Our summer garden is really producing!  Today I harvested 6 cucumbers, tons of cherry tomatoes, and the first full-sized tomato of the season.  I will have a beautiful salad for lunch today.

Truthfully, I’m not a fan of summer… at least not the 90 + degree days, but this makes it quite bearable!

We just finished up a really great season of weddings… I am so excited to share them with you! Over the next few weeks I will post them here on the blog for you all to enjoy. So stay tuned…

I’m really excited about our family Christmas Cards this year… Especially now that they are finished!! We have a picture we actually both look good in, which I put on a card template I customized, and I had the pictures printed on recycled paper (we are pretty stinking excited about the recycled paper).

I have always made too big of a deal about our Christmas Cards, and I make just as big of a deal over getting my clients Christmas Cards right! When I make a Christmas card for a client I set up a meeting where we talk through size and finish options, select the right template to customize, and make touch ups to the selected photo(s). I want you to be as excited about your cards as I am about mine!

My husband and I went out to the Oklahoma City Animal Control Center a few weeks ago looking for a new friend and we met Max. We fell in love with his super sweet disposition, expressive ears, and happy smile. We adopted him, and brought him home. He has been adjusting well to all the tummy rubbing, treats, and walks.

Okay, so I really don’t dress my dog up… This was supposed to be a picture of a scarf I just knitted, but Max looks so cute I couldn’t resist posting this picture!

I am so sorry that I have not posted on you in so long.  I solemnly swear that next week I will start posting again.  I know it’s all excuses, but Zac and I moved, and when we weren’t moving, or setting up my new studio, we were photographing weddings.  Life has been crazy!  I have so many awesome pictures to post too!  Next week, I’m posting… I promise!

-Abbey

I could take pictures for hours and not even notice. A perfect example of this was our recent trip to Pennsylvania for my cousin’s wedding. I was so paranoid that I might be slipping down the dangerous slope of photo documentation overload. I felt like I took a ton of pictures and was probably driving Zac half crazy. However, when I uploaded my images on the computer I realized I only took about a hundred images… I could have taken so many more!

Here are a few of my favorites:

This flower was growing out of a small crack in a stone wall

These were all taken at the Battlefields of Gettysburg.

I wanted to talk a little bit about the things I try to do for the earth. Ultimately there is so much more I can do, and each one of the things listed, I have baby stepped into. I just thought it might be some interesting food for thought since Earth Day is this week.  

We planted a garden this year.

We love composting!

My husband uses a Reel mower to cut our grass.  It’s silent and it uses no gas or electricity.  I learned in this month’s edition of National Geographic that the average gasoline-powered push mower puts out as much pollution per hour as eleven cars—a riding mower as much as 34 cars!!

We recycle and we also take the extra time to break down cardboard boxes and deliver them to the recycling center here in Edmond.

We buy as many organic, fair trade, and locally grown foods as possible, and we try to remember our reusable bags when we go shopping, although it doesn’t always happen.  It is estimated that it will take 1,000 years for a plastic bag to decompose!  

We avoid plastic water bottles because the are not only bad for the environment, but they also can leech toxins into the water inside the bottle.  We have a a bunch of these non-plastic bottles from SIGG.  

I try to purchase toiletries that are made without unnecessary dies, chemicals, or additives.  My favorites are Aveda and Alba Products (Target has a pretty decent selection of toiletries by Alba)

I’m anti CFL (although we have a few from when we didn’t know better), they have horrible color rendering, and they contain mercury and rare earth phosphors.  We now use halogen bulbs, and a dimmer instead. If you dim a halogen bulb to 50%, you will save over 40% energy and your light bulb can last more than 10 years. We use LED lights in our closets, garage, and spaces where light color quality is not an issue.  The downside to LEDs is that they are expensive.  The great thing about them is they turn on without that little pause CFLs have, they use even less energy than a CFL.

We try to clean as many things as possible with earth friendly cleaners.  My favorite is a solution of 1/2 vinegar 1/2 water and a few drops of peppermint oil.  I use oxy-clean instead of bleach.

Whenever we purchase appliances and electronics we make sure they are Energy Star rated.

I take all our dry cleaning to Vista Cleaners at 2120 E. 2nd and they are do a great job and are super friendly.  They use PERC free solevents to clean clothes and they have great prices.  This is an article about the dangers of PERC solevents

I try to only purchase items that I really will use frequently, and when I find that my old ____ is collecting dust I take it down to the Hope Center drop off.  It is my understanding that they rarely throw stuff away unless it is truly trash.  They also take whatever they cannot use to Goodwill.

When I do buy new household items I choose ones that are made from sustainable products like bamboo or recycled materials.  

When I’m not taking pictures, I’m editing photos, running my website, and updating Quickbooks.  I sit in front of a computer for so many hours a day.  I’m bound to pick up some technology crushes along the way.

Here is my TOP TEN list of techy things I love:

#1 Apple computers because of their file organization, sleek design, and low energy consumption compared with other computers.

#2 Canon’s line of digital cameras and accessories

#3 Amazon.com because they have a great selection of products and free shipping for orders over $30!

#4 ipod shuffle – It has a super long battery life because it doesn’t have a screen.  It holds tons of music, and it clips onto anything.  It’s also really inexpensive. 

#5 Last.fm - This website is a free music library of music from around the world.  You can listen to virtually any artist ever, as well as get great recommendations for similar artists.  

#6 Twitter – not sure how I feel about it yet, but it is strangely addicting.  I like looking at Twitter trends to see what people around the world are Tweeting about.

#7 YouTube

#8 Bye Bye Standbye – This is a remote control fully cuts power to electrical devices so there is no ghost load.  ”Ghost Loads” come from devices we may not even think of as being on, but they slowly and constantly consume electricity 24 hours a day—even when they are not actually doing anything useful.  While each device by itself may not consume much electricity, the combination of all of them within a household may easily consume the equivalent of two or three 60-Watt incandescent light bulbs left on all day and all night. Throughout a single year this adds up to over 1 Megawatt-hour!  We have one a Bye Bye Standbye that I plug into our entertainment center and one for a lamp that’s hard to reach.  I can turn them all on and off with the Bye Bye Standbye remote control. 

#9  Nintendo – We recently were given an original Nintendo system complete with Super Mario Brothers, Duck Hunt, Zelda, and some other games that my husband seemed really excited about. 

#10  Aperture and Photoshop – I use both of these programs to make your pictures even more beautiful!

I don’t love to read.  Maybe it’s all the educational and informative self-help genera of books I have forced myself to read through, or all the college text books that still haunt me.  It took me three years to read The Secret Life of Bees and that was a great book!  It seems that I don’t have time to read.  When I do find the time, I sit down to what I should read, not what is entertaining to read.  I love a good story though, and have found a reading loophole.

I download audiobooks and put them on my ipod.  It holds almost any book (or half of a Harry Potter book at a time).  I can listen to audiobooks when I’m editing photos, cleaning the house, sitting in the airport, etc.  I’ve been on this audiobook kick for a few years now, and I love it!  

The Shack has been collecting dust in my bookshelf for months.  I just look at it and feel the usual feeling of guilt for not reading wash over me… but no more.  I will not feel guilty!  I can be well read even if it comes in a non-conventional fashion.  I have downloaded The Shack and have it in queue to be the next book I will “read”.

I know I don’t actually sit down and read novels but, trust me, I do read my share of books.  This is a pile of non-audiobooks (I could find) that I am either currently reading, have read so far this year, or am planning to read in the near future.

I snuck outside this morning to capture some of our beautiful winter weather!  My favorite of these photos are the bushes with the little frozen orange buds on them.  It’s perfect reminder of how uncertain Oklahoma weather can be!

I am playing catch up from the Holidays and will have new blog posts up soon.  Please stay tuned!

I have been trying to upload new pictures to my blog for 2 weeks now. A fellow photographer I work with is having issues with it too. I was hopeful that the issue would resolve itself, but it looks like a call to customer service is on my list of things to do today. For now, please feel free to enjoy some of my older posts!

I decided to play around with my camera on Friday night and take some night time exposures. My husband and I piled in our car and drove to the outskirts of Arcadia.  I have posted a few of my favorites below. Enjoy!

Today we closed on the sale of our house!  We were able to sell it in this extreme “buyer’s market” for our asking price, without putting it on the market, or using a Realtor!  My husband was walking our dog late one night when he randomly met the buyer.  Talk about God orchestrating something awesome!  I have posted some before and after shots of our house.  It was an adventure for Zac and I to do all the remodeling ourselves (including the tile in the bathroom)!  Even though I have a degree in Interior Design it took my skill set to a entirely new level.  It was certainly an invaluable experience!

We recently celebrated my Grandfather in-law’s 80th Birthday! He just thought it was just another Saturday, but throughout the morning more and more family members arrived at the family lake house. Eventually all his extended family was there. Everyone had a great time sharing the day with him! Happy Birthday Bill!!

Hi! I’m Abbey, a photographer based in Edmond, OK. I am creating this blog so that you can view my most recent work, as well as see little bits of my life so you can get to know me better. So sit back and enjoy reading my blog!