Apples

I love going home and being able to just hang out, relax and make some cider? Our family has gotten increasingly agricultural in the past 5 years. From making salsa and spaghetti sauce to apricot jam and now: apple cider. Handpicked fromour tree and juiced in our juicer, the best apple cider I've ever tasted. As we were making it though, we realized we didn't exactly know what the difference between "cider" and "juice" is; do you know the difference? We ended up just calling it cider and putting it into one of our organic milk glass containers, unfortunately it didn't last but 2 days. Not only did we make cider-juice but me and my friendJackson made some pulp, spice muffins with the apple pulp that was produced while juicing the apples. They were amazing and extremely unhealthy with butter, sugar, and cinnamon. (We ALSO made apple cider syrup, which is not pictured but still delicious!)

Food photography

This week was my first attempt at food photography and I realllly enjoyed it! I'm hoping that someday my career will allow me to be successful in the many different fields of the photography/digital industry. There are so many things I want to become successful at and this may be one of them! Lew Robertson is a perfect example of what I want to be/what I hope to do. He's done high end retouching and now he's a food photographer. Not that I particularly want to do that, but he went from different ends of the spectrum it seems! Looking to post more often:) as always. xoxo, m

My dear Ashley

Ashley is a rockstar by nature. These shots solidified it!

Still Life

Erin Martinez

Here's some shots from my photoshoot last week with my coworker Erin! She was so awesome for not ever modeling before. I love how they turned out.

Cribbage

cribbage, originally uploaded by mjayyheart.

Guess who these were taken by?! Obviously, not me. My little brother snapped these during our cribbage game while I was, shamefully, losing against Zach.They were a little under exposed but in his defense, the camera was on the ever permanent "M" for manual. He did a good job though, right? Cribbage was one of the small highlights of this vacation! We got some good games in.

Farm fresh

Yup, here they are. The first morning we were there I decided to bring Zach into our family culture a little more and took him out to get the fresh eggs. We picked up about 30 eggs, it was awesome. We were able to take an 18 pack of eggs home with us!

We ALSO got to pick an overwhelming amount of fresh apricots off of my parents apricot tree. Zach was up in the high branches picking the best apricots while Natalie and I picked the low ones. Sorry, but there was no way in hell I was counting those puppies!

Vacation!

I'm back in Santa Barbara and, I have to admit, very sad to have left Gilroy. Expecting that a week would be long enough, me and Zach dreaded leaving because we enjoyed it so much. Farm fresh eggs, pool parties, a wedding!, fresh air and card games were only some of the things we got to enjoy while we were home. My parents have done a great job with our high maintenance backyard and my mom has planted beautiful flowers; the ambiance is great. I wish I would've taken pictures of the summer nights when we have the twinkle lights on but that's alright

On our way into town, we picked up some stuff from the grocery store for my parents and I found these beauties paired with little purple flowers that I couldn't resist.

costco

(Best viewed in Safari) costco, originally uploaded by mjayyheart.

Yesterday was an awesome day! It was my first day of my short "summer" break where I didn't have any obligations. I didn't have to work or go to school or tend to homework, it was awesome. Ironically enough, yesterday was also the first day of summer, the Summer Solstice, if you will, which also happens to be a huge celebration in Santa Barbara. We didn't go to the parade for the Solstice but we did go to Costco for some hot dogs! Gotta love some dolla' fifty hot dog and pepsi! Then we went and saw the movie Killers, which we really enjoyed. If you are wondering the dynamic between me and Zach, that movie defined us perfectly! The relationship between Katherine Hiegl and Ashton Kutcher is exactly how me and Zach are, minus the fact he doesn't have a license to kill (Thank God!)!

I've been trying to take pictures of my short summer vaca, so keep checking back ! Next week should get pretty exciting with all the fun goin' down in Gilroy!

June 2010

June 2010, originally uploaded by mjayyheart.

I've come to the end of another session at Brooks. With a small victory in the graphic design world and another notch on my belt, today has been a relaxing, pampered day full of pedicures, shopping and Asian lillies that my love got me: