I’m sure there are things in life that you want, or need, right?  Well, Josh & I are no different.  However, with me staying home, we don’t actually have a ton of extra money for said things.  While we were brainstorming ways to cut back our expenditures, we came up with the idea of Josh taking his lunch to work again.  I used to make his lunch for him regularly when I was teaching & making my own lunch too.  Then, with the busy pace of life, it got set to the side.  We recently realized we are probably single-handedly supporting certain fast food chains with our eating out habits & decided to brown bag it instead.

This is the lovely lunch I made for Josh this evening:  2 peanut butter sandwiches, 2 sugar cookies, bag of chili Fritos chips, peanut butter crackers, water, & an apple.   Very fancy!  But it’s what he likes!

Pretty much every day of the week – even multiple times a day – I have princesses visiting my house.  They usually magically appear out of my girls’ bedroom, or all of the sudden Emma will go in to the bathroom & then *BAM* a princess will walk out!  During this photograph I was visited by Ariel & Ariel.  One Ariel was in her mermaid state, and one was in her human state.   As you can see, human Ariel needs to get her color done again.  They also brought their little doggie too.  (who, by the way, ran away for three hours yesterday night during the freezing cold – little punk!)

Photos: Vanessa’s Photography.  Vanessa Ard came to the Professional Photographers of Greater Annapolis meeting this past Tuesday and shared about benchmarks, and pricing, and overhead, and percentages…stuff that I’m pretending I know about…stuff that I WILL understand.  She was a great wealth of information & so helpful in answering all of my questions afterwards.  Thanks Vanessa.  Your honesty & openness & feelings about taking new photographers into the fold inspire me!

When I type the word “date” I have to clarify – it wasn’t a date with my dear husband….he had to work today.  This long luxurious lunch that I had was with Meaghan Elliott – my Facebook friend!  How weird is that?  I “met” Meaghan through Facebook because, as some of you know, I’ve really been trying to network with other photographers in my immediate area.  So I found Meaghan on Facebook, looked at her work, friended her & the rest just fell in to place.  It’s so cool to find someone in your area who shares your beliefs, who has some of the same passions about photography, & is super easy to talk with!  We had a great lunch talking about photography, my kiddos, the fact that both our husbands are named Josh, & life in general.  What a blessing for some girl time.  And many thanks to my mother-in-law (Gigi) for watching the girls while I had a 2-hour lunch!!!!  And I think my friend (and trainer) Lauren would be pleased at my menu.

*Bonus points if you can guess where I was dining????  (although I don’t know what the bonus points will accumulate towards, but you just get them, okay!)