Friday, July 28, 2006

No Power

We both got home from work today to a thunderstorm and a power outage that lasted for several hours. Taking electricity away from two nerds is not a good thing, so we were at quite a loss for how to occupy our time. We eventually settled on drawing out some future plans by window light for the house and studio, and taking some stupid pictures.

The latter, unfortunately, you get to see the results of:




awwww


awwwww x2


awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww


Abuse!!!!


flash light is not very flattering when it's dark in the room to begin with, ech.


Daddy loves his baby


Time to go format CF cards, clean lens faces, and charge batteries for the wedding tomorrow. Maybe one day Matt will actually get on here and write something.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Ramblings

Not much going on over here today. More nitpicking about our loan options for the new house (payments and escrows and closing costs, oh my!) I'm actually glad that we have this 90 day "down time" to be picky about the loan we end up with, though, I am a little anxious about whether or not our place will sell in that time period. We're doing all we can at this point, so I guess we'll just wait and see!

We're having an open house August 13th. Tell all yo' people.

I'm thinking of turning half of my front showroom at the studio into a retail display of wedding/prom/pageant accessories/jewelry. I already have the wholesalers for everything I'd need, and it'd be a very concise, controlled inventory (just one or two of each item kept in stock and I'd just re-order when needed). Basically, my ploy is to lure some of the 7,000 (literally) middle and high school kids that hang out in the shopping center after school. With that many people crowding the center, I need some way to get them IN the studio, and then I can start pushing portraits when wedding season begins to wane in the fall/winter.

It's an idea. I may not even do it. We'll see.

And now, before my night of off-and-on tutoring begins, some random pictures from today:


Our new hopeless addiction.


Poor Nut seems to be overshadowed by her little "brothers" lately, so i figured she deserved a picture.


I think he's dead...


And the obligatory daily one-armed tired-and-gross shot of us.

Monday, July 24, 2006

Nashville & New House

Matt's mom visited Nashville this week for a conference, and we went over there Saturday to visit and spend a night in the Opryland Hotel, and see a show at the Grand Ole Opry.

Taken with crap-camera, as all blog photos are:









Then Sunday, we drove back to Knoxville under the pretense that we were meeting my parents for lunch. Instead, we drove to West Knoxville and turned into a neighborhood. We pulled into a cul-de-sac and up to a house.. my parents were parked nearby, but Diane hadn't seen them yet. Matt turned to his mom and said "See that house over there? It's ours" You should have seen the look on her face.

And now since most people know, I can post the pictures here:


Mom & Diane in front


The obligatory, corny, cheesy, "It's ours!" shot


Another front view


Side yard


backyard


more backyard


back of the house. See the double doors on the bottom? It leads to an unfinished basement. We're going to eventually finish it in and several years from now I can move my business back home (once my reputation has built up enough) and have my studio there!

No inside pictures yet, since the current owner still lives there and I didn't want to be taking pictures of his personal stuff. We have 90 days to sell our condo, and then we can move in!

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Junk

Punkin was taken to the UT vet hospital today for a complete cardiac work-up. A few months ago during a routine check-up, the vet noticed he had a little bit of a heart murmur. We had a basic echocardiogram performed that showed slight thickening of the walls in his heart, but they recommended we take him to UT to see exactly what was causing it and so we'd know the correct way to treat him. He's been there all day today, and I can hopefully go get him in an hour or so.

Here he is last night showing off his new manicure (www.softclaws.com.. they are awesome!) Keep in mind that most of my day-to-day "fun" pictures are taken with the little point 'n shoot camera, so they are less than stellar, usually.



In other news, I stayed home from the studio today to continue de-cluttering and cleaning the condo for showings and open houses. We're listed with the MLS now, so hopefully we get some interest soon. We only have 87 days left to sell! In the meantime, the condo is going to look worse before it gets better as I slowly pack up extra clutter to either stash in the attic or store in the studio.

I give you... Junk(tm)!


and Ham.. who is looking rather bug-eyed here


and Matt, who I made smile for a picture when he got home from work. I look nasty here, so just look at him, k?


That's all I got.

-Erin

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

L'adventure commence

Let's get this show on the road

Stuff & Nonsense

This family blog is part of our 'therapy' to working through a lot of our issues. It'll mostly be pictures and accounts of the *good* things in our marriage. - Erin