Happy Grammie-Duties

I was going to start this post by saying that one of my favorite, happy Grammie-duties is photo shots, and it is... but now that I think about it, I can't think of ANYTHING about Grammie-duties that I don't like! Seriously!

I always love to take photos of my family because then I get to come home upload them to my computer, look at them up-close and large, edit, examine and enhance them. By the time I'm finished I've gotten my Grammie-cup over-flowing!

Miss Bitty surely knows how to ham for the camera! I can't imagine where she get that from! Recently Camille described her as engaging. I love that word!

 One of the secretaries at Camille's school made this darling Very Hungry Caterpiller outfit for Liam. He truly lives up to that image. I guess when you come into the world half-grown you are mighty hungry!

Now this is a funny one... I made this basket for Camille to use as the diapie basket: holding two sizes of diapies, wipes, bum cream, etc. As I was making it, and it is amply-sized, I thought how cute it would be to take newborn pix using this as a prop...

Erm... Liam didn't get the memo and, as you can see, he doesn't fit. (Now here's another thing I want to know. How do photographers get photos of mailable, play-doh babies? Do they drug them? None of my babies or grandbabies put up with that sort of silliness. Again, I wonder where that comes from?)

This is one of my favorites. Fiona, just a tiny girl herself, is so sweet, understanding and loving with her new brother. She will put out her little arms wanting to hold him.

When Camille saw this photo of Fiona she exclaimed how much she thought Fiona looked like her. So I went ferreting and just happened to find a photo of Camille at the very same age. These two photos don't point it out as much as I see it. These precious baby-girls born almost 28 years apart! I sure love these angelic faces!

But the resemblance that still stand out to me is how much Fiona looks like my Mom, Elsie.

The Joy of Photos

I've said this before but my memory works like photographs; I have a whole library of mental images. I think that is one of the reasons I love photographs so much. They freeze a moment in time and when I look at them all of the emotions from that moment come back to me with clarity.

After finishing the 8 bridesmaid dresses the next item on my To-Do list was to scan photos of Stuart for a video presentation to be shown at the groom's dinner (aka rehearsal dinner) and the reception. I leafed through 21 years of photos and pulled out the ones I liked the best; the ones that captured Stuart for me.

Not many days later Stuart informed me that he looked goofy in all of the photos (and that's MY fault?) He looked through 15 years of photos, marked ones he wanted me to add to or replace. I sent them off to Liz and told her she would have to get with Stuart to pick the ones that don't look goofy!

This whole *search and scan exercise* got me infected with photo-phever again! I want to be able to share these wonderful memories with my kids... you know, the ones who made these wonderful memories.

Working in no particular order I started in 1993 and decided to scan every page and label them chronologically so they will *read* like the paper photo album. (I have about 6 years scanned)

It didn't take long before this photo jumped of the page at me! Look at these beautiful girls! Rebekah and Megan were room-mates at BYU before Rebekah got married. So when Megan and Erik got married two years later I captured these two friends, and now sisters. I just want to cry with love for these two beautiful girls who have matured into wonderful mothers and women.

August 23, 1994

Another of my favorites is this one of Rebekah and Spencer. Rebekah is wearing a cute little jumper I made for her to wear in the ward road show. Spencer is just 2 months old; the same age his little Annabelle!

March 3, 1984

And here are Camille and Stuart when they were only 7 months old... just about the age of little Fiona. How is this happening to me? This fast forward of 30 years?

May 1986

OK... and then there's this one of my babies with mustaches...

 DRAWN BY DADDY WITH A PERMANENT INK MARKER!

He said they liked it. What really happened was he liked to vex the mama because they wouldn't wash off! Can you see how unbelievable cute these babies are?

April 1987

And my beautiful Rebekah again. She is 13.5. When I was that age I looked like a boy (Stuart, in fact, and whereas it looked good on him at 13.5, it didn't work so well for me!)

May 1987

No list of favorite photos would be complete without this one! These precious little children! What a joy! We have two more re-enactments of this photo. Camille just commented that we need to do that again. Wouldn't that be fun with them and their spouses and kids?

August 1989

And here is that same cute group... 1st day of school 1995. Spencer is starting 6th grade and Camille and Stuart are starting 5th grade. Such happy siblings.

July 26, 1995

I'm so grateful for all of these happy photo and memories! What a blessed life I have!

Baby Annabelle

Today I got to do one of my favoritest things! Have a photo-shoot with one of my grand babies.

Somehow all of the love gets focused and captured in a concentrated form. The love is so tangible! It frequently moves me to tears; just as this photo did today. (I love the twin noses here!)

Annabelle was a willing little subject. She is just so mellow.

Annabelle's Auntie Bekah (as opposed to Auntie Becca) sent a couple of wonderful little outfits one of which just begged to be worn for photos.

"Ho-hum... I'm used to this by now, even though I am only 5-days old!"

I always love to do the *baby parts* photos. Tiny baby toes...

A precious little head...

With a wonderful amount of hair...

Yes, just as this serendipitous photo shows- Annabelle is a gift straight from heaven!

My Darling Niece

My darling niece is a writer AND she is going to be published! As part of that process she needed a bio photo for her book. She asked if I would be willing to be her photographer. Sure thing!

She was traveling home today after spending the holidays with her folks so we set up a photo shoot right here in my little corner of paradise. (I'm so glad the Eves share their beautiful pond- all the way from the Philippines! Although their nephew looked a little confused today!)

As I was clicking photos I was impressed, again, with family!

MY FAMILY! 

Many times I have this experience as I look through the viewfinder! I'm taking Sarah's photo, but who I see in those eyes, cheeks or smile is my Mama! (or my Daddy) It is déjà vu!

[isn't she the cutest?]

The first time I experienced it was almost 16 years ago when my niece Cindy got married. There she was, at Grammy's temple, looking like her Grammy AND with her Grammy's wedding rings.

I'm so grateful for the eternal nature of the family. That these wonderful people who are my family will continue to be MY FAMILY!

I've missed posting to my blog on a daily basis! I love having this very real and pertinent record of what I do and see. So project twenty-fourteen is under way. It is for me and if you folks like to read over my shoulder you are certainly welcome to.

January Bumblebee

So are you wondering where I found a bumblebee in January? In my photos... where else!

January always finds me working on photos and/or person history. This January I'm editing my blog book.** When I ran across this photo from last June I thought, "I need to try that new watercolor technique I just learned."

Bumblebee watercolor 2013

When I wrote that blog I'd been playing with watercolor filters, but as I've said recently, I wasn't happy with my previous attempts.

Bumblebee filters 2012

I'm still learning and hope that next year I will be further along the digital-photo watercolor painting trail.

** So what are these about?

I got my iPhone in mid-November 2011 so I didn't have many i-photos for that year's blog book. But 2012 is totally different story! Holy cow! I've got Facebook mobile uploads, Instagram uploads, and then UN-loaded photo represented by a plethora of iPhone and Rebel photos that got taken, saved, indexed and that was the end of it!

What's up with that?

Addendum... this is post 1111!

What To Do?

We've been treated to two glorious COOL rainy days! Yay! I love this tiny reprieve from the July heat.

We arrived home from church in a light drizzle. As I got out of the car I saw some-THING on the driveway. Immediately I recognized it as a snail! My first impulse was to go pick it up and chuck it into the street (don't hold that against me... I did grow up in the country).

But that cruel thought was immediately eclipsed by the thought...

"GO GRAB YOUR CAMERA AND A BATH TOWEL

 AND CAPTURE THAT IMAGE!"

I wanted Gordon to come take a photo of me taking a photo of the snail, lying on my belly in my Sunday clothes... but he was too busy attacking the pot roast. Maybe next time.

Jude- 4 weeks old

OK now that I've given Jessica time to post her favorites of baby-Jude now I can do MY post about my newest grandson! It's always a good thing to start them young and get them used to a paparazzi Grammie. (His first shoot was when he was just hours old!)

I just love his little Shar Pei puppy forehead! Seriously, how cute is this baby?

I just love being able to do a newborn photo shoot of my very own grandson...

I love the mama & bebe photos...

I love his tiny, fuzzy little head...

(And can I add that Jessica has the most beautiful hands? Some girls have all the luck... cute babies AND beautiful hands!)

I even got a photo of Jude with both eyes open!

He is usually sound asleep.

"I Kiss You, Bonx!"

My friend, Breanne, just had her fourth baby. How can a girl have such consistently darling children? When #3 was born Breanne lived in our neighborhood and asked if I'd do a photo shoot for her. It was my first shoot for someone outside of the family! I remember looking through the bazillion photos and thinking, "Ah-stink! There's not a good one in here!" But after a couple more viewings I started to see I really did have some good shots. Then a couple of weeks later I went back and took photos of  Baby K and her cousin!

And now Baby K is two and a half! "I kiss you, Bonx!" is only one of the things she says and does to her new brother.



I was excited when Breanne called and asked if I would like to do a photo shoot for new brother, *Bonx*. What a lively group. I suppose that having been at Grandma's all day watching conference with all the cousins may have contributed to the mayhem! We started with the group shots. What a train wreck!! Have you ever tried to get all four children to look at you at once? Hmmm, not easy. But I was able to do some cloning and come up with this nice group shot.



Then we did sisters- (Baby Big-girl K was not excited about this!  I cloned out M's hands right under her chin!)



and brothers... too bad nobody loves this sweet baby boy!



Then on to the baby fashion parade. What a patient little soul!

First an owl-



Next a turtle-



Then a bear with a bare-bum!



And we can't forget the old-man-face!



It wasn't until post-processing that I saw I'd caught Breanne and family reflected in Baby Bonx's eye! LOVE IT!



We ended with the stork pose... oh my... we should have started there. Bonx wasn't too happy with this! Poor little man was just out of energy for anymore funny business with costumes and props!



But what a darling baby...

The Dream Trees

Back in 2009, when I'd first started my photo of the day blogging, I had a very vivid dream. I was in Greenville and I was taking this photo...

When I woke up I was quite distressed because I knew I didn't have that photo. I even asked my niece, Cindy, if she had it, but she didn't either. I yearned to be there in my little hometown.

That yearning hasn't subsided over the last 3+ years so I decided to finally do something about it! Since I am on my *Grand Tour* road-trip (where I go to all of my family-places in California) I knew that I needed to go through Greenville and get some of the photos I've been yearning for.

But for tonight, as I'm tiredly writing this from my room on the 24th floor of the Nugget in Reno, NV (The Biggest-Little-City in the World) I give you my dream trees... I'm so grateful to finally have this photo.

I will be back in the next few days with all sorts of posts about my travels and finds when I'm not so tired (You know, I'm not 30 anymore!)

Joanie and Gypsy

I'm sure enjoying my trip down memory lane. Today I've gotten up to 1964 and came upon this favorite photo of Gypsy riding in the basket of my bike. The original is faded, yellowed and worn. What wonderful technology we have so I can restore these old photos.

JOANIE AND GYPSY SPRING 1964

Our memories are interesting things... some days they are all sweet and other days they are more realistic! This is an excerpt from my January 9, 2009 blog post...

Sue had just gotten married and was living alone!! No dog!! (yeah, she had a husband but that didn't count in my 11 year-old mind) A friend's dog had a litter of pups so I went and chose one for Sue for Christmas. Her name was Blue and she was a dandy!! By the time Sue was going back to Provo after the Christmas break I'd gotten attached to Blue so Mom asked if I'd like one of Blue's litter mates. Let's just put it this way... Sue got the pick of the litter!


Gypsy was one of those little dogs that is neurotic! We never could break her from pee-ing on the carpet, or walk on a leash without sounding like she was being killed, or barking at Daddy every time he walk into the house... even if he'd only been outside for five minutes!! This is the little maniac that almost burned down our house! Mom and I had gone to Reno for the day (100 miles one way) and we'd been invited to stay the night with Thelma, but Mom just felt like we needed to go home. When we arrive home the house was filled with acrid smoke. Gypsy had dug and dug at the electric blanket and foam rubber pillow until she'd shorted out the wires. There was a big smoldering hole in the mattress. Mom and I dragged the mattress outside and threw it from the back porch into the snow! Gypsy lived about 7 years. She died just days before Daddy. We laughed and said that there was Gypsy waiting at the Pearly Gates to bark at Daddy when walked in.

This-day I'm feeling the sweet memories. Gypsy was a funny little dog who filled a place in my heart. She was the only small dog we'd ever owned. We used to take her with us when we went on our trips, usually to see family in the Bay Area. As soon as we would turn at the *Y* and head those last 12 miles to Greenville she would go nuts! She knew she was almost home.

JOANIE AND GYPSY SITTING ON MOM'S FALCON CIRCA 1965

Can I just say again how much I enjoy photos?

The Joy of Photos

I'm someone who loves photos! I love taking, organizing, scrapping, scrutinizing and tagging them! (More about this photo in a minute.)

As you know I've been in my *happy zone* for much of this year delving into photos. It started with recent photos, 2004 forward, but then a conversation with Ann got me into the old photos. I remembered that I have photos of my parents when they were courting and then envelopes, somewhat organized, of my birth through the mid 1970s.

When I was about 10 years-old I started keeping a funny little 12" x 8" landscape photo album... green, of course, with the classic black pages and black corner holders! The funniest part about this album is that I started by mounting my photos, randomly, on only one of the facing pages. Then at some point I realized that I would run out of room that way- so I started filling in the blank pages with out-of-chronological-sequence photos! (And now it drives my OCD-ness wild!) Like I said, this one is totally random but I love it and don't want to change it... not even the Buddi-chewed corner.

I started thinking how nice it would be to have a more ordered approach with all of those photos that have lived in envelopes for decades (YES! decades). I tried to find an album similar to my old green one, but didn't have very good luck. The best I could find was a spiral-bound all black album on Amazon that with shipping (sorry, no free shipping from this vendor) would be around $25. I didn't love it enough to buy it without looking at Hobby Lobby first. Boy did I hit the day!! Scrapbooks were 50% off.  I liked the looks of this 12 x 12 specimen (I got two more as well. Hey! Half off!)  I also bought some black paper, more page protectors and opted against the corner holders. I'd much rather use my tape runner. And, AND a couple of white Gelly-Roll pens. I love the look of white ink on black paper.

To supplement the photos I already had in envelopes I took a week-long side-trip tagging and organizing many of the 3000+ photos Cindy scanned about 10 years ago. (bless you Cindy!)   I've been printing some of them so I can include them in my new heritage album.

As soon as this one came out of the printer I thought... sure wish this had the deckle edge! HA! I just happened to have some deckle-edged scissors! Voila! Almost-heritage photos!

JAKE AND ELSIE circa 1940

** Now for the story on the lead photo!

This was taken in March 1960 at Granddad's house in Oakland CA. My mom labeled this-

*THE MUNCE CLAN*

STANDING BACK ROW- BILL MUNCE, PATRICIA MUNCE, FRED MUNCE, SUE CARAWAY, ANN CARAWAY, PAT MUNCE
SEATED FRONT ROW- ELSIE MUNCE CARAWAY, ERMA MUNCE, KATHY MUNCE, JOANIE CARAWAY, JOHNNY MUNCE, DICK MUNCE,  JACK and JANE MUNCE.

This photo represents all of Bill Munce's posterity: 3 children and 7 grandchildren. With him is the only Gramma I ever knew, Erma... what a marvelous grandma (my mother's mother died in 1927)! I think she loved us as much as we loved her because even after Granddad died in December 1961 we still visited her frequently in her cute little house.

Now this is what I love about photos... you may only see the people in the photo.  I see some of Granddad's roses on the left, gingerbread on the porch, a climbing vine on the right side.  And then, far right, I see part of our old Ford aqua and white station wagon with 3 rows of seats so Mom could separate us girls if necessary!  I also see the rest of Granddad's rose garden that filled his front yard.  I smell the lemon tree that grew along the driveway down by the garage.  I smell the damp, ocean-fresh air and the faint aroma of Easter ham.  I feel the love of this family.  I hear the banter from Uncle Swabby-Fred... he was my mom's *baby* as she raised him when their mother died shortly after his birth.

And as an aside... my memory is just like a mental photo album made up from Technicolor photos, surround sound and vivid smells... maybe that is why I love physical photos so much.

All Done!

And if Missy Edna was still around she would tell me that, in fact, I am finished!

Only cakes are done!



My 2011 Joanie's Balonie blog book is uploading to Blurb as I type. It is always such a wonderful feeling to know that in a week or so I will have a year of my life in my very own little hands!

Half-Finished

Since we got home from Arkansas I've started working on my 2011 Joanie's Balonie Blog Book. This will be my third year to publish my blog for the year. (ah, well, print... I don't imagine anyone else is clamouring to have my blog in print!)

There is just something that I love about the paper and ink. It's very tactile... it has heft and weight... I can just smell it right now!

Since I didn't do a photo each day last year it is coming along faster than previous years. I'm up to 123 pages through the end of June 2011.

My Twenty-Ten book was 404 pages. The sad story here is that I was totally finished with the book, proof-read and everything, when I went to upload it I found that Blurb had changed their layout so I had to go through and totally re-edit all of my pages since I use every square centimeter of printable space they'll give me! Ahhhhh..... I didn't finish until late summer! The upside is I got 40% off my order.

My 2009 book was 320 pages. I worked on it during the 2010 Winter Olympics and had it finished in February.

I've been very pleased with Blurb! Their prices are very reasonable, even without a discount. And their customer service is stellar. Last year my book arrived with some printing errors (IE- text cut off and photos that didn't bleed off the page as edited). I filled out the form, sent documentary photos of the problems and had a new correctly printed book in just a few days. AND they let me keep the book with mistakes (so now I have one to lend!)

I think I may go back and make a 2007-2008 blog book for consistency. I love the quality of the photos. I've usually done home printing of my journals, but now that I've inserted so many photos I want them to be nice.

I love this winter hiatus from yard work AND this year so far I haven't had to shovel any snow! Whee-haw!  Look at all of the time I have to create!