Archive for September, 2011

travel tuesday (dune 45)

travel tuesday (dune 45)

This photo was taken on September 11, 2008 at Dune 45 in Namibia.  It is, in fact, Dune 45.  Sand dunes are my favorite natural formation.  Asking people “what’s your favorite natural formation?” was a big part of our (ok, “my”) life while we were traveling.  It’s a somewhat surprising question, but once people take you seriously, you get some neat answers!  I’ve met people with all sorts of favorite natural formations, from mountains, to coral, to waterfalls.  Those are all good, but none of them are as good as sand dunes.

So, I wanna know, what’s YOUR favorite natural formation?

September 13, 2011 1 comment Read More
my girls

my girls

This picture was taken on September 9, 2001, meaning it is almost exactly 10 years old.  These girls were my “crew” throughout my undergrad degree at the University of Alberta, and they remain some of my closest friends to this day.

Clockwise from left: Michelle, Krystal, Susan, Chelsea, Me, Jill

Of course, since we’re girls, we’ve had our share of “oh my god, I think she’s going to kill be moments”.  But, despite that, we’ve been there for each other for more than 10 years now.  Though we’re all doing different things, and we’re spread all over the country, and we all haven’t lived in the same city at the same time since 2004, whenever we get together it is like no time has passed.

Most of us (except Susan) are all headed to Canmore today for an extended long weekend for Chelsea’s wedding!  This will be the fourth wedding out of the group, which is pretty much just crazy.   (Suze was supposed to be here, but alas, she’s going through what one might call a “complicated” pregnancy and is under strict instructions from her doctor to stay home.  We’re all devastated she can’t be there, but none of us more than Suze herself.   We know that it’s for the best that she not drive 6 hours (x2) this weekend, but we are sad anyways!  We’ll miss you!!)

Tonight we will take fancy limo busses to Banff for a stag/stagette (complete with a whole bunch of Irish folks, can you say “excited”?), tomorrow is the rehearsal dinner (and the spa, if you are the hubs and I) and then Saturday is the wedding.  The last time we took a fancy limo somewhere was for Chelsea’s 21st birthday.  Pictures of that don’t belong on the internet.  But it was hilarious.

I’m thrilled that Chelsea is marrying Eoin (pronounced Owen, if you are anything other than Irish and don’t know that) this weekend.  They are so perfect together.  Preparing for my gig as MC, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Chelsea.  She’s a wonderful friend, and a wonderful human being.  She was there on, what turned out to be, one of the most important days of my life!  The day Chels and I picked the hubs up from the airport and billetted him before an undergraduate business school conference.  This next image was taken just 4 days later, in February 2003.

Trying to find a couple of pictures for this post made me realize just how amazing it is to have a wonderful group of girlfriends.  It’s something I had in both Edmonton and Vancouver, but I don’t have in Toronto.  I miss it terribly.  But… not this weekend!  This weekend is for F.U.N.!

Don’t expect to hear from me for awhile, folks!  I’ll be reliving my youth!

 

September 8, 2011 0 comments Read More
travel tuesday (bondi)

travel tuesday (bondi)

This photo was taken on December 2, 2008 at Bondi Beach in Australia.  I thought long and hard about posting a nice, but probably more boring, picture of the opera house or something, but I couldn’t resist this one.  All the credit for the neat composition goes to the hubs for this image.

September 6, 2011 0 comments Read More
sweet flea market finds!

sweet flea market finds!

On Sundays, the North Market at the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto is host to a weekly antique market. There are lots of expensive antiques, but if you dig and dig there are lots of deals to be had! Today I got some of the best. deals. ever. Period. (Ok, well, maybe not compared to this insane YHL deal, but these are some of the best. deals. ever. in my life, so there you go)!

The four frames, yellow mosaic thing-y and gray-y green ceramic jug were $1 each, the two necklaces were $5 total, oh, and the Nikon FM and the attached 50mm 1.8 lens and 1A filter were $99. Now we’re talking people!

I’m pretty excited about the four frames, they are all different sizes and are all different textures. I am going to spray paint them white and make a cute little wall display with them! (Two came with glass and two were without, but my vision has no glass anyways, so it should be a super easy, and cheap) little project! Any guesses on where my inspiration for that project came from? Anyone? I’m so predictable…

The ceramic jug will be our new milk jug. It was $1 because it is missing the cap. That’s ok, in my mind it is perfect. It reminds me of the new sidebar link colour on this blog, and the new primary colour of my photography website. I’m just in love with it!

Then we’ve got the two cute necklaces for $5, which seemed like a steal until I found my other steals. The little yellow thing-y may have been an ashtray in a previous life. It has found a new life, for $1 as a repository for my earrings before I hang them back up! (Don’t worry, I’ve scrubbed it down!)

But, by far and away, the very very very best deal of the day was my new film camera. It’s a Nikon FM, all black body – so it is sexy. These cameras were built between 1977 and 1982, making it (probably) older than me! It’s got a shutter release button, which indicates that is actually one of the earlier cameras, so I bet my “new” camera is almost 35!

While I’m a little nervous about shooting with this camera (it’s film, and it’s fully manual) I’m also very excited. Helping me out with my fear is that it does have a, reputedly, very good light meter that has, apparently, aged very well! If I have any problems, the guys at the St. Lawrence Market said I could bring it back. Oh yeah, and they are going to track down a polarizing filter and a 8A (?) filter and throw them in. Just because I bought the camera. For $99. These babies (just the body) sell on ebay for at least $100-$120, then you need to add in shipping and the 50mm F1.8 lens (another $60 – $80) and the filters. I love those guys!

The nice guys at Downtown Camera helped me pick out sweet rolls of colour and black and white film to test it out (respectively, Portra 400 and TMAX 400, for those of you who are into that sort of detail!) So, I’m hoping to shoot both rolls when we are in Canmore next weekend. Check back soon for an update of how it went! So nervous, eek!

September 5, 2011 0 comments Read More
If I were to do it all again.

If I were to do it all again.

You all know just how much I love pinterest, right? I love it a lot. With my heart and my soul. My favourite thing to do on weekend mornings is to grab a piping hot cup of coffee and pin away. The only thing wrong with pinterest is that I’m too inspired. I want to spend all my days doing fun DIY projects (like this or this) and I want to plan my wedding all over again.

I loved my winter wedding. It was classy and elegant and a little bit different; not many people can say they got married on a day that ranged from -25C to -40C (-13F to -40F). But oh, the warm summer light and bright airy colours… they call to me. So, for fun, this morning I decided to make an inspiration board of “what could have been”. If I could do it all again, I would get married at the cabin in the late summer, while the leaves were still green. Right around this time of year, in fact. The colours would be yellow and gray (we had grey at our actual wedding, so I’m just adding my all time favourite colour to the mix!). There would be yellow craspedias in our flowers, for sure. Despite not being Jewish, would get married under a most beautiful diy-ed wooden chuppah. We would dance under the stars.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t wish that we didn’t have our wedding; it was the best day ever. It was totally beautiful and romantic and I loved it. (Wait for the upcoming post about our DIY-ed centerpieces)! I just sort of wish we could have another.

Le sigh.

September 4, 2011 0 comments Read More
New “Home” On The Web!

New “Home” On The Web!

I’ve spent a big part of today working on my “home” on the web! As you probably know, I’ve got this personal blog, I’m a wedding photographer and have a blog / site for that, and I have a (for the moment inactive) travel blog (that I have also just updated). I was feeling somewhat disjointed; like there was no “home” for me online. No central place that lists all my different businesses and projects. So, using inspiration from my hubby, from flavors.me, and from my brain, I came up with the brand spanking new allison-suter.com (unfortunately, allisonsuter.com belongs to Allison Suter, the natural health professional, with the awesome business cards.)

The background is a full height and width image (thanks to Scott Robin for the awesome “Backstretch’ jQuery plugin!) When you arrive at the page it looks like this:

It’s basically a simple image and a couple of divs with my name, and links to my various sites! In the bottom right of the text box there is an “about” link, a “social” link and a “contact” link. These are some of the things I’m most excited about! I adapted a super cool script from Girls Who Geek (who, incidentally, use the same theme for their blog as me)! When you click on “about” it opens (and closes) my “about” box.

When you click on “social” it opens (and closes) my “social” box. Thanks to LeeAnn Donaldson for the super cute social media icons which I adapted to (a) be white, and (b) have a pinterest icon. Because we all know how much I love pinterest!!

Finally, when you click on “contact” it opens up a new window with my new cute wufoo powered contact form! (Try it out and say hi!)

All in all, I’m super excited about this new little website. I’m not sure how much traffic it will get, but it makes me happy to go and look at it!

September 3, 2011 0 comments Read More