Trick? Or Treat?

Personally, I prefer treats.

I made caramel apples today.  No, it is not homemade caramel, yes my apron does say "Will cook for Shoes."  And yes, I custom designed it myself.

Halloweenerific

Today I carved a pumpkin.

And it is a BOMB pumpkin.  I drew the whole thing free hand.  It's okay, you can (and should) be impressed.  I was asked "Did you do that for Zack?"  The answer is no!  Okay, so maybe the answer is actually yes.

Did I also mention that NOBODY would carve pumpkins with me?  So I carved my pumpkin all by myself.  Alone.  Kind of sad.  But the awesomeness of my pumpkin makes up for the fact that nobody wanted to hang out and carve pumpkins with me, and that to take a picture of myself with my pumpkin I had to put my camera on a self timer.

Then I made cupcakes for my Primary kiddos.  I think they turned out super cute.  They taste pretty good too...  Gotta love Halloween Funfetti cake mix on sale for $1.

Beginning

A little while ago I posted about Passion, and one of my passions is photography.  It has become such a big part of my life over the past 2 years and is slowly (very slowly) developing into something that earns me a little bit of money.  The other day I was thinking about my photography, about how much I enjoy it and trying to remember where it all started.
Oddly enough it started in Mexico.  Nick and I were on a cruise to celebrate our first anniversary (insert awww's and how cute's here) and were in Ensenada at La Bufador (the natural blow hole).  I told Nick to stand in front of the wall so I could take his picture when the waves came up... and missed it, and then missed it again, and missed it again, and finally gave up.  I remember being so frustrated with my camera and it's lack of speed.  It was just a simple point and shoot camera with the normal lag time that comes with them.  I remember thinking about how nice it would have been to have a "fancy camera" that could take multiple frames per second (actually it sounded more like "I just want to hold down the button and hear the camera go click, click, click, click and have it take lots of pictures in a row").  When we got home, I remember spending hours online researching cameras; Nikon vs Canon, this model vs that one, etc.  I was obsessed (I know, me?  Obsessed over something?  Hard to believe... just keep your laughter to a minimum).  Then the "saving up" process began.  Really I just talked about it incessantly to Nick until he finally agreed to buy it for me for Christmas :)  Sometimes it's good to be a girl.
And thus my passion was born.  After that fateful Christmas, my camera and I have developed a very close relationship, as you well know.
Nobody really spoke up last time, but I'm going to ask again.  What are your passions and where did they get their start?  Anybody have any interesting stories?

Boys

Usually boys are NOT fun to photograph.  They generally have a million things they would rather be doing than having you take pictures of them.  Not these boys.  They kept suggesting pictures for me to take, cracking jokes, laughing, smiling, and then they each wanted to have their own portrait taken!  It was so much fun to have cooperative boys to take pictures of :)  Love it.

Moments

I am a photographer, in case you hadn't heard (you should book a shoot with me, by-the-way).  Each photographer has their own style, favorite shots, angles, etc.  My ultimate favorite is when I capture a moment.  Not something posed or rehearsed, but something spontaneous.  I love it when I photograph a shoot and come home and upload my photos, and find one that makes me feel like I'm intruding on an intimate moment shared between two people, whoever those people might be.  I photographed a wedding this weekend, and managed to capture one of those moments, and oddly enough, it wasn't of the bride and groom.  It was of a bridesmaid and groomsman right after the bride and groom had exited the chapel and were greeting people.  I saw the bridesmaid lean over to whisper something to the groomsman, and knew in that moment that it would be a special picture.  I just wanted to share this moment with you.  It turned out to be one of my favorite shots of the day and I find myself drawn in and captivated by it.  Don't you just wonder what the secret it?

And just fyi, this is the original raw image.  No editing, no adjusting.  I love it when an image is perfect as is... it saves me a whole lot of time 

Bates Nut Farm

We went to Bates Nut Farm with my family this weekend and had a ton of fun!

 There were so many pumpkins to choose from!  It was neat to go through the fields and pick exactly which one we wanted.

 The one Nick and I chose was 113 lbs (thanks for paying Popsicle!).  Just for the record, we won.  The Stewart's pumpkin was 105 lbs and my families was 106 lbs...  We win.  Oh, and the back is ugly, but the front of the pumpkin is gorgeous, and it now looks beautiful sitting on our front porch :)

 My beautiful mother.  Even though it doesn't look like it, she is sitting on a pumpkin, just in case you were wondering...

 Mmmmmm....  I love old fashioned country stores with barrels of candy!

 These were some wind chimes they were selling.  Each one is made of an antique coffee/tea pot or a creamer or sugar bowl or the like.  They were kind of neat and made a really pretty tinkly musical sound.

Oh Baby, oh baby!!

I finally did it.  I went Mac.  And now that I've gone Mac, I'll never go back.  I love it.  LOVE.  I love my 27" Apple iMac.  The screen is gimungous, super clear, the colors are amazingly perfect, and my photography looks even better now that I'm viewing it on a beautiful screen.  Did I mention that I love it??  Weren't you curious why I was posting so much?  This is why...  I just want an excuse to me on the computer.  Love.

 Please disregard the fact that I look like a hobo.

New Link

I don't know how many of you follow my not updated often enough photography blog, but I changed to address to it
The new link is on the side bar, or if you're lazy, just click here.

Fat Girls Unite!!

Remember when I had that weight loss blog?  Probably not, because it was a really long time ago.   Anyway, I started it back up.  It is a safe haven for those who are struggling with their weight and want support and encouragement.  It is a private blog, so you have to be invited.  If you are struggling and want help, and want to join the Flab to Fab nation, email me your email address at kgrafton615 at hotmail dot com.  If you were a member of that blog before, then guess what?  You still are!!  Yay!  It's the exact same blog, I just gave it a facelift and deleted all the old posts so we could start fresh.  I would love to have your support and support you if you need it.

Grandma

September 30th was the seventh anniversary of my Grandmother's death. She and I were so close, and I still miss her everyday. She practically raised me for the first few years of my life because my parents had to work full time to support our family. She spent hours and hours reading to me and talking to me like a person, and not just a baby. She was such an amazing woman, difficult, but amazing. The temple was her favorite place in the whole world, and I promised myself that every year either on her birthday (September 1) or the anniversary of her death (September 30) I would go to the temple to honor her memory. It's something special I do to help stay close to her and feel her near me again. It's kind of like getting a big hug from her. This is probably the only picture I have of my Grandmother and I. I was three at the time.

Passion

This is going to be a long post. Feel free to read, or not, whichever you like.

Today I was thinking about passion versus apathy, hot versus cold. I like to think of myself as a passionate person. I tend to get very emotionally involved with people/things/places/etc very quickly, which can be both a blessing and a curse. My friends know that I am fiercely loyal and would walk over broken glass and hot coals if they needed anything from me. But what am I most passionate about? Am I using this personality trait to it's fullest potential?

My passions are as follows (in order): Family, The Temple, and Photography. At least for right now.

Family: I am ridiculously passionate about my family, especially my own little family of two. I love my husband with every fiber of my being, he is truly the best thing that has ever happened to me. He keeps me grounded when I'm trying to get on the crazy train, and he still stares at me the way he did when we first started dating. I'm so lucky to have found him. He is evidence that the Lord knows me better than I know myself. I things had gone according to my plan, I would never have moved home from BYU, and who knows where I would be now. I'm so grateful for the bumpy road filled with stumbling blocks, big mistakes, and losers I dated so that I would be ready and humble enough to give the weird, creepy red-headed kid who stared at me all the time a chance to steal my heart. I'm also passionate about expanding our family. Ask anyone who knows me, and they will tell you that I'm pretty much obsessed with babies. I'm obsessed with planning our baby, naming our baby, "decorating" our hypothetical nursery, baby shower ideas, I even know what I want the baby to wear home from the hospital if we have a boy. It is practically all I think about all the time. I want so badly to be a mother, to start our family... I just feel like that is my true calling in life.

The Temple: I adore the temple. I always have. Growing up, my Grandparents taught me by example just how important the Temple is. It was my Grandmother's favorite place in the whole world, and now that I'm able to go to the Temple I know why she loved it so much. Even before I was able to go in, I would love going and just sitting on the grounds and feeling the Spirit that resides there. To this day, every time I am driving down the 5 south on my way to the San Diego Temple, and I round the corner just before La Jolla Village Drive and I see the Temple for the first time, it still makes me cry and gives me goosebumps every single time. The Temple truly is the house of the Lord. It rejuvenates me emotionally and mentally, and sometimes it even feels like I've been physically recharged as well. There is no place on this Earth that you can feel the Spirit so strongly and be so close to our Heavenly Father. I know that when I need answers to my prayers, or when I just need to feel my Savior's arms wrapped around me, I can go to the Temple and He will provide me with what I stand in need of.

Photography: I have always appreciated beauty. Beautiful people, beautiful things, beautiful places, and now with photography, I feel like I have found a way to contribute something beautiful to this world. Don't get mad at me, but I have never felt like a beautiful person, except when I was being professionally photographed. Now, as a photographer, I feel like I have the opportunity to make people feel good about themselves, especially those people who might not feel that way about themselves on a regular basis. When I look through my camera lens, I see the world in a different way. I feel like I'm able to better appreciate the little things and little moments. I get so excited when I'm able to capture a special moment in time in a beautiful way. Like when I was taking a client's maternity photos and asked the mother and father to look down at her pregnant belly, and the mother kept stealing loving glances at her husband as he looked tenderly at their unborn child. It's moments like that that make me fall in love with photography over and over again.

What is it about these particular things that make me feel so much passion? There are a million other things in this world that I could feel that way about, why these three in particular? These are things that make me happy, more happy than I can possibly express with words. They bring a smile to my face, help the stress of my day melt away, bring me pure joy, make life seem just a little easier. I feel like each also helps me become more beautiful, even if it is just on the inside. I feel like a better, more fulfilled person because I have these things in my life. Each helps me focus on the things that are most important in this world, the things that really and truly matter. Let's face it, when I leave this world, it's not going to matter if I managed to get down to a size 10 like I would give anything to, or if I stayed at a size 14 my whole life. It's not going to matter if I was an amazing cook or if I was just average (I'm pretty darn good, but that's beside the point). Those aren't things that are a priority in my life. Happiness, however, is a priority. I just want to spend my precious free times doing things that make me truly happy. I want to spend it with family, going to the temple, or behind the lens of a camera.

What are your passions? What are the things in life that bring you the most joy and put the biggest smile on your face?