So on Sunday, Jason and my dad and I took on the seemingly monumental task of fixing up our yard. Okay, the yard is actually really small, but Jason and I are totally and completely clueless. Like, if my dad hadn’t come to help us, we would have probably just pulled a few weeds and called it a day. But with my dad’s help we set up beds and transplanted some stuff and now the yard is not done, but all ready for flowers and vegetables and looking great. We feel so happy to not be the embarrassing home on the block anymore.

I came home from picking up some extra manure and found the yard looking like this, like it had been excavated by groundhogs or something. Apparently rather than throwing out a lot of this waste kind of stuff, you can just break it up and spread it around the yard and break it up into the grass with a bagless mower! It worked shockingly well…especially now that it’s rained. You can’t even tell that there were all those little groundhog hills.

While we were gardening, we found a snake! I can’t even believe it. I didn’t even know there were snakes around here. He was a little guy though and we set him free elsewhere so that he wasn’t slithering around in the beds. Then we found three more smaller snakes in the same area of the yard. A nest! Sweet!!!

This is a caterpillar that we found. I don’t know what he is exactly or what he’s going to become but I thought he was cute.

Now I have to take a minute to wish my awesome, great, wonderful friend Amy a happy birthday!!!! I will also take this moment to share just a couple of the embarrassing photos from the trip that Amy and I took to Italy a couple of years ago. She will thank me for it I’m sure.

I swear to you, she is not superimposed here. It’s funny though, right?

Note: Italy, in November…is COLD!

One good one of Amy…

…and a bad one of me to even the score. haha.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMY!

A few weeks ago I arranged to do some photos of my brother, Patrick and his two dogs…Katja and Brayden. Patrick has had these dogs since graduating from college a couple of years ago and I just love them. They are a total handful and it cracks me up.

Isn’t this water tower awesome? I had wanted to take photos here for a while when I lived in Morrisville, so I’m glad I finally got the chance.

You can see that Brayden is trying to escape here. Both Brayden and Katja are notorious escape artists. They are actually a really good pair because Katja breaks windows (I believe she’s broken more than 5) and Brayden shimmy’s out of just about any opening he can find. And let me tell you because I have experienced it first-hand, when they escape it is a horror. Katja just sort of wanders around the neighborhood … checking everything out and Brayden (who I’m convinced is part greyhound) runs as fast as he can in circles. This makes him easier to find and harder to catch. I think luckily the escapes have gotten fewer and farther between recently.

Symmetry.

I love Brayden’s silly ears and underbite. I also love that he totally doesn’t care about the camera being all up in his face.

Sweet Katja.

See that window behind Patrick? Yeah…Katja once broke that window.

Here is one last photo that I took of Patrick at an open mic night. He’s a great musician (let’s just say that piano always came much easier to him than it did to me) and he’s done a few open mic nights with his own songs and some arrangements of classics…including an accoustic version of Ludacris’ “What’s your Fantasy.” haha. Anyway, I hope he keeps it up because I think it was great.

So…I wanted to take a moment to talk about my fabulous photographer friend Lauri…of Lauri and Mikey fame. The reason I want to talk about her is that she recently did a photoshoot of Jason and I that is just to die for and I want everyone to see the photos because I think she just made us look awesome!

Here are a few that she told me I could share up on my blog…but you should head over to Lauri’s blog to see all the goodness…including a slideshow with lots more photos. Yaaaaaaay!

(see that….in the above picture Jason and I are sitting on moldy seats and glass in an old abandoned van. I mostly did it so that if I ever want to make an engagement session couple do something they don’t want to, I can always throw out there that I sat on mold and glass for photos of me once. haha…just kidding of course.)

Thank you so much Lauri for making us look so great!

Last Monday I was lucky enough to get to spend the afternoon with the band members of Clarity shooting a bit around Philadelphia. They were about to head down to Nashville to record an EP with a record label down there, so we had to schedule the session at the last minute to make sure it was done in time. Thankfully, although it was cloudy the weather held out and we had a couple of hours of shooting time. And even though I haven’t shot too many band photos in the past, I really like the different locations and ideas it lets you play around with. It was definitely a different experience from the usual weddings, babies and engagement sessions.

Unfortunately, two members of the band were running a bit late, so we started off with some individuals.

Pat – kind of James Dean feel. Don’t you think?

Paul

Eric

Dave

Mark

After those photos were out of the way, we checked out a few locations in the city before it got too dark.

Here are just a few more I took before the whole band arrived that I kind of liked. Just for fun.

Thanks guys! I had an awesome time shooting your photos and I hope you did too.