Christiana Childers Photography Blog

My daughter took my phone the other day and started taking some photos with the Hipstamatic App that I have on my iPhone.  I had to share a couple with you -

Cool, no?

We had our home group over for dinner this weekend again.  It really is one of my favorite things to do.  We had such a great time that the neighbors up and down the block commented on it the following day.  Now that is a party! My cheeks still hurt from laughing.  We had a tacofest.  Here are some photos from the night -

Ben has been working hard to get our wall of windows and doors finished for the party.  I love how it turned out!

I made Whoopie Pies for dessert!  I’ve never made them before and will definitely be making them again.  The ones with Oatmeal have a Bacon-Maple filling.  Yum!  I’m not kidding!  You can find the recipe here.

But the yummiest dish of the night…these cheeks here -

Doesn’t the wall look so pretty?!My friend Dawn grabbed my little camera and took some great shots of the night.  I made a collage of them -

Oh!  They are going to kill me for posting that!  So long world!

This weekend we took a little trip down to Portland to visit my cousin Ruthie.  Isn’t she the cutest?!We had a big time.  Portland is too cool!  Here’s a sampling from the weekend -

Also Ruth taught me a new way to dye eggs and you know how much I love eggs!  Here are some photos of the process -

First you peel some onion skins off of purple and yellow onions and then soak them in water.  We also did purple cabbage but it didn’t work too well so I wouldn’t recommend it.

Then you wrap the egg in skins -

You then roll up the eggs in some clean scrap cloth.

Bind the whole thing up in rubber bands and boil like you would hard boiled eggs-

And the result! -

Cool, huh?!

I’ve been a crafting fool the last couple of weeks.  My friend Amy’s mom sent me some great fabrics from her online quilting store so I’ve been a bit on a sewing binge until my machine started causing me some trouble!  It’s fixed now so I hope to get back on the sewing projects but I thought I’d share with you another photo project I was working on as well.

Remember how I told you about the last project (Record Clock) where it was easier than I thought it’d be?  Well, this project lays (lies?…Mom’s always on me for not using this word correctly…I never can remember the rules), as most of my projects do, solidly in the “That’ll be a piece o’ cake!” and hours later….I’m swearing “Krauss!“  It shouldn’t be hard.  I was just wrestling with my printer…grrr.  ANYWAY, the project is this – Lora found me this super cool tray and our favorite boutique (aka Value Village). 

I wanted to take one of my photos and glue it to the bottom.  I’m trying to add a bit more color to my life so I picked a photo with a lot of blue.  It’s the bottom of a small boat that I took while living in Ireland.  I love the rusty stain and the crackley paint.

I found this free software that takes a photo and chops it up for you so you can print it out on your printer.  It’s called PosteRazor.  It’s pretty cool and easy.  My problems came when I wanted to print it on thick paper and my printer refused.  It also printed different colors for each piece and much darker than the actual photo (which I don’t know if that is a printer issue, software issue or a monitor issue) so that it doesn’t go very seamlessly together.  So I haven’t glued it down ’cause I’m not a 100% satisfied.  I might try printing it as one poster at somewhere like Kinkos but I don’t know.  What do you think?  Like it or try again?

Meanwhile, the tray looks kind of cool as is under my candles on my table…

So our decorations are up!  I’m rather chuffed with how my house looks so I thought I share a little of it.  It’s mainly just candle groupings with greens that I gathered from outside with stuff I had around the house.  Good thing too because we spent a whole heap on brand new outside lights as EVERY SINGLE BRAND NEW LAST YEAR strand was out!  Grrr.  So we thought we’d go for the commercial ones this year to hopefully avoid the waste next year.  Anyway, here’s my entryway -

I got the candles at the Dollar Store!  I love seeing this when I walk in the house.

Here’s a couple more around the house -

I’ve always been fascinated by smoke ribbons so when I blew some of these candles out I thought I’d try to photograph them.  I won’t tell you how much time I wasted trying to get an “even better” shot…. I think smoke ribbons may be my biggest photography challenge yet!  The camera didn’t know where to focus so I took it off auto focus but then I wasn’t fast enough…blah, blah, blah…it was hard, people!  Here’s what I did get -

Cool huh!!

One more thing… One of my dearest and oldest friends (not that she’s old, our friendship is old…wait, that’s doesn’t sound right either! Errr my really good friend, Kari!) started a blog called MamaBloo.  She is an amazing writer, mother, teacher and friend.  If you’re a mom, you’ll love her wit, observations and writing on mothering and life.  Check it out at www.mamabloo.com.

This post is definitely in the “Things That Make Me Happy” category. Last week so full but it was packed full of so many of my favorite things.  I have a lot to be thankful for.

This tree makes me happy because it is in a special place for me.

I think I’ve taken a photo of this tree every year for several years.  Once a year my girlfriends and I go away to my friend KA’s parents house to pick our book club books for the year.  This year we just gave up pretending to be a book group and we are now just a group would loves to be together and stay in our jammies all day and sometimes a few of us read the same book.  I’m thankful for my girls (who’d all kill me if I showed a photo of them all in jammies so I’ll stick with the tree).

I’m thankful for cozy moments like this in front of a real fire.

I’m thankful for my home group.  We celebrated Ryan H’s birthday on Saturday.  There is nothing better than getting together with friends over a yummy meal.  Here’s a few shots from the evening.

Lora decorated the table for me.  I just love it! 

I love it when people pick up my camera and take shots.  Thanks Ryan B for this one.  Look at JJ waiting for his turn to hold Baby W.

I’m also so thankful for my family, wonderful friends here and abroad, love, laughter, adventure, U2 tickets !, new babies in my life, my home, my camera…and on and on.  The Lord has blessed me richly and I am humbled by it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

*I just re-read this and thought I should mention that I’m not trying to be all code-y with KA and JJ that’s really what we call them!  But I never use kids names in my posts so will always say W, C, P or whatever for kids.

OK.  Here is attempt two at getting this post up!  Here we go -

Now that you know what Trading Graces is all about, I get to talk a little more specifically about this project.  So as I mentioned before, this family has two kids with special needs so getting their house “put together” was not really a priority.  Their priority was/is their kids.  When the design team (Lora, Debbie and Lauren) asked what she liked she said she that orange was her favorite color and they really liked warm colors. They had her collect photos from books and magazines of things she liked but other than that, the family didn’t know what all was going on in their house.

Most of these pictures aren’t mine because I wasn’t there for the beginning of the project and I left before the family came home so didn’t really get the finished pictures.  I compiled these photos from emails and Lora’s camera so sorry that some of them are a bit grainy.

Here is a before picture of the kitchen -

And the after -

I want you to know that the cabinets came from all over.  None of them matched.  Lots were from Craig’s List and some from salvage places.  Lora fit them together like a puzzle and volunteers painted them all cream to make them match.  Don’t they look amazing!  Look at all the extra cabinets she has now!!

On the opposite side of that little half wall, they had a dining room so the half wall was ripped out so the kitchen could use the whole space and then they put a built in with shelves and a desk and moved the dining room into what was originally intended for the dining room but was being used for an office.

Desk wall before -

Desk wall after -

They had blank wall and came up with this fun idea…

Before -

After -

Now here is an view of where the office was and is now the dining room..

Before -

After -

Now here are some finished shots of the living room done by Lauren Neal – www.laureninterior.ueuo.com.  (She also designed the dining room)

It takes a lot of talent to design but I think it takes even more talent to design with few resources compiling donations, found items from salvage yards or Craig’s List.  Didn’t they do an amazing job?!

And now I need to show you what Lauren did with my portraits of the family.  So cool!  It’s the first thing you see when you walk into the house.

Cool huh!!  There is so much more here to show and tell but it’d be too long.  I just wanted to give you and idea of some of the finishing touches.  And I love this photo of the family seeing their new kitchen for the first time -

And of them seeing the photo wall when they walked in -

The whole thing makes me so happy!!

Here’s one of Lora and me.  The thing that makes me laugh is all the people in the background trying to fix an issue in the pantry which sort of sums up Trading Graces – people are just excited to help…

There were so many many people that helped make this such a successful project but there are a few poeple who need special mention.  Steve Higgins (www.higginsbuildingco.com) – contractor extraordinaire – was there from dawn until well after dusk and sometime unto the wee hours pouring himself into this project.  He was always happy and helpful even when people were slowing him down.

Professional Organizer Elisa Adams put in many hours helping the family organize and purge before the project as well as being on site to help during the project and then helped move the family back in to their new space.  She gave a little seminar about organizing that I was able to go to and am so motivated to do some purging and reorganizing myself! www.how2organize.net.

Well, I feel like there is so much I’m leaving out as well as so many people I’m leaving out but I just need to stop. Thank you to all involved for a truly enriching and blessed time.

I love Summer!  If you could tell by several of my posts where I whine about the rain and cold and no sun.  I’m so happy that we had such nice weather this weekend.  It changes my whole outlook.  I decided to decorate my mantle to reflect the season.  I’ve had this idea floating around in my head of taking an old book cover and use it t build a vintagey looking frame and use it for sepia photos or something.  Here is kind of what I was thinking…

But when I found my book, I fell in love with all the illustrations…

…so decided to make it more of a sea theme collage with a photo and illustrations from the book.

I cut the cover off the book and then cut some pieces of book board (really thick card board available at art stores) to fit the inside of the book as well as the binding -

I then flipped the piece above over and decoupaged photos and illustrations that I cut out of pages from the book.  It all looked a bit stark so I painted it a little.  OK, a lot.  I think I over did it a bit. Ah well.  Then I glued the book board piece to the book cover and put it on my mantle.

The photo is of the girls taking in the sunset in Northern Ireland.  It was such a beautiful evening and wonderful memory so I love this photo for all the feeling it evokes.  I also through some shells up on the mantle from Dublin which made me happy to use those in a fun way.

I saw a photo in Martha a few months back where she had illustrations of birds in the inside of  jars so I thought I could do the same with more of the illustrations from this book to add to my Summer themed mantle.

So that’s it!  What do you think?

I’m going back a little bit for this post as the baby that this shower was celebrating is now in her third month.  Here she is a few weeks old…

Isn’t she sweet!  So I hosted a shower for my dear friend Kari – we met in HS, went to college together, were roommates in college, in each others wedding and now we are neighbors!  Could you ask for anything better?!  Anyway, I wanted to use photos in my decorations because, well, that’s what I love. I collected a few baby things from friends who are in the baby stage and took photos of them then printed them out on thick paper and made decorations out of them while also adding some fun paper in there.  Here is the result -

I couldn’t let the paper scraps go to waste so made little flags out of some skewers I had on had and stuck them into the cupcakes.

All in all, it was a great little party and I just love using photos in new and unique ways!

I did a photo shoot this weekend that I’m so proud of and I’m dying to post about! One of my favorite photos of my life has come out of it. But I have to wait until the first of June as it is a surprise for the family.  Obvisiously, they know I took pictures of them but they can’t see the final product because it is getting rolled into their house remodel which is being done Trading Graces.  Trading Graces is a whole post on its own. It’s so exciting!  I can’t wait to tell you all more soon!!

Meanwhile, I got to go to an Fashion Show called “Sunny Mood” with some local designers in Seattle on Friday which was really fun!  The designers where uber talented.  I’m not much of a high fashion gal so I was really there for the art but I did really like what I saw in the fashion show.  The venue for the show was so cool also.  It’s called Sole Repair on Capital Hill.  It’s what I always wanted in my dream home which looks a lot like a warehouse apartment.  Exposed brick walls, giant metal beams and a funky huge roll up window in the front.  My friend Neece Clark did all the art for the show (and this is how I knew about the show).  She had some stunning paintings up and it is so fun to see her work evolve.  Just when you can’t imagine it being better!  I’m fortunate to own some of her art and this show made me want even more! ”Honey, would it be OK if we sold one of our cars to buy a painting?”  I’m almost there.

I was also so impressed with the floral design at the show.  So creative!!  Here’s a photo I took on my iPhone of my friend Mary and the dress form bouquet.

Isn’t that clever?! And isn’t Mary the cutest thing?!  The floral designer is Meghan Stoller (meghannaehr@hotmail.com) and her business is called Mum.  Now I kind of want to have a wedding so I can have clever flower arrangements done by Meghan.  “Honey, we are selling the car and getting married….again.”