almost WW

Last week Jake and I made what will probably be our last fall zoo trip.  Since we have a year membership, we may go once or twice in the winter and then will definitely start going again more regularly in the spring.  I couldn't believe how active the animals were when we were there.  The cooler weather got everyone moving around.  I got a lot of great pictures and wanted to share some of them here.  Enjoy!

(almost) Wordless Wednesday

I took a walk yesterday in one of the local parks.  It is so gorgeous this time of year that I had to take some pictures.  I hope that all of you in the midwest who have been blessed with warm, sunny weather this week have been able to enjoy it a little, too!

fridge "walk"

A number of people enjoyed my fridge photo from this house update post last month.  I decided to give you a closer look at some of what's up there.  If you see anything you'd like to know more about that I don't cover here, let me know.

I wasn't able to go to Jake's white coat ceremony at the beginning of med school.  (It's stupid, but I'm still a little bitter about this.)  We keep in touch with one of his professors from undergrad who visited us in Iowa not long after the event.  We thought it would be funny to take a picture for Facebook that looked like he went with us to the ceremony.  It's the most recent picture that I have of the three of us so I still have it up.

I try to change the pictures somewhat regularly, but there are a few that stay, included a few from our wedding.

This is us with the maid of honor and best man.  Yep, my MOH was about 25 weeks pregnant.

I have a lot of favorite wedding pictures, but this one of my huddle with Jake and his side of the wedding party is way up there on my favorite list.

I have a few pictures up from other weddings, too.  Most of my favorite shots of us with wedding couples are framed, but I have some other pictures up right now from Ray and Shana's wedding (they're the couple that we just visited in DC), which was just last year.

The picture taking process took forever so I took some goofy pictures of some of the guys while the girls were taking their pictures.

This is my favorite posed group shot.

This is another all-time favorite picture.  This is from Memorial Day weekend 2008 at the Milwaukee Art Museum with my little sister-in-law and father-in-law (who had separated his shoulder while demonstrating hurdle jumping for my little sister-in-law).

Of course I have pictures up from Match Day.  For those of you who don't remember, Match Day is when all of the medical students in the country find out where they matched for residency.  (For EtsyBloggers who were wondering what my hair looks like short, this is still pretty much what it looks like.)

Finally, I like to put pictures up of some of the people who I don't get to see a lot in person.  This is one of the pictures that I have up right now of my brother and his girlfriend.

I hope you enjoyed this little tour of just a few of the pictures that I enjoy looking at while I'm cooking.  I would love to see pictures from other people's fridges.

black cats for Halloween

I am not a huge fan of Halloween.  (I don't have anything against it.  It just isn't my favorite holiday.)  But I love black cats.  So I put together a mini black cats photo feature for today.  Enjoy!

Black Cat Pink Flower Photo Card by PlumLanePhotos

BLACK KITTEN MATTED 11X14 TITLED SIGNED AND TITLES SLRUSSELL by sandrarussell

Thomas shadow photo by horatio3333

Black Metallic Cat Green Eyes Shimmering by gothicrow

Chat Noir - golden feline eyes and black sleek fur - a halloween photograph - a fine art cat print (5x5) by Raceytay

DIY, recent random happenings, need an opinion on a new picture idea

I decided to break things up tonight and post a few pictures of recent happenings (particularly of non-jewelry DIY projects) before I post about one jewelry picture idea that I would like some feedback on.

I've been perfecting the art of the self French manicure for the last few months.  Yes, those are my real nails.

As I've mentioned before, I started making my own thank you cards this summer for my Etsy package.  I put a few of them in my light box today while I taking some other pictures.  Pink is not my favorite color, but I made a pink/green baby card for someone (who loves both of those colors) and decided to make this set with the scraps from that little project.

Jake and I started watching Man v. Food this summer.  We saw a few episodes on cable while we were in the Dells and now watch it on Netflix.  For those who have seen the show, we got inspired by the Minneapolis episode and decided to make our own Juicy Lucy burgers.  They turned out pretty well.  Yes, each burger does consist of two 1/3 pound burger patties, and no, I did not eat the entire thing in one sitting.

Also on the subject of food, I'm sure that many of you already know this, but I like to bake even more than I like to cook.  I made pumpkin muffins last week.  I got the recipe from this cookbook which is written by Billy Joel's wife.  That cookbook is still one of the most random things I've found in the new nonfiction section of the library since I started browsing there regularly last year so I wanted to share that.

A picture of Angel that I took while Jake was setting up some of his Warhammer models in the light box.

I took a few dozen pictures of some of Jake's newest models yesterday.  I won't post all of them here, but I'm pretty happy with the way that they turned out.

And finally, while I was taking jewelry pictures today, I experimented with a new idea.  Jake doesn't like the way that it looks because he thinks that my hand ends up looking distorted. I think that a lot of people have trouble determining how a piece of jewelry is proportioned without a human model or a mannequin.  I don't provide any sort of model in my pictures currently so I thought a shot like this might help my shop viewers.  I have pretty small hands, but they will still provide a clear visual for how wide the bracelet is, how large the embellishment is, is it a long or short bracelet, etc.  I like the first shot better than the second.  I did not shoot any with a white background, but I could experiment with that if you think it would work better.  Let me know what you think.  Please be honest.  I am open to the possibility of using a plastic hand mannequin, too.  I just don't own one currently.  Thanks in advance!