It's a Brownie!

This July 4th was quite relaxing for us. Last year, we were visiting Chicago for the first time and were running around like crazy tourists between the architectural boat tour, the Field Museum, the Taste, and the free John Mayer concert, then dinner in Grant Park, then back out toward the waterfront for fireworks. The year before that, we kayaked all morning and then hit three parties and stumbled back home around 2 in the morning. The two years before that, we were backpacking at White Pine Lake in way-Northern Utah... and before that, there were parades and fireworks, but the details are fuzzy.

This year, we had a lazy morning. I finally memorialized my daisies on Polaroid, and Trav ran to the local grocery and grabbed us fresh donuts for breakfast. We spent the afternoon with family at my dad's cabin, played in the inflatable frog pool, took some pictures, enjoyed each other's company, and ate really good steak. Later that night, we went to a big, ruckus-filled party at my aunt-in-law's house. She's done it for years and it is aptly named Avenues of Fire. She lives in Salt Lake City's Avenues area and the "fire" part comes in at dusk, when the fireworks begin. Four adults (including my husband) and two very well-watched kids lit all the cones, up to six at a time, for 45 minutes straight. There were probably $400 worth of pyrotechnics there this year. It was pretty awesome, and a great end to our first lazy 4th in a long time.

Now, to get to the meaning of the photo above. While at the party, my uncle Doug surprised me with two Kodak cameras. One is the Handle, a short-lived Kodak instant film camera that I'll have to troll ebay to find some film for, and the other is this beautiful little Brownie Hawkeye Flash. It's nice and clean, the shutter works great, and there were 11 flash bulbs in the box, but the coolest part is that buried in the box was an unused, unopened roll of classic Kodacolor-X film expired in October, 1970. I'm running it through the camera now and hoping it's still good. Doug has now added three cameras to my collection and I couldn't be more happy. Thank you, Doug!

I hope your Fourth was as nice as mine!

Happy 4th!

Daisies aren't exactly "Stars and Stripes Forever" but they're a sign of summer and the Fourth of July is in the summer, and well, that's my correlation. Today is a day for family and friends, BBQs, corn on the cob, fireworks and popsicles. Happy Independence Day, yo.

New Love(s)

Living much closer to Salt Lake City sure has its benefits, many of which I'm sure we've yet to discover, but we came upon a new one last night, a new love: Lone Star Taqueria. It's on Fort Union and 23rd east and has THE best tacos ever. We were amazed at how fresh and not-greasy they were, and wanted to just have more tacos for dessert. The bad thing about Lone Star though is that it's in Utah and is therefore closed on Sunday, and that blows.

On our way home, we stopped at The Yogurt Stop on Main and 5th South in Bountiful and found another new love. For a while now, we've lamented the loss of Country Boy Dairy in North Ogden, but we're thinking The Yogurt Stop is a fair replacement. The CBD made ice cream that was just ok, but we never went for the ice cream. We went for the country bumpkin North Ogden folk people-watching. Big hair, red hair, d-bag monster truck hillbillies, crazy made-up kid names, teenager employee girls named Becca and things that started with Mc (McKenna, McKenzie, McKell, McCall, McWhatever). The CBD closed a couple summers ago after being open longer than I've been alive, which is sad because it was quite the experience for non-North Ogden people. We have friends who'd drive up to the CBD from Salt Lake (40 miles). It was that cool. Anyway, I digress. The Yogurt Stop was teeming with screaming, noisy kids, some with red hair, and I swear all of them ran into me and ended up smacking me in the crotch (why do kids do that?). Some of the moms had big blonde Bountiful hair, and SUVs and minivans lined the parking lot. We weren't inside long enough to hear any names hollered out, but I'm sure there was a Mc_______ somewhere in there. While there are similarities, the big difference between The Yogurt Stop and the CBD is the quality of the goods. The frozen yogurt was actually very tasty. Ok, it was delicious, and we're going back the first chance we get, but not today, because Bountiful is closed on Sunday.

As if two new loves weren't enough, I have a third: this post's photo. I made it for The Photo Trade theme for June, "Into the Light", the same theme I talked about in my previous post. It turns out that despite being a challenge to shoot this way, I sure love it. I hope you find some new loves this summer too.

Summer Sun

I should be working on the magazine or eating lunch or sweeping my gorgeous new kitchen floor or creating my Polaroid wall in my Foto Hut or any number of other things, but I feel like doing this instead.

I joined The Photo Trade this month and have really had a tough time coming up with photos I like. My lovely new backyard isn't as photogenic (yet) as my old backyard and the beautiful direct late evening sun is blocked by a stand of trees across the way, so if I want to shoot "into the light" as the June Photo Trade theme directs, I have to go somewhere else. Another issue I'm having is that I generally don't shoot directly into the sun so it's been a challenge re-thinking how to shoot this way, but it's been rewarding so far and I hope my trade partner thinks so too.

There's a nice little park alongside Highway 89 in Kaysville (or is it Fruit Heights?) that I drove past daily (for two years) on my long commute home to Ogden up until a month ago. Giant old trees border the park's west edge and from one of them hangs a rope swing, and almost everyday I'd think "I need to shoot that!" and I finally did. Trav and I drove there one night last week right as the light was just getting to that yellowy/orangey/sunsety/summery goodness and I made a few Polaroid shots including this one. It's my favorite of the bunch because to me, it's summer: Airy, summery sandals kicked off in the long, cool green grass. (And if you could see my feet, you'd see summer feet too: Chaco-tanned with one blister!) We each took our turn on the swing, and while I made photos, Trav climbed up one of the trees. The finally-summer weather is so welcome!

Foto Hut

I'm in love with the notion of updating my blog more frequently, say two or three times a week, but the fact of the matter is that I just don't have that interesting of a life. I've certainly been shooting enough Polaroids to post two or three times a week, but I'm still lacking the inspiration to shoot more and write more. Perhaps it's not the inspiration I'm lacking, but the time, but hopefully since we no longer have a 2.5+ hour daily commute to/from work, I'll have more time to do the things I've had to keep tucked away in closets, boxes, Rubbermaid bins, and the back of my mind.

We've been in our new house for one month and one day, and as of last night at 10pm, my office, my "Foto Hut" is now up and running. We had to paint the room (3 coats of primer alone just to cover the previous owner's two-tone blues) and then began the task of reconstructing my desk, file cabinet and bookshelves, and after that, it was time to disperse the contents of about ten boxes full of interesting office things: photo books and magazines, binders of negatives, stacks of prints, Indiana Jones action figures, rocks, sheets of felt, bags of yarn, dozens of pens, markers, a bendable Kermit the Frog, our Jerry Garcia doll... And now, thankfully, the "Foto Hut" is put together and ready for me to get down to business, or at least something that resembles it, and to commemorate the event, I reopened my Etsy shop today and sincerely hope to add new items very soon. It's been long and harshly neglected ever since we put our house up for sale and began the whole arduous real estate process, but now that we're good and settled, I hope to make up for it.

So what's up with the corn on the cob thingies? I don't know. I'm obsessed with my Polaroid SLR 680 and can't set the table without placing my camera and new close-up filters next to my plate. There's just something so special about Polaroid. The two things I've nailed down are the instant gratification and the colors. The tactile object in my hands and the kooky Polaroid smell aren't half bad either. I also love corn on the cob.