Last fall I had the chance to photograph this wonderful young girl – Allie.  She is a friend of one of my senior models and I was thrilled to get to work with her.  Laura, who referred her, told me Allie has about a million facial expressions, and can even “smize” – which apparently means smiling with your eyes!  (These girls keep me fresh with the new lingo.)

Here’s Allie!

Catherine, Noelle, & Laura are just a few of the high schoolers that Josh & I work with through our church’s youth group ministry.  And these three girls are some of the ones who like their photograph taken the most!  I love high schoolers – they just tell you what they want.  I got a text from one of them a few weeks ago saying, “Mandy, we want new pictures.  Let’s do them downtown.  When are you available?”  Haha!  Just like my little ones!  I had an open early Saturday morning & they came!  We met in Downtown Annapolis at 8am on a Saturday – that’s dedication!  They simply wanted some photos of them hanging out, and that’s just what we did!

About 2 weeks ago you may have seen a 365 post with Anna & Kate’s photo.  Well, I’m finally getting my act together and writing the full post on their session.  It just took me that long to realize that this blog is for you, and not about me.  Sorry ’bout that!

Laura, Anna & Kate’s mom, is my neighbor of over 6 years.  And she has given me the privilege for the last 3 years of taking her girls’ Christmas photos.  For the past two years we’ve gone to the Annapolis Mall, but it’s just gotten too crowded & too familiar lately.  So this year, Laura got the girls Christmas dresses earlier & we went to Downtown Annapolis for some fun.  What was really neat to see was how Laura would explain spots of significance to her daughters as we passed them.  Laura & her husband got married in Annapolis & lived downtown for several years before moving to the ‘burbs & having kids.  So Annapolis has special meaning for her & she wanted to convey that to her sweet darlings.  See if you can recognize a few places we ventured…

Welcome to my living room.  No toys were cleaned up in anticipation of this post.  In fact, there are a pair of socks lying on the floor visible in this photo (dirty socks).  This is how I roll.

This quaint Melissa & Doug dollhouse was just sold to us by our neighbors & friends Anna & Kate.  Anna is cleaning out some of her toys & her mom Laura offered this dollhouse to us first.  She also told me that Brooke plays with it constantly whenever she visits Anna’s room.  We do have a dollhouse already, 2 in fact, but one is Emma’s and the other is what the girls call a “baby” toy.  It was Emma’s first dollhouse given to her by my mom on her birthday – the Fisher Price Little People series.  Ever since then we’ve been collecting a slew of Little People until it got too unbearable.  They were like a bunch of breeding rabbits, showing up everywhere!  The kids have loved them, but I told them if they want to buy this dollhouse, they needed to sell some of their old toys to make room for the new one.  They agreed.  Some things have sold (enough to clear out some clutter) & they’ve been playing with this doll house non-stop since Laura brought it over.  So, thank you Laura, my dear friend, for thinking of us.  We love its simplicity & the imagination it brings forth.  Emma & Brooke are in dollhouse heaven!

Here’s to recycling your toys!

And to get this shot – in case you care – I put my camera on the dining room floor and put the ISO at 400, the aperture at f/4.0 and the shutter speed at 0.6 sec.  I wanted to see if I could get enough light, no grain, & enough in focus without using my flash.  My makeshift tripod of the dining room floor seemed to work well!

Photos I’ve been looking at:  Homeshade Photography.  Tasha Pool was introduced to me by my friend Heather (her website, not her in person).  I’ve loved looking at all her work, following her numerous hilarious status updates on Facebook, and just enjoying her real, vibrant, & colorful photos.  She’s even shared with me a little bit about how she does petti parties for little girls & mini-sessions for various other holidays.  They are kind of like Tupperware parties with the hostess inviting friends over for little photo sessions of their kids & the hostess receives credits for the more guests she invites. It’s ingenious!  And this girl cranks out the photos – and they are by no means mediocre.  She is fabulous!

Well, that’s my talk for today.  Just wanted to give a little shout out to my wonderful family, friends, and clients who’ve pushed my Ethiopia fundraising all the way up to $500 so far!  (Corinne, Jimmy, Ashley, the Rode’s, Kelly, Aunt Gail)  And the total cost of the trip got reduced to $2,500 so I am on my way!  If you’d like to help me get all the way there, visit my online donation page.  I’ll also be mailing out support letters & prayer cards, so let me know if you want one too.  I covet your prayers!  Thanks so much!

Yes, family & friends, it was only a matter of time before a Settlers blog post appeared.  In case you don’t know about Settlers of Catan, it’s a German board game that my family is obsessed about – or, that I am obsessed about winning.  Personally I think it’s like a cross between Monopoly & Risk.  Currently I am on a 3-month losing streak.  And, people, we don’t just play once in a while – we play at least once a week, sometimes more, and even more than one game in a sitting.  I am the official Settlers loser in my family, and I make sure to let them all know about it.  I stink!  I just don’t know why (they could all probably tell you), but I can’t seem to win.  Oh well, such is life.  And it’s just a game, right?

Today after Bert & Laura brought Emma back after her sleepover, we all had lunch at our house & played two games of Settlers.  Congratulations to Mom (Bonnie) & Bert on winning.  (You won’t be invited back, since you didn’t let me win).

In the photo above I’m the blue pieces.  As you can see at this point things didn’t look too terrible for me until Mom came full force with a massive road, cutting the entire land of Catan in half!  And Bert with his stinkin’ castles!  OMG!  How’s a person supposed to win with this kind of competition?  I even have Settlers of Catan on my iPhone so I can practice against highly-skilled computers but I just can’t seem to bring the winning into real life.  I’ll be sure to let you know when my streak ends.

Oh, and if you want to play with us, come on over.  We’re usually up for playing any day of the week, even into the wee hours of the night.  Sroka’s are always up for some competition!

Photos I’ve been looking at:  Melissa C.  She’s a person I randomly found though…you guessed it….Facebook!  I think I saw her comment on another 365 blog & clicked through to her blog & saw her photo of a crossword puzzle.  Immediately I thought of my dear grandmother who loves crosswords.  Melissa gave me such an encouraging comment the other day when I felt like giving up on this 365 thing.  Thanks for the push forward Melissa & I love looking at your work.  Keep it up!

*oh, and we’re such Settlers nerds that we bought Kids of Catan for our children.  Yup, we took it that far.