So our newest rabbit, London, is our first long-haired rabbit. We love him but he came to use with tons and tons of mats. I finally threw in the towel this weekend and got him shaved. I don’t think his dignity was left intact though….

Want to see more pictures of London getting shaved and looking, well, like a sheared lamb? Check out my facebook page.

Other London related posts: London with a hat on for Halloween

I grew up in Virginia in the exact same town my mom did. I went to the same high school she did. And while, Virginia may not be Puerto Rico in warmth, it’s still a pretty mild area. I can remember small flurries shutting down school. A whole inch of snow and people flipped out. Where to go!!! What to do!!! And let me say, Virginia drivers are not the best, but when snow comes down, well….you might want to avoid roads at all costs. I think snowflakes block the blood to the brain of Virginians and the accidents are a great testimony to that.

So when Natalie and I moved up here to Connecticut, I had maybe shoveled 2-3 inches of snow in my life. I didn’t own *real* gloves. I owned pretty H&M, not-really-made-to-hold-snow, gloves. And my coat was lackluster in the keeping me warm department. First year went like this:

Me: OMG, there’s snow!! Yay!
Two hours later
Me:It’s still snowing. And…it’s sticking
Four hours later
Me: We don’t own a shovel! Or salt!!! Or the snow blower our neighbors are currently using!! Holy crap. I hate snow. I haaaaaaaaate snow. We can’t even leave our house because our car is stuck *SOB*

The second year went like this:

Me: I got a shovel. Oh yeah. And I even have a northface jacket. I’m sooooo ready for this. Bring it.
Commence 25 inches of snow falling in one day
Me: *SOB*

So snow and I have a very love/hate relationship. I think it’s pretty. Until I have to shovel it. Or faceplant in the snow for the 34667 time trying to push our car out of the snow. But Friday and Saturday we got 8 inches of snow. So I decided it would be fun to take a walk in the snow. At the time, it was snowing so hard we couldn’t look up. Thankfully, Natalie wore a ridiculous elephant hat so I never lost her. Half-way through our walk we decided to extended it and walk to our local cafe.

Hot coco in cute mugs and just watching the snow come down from inside was wonderful.

P.S. Most of the snowy shots were taken with my new Fuji x100. This camera is so perfect for throwing in my purse and has actually made me just take photos I *want* to take.

Other CT Winter Posts: New Englander 101

I’m sure, by now, you have noticed a little bit of a change around here- as in my whole website got redone!! I’m beyond thrilled with it because it’s exactly what I wanted when I actually had no idea (or, in reality, 345345667 ideas) of what I wanted. With so many ideas and directions I wanted to go, I needed a graphic design team that really knew how to take all that and transform it into a site. I needed a team that was super experienced in working with wedding photographers/creative people because I wanted to make sure they would design a site that flowed well and made sense for my kind of work.

So I found Second Street Creative. I Facebook stalked them and watched as new logos and sites went up. I just loved their vision. So I emailed them, not really sure of how the hell this works. But Ryan took it from there. Weirdest experience: talking on the phone to Ryan all about me and well, me. It felt so odd to talk on and on about myself, but at the end of the call, even I had a better idea of what I wanted from the website because Ryan knew what questions to ask. I won’t give away his secret sauce, but that call really made all the gears in my brain start to turn….and helped me figure out which inspiration images I wanted to send his way. It wasn’t just all about the pretty- it was about making this site work for me and my clients.

Texture!!! Poor Second Street Creative heard that word a million times. But I wanted my site to have lots of texture, be classic, and keep my color palette I loved. I wanted something that focused on the images and was clean but not minimalist. They even went back and redesigned my logo to have a more ‘hand-drawn’ quality to it and removed the leaves in my old logo.

I drooled when I saw the first mockup. And we actually changed very very little from the first concept! They hit it out of the park right from the get-go. I wanted a website that really just was a nicer blogsite. And behind all that hotness is a wordpress site that is custom built for me. I’m going total nerd on you guys, but as a geek-tastic girl who watched her dad build super computers in the basement at age 3, I got a whole lot of love for people who can make something amazingly functional but super easy for the non-programmers. And my site is just that- I can change things, if I wish, in the future, without crying while looking at the css or html. I just plop in the changes I want. Easy.

And as a little shout out- thank you Ryan and all of Second Street Creative. You really put together something I feel fits me exactly and is easy to use. I can’t wait to work on more projects with you guys

Natalie and I got engaged again! Sort of. Kind of. You see, this spring will mark 10 years of us being together. We started dating our senior year of high school after Natalie found my online profile. You bet I rocked the Planet Out website profile! But having got together when we were 17, it led us to some interesting predicaments.

When you’re 19, $300 seems like $1 million. You can’t ever imagine spending more than $300 on anything, let alone a ring. So that vastly limits your options. Plus, all this ring shopping was on the down-low. We didn’t want to be teenagers getting engaged. We couldn’t do that! We had to be a grown up 20

For Natalie’s engagement ring, we ended up in Montgomery Mall surrounded by giant groups of bored teenagers. She wanted something nontraditional, something with a sapphire (and no, sapphires don’t mean something to lesbians–though we have been asked many, many times) and something not too big. And we found a ring she absolutely loved. It was a sapphire flanked by 2 diamonds. Teeny tiny stones. No certificate or anything. It was from fire and ice- a chain mall store whose un-traditional rings we liked but quality was majorly in question.

So, as time went on and we had our big, Jewish wedding and then we got legally married in Connecticut, I loved the ring I gave to Natalie when we had just started our relationship. But I also had some concerns. I could see the questionable gold of the band giving Natalie rashes. And it really stood out (and not in a good way) when she wore it on the same finger as her wedding band. So I decided for our 10th anniversary, we needed to upgrade her ring. So, for the last year we have been wandering in and out of jewelry shops– no rush. Just looking.

Natalie walked into the house a few days ago casually mentioning she had seen a ring she really liked and the whole store was having a sale. HELLO! Natalie had yet to mention any ring she was interested in, at all, this entire time we had been looking. So you bet I wanted to go and look at it. And when I walked in and saw it, I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t sure I liked it. It was an emerald cut diamond–I had never seen an emerald cut. And I kind of like the sparkle of other cuts more. But when she put it on, she had that look (and Natalie does not like jewelry)  and I looked at it only to realize it was perfect. Not too big. Not too flashy. Very vintage looking. But it was quality, from a small jewelry shop that has been a New Haven since 1919. And the best thing? It was a Canadian diamond, which had been a non-negotiable for Natalie and me.

So for New Year’s Eve we had the BEST sparkle of all. A new ring I know Natalie will wear until our old, farty hands can barely move.

Happy Halloween and say hello to our newest family member! He doesn’t have an official name yet (early gray? London? Slipper?) but he’s already being tortured for Halloween. I mean, isn’t he the perfect beefeater? We got the hat in London at a build-a-bear. I stopped myself from trying to fit him into the red coat.