Me? Magazine Photog?

Ok, this post is probably premature, but I can't contain my excitement!

I was contacted today by the Art Editor of City View Magazine. She's in love with my work. (Her words)

And she wants me to FREELANCE for her MAGAZINE!!!!

Are. You. Kidding. ME???????

I am so beyond excited!

I should have waited until this time tomorrow to post this, because I'm meeting with her tomorrow to discuss this possibility and who knows... she could hate me in person, but I'm just so excited!

I knew good things were coming, but sometimes it's hard to see through the fog of waiting. You know?

And this is a local magazine, but, seriously, I'm just so excited that my work is going to possibly be in a magazine seen by all in my area.

The thought gives me goosebumps. :)

New Professional Photography Blog!!!

I'm so excited to announce that I now have a brand spankin new professional blog for my photography!!! Please go see it and know that it is still very much a work in progress, but it is up and running! Subscribe to it... Bookmark it... If you're around here, tell your friends about it, I look forward to hearing from you on there!! :)

www.graciejamesblog.com

Thanks so much for your love and support!! :)

Meeting BrinkleyAnne for the first time

Wednesday was a special day. I got to meet 4 day old BrinkleyAnne. She's Amy's (one of my best friends since middle school) newborn baby girl. Amy and I have wanted little girls since we were little girls and I got pregnant with mine 6 years ago, but Amy had to wait a little longer for hers to enter her life. So, needless to say, this is one spoiled little princess! Her room is perfection and she has almost as large of a wardrobe as my 5 year old Emma has! It was a really special day.

I also did her newborn pictures while I was there. A bunch of them are on my photography blog.

These are my favorites...

If Only Everyday Were Like Yesterday

The day didn't start out fabulous, but it sure turned out that way.


To start, my Breathe Right strip ripped the skin off my nose when I pulled it off. And in case you've never had the skin ripped off your nose... that freakin HURTS!!! And I sleep so much better with those strips holding my nostrils wide open, so it was a little difficult going to sleep last night.



The day got much better, though...



I had a wedding consult appointment at 1pm with the cutest girl and her mother! And WOW... it is going to be a BIG ONE. They have 9 attendants each and somewhere around 300 guests. This is HUGE for me. I was so hoping they would book, because this is such a big opportunity for me and my business. And after we met and discussed lots of details and wants/needs for the wedding day, the beautiful blonde bride and her hilarious mother left my house with all their paperwork and told me they would get back with me.


I immediately assumed the worst.. that maybe I said something wrong or didn't make a good enough impression... something...


BUT then, while I was running errands just two hours later, my phone rang. It was my beautiful bride and she told me that the signed contract and check were in the mail that they definitely wanted to go with me!!!



AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!




Not only that, but they are going with my BIGGEST package.




THIS is going to be a GREAT year!!!



ANDDDDD, we have been so worried about my Granny and her condition since she had the stroke almost two weeks ago.




Her personality has changed so much. She's very beligerant at times and this just is NOT her at all. She's the sweetest person and so much fun to be around. And it breaks our hearts to think that maybe that person is gone, replaced with this new -much less pleasant- person.




But, when I went into town yesterday, I stopped by to see her unexpectedly at the Rehab center and she was so like her old self. She was happy and cheerful and talkative. It was very reassuring. I pushed her all around the building in her wheelchair and spent time getting her settled in her room and left feeling a whole lot better about her and her condition than I had earlier. Hopefully, once she gets back home in her own environment, she'll be a hundred percent herself again.




But, between the Wedding booking and Granny being herself, yesterday was the best day I've had in a very long while. I appreciate all the prayers so much that have been sent up for her. Please keep her on your prayer list.. :)

Most Fabulous Session EVER

Really... it wasn't a session.. it was more like an all day EVENT with two of my BFFs... nonetheless... BEST.... EVER....

So, if you want to see lots of this.....

Evil, Possessed Preggo Girl

and

Sex Kitten Preggo Girl

You should definitely go here and leave lots of sweet, fun, happy comments to make these gorgeous girls feel good about their very last pregnancies!!!! :):)

Busy, Busy Week

I'm sorry I've been so absent on here over the past couple of weeks. I think of you guys all the time. Literally. I miss hearing from you and I miss reading your blogs. Last week was so busy getting ready to go to Dallas to train with Amy and then this past week, I was so busy implementing what I learned from her that I have had absolutely no time to post on here. Well, I could've posted something, but I'm not usually great at short posts.



I have had an amazing week, though, I'm happy to report! I spent two afternoons/evenings with great friends ( Alison, Garrett, Jack, and Collins & Heather and Miles :). I'm so lucky to have friends like you guys in my life! Thanks for always being there. :) And not to mention that a friend that I've known half my life drove from Jacksonville on Tuesday for me to take pictures of her and her four boys. What an amazing time we had! We started our shoot on the Bullard Farm because they'd just baled up hay and the boys had a blast playing and being themselves out there. It was a great time and so wonderful to see her again and catch up. I'm pretty sure we hadn't seen each other since 9th grade!!! Life is good when you get the pleasure of being reunited with an old friend from the past like that. :)

And these boys.... AMAZING. I completely fell in love with them! I'll have more of their pictures on my GJP blog this week, so keep an eye out! :)

And tonight, we got to cook-out and spend the evening with my mom for the fourth! We thought we were going to be alone for this holiday, because my mom was at the beach, but she ended up missing us and coming home early. So, thankfully we were not alone this fourth of July.





My mom wanted some pictures taken of her, because she never gets pictures and she likes updating her sites she's on, just as we do, so I snapped a few pics of her tonight after we cooked out. All I have to say is that LORD.. I hope I look like her when I'm her age. I mean, seriously. She's turning 50 this year and you would never, ever know it! I'm going to post a bunch of her on my blog this week sometime, but those of you on my Facebook have already seen a couple of them. Here are a few of my favorites so far...

All I have to say is... LORD, I am SO thankful that half of my DNA came from HER!!! :)

Hope you all had a happy fourth, friends, I"ll try not to go another WEEK without posting! What a slacker I am. I'm sure a few of you are on the verge of putting my blog in time-out. :)

The Big Day

Today was the first day of the rest of my life. Of course, every day is the first day of the rest of our lives, but today... oh, today was special.

For my mother-in-law, today was her sixtieth birthday.

For my brother-in-law, Johnny, today was the day he married, Maura, his true soul mate, his best friend.

And for me. Today was my first wedding as the photographer of the event and I did it all by myself. I sweated ten gallons, I'm sure, I was so nervous I was going to forget the one most important shot. And of course, I was sure I wouldn't remember what the one most important one was until I was half way back home and way far past any time frame of salvation. However, after filling up two and a half memory cards with 900+ pictures and spending the majority of 5 hours with two cameras slung around my neck, I think I did a pretty decent job for a first timer. I've looked through most of the shots and I'm pretty happy with what I came up with.

The one at the top is the only one I've done anything to, as of yet, I'm so exhausted. It was a long day.

And don't let me forget to insert a dose of depression into this blog. It wouldn't be normal lately if I didn't. Do you wonder how bad it sucked driving three hours today to be with Tony's family and spending the whole day with them without him? It sucked bad. So. Bad.

So, what am I doing at the moment? I'm watching Titanic so I can have a good cry. A really good cry, because watching Titanic for the first time or for the four thousandth time always turns on my tear faucet. It's pretty much a guarantee.

Good night friends. Go love on your loves. :)

Excitement Flows

Tomorrow is the big day. My first wedding shoot. I'm so glad I'm related to them, it kinda lessens the pressure a little. Then again, if anything goes awry, I have to face these people for the rest of my days.


Pressure.


I've made my lists of shots to be sure to get. I've stalked my favorite wedding photographer's blogs. Hopefully I'm fully prepared. I plan to have both my cameras going at once. Isn't that going to be a feat? :)


I'll let you know how it went tomorrow night.


Wish me luck. :)

Happy Memorial Day!

Happy Memorial Day, everyone! Hope everyone remembers what today is all about!

I took this picture for my friend, Alison. These flags are displayed downtown at the Airborne and Special Operations Museum. It's so sad to know that each flag represents someone who sacrificed their life for our freedom.

Good Times

This is, for the most part, going to be a picture blog. Tony's leaving Monday, so we're doing lots of documenting at the moment. Tonight we cooked out and the kids and Tony played in the yard while I did lots of snapping...

I wanted a picture of Emma's outfit in it's entirety, because I thought she looked super cute today. She looks thrilled, doesn't she?

Marley loves when we play outside and he gets to be an active family participant...

Can you tell Noah loves to swing?

Emma was having such a blast playing soccer with her dad...

I just love this...

My angel...

Love this one too...

This was my submission for my Mission 24 challenge today... the challenge is "fluid"... fluid motion is how I interpretted it.. and yes.. Jessica, I owe you my next born child since you are the means by which I discovered that blog. Think you can handle six? ;)

Love this.... I told Tony I wish he didn't have his diaper on so all of you could see the cute little hiney I love so much... he reminded me that if the diaper was absent, his little boy hood would be visible... personally... I think that is the absolute cutest thing I have ever seen, but I wouldn't have been able to post it on the blog... ;)

Hope you enjoyed....

Totally Unexpected One

Sunday, I was so exhausted when we got home from the beach, I really just wanted to go to bed at 7pm. Noah did, which basically meant I could. However, I hadn't done my Mission 24 challenge yet, and I'm trying really hard to not skip one, so I got my camera and went on my mission around my house to find something to photograph that would somehow portray the challenge word, "change". I ended up taking this picture of my front door's wreath.. to signify the changing of the seasons... and I won!!! Woo Hoo!!! I was so excited and so proud of myself that I persevered and didn't give in to the temptation to be a slacker and skip out! :) Thanks so much to my fellow Mission 24 girls! I just love you guys so much.. you add so much to my life! :)

Ten Days {...at the beach}

Our beach trip went by way too fast. There was so much going on every single day. It was such a great time! We got there Friday, May 1st and Johnny and Maura (Tony's brother and his fiance) got there just minutes after we did. They spent the whole weekend with us and we really had a great time together! Friday night, I did Johnny and Maura's engagement pictures. Here's one of them and the rest of them (well, mostly the rest) are posted on my photography blog.

Saturday was too chilly to stay out on the beach, so instead, we just hung out with Johnny and Maura, then around five, Maura and I headed out to find a great spot and take her bridal portraits. I had so much fun doing them and it was quite stressful at the same time. Something happened to my BEST lens while we were out shooting and I almost had a breakdown. I switched to a different lens and everything was fine, and then when we returned home, it was working fine. It was extremely muggy in the location we chose and I'm thinking that had something to do with my lens malfunctioning? I don't know, but it really freaked me out a little. Oh, and Maura's bridals are beautiful, but I can't share them until after the wedding, because Johnny would surely sneak on for a peek. ;)

And Saturday night, Johnny cooked us an amazing meal of shrimp, salmon, chicken, and rice pilaf. It was really great. Here's Uncle Johnny and (soon to be) Aunt Maura with Noah and Emma...

Sunday was GORGEOUS!!! We spent the whole day on the beach! There was a group of kite boarders out, because it was super windy and I took about two hundred pictures of them doing their thing. I'm pretty sure they thought I worked for the paper or something, because one of them kept showing off right in front of me and smiling for my camera. It was so funny! :)

But what was hands down the funniest thing ever was this... When we first got onto the beach, the wind was blowing SO HARD that Emma's beach ball took off at top speed down the beach. It was hilarious!!! Tony chased it and chased it and chased it until we could no longer see him at all. MILES he ran down the beach chasing this $1 beach ball!!! hahahahahaha.... Okay, here's a picture of him returning from his impromptu run...

And here's my most precious little love muffin in his beach get-up...

Omgosh, I could eat him... how many times have I told you that???

And Tony and Emma spent the whole day building a sand castle... This girl loves the beach so much. She would stay out from sun up to sun down every day if we would let her. Such a sweetheart...

Building sand castles is such hard work...

Then, Monday we headed to Wilmington because #1... I really wanted to eat at The Waffle House and the closest one is 30 minutes away in Wilmington. Since we were driving all the day there, we thought... Hey! Maybe we'll head over to Fort Fisher and go to the Aquarium. So, that's what we did and somehow, we passed the road to the Aquarium and suddenly were upon a ferry. We had no idea where this ferry went, but we knew Emma would LOVE it! And as chance would have it, the ferry was leaving like 30 seconds from the time we pulled, up so we paid the $5 fee and onto the ferry we went.. the last car! :) That's when we found out this was the ferry to Southport. We didn't know what that was or where that was, but that was where we were going!

When we first got out of our car, this cool blackbird was on the back netting of the boat! He was so cool! See how he's looking at me?!? I quit taking his picture, because I thought he might attack me if I kept snapping..

Here's Noah and Daddy on the boat.... Let me tell you a funny story about this picture... the next night was cinco de mayo... Tony and I made strawberry margaritas... you'll read about that in a minute... and during the drinking of the margaritas, we started looking at these pictures from the day before... well, you know.. I had a little margarita in me, so I photoshopped Noah's hair onto Tony's head... pahahahahahahahaa!!! Okay... you had to be there, but seriously, we were close to peeing on ourselves after I did that... oh, and plus, I made his teeth like super duper glowing white and I made his skin look like a mask. It was the funniest crap EVER!!!! I wish I woulda saved it, but the funnier I made him look, the less and less funny he thought it was, so to save the marriage, I deleted the photo.. ;) However, you can picture it and you KNOW it's funny!

Tony took this of me and my babies. Hair's a little messy, my hand's over Emma's head like a claw and Noah's not looking, but other than that... it's perfect, dontcha think? Oh, and my boobs are hanging out. Sorry for that. ;)

Pretty, pretty princess on the ferry. She thought it was the coolest thing ever. That was the point. We knew she would think it was the coolest thing ever.


Just a pretty bird in the water by the boat.. probably hoping we would throw him some food... we didn't.

And Southport is the coolest little town EVER!!!! Pretty much no chain stores there, it's all little mom and pop stores. Loved it so much!! And THIS one was my VERY favorite!
Emma got to see her favorite old man in the world. Emma's one of those kids that sings Christmas Carols year round.. every day... loves Santa.. talks about him daily..
The Christmas House had a cool gazebo attached to it that had this cool train going around the top of it.. Emma loved it..

My fam-a-lam..

And here's Cinco De Mayo... do you know we bought that blender just so we could make strawberry margaritas? It's fabulous too, it's like a bar blender. Makes super smooth, perfect drinks. Oh, and it also does pancake batter quite well. I used it for that Thursday morning...

Tony said I make the BEST margaritas. I do. You should come over and try them sometime.

Emma's margarita was VERY virgin. Please refrain from calling dss. Thanks.

Noah wanted some of the action, but instead he got a bottle of milk and went to bed.
Here's WEdnesday morning. We were determined to find that Aquarium and boy did we!
I do not know how we missed the aquarium sign. It was so blatantly obvious. The only thing I can think is that God knew we were just supposed to take the ferry to Southport on Monday, so he temporarily made the sign invisible? It could totally happen. Right?

Okay, so this is a cool, pretty duck in a pond at the start of our aquarium visit.

Emma was so stinkin happy to be here. She loved every second of it.

This is at the part of the aquarium where you can touch the shell fish and anemones. I'm pretty sure this guy had a crush on Tony. Look how he's looking at him. Freaky. And Emma's holding a conch of some sort...

Noah very much wanted to be a part of this touching action. He was very happy when we let hiim out of the confines of his stroller and allowed him to splash in the water.

Emma the crab

Such a little daredevil he is!!! Emma was absolutely terrified of this alligator! Noah.. no way! He could not wait to get as close as possible. By the way, this guy's a statue in case you're questioning my parenting at the moment...

Then when she saw her brother's enthusiasm, she got a little closer, but still... not too close...
Thursday, my dad and brother came down and they stayed with us until Sunday. It was nice to have them. They fished most of the time so we didn't really see a whole lot of them, but still, they were there and we enjoyed them. Here's my dad and Noah having a conversation on the beach on Saturday.
I have a few more pictures I'm going to upload and share with you, but for the moment, this is it! :) Sorry it took me so long to get these up. The internet service at the beach is horribly sucky, so I just did not have the patience to wait thirty minutes for five pictures to upload down there. I'll share more with you later. :)


p.s. Yes, Jessica, I meant to say Holy Crow below. Everyone says Holy Cow and somewhere, sometime I heard Holy Crow and decided I liked it, so now it's mine. You can borrow it if you'd like. ;)