Down at the creek

On Sunday Mikey and I took a little trek down to the creek by his apartment (I sooo pronounce it "crick". It's true. I feel ashamed.). So I just brought along my camera and took some pictures of Mikey in his pirate attire being cute by the "crick".







There were all these little shells in with the rocks...







Right after I took that picture above I realized that I was laying amidst like 15 mini-bees. Ahh, nature. I somehow came away unstung though. Woo!

So now Katie and I are gearing up for Carly & Justin's wedding on Friday. We are super excited and we'll be posting that on here asap. So stay tuned!

Book club = Face painting club

Tuesday night was book club! Unfortunately, half of the members couldn't make it, and out of those of us who did make it, no one finished the book yet. Worst book club members ever. But never fear, we still managed to make it a super fun night! Janine brought her adorable daughter Emma who is 6 months old and seriously the happiest baby I have ever seen. We were there for at least 3 1/2 hours and she didn't get cranky once! Yay Emma!

After we picked the next book we are going to read, we decided to make it a face painting party! (From the post below - Jaki paints faces at the Philadelphia Zoo). We told Jaki to pick whatever she wanted to do for each of us. Luckily, I had my trusty little point and shoot digital camera in my purse for moments just like these. Here are some pictures from my camera and Jaki's that Katie was manning from our fun, face painting extravaganza!





Katie got this shot of me taking some shots of Emma:



Me as a puppy-dog (that's right, I'm 5 and still say puppy-dog):



Katie as a Tiger (rar!):



Next book club we are doing the face painting again (maybe we'll get to the book next time...maybe....). I can't decide if I want to be the dinosaur or the pirate next. And I vote Katie should be Spiderman. Thoughts?

The Zoo!

Last week I went to the zoo with my friend Nicole. Our other friend Jaki is actually painting faces at the zoo for the summer, so she also joined us for a bit. I haven't been to the zoo in a LOOOOONG time and I was worried I wouldn't like it as much as I used to, that it was more for kids or something, but we had an awesome time. Also, if you are a fan of the elephants, as I am, go now because they're not going to be in Philly much longer (if they're even there now). They're scheduled to leave for other zoos this month because they are too expensive to keep here any more. Sad. I was happy to hear that they're at least staying together though.



Nicole and Jaki...



the cats...







the monkey guys. Okay, I read Life of Pi where they go on all about how animals in zoos are happier or whatever and I just don't know. Whenever I get to the monkeys I have trouble believing this. Look at these guys? :-( They have such sad little faces and they just look like they want to be out there playing. In defence of the zoo though, it's possible that these monkeys did have an outdoor enclosure too, I can't remember.





lemur guy looking all funny...



Nicole protested going in the petting zoo...but I think it was the best part. We pet sheep and goats and cows. Jaki said if I came back as a cow I would have looked like one of them. Not sure how to take that... :-)



This is the zoo tender guy yelling at one of the jersey cows in the petting zoo. hehe. See how ashamed she looks? She'd pushed her little red ball which they have for enrichment in between the rungs of the fence. Then when the other cow wanted to play with it she couldn't cause it was stuck. (This isn't the cow that looked like me btw)



Last but not least Nicole and Jaki got to ride the tractor...fun. :-)

Crystal & Johnny

Crystal and Johnny came up last weekend to visit for Mikey's birthday. During the birthday celebrations (after they had a couple drinks and were more willing to agree) I made them promise that before they left the next day they would let me take some pictures of them. Muahaha. My evil plan worked. So before they left on Sunday, after I reminded them about 5 times that they agreed to pictures the night before, we stopped by Muhlenberg's campus to do a quick wee photoshoot of the two of them. I think Johnny felt a little silly at first, but Crystal was a pro right away. Johnny eventually eased into it and I got a couple of really cute shots of the two of them. So here are just a few.











Thanks you guys for being so much fun :-)

Lauren

Lauren is an aspiring singer-songwriter and has hired me before to do photos of her for her demo. That session involved a makeup artist who followed us around the city from location to location. This photoshoot involved her doing her own hair and makeup in roughly 15 mins and then posing in front of a white wall in her apartment. We needed to do some bathing suit shots (none of those are included here) and business suit shots for a reality show she was applying to. I tried to convince her to climb up onto the roof on the little fire escape ladder, but she wasn't interested. I probably would have persisted if we weren't under a time crunch. Anyway, these are a couple of the business suit shots which we did in the apartment. Her boyfriend tutors chess...thus all the chess boards (don't mind the chess pieces being incorrectly placed).

Grounds for Sculpture

Last week was Mikey's birthday, so on Saturday I decided to take him to Grounds for Sculpture which is right in Hamilton, NJ for part of his birthday celebration. Since Mikey is a sculptor I thought it would be perfect. Neither of us had ever been there, but we both had heard how awesome it is. It's just this big outdoor scupture garden with over 240 contemporary sculptures. You can check out the website at www.groundsforsculpture.org. Here are some of my favorite photos from Saturday, although it was really hard to pick just these. I'll have to upload more into a slideshow. It was just so beautiful there!

All the sculptures are just perfectly placed within the serene landscape of the grounds. They just fit right in.



Oh and there are also free-roaming peacocks.

This was one of my favorites. Pegasus. I really love the organic shapes.

Some of the sculptures recreate famous paintings so you feel like you are right inside of a work of art.

This is us being excited that we are inside a work of art.

There were also ducks! I love ducks.

Below is another one of my favorites. It looks like an elephant head to me, with the big trunk in front.

This is Mikey sticking his head in the line of the shot I was trying to get above.

There is also a restaurant just nestled in the beautiful scenery. We didn't eat there, but we're going to next time. It's supposed to be really good.