Life in Pictures.

Your Vote Can Make a Difference! Vote in the best of OC bloggers contest!!

 

Do I sound like a politican??? ;) Well, I'm going to play one for the day. :) I just got some exciting news and feel like I have been nominated for an academy award!! Well, in the blogging world this is just about the same!! :) Here's the scoop...

"Congratulations! Your site has been nominated for the 2009 "You've Just Been Spotted" Orange County Blog Awards. Of all the fantastic & incredible websites, Your site has been chosen by our readers as one of the best & brightest that Orange County has to offer."

Whoo Hoo!!! If you haven't heard of Just Spotted it is pretty much the coolest site for those of us living in the OC. If you need any information about cool haps, great eats and fun things to do then you need to head on over there and check it out!

Anyways, I've been nominated in the best of "lifestyle and design" category and I would LOVE your support and a vote (or 50!!! ;)!! You can head on over to just spotted and vote in the poll on the left hand side of the site under lifestyle and design where it says "tammy mitchell." Thanks a TON!!

For those of you new to the blog....welcome!!  I just changed formats this week...what timing, huh? :)  All new posts will be found at www.tammymitchellphotography.com from now on. :)  Come check it out! :)

We'll have a little blog party if we win! :)

Have a great day!

-t

Drumroll Please......

the secret's out!!!!!!  i have a new address...come and join me!!! 

tammymitchellphotography.com

 great things are in store!!

have a great day!

-t

cha cha changes.....

big things are happening around here...things that are LONG overdue....

Coming soon to a computer screen near you....

 

August 3, 2009

have a great day! ;)

-t 

The Inn at Entrada: Calling all High School Musical 2 Fans...

Have you ever had that friend or relative that went on a vacation and then came home with thousands of pictures and expected you to look through them and re-live their trip with them?  Well, this week I am that friend. ;) lol!!  I thought I'd share a few photos of our adventures last week...I promise to try and not bore you too much. :)

We started out on Saturday driving through Vegas heading to St. George, UT for a good old fashioned 4th.  At first I wasn't too excited about spending most of my 4th of July in the car, but then I tried pitching it to the kids as a unique experience...what could be better than spending our nation's birthday driving across it and enjoying the beauty that it encompasses.  We sang patriotic songs, talked about the colonies, the intolerable acts, the continental congress and read the declaration of independence.  (thank goodness for the blackberry and internet service in the middle of nowhere!! ;))

Another fun surprise was a quick and fun vist with some really good family friends in Las Vegas.  We were driving though kind of spur of the moment and gave them a call to meet us for lunch.  That turned into a fun afternoon of swimming and chatting. :)  We are so grateful for the wonderful friends we made in law school...really more like family if you ask me.  You know the kind...friends you can go without speaking to or seeing for months and then just pick up right where you left off without missing a beat.  We sure love these families and relish every moment we get to spend with them!

This kid cracks me up.  I love how he insists on wearing his goggles..."but mom, they are more comfortable like this..." lol, a little funnier looking too, but while he's so little and cute we won't mention that! ;)

 

 

 

Thanks for a fun afternoon Allemans!! 

After a nice break from the car (and some Cafe Rio) we headed to our final destination for the weekend...St. George Ut and the Inn at Entrada.  For those of you that are HSM2 fans, you might recognize it as Lava Springs.  Yes, we stayed at the resort where HSM2 was filmed in one of the casitas where the cast members lived during filming (insert teeny bopper squeal here).  It was gorgeous!

It was incredibly fun and very reasonable.  You stay in a casita that is roughly 2000 square feet with a full granite kitchen, laundry room, beautiful master bedroom and bath, great room, garage, and patio.

 

Here's the view from our "backyard"...this is a virtually unenhanced photo, just a little border on the edge...straight out of camera...yep, the colors in the early evening are really that gorgeous!

 

We spent a lot of time here...

 

kinda made us wonder what we were thinking heading out to a rustic cabin in the mountains shortly thereafter.... ;)

more to come.

have a great day!
-t

Scrapbooking Tips: Using Glitter

I was busy creating yesterday with a deadline that had come and gone...I had a SUPER FUN kit to work with this month from Coordinates Collections.  The full kits are being revealed on the website today...but here's a sneak peek at some of the yummy things you can create with this kit:

  

 

 

SO for all you scrappers, here's one of my favorite easy tips to jazz up a layout with some glitter...take your diamond glaze with the needle nose tip and trace over some of the designs on the paper.  If you want to use different colors, make sure that you only trace the ones you want to be red all at once then glitter, all blue at once then glitter etc.  That helps to keep the glitter separate and easier to return the excess to your bottle.  In the first layout I used this technique on a few of the words in red and green glitter, a few of the blue swirls and the orange around the three suns.  It really makes a rather simple layout look like you spent hours! :)

Have a great day!
-t

An Unexpected Trip...

Yesterday was a little bit of a crazy day in our house.  We got to make a surprise visit to the dr.'s office.  Poor little Ash was trying to get her cup from off the kitchen island.  She stepped up onto one of the rungs on the bottom of a barstool and before she knew it her little toes slipped right off.  She landed chin first on the seat of the stool. :(  At first I thought it was a just a simple bitten tongue, until it kept bleeding and she kept screaming...then I realized she was bleeding from her chin too.  She had bitten right through her lip!!! 

Now, for those of you that know me, it is a miracle that I have two children...by c-section none the less!  From the time I was little I have NOT handled anything having to do with the medical industry well. ;)  I am still known at the Kaiser hospital in SD from the time I was 5 and had to get my "starting school" shots.  After I sent the nurses on a mad dash to catch me it took 5 of them plus my mom to hold me down.  :)  My mom's reaction when she heard the news was...did you take someone to drive you to the doctor???  (knowing that I probably shouldn't have been driving in my condition..lol!! forget ash...i was the one experiencing major trauma! :)  But seriously, I called the doctor, we ran over and fortunately she was chatting everyone up by the time we got there and the bleeding had stopped.  One of her teeth just barely pierced the skin.  Thank goodness!!  If it had been any worse the day's adventures would have continued with a visit to the oral surgeon I was told.  whew!!!  Needless to say she is in a lot of pain and will have the worlds biggest canker sore until the wound heals, but we're just grateful we didn't lose any teeth or cause any scarring on that precious little face!! 

Before the "incident" I snapped these shots of my little cutie...thank goodness!!  These smiles will have to hold me over for a few days until I see some more from that little fat lipped girl!!

 

 

love you baby girl!!

have a great day!

-t

Helloooooooooooo Kitty

The hello kitty mecca had been calling Ash's name for some time and on Saturday we finally took the trip.  John was less than thrilled to set his three year old free in an entire store of girly, pink, WAY overpriced trinkets, but let's face it, you have to capitalize on these photo ops while you can. ;)  When she's five she might not find the Sanrio store quite as exciting. :)  Fortunately she's a pretty good shopper and while she enjoyed filling her arms with item after item, she was also perfectly happy to put them all back when asked. :)  She was just happy to be there. :) (but yes, we did leave with a few things) :)

She had it in her sights from the minute we got on the escalator...

 

the minute we entered she was off... filling her little arms with all kinds of hello kitty goodness...

 

at least she was trying to be fiscally responsible by checking prices. ;)

 

 

she was careful to only grab necessities-- like a water bowl for the pet that we don't have

 

 

you would have thought she was on supermarket sweep.  it was great.  every little girl should have the chance to visit the hello kitt store once.  if you're going to go, make sure you are prepared to shoot discreetly.  Most of these were taken from the hip...literally.  with no flash.  i didn't see what I had captured until i got home.  stores are not usually photography friendly. :) 

Have a great day!

-t

Summer has arrived!

We FINALLY saw the sun this weekend!  We have been experiencing the normal "june gloom" around here for the last few weeks, but this weekend we got lucky.  It was cloudy at our house and we headed to the beach just to go to the tide pools since it was too cold to actually go to the beach.  To our surprise it was SUNNY on the coast.  Usually it's the other way around. :)  Like any good southern californians we had towels and suits in the car and our trip to the tide pools quickly turned into a day at the beach. :)  The surf was huge and the water looked AMAZING!  It was like we were in Hawaii.  Not quite as warm though. ;)

 

 

 

 

 

Hope your summer days are filled with lots of memories like this!

Have a great day!

-t

Ballerina School

Guess what we started last week???

 

 

It seriously doesn't get any cuter than this.  It is 45 minutes of giggles from mom's outside the big double sided mirror watching these little cutie pies twirl to their heart's content.  The double sided mirror explains the reflection in these ...sorry about that.  I had to take them through the glass so I didn't disrupt too much! ;)

Ash tells everyone she knows that she is in "ballerina school."  Too cute. 

 

You know there are lots more pictures coming of this in the future!! :)

Have a great Monday!

-t

Scrapbooking: How to create a fun ribbon border and a few new projects

It must be the first of the month again because I actually scrapped!!! ;)  If it wasn't for my gig with Coordinates I seriously don't think that I would ever force myself to sit down and create a page these days.  I LOVE to do it, it's just getting harder and harder to find the time as the kids get older and I seem to get busier! :)  Here are a few sneak peeks of the Caribbean Breeze kit.  I have been SO bad about developing pictures lately since my neighborhood Ritz closed..I had to borrow a few of my neighbor's pictures that I took a little bit ago. :) 

 

 

I LOVE to create these ribbon borders...especially when I have such fun ribbon to work with.  They are super easy and I think add a really fun look to your page.  Bestof all...they are SUPER easy!!  Simply fold your ribbon over so that it creates a ruffle and staple it in place, then fold another ruffle and staple, another one...staple etc.   You can let your staples show for a more rustic look like I did on the card, hide the staples underneath a picture like I did in the layout for a cleaner look, or, if you can't hide them with a page element but still want that cleaner look, simply hide them amongst the folds.  This means you have to be a little more careful when you are creating your folds and pay more attention to where you are placing your staples, but it is still very easy.   Give it a try!!

Have a great day!
-t