Mother's Day (almost)

I know that I am about 3 weeks early on this, but Krystaly is in Utah with her family this week, so this is my chance!

Krystaly is the love of my life.  She is the best mother in the world.  I use to say that she was the most important thing in the world to me, but now she has to share that honor with someone else.

I love you with all my heart Krystaly.  Thank you for the passion you have to be the best mother that you can be every minute of every day!  Every smile you see on Kylan's face is one that you put there.

Happy soon to be Mother's Day!

I made a special video for you:

http://web.mac.com/epochvideoproduction/Site_2/Kylan.html

I Love You,

Matt

Just For Fun

 Just for fun I took an advanced "artistic" photoshop class from one of my favorite professors from back in the day. She is awesome and always has the coolest tips and tricks in the program. Since we switched to mac I thought it would be a good idea, since that is what she uses and a few things are different. Our latest assignment was an absolute blast! I am a huge renaissance fan and our assignment was a theme, so that is what I picked. I may have gotten a little carried away, but I was just having WAY too much fun... 

Graf Wedding

The Graf's were a ton of fun. Luckily we were able to work with the sunburn. The best part was they were both a little crazy so along with the normal pretty shots we were able to do some really funky ones that we wouldn't have been able to do otherwise! 

Recipes!!

I LOVE to cook. It is my "secret shame", if you will. Matt taught me how to cook when we were dating, and it is something we did all the time together. But Matt is so much better at it than I am. Sometimes I will be making something and he will come in and "fix" it and it turns out amazing, just not what I wanted it to taste like. So needless to say, he does most of the cooking around here, weather I like it or not! This recipie, however, is all my own! He won't touch French Toast or Crepes and it is nice to be able to cook something and know it needs no introduction. 

For those who wanted it, here is my crepe recipe! It's pathetically easy, you will just laugh. 

1 egg, 1 cup flour, 1/2 c sugar, 1 overflowing cup of milk (a cup and a little, really - just to get the right consistancy) - this serves 2

Using a hand mixer, mix until well blended, a minute or two. Pre-heat a large non-stick frying pan on meduim heat. Pour 1/3 cup of batter into the center of the pan, pick the pan up by the handle and tilt it to spread out the batter. Cook until golden and then flip! It should only take a minute to cook! If it is too thick enjoy your thick crepe and add a little milk to your batter for the rest of them. If it sticks just spray the pan with pam before you drop on the batter.

Easy!! 

French Toast is just as easy. 

2 eggs, 1 c milk, 1 tbs cinnamon, 1 1/2 tsp nutmeg, 1 tsp vanilla, and the secret ingredient, 1 tsp almond extract. I just eyeball it all. I mix it all in a pie pan and just lay the bread in, flip it over, and throw it on a griddle! 

Enjoy!

A few thoughts...

This weekend was General Conference, which has always been a pretty big deal in my family. Normally we would all gather from the four corners of the earth to hang out with the family (our VERY huge family), watch Pride and Prejudice, and let the kids run wild in the orchard. It was a weekend of my Great-Grandmother Ashworth's Famous Home-Made Bread. She would spend the few days leading up to our arrival for the big weekend baking bread like a mad woman, and by the time we left we had usually devoured every single loaf. Sunday morning my Grandpa Ashworth would always make his amazing French Toast. There were lots of nights of bread and milk at one in the morning (only worth eating if it is fresh, home made bread) and a great "girl movie", and afternoons hiking in the mountains behind my Grandma's house or shooting targets and clay pigeons. I love it, and I have to say I'm a pretty good shot. My Dad always said that if I practiced I would probably be better than him. Considering he is Grizzly Adams that is saying something!

Well, in the last few years my Great-Grandmother has passed away. Boy do I miss her Famous Bread. It is a recipe that was perfected over 4 generations by the time it got to her. She made it so much that she never used a recipe, she just made it. My mom used to make it all the time too before she died. It was a huge deal in our family, it was a lot of fun. I hope I can get a hold of the recipe. Just thinking about it brings back such great memories. And, my Grandparents are currently serving a mission for our church in Chicago. I miss my Grandpa's french toast - I do have the recipe for it, but it was always so great to wake up Sunday morning to the smell of it filling the entire house. I miss my grandmother's laugh at the insane horde of kids and the mischief they got into in the small orchard. Last time they got a hold of a shovel and managed to dig a several-foot-deep trench around the tree swing in just a few hours. 

This conference I had to work on Saturday night. Getting home at one in the morning and then trying to pack up a sleeping child does not constitute good driving conditions for the trek up to a little town outside St. George, Utah. So instead my parents came to my house. I am becoming as "family famous" for my crepes as my grandfather is for his french toast. My little brother always asks me to make them for him, and how could anyone resist a compliment like that!! So, we did a marathon day of cooking beginning with crepes and ending with impromptu peanut butter blondies and including everything in between. It was a lot of fun, and we still made it a family day. It was just so different. There were so many things I missed.  Mainly the craziness I think. I love having a ton of people around, my mom was the second of seven kids and they all have big families - and all the cousins are great for a laugh. So just having my immediate family around was a little different. Good, but different. Maybe I can get a hold of that bread recipe. I have a feeling that tradition could fill a gap or two. 

The Sunburn

Okay, okay... By Popular Demand, here is a before and after of the infamous SUNBURN! Obviously the point of being a good photographer is to take a great picture and not have to photoshop it to make the image good. In my opinion the Adobe suite should just be used as the icing on the cake. Well, there is only so much I can do when the groom looks like a LOBSTER! Jason was a great sport and when I gave him grief about not wearing sunscreen the day before. He told me it was because they were both outside all day the day before the wedding and if there was a chance she was going to have a sunburn then "dang-it"he was going to have one too! Cute sentiment really, but the bride didn't end up with a sunburn! 

So, here is an example of what I had to work with and what the end product was! HUGE difference, let me tell ya. The Adobe suite is full of great tools, yes, but I would rather take a great picture than spend a million hours on the computer fixing it. 99% of things I can totally work with - but unfortunately, in this case no positioning, setting, or light change was going to make a difference! 

Before
After

Monae

Monae was absolutely a blast to photograph. She is such a sweet baby, we really had a lot of fun with her. It was a gorgeous day so we had our studio set up outside in the shade of our courtyard. We originally had all of our lightboxes set up and everything, but after the first flash Monae gave me a look like "What the heck are you doing lady?!" So, we decided to just use our reflectors and shoot ambient light. It worked out great, especially working with someone so small. We were able to "rapid fire" our cameras to get a lot of great facial expressions that we wouldn't have been able to get otherwise. The only down side... we took over 800 pictures in 20 minutes! If you want to see her full shoot just go to www.collags.net, username: Monae Livingston Password: 11377

Looking Back...

I got on my old laptop today to write in Kylan's baby journal I started when I found out I was expecting, and I stumbled across this photo shoot. Matt and I had taken a sunday drive to Bridal Veil Falls and, of course, had taken our gear. I wasn't planning on being in front of the camera, I never do. So, it being a lazy sunday afternoon, I had no make-up on and and my hair wasn't done. I showed the picture to Matt when I found it this afternoon and he insisted it go on the blog. I can't believe how huge I was, and I was only 7 months along in this picture. By my last month I honestly couldn't change the radio station in my car because I couldn't lean over that far. We had to get Sirius Radio, the unit had a remote control!

Ky will be 8 months old next week - I can't believe how fast time has gone. My dad told me once that every time he blinked it was like several years had gone by, and he couldn't figure out how to stop blinking so much. :) I am now finding that to be very true. Kylan is the cutest kid of all time and laughes and smiles at everyone he sees. I absolutely LOVE being a mom. I don't miss the smell of chocolate making me sick and craving pickles and cherry coke slurpees that entailed getting Kylan here... But he is well worth the 9 months of misery!