Category: Everyday Avenger

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Everyday Avenger Travel Notes

On Birthdays, Camp Mighty, and Charity:Water…

Water at Glacier National Park

One week from today, I’ll turn 44 years old. I have a favor to ask of all of you.

Wow, wait. Did I really just write that? 44? That means I turned 31 the year I started this blog. Unreal. Seems like only yesterday, and yet so very long ago! So much has changed. I watched the Internet grow up, and my son grow up, and I grew up with it all.

This summer, on the most epic road trip EVER, I’ve been so fortunate to see so many of my friends and family along the way. People I otherwise only see online.

When Stephanie & I wrapped up the launch of Vivid & Brave here in Calgary, Mike & I started to talk about where I would go next. Should I turn south and head home and fly to Camp Mighty in mid-October? Or should I go big or go home and drive to ALASKA for my birthday, then down the Pacific Coast, eventually turning inland to head to Camp Mighty?

Well, it wouldn’t really be the most epic road trip ever if I didn’t drive to ALASKA now, would it?

So I am. I am driving from Calgary, through Banff and Jasper, and on to Alaska. I plan to see Mt McKinley on my birthday next Friday.

Then the icing on the proverbial birthday cake? Mike surprised me and used some of the airline miles he has earned this year with all of his work travel and bought a plane ticket to meet me in Alaska! WHOO HOOOOOO!!! It has only been a week or two since he left Calgary, but it will still be great to see him!

Now I have a favor to ask from all of YOU.

Camp Mighty does a fundraiser every year for Charity:Water, and as part of our registration we are tasked with helping raise money. Charity:Water is a non-profit organization that brings clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations. I would love it if you could help me raise $200 for Charity:Water by my birthday next week on September 27th. Really, I’d like to raise even MORE for them. $4400. $100 for every year I’ve been alive.

That is where YOU come in. If everyone reading this donates $10-20, we can make it happen! If there is one thing I’ve learned on this trip, it is that you can do anything you set your mind to doing.

Want to help? Visit the Camp Mighty Charity:Water donation page. Make a donation. Be sure to note that your donation to add a note that the funds are being donated in my name – Christine Tremoulet. That way they know to credit me & Team 4 at Camp Mighty.

As awesome as it will be to start my birthday off next week in Alaska, it will be even more incredible to know that I kicked off the next year by banding together with all of you to do good for those that truly need our help. Charity:Water is a charity I’ve donated several times to in the past, and what they are doing to get clean water to people who need it most is amazing. Chip in and change a life.

PS – I have photo session times available now in Alaska (Anchorage & Fairbanks), Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and San Jose! Let me know if you would like to set up a session!

The above photo was taken at Glacier National Park in Montana. The water was so blue, so clear – and the mountains so mighty. I can’t wait to see what is on the road ahead!

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Everyday Avenger

Save My Colorado Wedding – Making the World More Romantic…

Sarah Roshan - Colorado Wedding Photographer

My friend Sarah Roshan, a Colorado wedding photographer, has created “Save My Colorado Wedding”, working towards her mission to make the world more romantic. She doesn’t just want to save her client’s weddings during the catastrophic floods – she wants to help save as many weddings as possible. This is just one of the interviews she did this week about what has been happening in Colorado.

When Hurricane Ike hit Houston a few years ago, a lot of weddings were impacted by it. I was still mainly a wedding photographer at the time, and the day Ike hit I was in Louisiana photographing a wedding. Even being several hours away from Houston, we had 80 mile an hour winds because the storm was so huge. A number of Houston guests didn’t head over for the wedding because they did not want to travel, not after the disaster that evacuation was during Hurricane Rita a few years earlier.

Two weeks after Hurricane Ike, on my birthday, with the birthday bride (yes, she got married on her birthday!) I photographed another wedding at a venue still without power in Houston.

When you’re planning your wedding, things like catastrophic storms aren’t something you consider. Worse case scenario, you maybe plan for some rain on your wedding day. Yes, even along the Gulf Coast – I’ve lived in Houston for over 25 years, and only a handful of named storms have hit Houston in that time. You don’t plan for things like your venue still not having power two weeks after a storm. Or maybe your venue sliding off a mountain and floating away in a flood as is the case in Colorado right now.

If I lived in Colorado, I doubt that I would plan for anything as catastrophic as what they are seeing right now. It makes me furious that the media is giving it so little attention, as this flood they are experiencing is far worse than what we saw in Houston with Hurricane Ike. It feels like since the storm doesn’t have a name, it isn’t a big deal? Entire towns are destroyed.

Maybe it really hits home for me because I drove both the Boulder Canyon and the Big Thompson River Canyon in early August of this year. I have seen these places that are flooded right now. Beautiful, amazing places. Roads that are now gone. Not damaged, but holes left in them, washed away, GONE.

I just can’t put in to words how damn proud I am of Sarah right now. When the floods were just starting, she was already making a list of venues still open. When people started putting pleas for help out on Facebook to find a new, non-flooded venue for a wedding not even 48 hours away, she stepped in to help connect them with venues who could help. She has worked tirelessly for the past week, along with a team of planners and volunteers, to get people connected.

With all the media attention on the bad things in the world, it helps me to know that there are great people like Sarah out there. The human race as a whole is WONDERFUL. We step up. We help where we are needed. People like Sarah do, indeed, make the world a more romantic place. It gives me hope.

Sarah Roshan - Colorado Wedding Photographer

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Everyday Avenger

My Government At Work…

Stand With Texas Women

Stand With Texas WomenIt has reached a point of pure insanity at the Texas Legislature when they are forcing women who are there for the hearings on HB2 (link to live blog on the topic) to surrender the tampons they have in their purses. Texas women are angry over this bill, and they are afraid that they will be used as projectiles to throw at the legislature.

No matter where you stand on this bill, no one should have to surrender basic feminine hygiene products. Ludicrous!

The only “down side” to my surgery and my road trip is that I’ve missed the opportunity to be there for this critical time in Texas government. If I had not been in the hospital, or if I wasn’t on the road now, I would be there in Austin. It is hard reading the news from so far away, and I really hope I have no issues with this hospital, otherwise I would be contacting experts from >https://www.the-medical-negligence-experts.co.uk/

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Everyday Avenger Travel Notes

Hello, June! Goodbye, June!

Christine Tremoulet

Colorado National Monument - Rim Road

WHOOOOOOOSH!!!

That would be the sound of June 2013 flying past me. The month started with a flurry of activity around attending BlogHer Food. From there, there were the summer Flirt, Hot Mama, and White Sheet sessions for a lot of wedding and anniversary gifts, even a zegarki watch, how exciting! I was formulating the plans for the Avenger of Sexiness North America Tour (#aos13 on Twitter and Facebook) … and then it all came to a screeching halt.

I had a very sudden, excruciatingly painful gallstone attack on Saturday, June 22nd. Just days before I planned to leave town. I went to the ER, and they ended up admitting me to the hospital. Instead of heading west on June 25th like I had planned, I had my gallbladder removed. I was finally released on June 27th.

I don’t normally make a lot of plans because I *HATE* it when my plans get changed. I cried on the night of the 29th because I was still at home, instead of in California with my friend Tara like I had planned. It didn’t help that it was the hottest June day in Houston … EVER. I was miserable.

Since our plan always was to drive, and the doctor cleared me for travel when he released me from the hospital, I asked Mike if we could go ahead and pack and leave. There was no way we could do the California leg of our journey, but we could still make it to Portland in time for the World Domination Summit, which I was lucky to score a ticket to months ago.

My Mini Cooper at Colorado National Monument Rim Rock DriveWe spent Sunday morning quickly packing our bags, loading up my Mini Cooper, picking up a GoPro camera to record the trip and heading out. Our journey took us north through Oklahoma City, on in to Kansas, west to Denver, through the Rocky Mountain National Park Trail Ridge Road, across to Grand Junction – where the above photo was taken, at the Colorado National Monument Rim Rock Drive, in to Utah, on through Idaho — and here we are today in Portland, Oregon.

I made it. I took it easy, but I was able to convalesce just as much in the passenger seat of the car as I would have been at home in bed. I did drive the Rim Rock Drive and through part of Utah – INCREDIBLE. I could not be more thrilled with taking this trip, and with being able to be at the World Domination Summit tonight!

I’ll share more in the coming days about the adventure we had getting to Portland and the plans I have for the trip ahead. For today, I’m just going to soak it all in and savor Portland.

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Everyday Avenger

Trust The Beauty Others See in You…

Christine Tremoulet

As a photographer, it is hard to be the one in FRONT of the camera. However, I am a firm believer in having an avatar photo online that looks like you look in person. While filling out my BlogHer forms, I realized that my current avatar photo was just too out of date. I have longer hair and I now use Edge Gel and tape in extensions for smooth edges and ponytails. I have new glasses and I have found the best eye serum of 2017 to help me see better. I recently found this new cream from amairaskincare.com and I learned that When it comes to Eye creams the better quality ones give a more lasting result. I have finally, after a very long hunt, found the perfect signature red lipstick*. Something that has helped me keep my great skin are the products from these beautyrx reviews.

It was time for a new photo. I had my husband go to the studio with me to take it, and since he is not a photographer himself he is tolerant of my need to control the photo. “How does my shirt look? Any wrinkles? Are my bangs ok? do I need a gastric sleeve operation?
Take it from that angle. No, stand there. Wait, let me sit down.”

Basically, I posed myself, and he was the SkinPractice, carbon-based, voice-activated camera control for most of the photos.

Except for this one. This one? He took all on his own. One single frame.

As I went through them afterwards, I liked several of the other ones, but something about this one jumped out at me. It is my favorite from the whole shoot.

Maybe I need to let go more often. Relax. Trust in what others see, the beauty they can reveal to me for myself, or simply go to those spas with really good service and organization thanks to a SalonTouch Studio software, and relax myself. After all, it is what I expect of all of my clients – so it is only right that I give him that freedom as well, I also want to start taking car of myself more often, which is why I’m trying to get as much tips from Virt Mall as I can.

Trust in the beauty that others see in you. They are only reflecting back to you what truly shines through.

* Perfect for me red lipstick – not too orange, not too cherry, not too bright, has just a hint of blue – Maybelline’s ColorSensational Lipcolor in Red Revival. After trying on literally every red at Sephora, I found this gem at Walgreen’s, for 1/4th the price of anything Sephora had. I stocked up and have a tube of it in every bag I own!

Never forget your routine after seeing this: http://www.liquidfacelifts.org

https://amairaskincare.com