun to grow up had me sitting slumped in a chair...waiting. waiting for something to happen. looking at it now i'm not sure i could tell you what exactly i was waiting for. for my husband to suddenly be wealthy? for job security? for a good night's sleep? maybe i'd be a nanny forever? or maybe i'd just wait until the kids were grown and then try and find myself. maybe i was waiting to stop feeling so afraid of actually listening to myself and maybe even have enough faith in myself to try something risky and new. the only thing, the only person who was going to give me what i wanted, what i was waiting for, was me. the one holding all the fear and creating all the roadblocks was me.

this is not to say that i didn't spend the days leading up to that wedding with a sour stomach. or that i wasn't up at a ridiculous hour this past weekend rocking in a corner like a crazy person begging the weather gods to behave. maybe that happened. whatever. the point is, i know i made the right choice a year ago. i am doing something that challenges me endlessly in more ways than i first expected. there's always room for doing what you love, for doing what challenges you, for jumping off a cliff and hoping for the best.

of course i'll do a wedding post. it was such a beautiful day with a beautiful bride and groom. i could definitely be talked into doing a wedding or two in the future. and the mother's minis were great, despite some rowdy new england weather and a quite unwelcome breeze. it was so great to meet these families, all different, all at different stages. some with newborns, some with first borns, and some with teens. i love working with new people and i only hope i am lucky enough to work with them all again in the future.

onto some pictures. and another ridiculous tale of "how isabel makes friends online" back in 2007 i connected with my friend Kristina in an online mother's support forum. both of us in a bit of a dark patch (Kristina is probably chuckling a bit at the light heartedness of that statement) we eventually became friends on facebook too. she is a good friend, a great mother, and a talented professional. her little daughter Fiona is absolutely gorgeous. i've been joyfully watching from over here in boston as she's gone from a tiny little preemie, to a tall for her age almost 2 year old who, as i know as fact now, never stops moving, is very smart and never stops talking and is one of the happiest kids i've ever seen. Kristina and her crew lived in CA for a long while and recently relocated to TX. i never thought in a million years i'd ever meet her in real life, but up she came for a visit with an old friend who happened to live in boston! oh, and did i mention Kristina is a photographer? yea, you should have seen the two of us. sitting on the floor in the ICA (in the one freaking room we were allowed to take pictures and where the kids couldn't break, destroy or spill on anything valuable) with our cameras, carrying most of our conversations with a lens to our eyes. i know there will be more photos when she returns to TX. but for now, here's most of my batch.

we started off at the ICA.

then we headed out to lunch...

and then, finally, with the wind dying down, we played outside. for a long time.

sadly, we walked them to the train stop. holding hands by the way, completely unprompted. this was a good crew.

such a great day. if you had told me 6 years ago, i would meet such interesting, wonderful people like Kristina and Fiona, or that i'd be a photographer, i'm not sure i'd believe you. just goes to show you how much you can surprise yourself.

xo isabel

distractions of the Milo kind

hey, guys, did i tell you i'm shooting my first wedding this weekend? like, the day after tomorrow. did i tell you i'm totally out of my brains nervous. that i'm dreading new england will pull her old tricks and snow or rain or BOTH! we had a ton of rain which put a major crimp in my "go out and drive around the area of the wedding" plan for days. you know what's hard? finding a spot that's beautiful, public, but not crowded and not the same as everything else you've seen and also not ugly. i think i may have got it though, which has really relieved a lot of my stress. the husband will be my right hand man the whole day. if i can go into a room and make my ugly freak out face with anyone, it's him. but mostly i know he'll just keep telling me i'm doing great, which i might need. who knows, maybe he'll become my always assistant. he is great with kids... starting a business, becoming a mother, a wife, a friend, a sister, whatever transition it is that you and i are going through, is really hard. sometimes i wake up and wonder why i feel so out of sorts. probably because every day is a combo of constant worrying about all the balls i'm juggling and constant worrying about what balls i'm not juggling that i should be juggling. i should be writing a post about why i freaking love shooting and editing in RAW and how i ponder how one can be a photographer without doing it this way and what took me so damn long (fear, duh!) to switch. i should be catching up on late print orders, i should be putting away that 3573498673986739876th load of laundry or spend more than 10 minutes with my husband that doesn't involve the glow of a screen. i should also be enjoying this exhilarating feeling of being at the very beginning of an adventure, because while adventures are super crazy happy fun times, they're also a lot of work.

i should also find a way to work on photos of my own kids and life. i know for a while it probably felt like they were all you were seeing. but sometimes there is only enough time or energy to whip up what i'm feeling, what i want to write about, what i want to share. maybe i'm going to force myself to share some amount of photos of them a week. a classmate's mom asked me for photos i had taken at their winter concert, in JANUARY, and i realized. shit. i haven't even touched those photos. i was waiting for my niece to be born (which meant my travel to DC), my lens was in the shop. then february happened and sucked. and then march happened and sucked, mostly. and then poof, it's not january anymore.

but with april comes a fresh start. a wedding, mother's day minis, meeting new families and doing what i love. speaking of doing what i love, i love spending time with my baby Milomunchkindoodle. he kind of is my baby from another mother. don't worry, it's a joke i make with his ma. funny, right? anyway...Milo and his ma, Leah, made the trip up to our stomping grounds yesterday. and since last i saw him (here) he is now sitting up alone, and has two teeth, his very first two! since it was a nice day out, Leah and i treated ourselves to some starbucks, which Milo found quite boring and unimpressive:

and a walk to the playground. it just happened to be Milo's first time ever in a swing. i'd say he's a fan.

Leo was, in fact, at the playground with us. i think he was in such shock that we were even able to be at the playground that he was totally happy by himself.

then, we headed back for food and nap. after everyone was fed and rested, it was time to get to work. the wonderful owner of the wonderful Gnorasaurus, saw a picture i had taken of miss Mary in a hat from the Gnorasaurus store, and wondered if i would be interested in photographing some more babies in some more awesome Gnorasaurus threads. uh, don't have to ask me twice! but with that whole crazy winter and no indoor natural light studio (yet) it was proving harder than i first thought to get this done. Milo to the rescue! he modeled two of the little boy onesies and boy are they cute! the onesies are so soft and the fit is great. Milo is a huge chunk and the 6-12 month onesie fit him perfectly with enough room to grow. but before we got him into his clothes...we had to get him out of his clothes!

ok ok, Milo, put some clothes on young man.

like my make shift inside studio? (insert me rolling my eyes) that's one thing i'm really hoping for in whatever our new place is. maybe just a small corner where i could set up a mini travel studio. dream a little dream for me...

i might post one more jibberish filled post before the wedding. it will contain mostly brain mush and likely will not make sense.

wish me luck! xo isabel

out like a lion, in like a lamb...

i would just like to start this post by saying how incredibly hard february and march sucked. i am finding it so difficult to find our new normal and to find energy. the freakin gloomy new england weather is not helping. when we returned from CA i was invited by a friend's mother down to Hingham, MA for a playdate and relaxation. it was a lovely day despite rain and the kids had such a fun time together. you may recognize little sisters Anna Rose and Josephine from a session last fall, or maybe from the mother's day ad. these girls are just so gorgeous. Josephine with her dreamy curls and Anna Rose with her fiery red hair, and both with big brown eyes that melt me. yea, i'm a sucker for little girls.

anyway, this was visit was well over a month ago, and then my sister in law came into town and i shot nothing but nieces and nephews for 12 days straight and i switched from jpeg to RAW shooting and and and...and so i decided i had to start somewhere. so i started here. hopefully i can muster a big post i've been dreaming up that will be me blabbering endlessly about my jpeg to RAW revelation.

i wasn't kidding about these two, they're gorgeous.

Leo and Josephine enjoyed a show together. two year olds are hilarious to me. they both requested to be seated snug next to each other and also requested a blanket.

the other cool thing about said friend's mother is that she has the most amazing knitting room i've ever seen. that i wasn't quite able to do justice in pictures because it was very dark and very gloomy and the light in the room did not lend itself well that day.

and one more of beautiful Jo.

love these girls and their mama and look forward to documenting much more with them. one post down, many to go. i will get my mojo back!!!!

in other exciting news, i'll be shooting my first wedding this coming weekend and the weekend after we have our mother's day mini sessions! there are only 3 spots left so if you're itching to book, do it now! i'm so excited about all the new families i get to meet with our first round of minis.

xo isabel