Month: March 2011

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Change – and falling in love…

I’m feeling the need to change things up. To stretch, to grow. To reclaim things I once used to do. SXSWi interrupted my steady posting here, and I’ve missed it. So I’ll be doing more. I’ll finish my 30 lists, but on my own time. Who knows what it will be.

I know a big part of this is the shift in my photography business. After years of identifying myself as a wedding photographer + boudoir photographer, it is hard to flip it around. And yet I must do it – I long to do it. Not that I don’t LOVE weddings, because I do. So, so, so very much. But I love even more that through my intimate photography I can help moms grow in their confidence and rediscover their beauty.

I just stumbled upon Apricot Tea this morning while searching for a new blog theme. (Part of that whole need for change, I was looking at blog themes and pondering redesigns for all of my sites.) I couldn’t help but notice her sidebar links to Sex, Love, Liberation. I mean, how can you miss a blog with a name like that?

There, in the sidebar. There it was…

“Fall in love with yourself.”

That is what I want. That is what I want for my clients. That is what I want for myself. That is what I want for my friends, my family, for everyone I meet. I want them all to fall in love with themselves.

When we stop comparing ourselves to everyone else, we can finally see the beauty that we are. I think the world needs more of that.

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For Japan with Love…

Please go & donate.

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My Favorite Websites & Blogs (30 Days of Lists: Day 9)

This could be a really, really, really long list if I let it be – I like a lot of websites & blogs! So instead, I’m going to list the places where you can almost always find me online first, followed by some of my favorite blogs to read.

– Gmail
– Twitter
– The SWPB Group on Flickr
– Facebook
– Etsy (beautiful handcrafted goodness!)

I love to read:
– Design Sponge
– Psychotactics (Business tactics for the small business owner)
– The Bloggess
– Chookooloonks

And about a zillion others that I would list if I had time to pull up all their URLs and add them here, but pulling up The Bloggess already sent me off into a 20 minute spiral of reading her posts and posting to twitter about Wil Wheaton. He may have angered the Blogosphere back in 2002, but his photo of him collating papers today totally makes up for it!

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What’s In My Bag? (30 Days of Lists: Day 8)

Yesterday was a crazy, crazy day. Matter of fact, it started the night before. I went to my studio to have a meeting about the upcoming Photocamp Houston (whoo hoo!!!) and Mike went to a 5 course dinner with beer pairings at Beaver’s. As our meeting ended and I hopped in the Mini to head home, I thought that I should take a moment to check in with Mike. Good thing I did, because it turned out it was five STRONG beers that they served up with dinner, and since he doesn’t drink often it hit him hard! Oops! He had no intentions of driving home, but since I was there I was able to go get him instead of him taking a cab. Of course, that meant I had to drive him back there yesterday morning to get his car! I needed to get in to get my hair trimmed before SXSWi, so I made a quick call to the salon and got in there as well.

The whole thing threw off my working plans for yesterday though, so today is crazy catch up day! And as I went to sleep last night, I realized I never wrote this post. That made me sad, which I considered a good sign that I’m getting back into the swing of regular blogging! Yay!

Today’s List prompt is “What’s In My Bag?” I should note here that it gave me pause as I looked around and wondered to myself, “Which bag???” Seems that I have a thing for bags. Lots and lots of bags. It doesn’t help that as a knitter, I often have projects in bags too. But I’m going to go with my main bag, my cute concealed carry purse. So let me see, what do we have in here?

– Business cards to pass out for Wholly Matrimony.
– Business cards I got from others at WPPI – I’m still working on emailing everyone that I met!
– Several Sharpie Pens – they are the best!
– Receipts
– My latest sock knitting project – hoping to finish it while on the road to SXSW
– My wallet
– A fortune from a fortune cookie
– Cash
-9mm pistol
– Debit cards, drivers license, health insurance card
– Two tubes of lipstick
– Lush lip balm
– my iPad
– my Sprint MeFi for my iPad (looking forward to the upcoming iPhone update to use that instead!)
– a thumb drive

Best part about making this list? I cleaned out my purse at the same time and threw stuff away!

I should add that I love my purse. Mike bought it for me for my birthday, but took me to the Fossil store so that I could try out the purses and make sure I got one that my iPad fit into, that way I can easily carry it around with me!

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Blog Goals! (30 Days of Lists: Day 7)

Oh goodness, this couldn’t possibly be more timely! As I mentioned before, I’m bad about “living in the moment” and not setting goals. I’m driven enough that this has worked out to be ok for me. Not great, but not bad. Just ok. But I’ve been working with Jeff Jochum on defining different goals, and several of the ones I’m working on involve my blogs.

Yes, blogs. As in I own more than one. This one is personal, but the rest are business focused, so I’m going to break this down by blog.

BigPinkCookie.com (You are Here.)
– Finish up the 30 Days of Lists
– Participate in other writing prompt activities
– Get back to blogging about personal stuff 3-4 times a week
– Before I post something to twitter as a link, write a longer post about it here if it is worthy of it
– Redesign the site, or at least give it a thorough overhaul

Hot Mama Boudoir
– Do my homework from today’s call with Jeff
– Write up my declaration statement
– Write a whole new bio that is more about ME
– Contact more past clients about sharing their sessions online
– Once I have permission for using photos, write up posts – ideally, at least once a week
– Help moms rediscover their true beauty

Christine Tremoulet
– Think more about what my big goals are, my lofty mighty dreams
– Share posts featuring weddings within a few weeks of the wedding date, after the gallery goes online
– Revamp content on static pages on the site, replace the bio, update the FAQs

WhollyMatrimony
– Cheer Melissa on as she has been posting real weddings! Yay!
– Work with Melissa on ad packet
– Fix header image
– Do a weekly editorial post on trends & products
– Work with Melissa on creating a vendor directory within the next 6 months

SLGT Photo Project
– Make sure any pending posts are online
– Check in with clients who haven’t sent PR info for posts
– Schedule outstanding shoots for people who have signed up but never did session
– Find a programmer to change the calendar format for booking to an option to be one of 300 sessions

Some of these things can happen immediately, some with take time, some will require me to work with Melissa on them. Knowing what I want to do helps me focus on getting them done though! Now off to do my homework!

Want to join the project? Check out the 30 Days of Lists site!