wil and kris (and gracie and ava)

we just finished watching a movie called paris je t’aime…i think wil heard from someone that he ought to rent it. we put it on our blockbuster list, and after reading more about it (click the link for imdb info), i decided to jump it forty spaces to the top so we could get it sooner.

as soon as the credits started to roll, we both turned to each other and agreed that it was one of the most fantastic movies we’ve seen in a while. the music, the language, the views of paris, and the unique quality of every scene. it made us really long for the city we fell in love with and made us ache to go back and spend more than a couple days. i don’t know about wil, but this movie truly captured my view of the personality of paris and it’s people. we were also very excited to see places we recognized and even stepped foot on.

note: i think bill and leila would especially enjoy this if you haven’t seen it yet.

on a side note, here are the girls…i already liked taking pictures of them, but it seems to be even more fun with my camera and cool lens.

(i still have my fingers even though the piranha almost got them)

well…i’ve sat here for about 10 minutes trying to figure out how to intro into this with some witty one liner or clever joke…but meh…this week at work has exhausted me; my brain’s a bit fried. so:

wil was promoted to manager of his own store! a few days ago his district manager offered a store to wil, and he accepted the following morning. he’ll be transitioning to an existing store just straight west from us (technically the nashville district but the city is called bellevue)…not an area we frequent, but it’s about the same driving time that we do for work, going to franklin, etc. he says its a good store in a nice young area- next to a kroger and shopping i believe. and although he’s had fun being in a store with a drive thru at his current ‘royal oaks’ store, he’s excited about changing back to a cafe-only style location. we’ve grown some great friendships over the past few months at royal oaks…i truly hope the relationships continue even without the daily interaction and communication. i think they will… we met some pretty cool people.

yay! i’m so proud of him. the girls are excited for him too…

to say the least, we have been enjoying the christmas (and his birthday) money…wil was fortunate to get the whole weekend off (!) after working about 9 or 10 days in a row, and with the free time at hand we had a project in mind.

wil has wanted to organize the garage (which is now, his, by the way…he just lets me park my car in it) for some time. i thought for christmas i could do something in there to surprise him for a gift, but since the logisitics never worked, we settled for asking for money towards it. with a home depot card/cash in hand, we made our way through the aisles grabbing all the necessary stuff to make it happen. storage cabinets, countertop, pegboard, hangers, shelf brackets, and lighting.

in one afternoon we totally tackled taking everything down from the existing old plywood shelves around the garage, set up and installed everything and reorganized the space. he is sooo excited about this new work bench- he kept going out in the garage last night to just look at it.

for a better visual story- here’s a set of photos from beginning (well sort of…he had already taken down a bunch of the junk by the time i came out with the camera for a before shot) to end. a few of the photos have lots of little notes on them for your enjoyment as well. we can already mark off the garage from our spring cleaning list!

i did it. i bought myself the my dream camera (well, dream first camera…). it seemed like in the post holiday financial slump i thought i might not be able to get it, but with enough christmas gift money pooled together, i was able to order a canon eos digital rebel xti, plus a battery/grip (to add to the subtance of the body in hand, add battery power, and make vertical shots easier), a beefy memory card, and a 50mm/1.8 lens (a lens that can make beautiful shots like this possible).

anyways, i ordered all of this stuff from amazon two nights ago (totally the best deals around with free shipping), and amazon works with a bunch of different vendors when it comes to non books and non music, so it ended up being four different shipments. well, to my surprise, i got an email yesterday that the camera was coming today (seriously- in less than 48 hours!)…and to make it better, wil happened to be home when they delivered it so i didn’t have to find a ups sticky note telling me to wait another day!

i came home from work to find the glorious amazon box sitting on our counter and i was so excited that i was lucky enough to have the first shipment be the camera and not the grip or lens (come on, what fun would that be to get first?). immediately upon unwrapping it i started taking pictures and playing around with it. it felt so natural, and it took me about 30 seconds to find all the buttons i needed to find.
i think having my own camera really has solidified in my mind that photography is a hobby i am seriously interested in. by borrowing a friend’s camera, i have always felt like i was “faking it” or not a true photographer. and although i may not be a fantastic one, i am a genuine photographer in heart and mind. i honestly think about pictures, cameras and images all the time. i am always thinking about apertures, always imagining things i see as images that i could potentially shoot. even though i may not physically take a picture every day, i shot hundreds of pictures in my head every day. i love pilfering through images and seeing how the world looks through other people’s viewfinders…seeing how they capture their everyday.

here are some of the first few test shots from the new baby…

it’s taken me some time to get my christmas trip pictures all on the computer and onto flickr…have were loaded onto the laptop and the second half was on the camera, and of course, every time i thought about working on it, i’d realize wil was at work with the laptop.

anyways, i finally got them up. i probably took way too many pictures considering we all know what we look like, being family members and all; and the only things we did all week were hang out, play games and open gifts, but that’s ok. someday maybe i’ll look back and say to myself “i’m so glad i caught that random expression during that random moment”.

so, instead of just saying, go ahead and take a look at my flickr account, i am giving you a link directly to a slideshow of the set. hopefully that makes it easier to look through them all, since there’s about 200 pictures. and i recommend putting a song on in the background while it plays (sorry i don’t have the ability to do that with this link). oh, and some of the last few photos are not in chronological order like the rest of the set since they were taken with my phone- oh well. enjoy!

christmas and new years in sisters…

its been just me at work the past couple days…kind of hard to come back to an empty office, not be refreshed on everything that happened while you were gone and then attempt to run it by yourself… luckily being the first of the year, i don’t think many of our clients have gotten out of the holiday mode and back into normalcy, so the phones have been pretty quiet.

it’s really stormy out right now…i think there are some tornadoes north of nashville and our area is on tornado watch (not warning, which means there’s an actual tornado spotted…watch just means they could potentially form). not too scary, but it’s been very lightning-y with massive downpours and i don’t feel like losing all of our files from the past few weeks with a power outage, so i am backing up all of our client plans, spreadsheets, photos, etc.

the only bummer is that when we back up our main computer, we have to close all the open files on any other computer on the network (we are lowtech i guess), so we are out of commission until it copies everything. it’s usually not too big of a deal since it lasts only about 10 minutes or so, and no one’s here but me so i am not interferring with anyone’s work. but for some reason…either the computer is royally slow today, or we’ve had a huge influx of new files and information since i have been gone…this process is taking forever.

i am pretty much stuck at the moment with no access to anything, except for our work email and the wide open internet. it’s making me realize that if we aren’t pulling paint colors or fabric schemes (which is about 20% of the time), we are on the computer…ordering, researching, pricing, calculating, spreadsheet-ing, drawing in cad, printing, typing faxes etc.

i think a lot of people don’t realize that design is sooo much more than just picking out a sofa that you like. you pick the frame, decide what cushion upgrades the client may need, verify the exterior dimensions fit in their plan, and verify the interior dimensions will be something their comfortable with, and then price. you pick the fabric (assuming they like it and it works well with the rest of the scheme), call for a price, determine the repeat of the pattern and necessary yards, decide if it needs to be backed for durability, and then call the backing company for pricing. decide on an added detail of a decorative braid around the bottom edge? select and price the trim, find out the yardage needed for such customization. make an estimate of all the little pieces so the client sees one price. they give you a deposit? awesome- go ahead and make purchase orders for all 4 of those companies (don’t forget it will be shipped and delivered by another company). they decide they don’t want to give you a deposit? that sucks…all your pricing labor just went down the drain and you’ll probably do it again.

plus…design is so much more than just buying furniture. it’s more than color, it’s more than lighting, or draperies or accessories. hardwood, tile, stone, carpet, casework, reupholstery, antiques, cabinetry, space planning…not to mention any custom details that we design from scratch. when people ask me what i’ve been working on it’s so hard to answer because projects may last for a few weeks or a year (or more), but i am still working on something different every day. and that something, usually requires a computer about 80% of the time. which, *ding* happens to be done backing up (finally!)…