Johnson Family Portraits

A few months back, I took some photos for my college roommate and her family.  Joy has recently come back into my life after 5 years apart, moving to the same small town I moved to back in 2007.  As she had her whole clan in town for the holidays, she asked if I would take some family portraits for them.  

I'm always glad for the opportunity to learn more through times like these and learn or apply something new each time.  This time I was able to (for the first time ever) take some (in my opinion) good indoor photos!  Indoor photos are a pain.  They entail so much attention to the camera and lighting and settings and it can just be overwhelming and oftentimes disappointing when you pull them up on the computer and see a grainy, orange, or blue-tinted photograph. 

But, thanks to my amazing friend Zach Gideon, who taught me a thing or two about lighting recently, these first few photos turned out better than I could have hoped!

One of the best parts of this photo shoot was the reunion of it all.  You see, in the photo below, I went to college with 5 out of the 9 (+2 kids) people you see!  And I hadn't seen most of them since I graduated! I even stayed with Joy's parents in Miami one spring break, so really I knew everyone except her grandparents, who I gotta say were very good sports in all of this -- it was cold! I can't imagine how cold it must have felt to a bunch of Miami-ians!

these girls hit the gene-pool lottery, did they not?

What a fun way to spend the day after Christmas :)  Besides getting to see some long-lost college friends, I had Wade with my on the shoot for the first time! He was a huge help in getting some successful, kids-looking-at-the-camera, photos!  And I may have made him go to all of the locations with me earlier in the day and be my "model" while I practiced beforehand.  Gotta love that man.  (if you're lucky, maybe I'll post a few of his modeling-debut photos here in a few days. Hah. He'd love that.)

i love freebies.

Especially when they are freebies for photoshop!  I am editing photos and thought I'd use the opportunity to play around with this freebie from Jessica Drossin Textures!  Her Free Lights Overlay creates a really fun texture to the photo, don't you think?  

To achieve this look, I first sharpened/defogged the photo, pulled up the lower level, and applied the overlay (soft light). I then used the brush tool (100%) to remove the overlay from the subjects, and then again at 30% over the rest of the photo to make the overlay less harsh.  I finished by raising the curves just a hair.

It's too bad Christmas is over, because with this freebie, I think you could make some really great Christmas cards!  Be sure to "like" her on facebook and get her freebies! This one won't be there much longer!

:linking up with:

Today...

... I joined the youth group and youth leaders as they made sausage biscuits, collected clothes, and drove an hour away to a homeless "tent city" to hand them out and share the love of Christ with the people.  All the while, we met great people with intriguing stories, my favorite being "Wild Bill" who had a little shank knife, rolled his own cigarettes, and kept pretty quite as he sat with the radio playing Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror," which I found quite fitting.

"I'm Gonna Make A Change,
For Once In My Life
It's Gonna Feel Real Good,
Gonna Make A Difference
Gonna Make It Right . . .

As I, Turn Up The Collar On My
Favourite Winter Coat
This Wind Is Blowin' My Mind
I See The Kids In The Street,
With Not Enough To Eat
Who Am I, To Be Blind?
Pretending Not To See their Needs
A Summer's Disregard,
A Broken Bottle Top
And A One Man's Soul
They Follow Each Other On
The Wind Ya' Know
'Cause They Got Nowhere To Go
That's Why I Want You To Know

I'm Starting With The Man In The Mirror
I'm Asking Him To Change His Ways
And No Message Could Have Been Any Clearer
If You Wanna Make The World
A Better Place
Take A Look At Yourself, And
Then Make A Change

That's a good day if you ask me.

Merry Christmas, in pictures.

1. Merry Christmas from the Williams'!

2. fake snow made of marshmallows and fishing wire

3.. my stocking stuffer - the cutest little sewing machine there ever was (I can't wait to give it a go!)   4. my favorite Christmas candle

5. Wade's stocking stuffer - made lovingly by moi with my Silhouette

Today marks the first Christmas for the next 6 YEARS that Wade doesn't have to work!  We started the day at church, hit up Shoneys (just about the only thing open) with the father-in-law for lunch, and I spent the rest of the day singing and dancing along to Zooey Deschanel's new Christmas album while cooking my first full Christmas meal from scratch - Turkey, sweet potato casserole, cranberry sausage dressing, and green bean casserole.  I'm so proud because everything made it to the table except for the gravy, and that's pretty good for me!

I hope you all had a wonderful and relaxing Christmas. Happy Birthday to the most important man in my life, Jesus! I love you so much!

Just Elf Yourself!

It's a tradition around here that every Christmas I make an "Elf Yourself" video of me and Wade from Office Max. So, enjoy, and make one for yourself! They are hillarious!

I stayed up until midnight making our first ever stockings last night!  I'm so excited! Finally my stocking holders aren't empty (yes I put them up each year, stockingless).  I love how they turned out!  For a great pattern, go here.  I just used the pattern and figured the rest out myself.  

And on a more serious note, if you missed it, check out my post from yesterday  I've spent the past two weeks reflecting on it and talking with God about the restlessness inside of me.  I'd love to share with you  the things God has revealed to me.

Merry Christmas Eve!

Restless

A few Sundays ago, just a few days after returning from Mexico, I recieved an email from someone who loves and cares about me, concerned that I seemed restless.

It struck me.  This email caused me to get into conversation with God about my restlessness.  She's right, I am restless. And the more I spoke with God about it, the more I realized that being restless is a good thing.

So often in America, as I'm sure you notice this time of year, life becomes about us.  I want, I need, I. I. I.

As Christians, we are in constant battle with the American dream, which was pushed on us at a young age by the world we live in.  We want comfort. We want privacy.  We want easy.

The morning I received this email, I was wearing this shirt. It's a new shirt and I didn't think much of it until later when I realized what the picture really was:
A man with the World on his back.

This was me.  Restless. Carrying the world on my back.  The heaviness of it weighing me down.  All of these people: lost, following false gods, dying and going to Hell.

It's hard to come back from a mission trip, where 100% of every day is spent serving God, sharing His love, enriched in His presence without the distractions of "life" and just jump right back into the world you left behind.  As I've said before, when I get back, I am only half here - part of myself reflecting in God's glory that was shown the week prior.

My brain is wracked with the need to continue. The need to NOT go back to a comfortable life - a life where I so easily go days without being solely in God's presence.

I'm so thankful for this email because it really caused me to reflect on what that means - to be restless - and how I don't want to be anything but.

It "just so happened" that the message that day was about the urgency of the Gospel.  I truly believe God was teaching me a lesson through all of this - to not forget God's will in my life, which, btw isn't to live in a nice house, have a good job, and spend all my time with family, but is to respond to the urgent need of the Good News of Jesus Christ to be spread here in my country and around the world.

Please, play this hour long video as you do stuff around the house today.  I had the honor of helping lead worship and sharing at the end of the message (on the Urgency of the Gospel) about what I do at Lifepoint church as the missions coordinator and just WHO I think is called to missions and WHERE I think they should go.

12/11/11 from LifePoint Church on Vimeo.

I leave you with lyrics to a song by John Mayer

"Waiting on the World to Change"

Now we see everything that's going wrong 
With the world and those who lead it 
We just feel like we don't have the means 
To rise above and beat it 

So we keep waiting 
Waiting on the world to change 
We keep on waiting Waiting on the world to change

{I'm done waiting. Are you?} 

linking up with 

Our final days in the great state of Washington

were spent making sure we saw all of the popular landmarks that make Seattle memorable. 

The girls loved the Science museam (and so did we). Check out this huge Rubik's cube!

I laughed so hard when I saw Wade standing like this. Like I said, we liked it just as much as the girls did!

And of course I loved the butterfly room... except when they landed on me. I don't like that.

From there we went on to the space needle where I was honored to be Deci's personal tour guide :) I love my nieces so much, I sure do miss them!

We even got the awesome opportunity to see some friends who had moved to Seattle a few years ago and their adopted son Luke, who I'd only seen via Skype! What a sweetheart!

And we found the best book at the Space Needle, "Larry get's lost in Seattle."  Deci sat me down in the middle of the gift shop (on the floor) so she could read it to me. It was such a neat book because it had all of the places we visited in it, which Deci thought was really cool.  Needless to say we bought the book -- what an awesome souvenir to remember the trip!

this was the actual street our hotel was on!

While reading the book, Audrey noticed a landmark we hadn't seen yet -- The Fremont Troll!  Of course that meant we had to go see it!

Officially one of the coolest cities ever. 

Thanks for coming along as I shared my vacation with you :)  It was so much fun reliving it.