Smells Like Heaven

I love lists. I love these things:
1. My new nephew. He's precious and he smells like heaven.
2. There must be a new laundry facility that opened in Salt Lake because when I get on the 201 to come home, it smells like a million warm dryer sheets. I breathe deep and can't help but smile.
3. Pumpkin frozen yogurt from the Yogurt Stop in Bountiful.
4. My new iMac sitting in its box in this very room, patiently waiting for the weekend.
5. Being a lot brave, maybe a little crazy, but definitely unconventional, and going after something I really wanted, and getting it.
6. My sister. Always.

Blue-Buttoned

The PC is back and so am I. I brought it home Wednesday only to find that the hard drive wasn't connected, and after a few more bad words and a trip back to the computer store yesterday, we are good to go. I haven't told the PC yet that it's going to be replaced next week by a Mac. I don't want to do anything to aggravate it or set it on an unstable emotionally-charged rampage. I'll just continue to research the Mac on my Mac at work and then next Friday the Mac will show up and the PC won't suspect a thing. Shh!

Last weekend we went to lunch with Wendy and Troy and took a drive up Big Cottonwood Canyon. Trav and I are working on our Christmas card already and we required the assistance of Wendy and two reindeer sweaters from ebay. I took my new blue-buttoned SX-70 and some Artistic TZ along for the ride. What a sweet little combo.

So happy it's Friday...

OH! Today is gallery stroll and the opening reception for The Holga Show at Saans Downtown in Salt Lake City. I'll be there from 6:30 to 8-ish, slowing creeping out of my hermit-like shell and schmoozing with the artful public. I can't wait to see the show. According to Shalee, Saans' curator, it looks awesome.

So Long PC!

After almost two years of spurts of hard work mixed with a lot of procrastination, this weekend I got within a half hour of finishing my big and tedious family Polaroid project, only to have my computer catch yet another nasty virus. It will now spend the next week in the shop, getting its hard drive wiped clean and reinstalled with everything, and my project that I am *this* close to finishing will have to wait. I usually say (yell) lots of bad words when my computer has issues, but this time, I just laughed. I laughed out loud. And then I went downstairs and fired up my husband's slow-ass laptop and immediately (well, a half hour later... it's that slow) went to Apple.com. I'm buying an iMac. No more PCs for this girl.

The Holga Show!

If you're in the Salt Lake area Friday evening, November 21, please come visit me, Amanda Moore, and Shalee Cooper at Saans Downtown for the second annual Holga Show! Shalee is the curator at Saans, and Amanda and I juried the show this year. There are over 150 images in the show from roughly 65 photographers around the globe. As a juror, I'll also have five of my Holga images on display. I'm so excited for the show, and I hope to see some familiar faces at the opening. The show runs November 19-December 17. (PS, that's my Desert Door shot in the lower right corner.)

Something Crazy

I did something crazy bold and completely out of character today. I hope it works.

Airheads

I've got some big events on the horizon that I'd like to share in hopes of drumming up some support for myself... First, if you're in the Salt Lake area Friday evening, November 21, please come visit me, Amanda Moore, and Shalee Cooper at Saans Downtown for the second annual Holga Show! Shalee is the curator at Saans, and Amanda and I juried the show this year. There are over 150 images in the show from roughly 65 photographers around the globe. As a juror, I'll also have five of my Holga images on display. I'm so excited for the show, and I hope to see some familiar faces at the opening. The show runs November 19-December 17.

Second bit of news, I'm having my biggest solo show yet! Twenty images from my ongoing Plastic Landscapes series will be on display at the Sprague Branch of the Salt Lake Library in Sugarhouse from November 21-Janurary 11, and the reception is Thursday, December 4 from 6:30-8.

I'm really excited for both events, and for the next big one coming up in February. Amanda and I, along with our pal Brett Johnson had our collective toy camera work juried into the fancy-pants Finch Lane gallery in Salt Lake (which surprisingly doesn't have a website). We're going to check out the space tomorrow after lunch at Martine, where my Local Color series is currently hanging (but soon to come down), and that's the last of the self-promos for this post, I promise.

Last Friday, I posted a screen shot of my blog on Flickr, with the hopeful request of increasing traffic here on photosteph, and guess what?! It turns out people really are reading! Thanks to all of you who came over for a web visit! You made my day. As an incentive to visit my blog, I offered a free Polaroid print to a lucky commenter on my previous post, and just now, I put all the names in my favorite striped Pistil beanie and drew one out and the winner is... Donna G! I'll be sending her a print very soon.

Oh, and if you're wondering about the photo above, I made it a long time ago at work and just never posted it. I felt it fitting, what with all my shenanigans and goings-ons.

Wanted:

This image has nothing to do with my blog post, but I like it, so I'm posting it. I've been thinking a lot about friendship lately, and wishing I had more friends, and I hope that statement doesn't immediately make me sound like a loser. I love the friends that I have, I just wish I had more.

My husband and I, for years, have been wishing we had more couple friends, preferably those without kids. We live in a society where if you don't have at least one child by your second anniversary, you're completely abnormal, but we just passed our seven-year mark and see no spawn on the horizon and we like it that way, but it leaves us with "just us" on many a weekend and all of our travels. We always worry that people think we're freaks or too boring or just plain weird. We joke about placing an ad in the City Weekly (Salt Lake's indie alternative paper) for childless couple friends who like traveling, concerts, outdoor activities, and good food, and if they could teach us how to appreciate wine, that'd be a plus, and they must have great senses of humor. If they like disc golf and Mystery Science Theater that wouldn't be a bad thing either. We don't want needy friends, or swingy friends, just friends to hang out with occasionally and road trip with. Is that so hard?!

The Fun Part

I've had a very successful, productive weekend, and yeah, I'm pretty proud of myself. Usually on lazy weekends, I watch tv, but this lazy weekend, as Travis hiked Mt. Nebo yesterday (all 16 straight up and straight down round trip miles), I deconstructed my Polaroid wall and filed all the little instants in a binder (I have this irrational fear that one day my house will catch fire and I won't be able to get my Polaroids out); I collected fall and photographed it; and finally, I had a marathon scanning session today and scanned all of my family Polaroids for my Christmas project, and it is this that I am most happy about. Now the fun begins: cloning out all the dust and resizing in Photoshop, and then uploading all 97 photos to Blurb. I'm so excited about this project, and I hope by the end of the day tomorrow to have them all cleaned up and ready to upload. And if anyone from my family is reading this, sorry, you now know what you're getting for Christmas. Surprise!

Now if you'll excuse me, we're headed to the Broadway to see Seth Rogen's new flick. Have a nice week, friends.

Collecting Fall

Before the sun came completely over the mountains this morning, I opened the blinds in my front room, anxious to see the autumn light filtering in. An hour later, I wandered into the room and saw my front yard bursting with color. I couldn't stop smiling. I waited a couple of hours for it to warm up and dry up outside, and then I went collecting.

Our old house, bless its little red brick soul, was a lovely home but was almost void of fall color. We did have beautiful gingko trees that would turn a soft buttery yellow mere days before all the leaves would drop at once, but there were no reds, no oranges, no seed pods, nothing of that. Today, as I filled my hands with fall finds from the yard, my smile returned as a renewed love for my new house gushed into my little autumn-loving soul.