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BlahBlahBabble Houston & The Heights

Halloween & Feeling Witchy…

Yesterday I was out & about town with my friend Kelly (yes, the same Kelly that saved me when I almost drowned after the destination wedding we photographed in Bermuda), and I was on the hunt for a witch hat for the Heights Woman’s Club luncheon I’m going to later today. It is the Witches Lunch at Stella Sola, and they asked us to wear a hat, so I was on it!

First I headed to a Michael’s store. Walked up to an employee. Asked where I would find a witch hat. He looked a bit puzzled and said, “Oh, I don’t think we have those.” Standing in front of an explosion of Halloween display, with the rest of the store looking like Christmas threw up on it, and no hats. Ok, fine.

Next we headed to Hobby Lobby. My Mom is visiting family right now in Minnesota, and she told me that Hobby Lobby had a lot of witch hats – really cute ones even. Excellent! Because the women normally decorate their custom trucker hats for this luncheon, but I was more than happy to buy one off the shelf already looking cute. I thought the Michael’s experience was odd, but this one was even stranger! I walked in, asked the first employee I found where I would find a witch hat, and she seriously looked at me as if I had horns growing out of my head! “We don’t sell THOSE here!”

Sure, I’m reading a lot into this – and they did have an aisle filled with cute Halloween stuff, pumpkins, aprons, and the like – but what was up with the weird attitude about the witch hat? Was it the idea of dressing up like a witch? Costumes? What? Just to make sure it wasn’t just me, I confirmed with Kelly. That woman looked at me like I was crazypants with devil horns sticking out of my head!

Driving around in the suburbs yesterday was such a stark contrast from the Heights. I hardly saw any decorations in the suburbs other than some pumpkins. Everywhere around here in the Heights, there are Halloween decorations. A block from my house they have an 8 foot spider web with a big black spider and a giant stripped spider in bright colors. Ghosts are hanging from the porches. Tombstones. This place DOES Halloween!

On Facebook people are talking about how their schools won’t let kids wear costumes or do Halloween parades anymore. Man, I remember those from elementary school – those were good times! Halloween was FUN!

Why do we have to be so damn politically correct? Your kids aren’t going to start worshiping Satan if they dress up for Halloween, people! UGH.

Meanwhile, for the first time in a long time, I bought a TON of Halloween candy for this year. These Heights kids better not let me down! I’ll be waiting at the door in my witch hat – which I finally found at Walgreens! (Yay, Walgreens!!!)

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BlahBlahBabble ChristineTremoulet.com Houston & The Heights Wedding Photographer

Heights Gratitude…

It has been a busy week around here. I traveled with Elaine up to Brenham to photograph Catherine & Rich’s wedding. Something in the air beat me up pretty hard, and I was down and out with allergies on Sunday. I had spent the night on Saturday at my parent’s house since it was closer to Brittany and easier to hand off the memory cards to her there, and spent much of Sunday there too as well.

As I was driving into the Heights on Sunday night, I had a familiar feeling. I was taking the same route I always used to take to my former studio before we moved. Southbound on I-45, exit N. Main, take right on to N. Main and an immediate left on to Pecore. It really hit me as I sat at that light at 11th & Studewood, where I used to turn left but now I go straight.

I am home.

After all of those years of wishing we lived in the Heights, after all of those days that I dreamed and lamented that my house was 40 minutes away, I’m here. I live here. It is my home. It is the first time I’ve ever really felt like Houston is my hometown. After 25+ years, that is saying a lot.

I’m so grateful that I had to note the feeling. It could have just been the allergy drugs, but I don’t think that was the case. I’m just so happy to be home at last.

In case you missed them, here are some other recent posts I’ve made…

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BlahBlahBabble

By George, I Think I’ve Got It!

I’ve realized that part of why I don’t blog is my overwhelming need to compartmentalize what I blog. But then how? What? What goes where? What do I want to do with it all? Ugh!!! From there, I just go circling down the drain.

I used to post anything and everything here. That is why BigPinkCookie has such a crazy diverse history. Then things like Twitter & Facebook came along. Now if I find a funny joke or a cute photo, I post it there – not here. Which to be honest bugs the crap out of me. I have no archive of it personally then – when it is gone, it is just gone. Although in the case of my Twitter stream, I guess the Library of Congress has an archive of it. Which seems bizarre. It also reminds me that I still need to share my photos from Washington DC. But anyways…

Here is the plan:

  • BigPinkCookie – Write about life. Random things. Whatever I want. The joys of living in the Heights. Places I love to go here in Houston. Things I find amusing. Personal photo things. The day to day. Goal is to get back to writing here 5 days a week. Give me time to get warmed up…
  • Christine Tremoulet – Houston & Destination Wedding photography. Pretty much just wedding related posts, whether my photos or tips on wedding planning as it pertains to photography. Update 2-3 times a week, since I have a HUGE catalog of photos I’ve never shared.
  • Hot Mama Boudoir – using my super powers to help moms rediscover their beauty. Update as possible, since I only post what my clients say I can, and some clients ask that I post nothing online. Also post things related to women, beauty, and how mass media distorts our view and the battle to recover that. Update as often as possible.
  • Delightful Bicycle – why yes, I do want to blog about cycling, specifically cycling on a cruiser. The Slow Bike Movement. It isn’t about the speed, it is about the journey. Houston isn’t recognized for the cycling potential it has, and this is my little way to combat it. Or to write about my bike that I love & adore. Either way, it is going to be awesome. Planning multiple updates each week as the site gets going. Oh, and we’re going to have a biker gang. Yes, yes we are.
  • Business of Awesome – I’ve written about business topics here before, but they don’t make sense here. When it doesn’t make sense, I don’t do it. But I have a TON of info I’m happy to share, considering that I’ve owned a business in one form or another since 1999, and they’ve all been successful, including selling my dot com related one. I’ve been told that makes me a dot com success story, since that was every other dot com person’s dream. Whoo hoo! My dream? Helping creatives learn how to be better business people. It isn’t easy. We battle a lot with putting a pricetag on our work, and so many other things. So while it is a dream still right now, I can sense it coming to the surface. It is time…

This was actually the first thing I thought about when I woke up this morning. I realized that having a place for everything and everything in its place makes me happy. I’ll do a weekly update post here about what is going on everywhere else. And all will have a way to get here, because I like giving people a chance to know the real me.

Good. Glad we’ve got that sorted out now. On to other bigger things! YAY!!!

Categories
BlahBlahBabble Creative Geek

CSS Now Causes Minimal Bleeding…

While I still don’t love working with CSS, probably because I only do it a few times a year, I realized while working on the wedding photography site the other day that it now only causes minimal eye bleeding. Oh, it is still there, and I still end up pulling my hair out at some point, but I think it has definitely improved over the years.

I like to think that Tantek, Matt & Eric would be proud…

(I’m quite sure Ann would be proud too – that is her in the wedding photo above – but she is busy being a new mum to one of the cutest babes ever and likely has no time to notice these things.)

Now if only I could figure out how to get drop down menus with hierarchy in there instead of that weird categories menu, I’d be really happy!

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Media Consumption

Kick Off Your Sunday Shoes…

Everyone has movies that are such a key part of their lives that they are nearly sacred. For most of us, they are “coming of age” movies, or movies that are a big part of our childhood. Just a few of the ones on my list would be Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Sixteen Candles, Breakfast Club, Dirty Dancing, and Footloose.

So you can imagine that I did not take the news of a Footloose remake well. At all.

It is an ’80s classic! How could they remake it and even come CLOSE to the original? No way! That is just so wrong!

But tonight when Amy offered up free passes for a sneak preview on Twitter, I decided to take her up on it. Dude, I will see almost ANY movie for free! I asked Mike to join me, and we were off for the Studio Movie Grill at Town & Country on the west side of Houston.

I don’t want to give away too much, but it was not the horrible remake I was bracing myself for. I found myself giddy and almost toe-tapping over the remake of the opening scene. You know the one – all the shoes shuffling and dancing to Footloose. Even doing the dance that they did in the original movie. But quickly I discovered that this movie had been rewritten almost completely. The premise is the same, and the kids just want to dance. But the rest of it? Instead of attempting to recreate the original movie, they did us all a favor and wrote a completely new, updated version! YAY!

Some of the classic scenes have been redone, and they were done very well as a nod to the original movie. Not lame at all like I was expecting. You’ll know them when you see them. And if you were a high school girl in 1984 when the original came out at watched the video over and over with your best friend, and even owned the soundtrack on cassette and later on CD, you’ll be thrilled when you recognize some of your favorite songs are still there. But there is just enough differences to keep it interesting for you, and just enough of a modern update to make it current.

Was it the most gripping movie I’ll watch in 2011? No, of course not. It wasn’t meant to be. Is it a movie that will make you smile, tap your toes, and maybe even cry a little bit? Yes, yes it is. I’d give it an 8 out of 10, I would have cast someone a little stronger as Ren probably (of course, Kevin Bacon is hard to top), and I would have put Kevin Bacon in as a cameo somewhere. Just to make the moms in the audience giddy. It is the sort of movie I’ll watch again when I spot it on the movie channel or NetFlix. Totally worth it!

Disclaimer: Mike & I were given free tickets to see the movie, but I was not asked to write anything about it. I’m doing this just because I liked it enough to share!