It’s a new year, and I’ve never been one to really look back on the old year and assess the good and the bad, or one to make a resolution for the next. For some reason this year I did start thinking, a lot happened in 2011. New job, new niece, and the revelation that soon we’ll be moving into a new house. Changing jobs has always been scary for me, this time, though, things seemed to have flowed very naturally. Changing jobs was probably the best decision that I’ve ever made for my piece of mind. And if you consult those close to me, big decisions are hard for me.

A new niece didn’t have really all that much to do with my decision making process thankfully, but the birth of Lucy had an enormous affect on me. I mean look at that picture? Who wouldn’t she affect (effect, affect, effect, affect – can anyone remember which one to use without looking it up?)? I was lucky enough to grab a few moments with my sister and Lucy during the craziness of the holidays to shoot that picture for my sister’s Christmas card.

Finally more on the moving thing, no pictures yet (I know, I know, soon…) and the reason I’ve waited so long to give you guys the DL is because there were a lot of paperwork, legal stuff, things to sift through before it was a reality. My grandmother’s home has sat vacant for a few months due to her move to a place where she can receive a little more care. The house that she lived in was built by her and my grandfather. My dad grew up in this house, I lived there for a few months after I was born while my parents were saving up to buy a place of their own. My sister and I spent countless hours over there – never really having a babysitter other than Granny. Every holiday was spent at Granny’s house. After my grandmother’s move no one could really decide what should be done. At first we discussed selling the home, but the economy is terrible and it’s in a wonderful location, plus no one in the family felt right about that. After months and months of my family suggesting I move in (Me? I have a house, I don’t need another one.) my boy and I sat down and discussed it for real. After a few days of deliberation we realized that if we moved in and were able to modernize it and make it our home we could carry on the memories of the house.

So, there you go that’s 2011 in one post. I have thoughts and resolutions for 2012 but I think I’ve gone on long enough for now. Hope you all had a great 2011 yourselves and are looking forward to 2012 as much as we are. Thank you for your support this past year!

As you can see she’s gorgeous and also very easy to photograph.

The best part about Olivia is that, aside from being beautiful on the outside she’s the same on the inside.

Here are a few fun ones.

This reminds me of Alice in Wonderland.

And finally a fun photobooth. Thanks Olivia for letting me spend some time with you and my camera!

This is my newest technological obsession – yes it’s a thermostat, and yes that may be the geekiest thing I’ve ever said, but I am who I am. This is a smart thermostat and it was created by some of the people who have worked on iPods, iPhones and iPads, so it’s not only smart, it’s beautiful, it’s green and it’s easy to use. I’m not going into all of the things that make this thermostat awesome but if you want o learn more go to the website – Nest.com

Now onto the big news – and this thermostat is involved. Where would this thermostat be completely at home you ask? Our house – why yes probably, but where would it be even more at home? A new house. Our new house, which is actually an old house, yep we’re moving. Moving into an older home that needs a little love – which we are more than willing to give because this older home is very special to me. Special to me and others, but that’s enough for now.

More on all that later…I know you’ll be dying  to know.

This picture represents four generations of my family. It makes me think about the world Lucy was born into and how different that world is from the world Granny was born into, how much it has changed in such a short amount of time. Granny was born in 1922, just a few years after the first world war ended. She grew up during the great depression. She listened to the radio when she was little. She saw televisions and computers come into existence and then into almost every home. She grew up during a time when polio was a real threat, she saw the HIV virus develop into a real threat.

When Lucy was born, we communicated the news through our iPhones and passed time by reading on the iPad. We took pictures with our digital cameras and some of those images have been put online in some form or fashion. Lucy has had and will have vaccines to protect her against a variety of very serious diseases.

What will the world be like when Lucy is an adult, if she makes the choice to bring life into this world? What amazing technology will we use to spread the word? What things will we be able to protect that child from, what new threats will exist?

It’s amazing to me how fast this world changes.

I had these great plans for an awesome post. An awesome post that would cover for the horrible fact that I haven’t posted in forever about anything. An awesome post filled with before and after pictures of this home improvement project that we completed earlier this summer. The post that would top all posts….

And then I accidentally deleted all my before pictures. Oops.

Tis life.

So imagine a backyard, a backyard with no patio. Devoid of all summer gatherings, devoid of a nice place to sit out and enjoy dinner and a glass of wine, devoid of a flower box. A lonely backyard that would not enjoy the life of entertainment, a lonely backyard that was transformed into this:

Several weekends, sore knees, sore fingertips and sore backs gave us this little beauty. My boy even built a little flower box there on the end for me, which was only recently filled with plants thanks to my weeks of procrastination.

So there you have it, my amazing Before & After post. However, I’m truly excited about the patio it was very much worth the effort and it’s helped some of the water flow issues we were having because we live on the side of a giant mountain/hill type thing.

Now, if we can just tackle our huge mosquito problem, which is a definite issue, those things are prehistoric and attack in droves without warning, then we’ll be set for the outside entertaining spot of the year!

P.S. I have recently decided that I’m going to start making posts that are shorter so I’ll hopefully be able to post more often. I may even branch out into other areas, recipes maybe, I dunno. Let me know what you think.

But if you would like to see some bragging about a new niece, you’re in the right place. I already spoke a little bit about my experience with the whole birthing process here. A week or two later I made my way back to my sister’s house to stay for a few days and help with whatever needed to be done.

On that note, here’s a list of things that I could help with:

• Cooking
• Cleaning
• Laundry
• Cooking
• Take pictures of the baby
• Did I mention Cooking?

A list of things I could not help with:

• Feed the baby
• Dress the baby
• Change the baby’s diaper
• Burp the baby
• Figure out what was wrong when the baby was crying

The things that I couldn’t help out with were not because I didn’t want to or because I didn’t have the time, they were because of complete ignorance. I just haven’t really been around babies. I never baby-sat when I was younger, and my sister is only 3 years younger than me so when she was a baby I wasn’t able to help, and don’t really even remember that time period.

Plus I’ve only ever even held a baby once before in my life, before that I had always refused because I felt like I would drop them or hurt them or screw them up in some way. And that one time I did hold a baby, I was forced into it.

So I went to see them with the notion that I would do what I could do. I would cook a lot of  food and take some pictures.

But of course things are different when the baby is your niece and the mother is your sister.

And by the end of the few lucky days I did get to spend with them I ended up being comfortable with a whole lot of holding, burping, and even some changing of diapers. I also rather enjoyed all of those things, my how things change.

I’ve mentioned here before that my little sister was pregnant, you can see that post here. Actually I’ve talked a lot about my sister on this blog and all the things that have been happening in her life in the past few years. All of those things pale in comparison to what happened on 3.15.11. While that day was most definitely not about me, all I have to relate is how that day changed me, changed my outlook on life, and really did change my world.

To be completely honest, (and if I can’t be honest with the scathes of faceless people on the internet, who can I be honest with?) I’ve never been that girl that dreams of growing up and starting a family. Finding someone to share my life with, someone to marry, yes. Someone to procreate with, no. And I’m most definitely not going to tell you that experiencing the birth of my niece completely changed those thoughts, because it didn’t. However, it did make me understand the yearning that others have to make that jump.

But first, let me back up. Growing up my sister and I were not close, VERY not close. We fought constantly especially in High School. I’m not sure exactly what caused that to change along the way but I remember the exact moment it did change. She was in college (she went away to college, I stayed in the same town we grew up in) and I think she was at home for a visit. I had been going through some tough times lately with boys and we somehow bridged the gap from casual “I’m so sorry to hear that” conversation to really talking about what was going on. By the end of that conversation we had covered every single romantic relationship each of us had ever had with all the ridiculous details. I’m not sure if her living in a different city had anything to do with it, but we gradually started talking more often. From that point on we were the kind of sisters that I can only imagine everyone wants to be. Today we don’t go for more than a few days without speaking. Ours is one of the most important relationships in my life.

So back to the now. It was important to my sister that I be in the delivery room with her during the entire process. I think my first and most important duty was to be there with her husband for moral support, the second, of course, was to take pictures. Now, I won’t go into all the details because no one really wants to read about that here and I’m not really up to typing it out, so if you’re really interested google that one (but not at work, trust me). What I will say was, is that I wasn’t prepared for the reality of it all to be so close and up in my face. I optimistically thought there would be some sort of barrier between me and the business end of what was happening.

Nope.

But the sisterly bond is strong, and those first few moments after the birth were some of the greatest moments of my life.

Lucy Womack was born at 3:19 pm, and from that moment on I will forever believe in love at first site. The look on my sister’s face seeing her child for the first time was pure, intense joy. Seeing my brother-in-law hold his baby girl for the first time was an unbelievable site. The love I felt for that child the first time I saw her is like nothing I will ever be able to put into words. Even now, typing this a month later, those feelings are rushing back.

And this little girl is at the root of it all, this little girl is what changed my world forever.

She’s really excited, if you couldn’t already tell by this picture. I’m really excited too, I’m going to be an Aunt. Now all the emotional issues I had with her getting married seemed to prepare me for this whole Aunt thing. However they most certainly did not prepare me for this:

Now this picture was taken back around Thanksgiving so to be fair her belly wasn’t even THAT big yet, and she stuck it out a little more than was necessary, but still. Look at it. And now that it’s February, getting very close to the ole due date it’s even bigger, hard to imagine even. I wish I could see it progress every day like she is able to.

As for me I’m not sure if I’m ever going to be the procreating type, but I’m definitely not in a place right now where I want to be. I think my role as Aunt will have all the benefits of having a child with none of the less-than-beneficial-aspects. I can buy them cool presents, spend time with them when they’re in a happy playful mood, and hopefully take some really cute pictures.

I think the most exciting part of it all is seeing my little sister grow up and mature into the compassionate, loving, caring, woman (and now mother) that she was destined to be. I’m sure she’ll have a million questions and fears when the baby is born, if she hasn’t covered the majority of those already. One thing that I hope she never questions (because I sure never will) is being a good mother, because I know beyond  a shadow of a doubt that she’ll be the best.

I am historically bad at math, it’s never really been one of my strong points, I remember the first time that I realized that I wasn’t good at it. I was in middle school and taking pre-algebra, I really only remember three things about that class:

1.) The teacher tried to teach us how an equation works with chess pieces on this strange clear plastic scale.

2.) The tip of my teacher’s middle finger had been chopped off during what she claimed was a horrible encounter with a reclining lazy boy.

3.) I didn’t get it, the equation explanation, not the finger.

I probably couldn’t concentrate on the whole chess analogy because I couldn’t stop staring at that finger. She painted the little nub that was left of her fingernail with fingernail polish. My memory isn’t the best but I remember that strange little pinkish-brownish polished nub.

So anyways, back to the issue at hand. I’ve never been really good with numbers, and as all math teachers throughout your life will tell you, no matter what field you go into, you’ll have to deal with math. They’re right of course. I deal with it everyday. One thing that I have to figure out constantly are conversions from fractions to decimals. I’m constantly given dimensions in fraction form but then will need to convert in order to set up a file in any number of Adobe software programs.

I was lucky enough to be given a conversion chart a few years ago by a fellow designer and friend, Catherine. I think the chart had been passed down to her from another designer and had become just a black and white, cut off photocopy along the way. I use this chart all of the time, it’s followed me from an old job to a new job and from a work office to a home office. I was looking at it a while back and decided that if I ever misplaced this photocopy I would be lost and that it could use a good redesign and a official digital file safely locked away on a hard drive that is obsessively backed up.

During the few weeks that it took me to lay it out (hey it involves a lot of numbers and, remember, I’m not good with those, AND I have other things to do) I decided that it would probably be something that would be helpful to others as well. So without further middle school reminiscence, I give to you the newly designed conversion chart. Download it, give it to your friends, send it around the world. Oh and don’t be afraid to redesign it for yourself I have no qualms with you removing my shameless self promotion.

Download the conversion chart as PDF

Don’t have Adobe Reader? You can get it here.

One more thing, try not to think about that strange little nub while using it but do watch out for lazy boy recliners.

This is the first real (and by real I mean non-disposable) camera I ever owned. I had just started college and was ramped up to be taking my first photography class. I was young and full of ambition, and void of money. Even though that class started in the early 2000′s it was a film based class, no mention of digital photography ever left the instructor’s mouth. The camera is an original Nikon FM, and had been my Dad’s camera that he bought when he took a photography class in college.

During the class I learned what to do with every single one of these few buttons and dials. All those numbers and settings were pretty daunting at the time, which makes me laugh now thinking about all the settings on my digital camera. There are still a few settings on that darn camera that I don’t fully understand.

We also worked in the darkroom during that class. That means that after we successfully loaded the film into the camera, took pictures, and unloaded the film, we took it out of the plastic film roll in complete darkness and developed it in the cozy but leaky and damp darkroom that was on our college campus. Then we exposed the images onto larger sheets of photo paper. I usually emerged from these sessions completely unaware of the time that had passed and the fact that I smelled like strange chemicals. In fact any time I get too close to the picture printer in a drugstore I can smell the chemicals and a flood of darkroom memories washes over me.

I’m sad to omit that I haven’t actually used this camera in years, maybe even since I graduated college. There was a point where I wasn’t taking pictures at all, I wasn’t creating anything outside of work at all. But luckily that changed, and I think it did so with the purchase of my new digital camera. I’m so glad that changed to. It’s made me look back at where I’ve been with photography and where I hope to head in the future.

I’ve been reminded of photos I took, developed, and printed in that old dank darkroom. And it reminded me of photos I hope to take in the future and the progress I hope to make. So here’s to looking back and to moving forward.