Life in Color Photo – Page 115 – Celebrating crafts, kids and the everyday through photographs.

I don’t wait patiently

Yes, patience is a virtue, I know that, I also know that I myself tend to get a little antsy when it comes to waiting. But I think I did pretty well all six hours that I was in line at the AT&T store by my house yesterday. I had fun talking to the girls next to me (who were both getting paid, one by an uncle, one by a boss, to wait in line). I Laughed at the antics of the guys in the front:

As taken from our local paper. You can almost see me down on the right in an orange jacket. My rain jacket, because it was totally raining all day. This was the only place in Salem to wait under cover, so that was cool. And they were sweet to bring us cookies and pop:

When I got to line I was told I was number 17 (and 18 with Bj who joined me after a few hours). I kept begging the guy to tell me how many they had, but he "couldn’t say, but you will be fine" is all he said. So the line got to be a petty happening place around 4:30 when the store closed. I had a cute puppy next to me:

Awe. It was so sweet and good too. My dad and Kim hopped in the line a little after five.

Then at six the manager came out and started talking to the people at the end of the line. I wasn’t really listening, but I heard him say something about, "we will order them for you" so I went back there to ask my dad and Kim what was up. He said there were only 30 iPhones, 15 4gb and 15 8gb. I started freaking out, asking the people in front of me if any of them were there for a 4gb, because I knew I wanted an 8. Only one guy said yes, that I talked to. I started to freak out more and more. Please I thought don’t let me have stood in this line for six hours to not get a phone! They let in 7 people at a time, so the line crept forward, meanwhile Bj was on his Blackberry trying to see what the order time online would be (2-4 weeks). Now I can get really excited about things, but when things don’t go my way I can also get very dramatic, which is what happened as I pressed my head to the glass windows and watched person after person buy an 8 gig iPhone.

(from our not so cool local paper) Finally we were second in line and the guy in front of us was greeted by a salesperson who told them he would help them order a phone. When the next person came to get us, I just said, "take us to the counter, we want to order two 8 gigs." He’s all, "ohh let me show you the accesories, you can get those now." I’m like, "no dude, you said it was first come first serve on the ordering system and I want to get our order in." Meanwhile Bj is talking to Sciarrino on the phone, asking her to call around for us. I put my card on the counter, and let Bj deal with the sales guy so I can at least go play with one of the demos. I load my site up on it, it was so SICK ILL!!! Then Bj says, "Amber get back here." Sciarrino says Bridgeport has them! I grab my card off the table just as the guy was going to process it and Bj and I run out of the store. I told Kim and dad, "they have them at Bridgeport," and other people flee the line so we run to the car.

Bridgeport Village is a shopping center that is about 45 minutes away, so I had plenty of time to get more and more nervous as we drove. Bj had me call them again, just to make sure Sciarrino wasn’t mis-informed, and they told me again that they had a lot. I spent the drive calling people and telling them what was going down. When I called Michele, Bj said, "have her go down there!" I told Michele that and we laughed because it’s not like you can just throw a baby in the car and go. So I was biting my nails (figuratively) and fiddling with the radio when she called me back five minuets later from her cell and told us that her and Brett were on their way there. This made the rest of the drive so much better because we figured we did all we could do. And Bj’s face when I said they were on their way to the store was one of pure joy.

We pulled up to Bridgeport and Bj’s all "duck and roll" at a stop light, so I did, jumping out and running through the out door shopping center. I forgot for a second where the stupid store was so I was a bit out of breath when I finally got there and gasped, "do you have any 8 gig iPhones left??!!?!" "Um, ya," said the friendly Apple store employee, "there in the the back." I run to the back of the store to see, and I kid you not, a freaking tower made out of iPhones. I was like, "2 8 gigs please." They handed them over and I paid, done, done, DONE. I was so squealy happy, it was ridiculous. They gave me a little cheer as I left the shop, and then I realized that I had a husband and friends some where, so I called. They had met up in the parking lot and were coming towards me. We met up, and I think even Violet could tell I as in an extreme state of happiness because she laughed with me. Bj ended up going back to get one for my dad, who had gotten a 4 gig as a last resort, but hadn’t opened it. We went out to dinner and brought dessert back to Brett and Michele’s so it was about ten before we could get home and activate. The whole time I was rubbing the box against my face and staring at this:

The phone will only call 911 until it is activated, you can’t access any feature with out doing that first. So we got home and activated no problem. I know some people had to wait for ever and that sucks, but 500,000 trying to activate at once is going to do that. I had already planned ahead and updated all the stuff on my mac, like the address book, etc. So when the phone said it was done syncing I didn’t believe it at first. I pulled it off the dock and ran through the contacts and all my friends were there! It was so super fast. We took our phones over to Sciarrino and Brent’s and watched a movie while I surfed the web and played with my pictures and assigned ring tones to people. Today was more of the same, playing with them putting more pictures on. The iPhone formats them so they take up really not much space on there, which I didn’t know so I was able to put all my wedding photos on, as well as podcasts, five TV show episodes, a movie, 300 songs. We went to see Sciarrino and Kathy play in a softball game today and I tried out the camera:

You know I love my Nikon, but this is perfect for little snapshots, and I even managed to do a few artsy photos:

Basically I’m in love and I could go on and on and on about it, but this post has been long enough already. Yes the keyboard is really easy to use, just let the thing fix the mistakes for you and you can type super fast, yes the iPod feature is wonderful, the sound quality is great, the headphones rock, the finger flicking is crazy good, the web browser is ridiculously cool, and as one TUAW blogger said, "it seems to have been engineered by angels."

Thrifting – Amber Style

Okay so I thought I would go over a little bit how I thrift, specifically the sales on the weekends: yard sales, garage sales, and the holy grail: estate sales. The first thing to do is find a reliable source of information. I go for the local paper.

Here’s a list of what I bring:
-Basket – guaranteed to make you look genius. I’ve had these for a couple years now and they are freaking fantastic. Every sale I get a "oh your own basket that’s a good idea!" You can stash stuff in here while the mad grab is going on and then before you check out review everything to make sure you need it all.
-Bags – I also bring bags, for linens, and little things to hold in the car. If you always go for glass bring boxes and paper, don’t expect them to have all that for you.
-Directions – very important!
-Thrifting Purse – one you don’t mind getting dirty, can go over your shoulder and leave your hands free, separate pocket for your cash, in it I put:
-Purell – I usually try to avoid anti bacterial in an effort to stop creating super germs, but I do have some just for this because I’ve ran in to some real nastiness.
-Cash – 1s, 5s, 10s, maybe a few 20s, but the thing is the less money the more bargaining power you have; "I only have 12 dollars, will you take 12 for it?" You can always leave more in the car. And I always bring my check book in case I find a big item.
-Cell Phone – a cell phone with a camera is ideal if you need to check with someone about something they have been looking for.
-Business Cards – If you look for really specific things like me, and you run into people who run estate sales a lot you can give them your card and they might be willing to contact you if they run into that thing.
-Sustenance – I always bring Diet Coke so I can wake the hell up as this is usually the earliest I get up all week. Fruit, a power bar, graham crackers, etc.
-Closed Toed Shoes – Learn from my misery. I have been in so gross places, with animal droppings, mold, muddy yards, etc. Plus the time I was parked out in the country next to a snake!

So how did I fare today?

I found some awesome stuff. I registered for one of those puree things, but this was only five, I picked up another snack set (I swear I’ve never seen these before and now they are everywhere), three diaries each with 5 years of entries. Gonna be a good read:

"Today our cook left us." Hmm… Lots of Christmas goodies, which is weird because usually very hard to find and over priced. That angle was one of three. Tomorrow is half price day at that place so I’ll go there first thing and try and get the other two (five dollars normally, so 2.50). This box of bulbs was only one dollar.

And when I was leaving a man came up to me and told me it was his dad’s house and he remembered the bulbs from when he was a small child, always putting them up at Christmas. He said he wanted all the stuff to be happy in new homes, I thought that was so sweet. It’s rare to hear about where things came from or a story about them.

I also scored this chili mug, some sweet older maps, and (not pictured) an atlas, two Gene Straton-Porter books (I had them when I was younger and then loaned them out – they never returned), a history of entomology, with some awesome bug drawings.

Now I’m getting all fluttery because I’m going to get in line for the iPhone. I called 45 mins ago and there were 15 people in line!!!

Putting all my mad surfing skills to good use.

And in the totally not going to save the world, but extremely interestinig and funny catagory we have random crap from Amber day! I’ve been online like non stop getting info on my iPhone. And have come across quite a few interesting little gems on the web. So enjoy the fruits of my labor.

Person witnesses a murder and writes the paper about it. (ah hahahahahahahaha)

Complaint about airline seat. (I fact checked this on Snopes, and it’s real!)

A fun little American accent quiz (I’m a midland apparently – the least amount of accent! Nice and boring, Go me!)

Anyway just a little fun. I stopped by my local AT&T store and there were already a couple guys lined up! It is raining here (I know, shocker) and there is no way I’m spending the night out there. The super sweet clerk at the shop gave me her personal cell number so I could call tomorrow and check on the line status. I asked how many 8G iPhones they were getting and she said she didn’t know, but they already had some. Hmmm…. My dad is the landlord to that building and I so want to borrow his keys and go get me one tonight. Ha! I wish!

Next up: thrifting Amber style, a do it yourself guide!

*edited to add. Almost forgot my favorite. Kung Foo Baby!!!

One track mind.

So I was trying to think of what to blog about today. Some sweet new candle holders? A fun day in Portland with Michele and V? The million and one projects I’ve started and haven’t finished? The 25 awesome jars ready to be put up on my site? No I can’t blog about any of that because all I can freaking think about is what is going to happen in 66 hours. If you don’t know what I’m talking about then we’re not friends. It’s the iPhone people, and it’s all I’ve got on my mind. The problem really started in January. Bj and I geek it up when it comes to Apple and he had heard rumors of an iPhone. I was out of my Tmobile contract and my hand me down phone was on its last leg… or so I thought. I looked up Ericsson phones, ready to finally take the plunge and get a brand spaking new phone of my own choosing, but then Steve went and actually released an iPhone. The only problem, a June release. OH NO. I swear the NEXT day I dropped my phone in a puddle and was sure it would die, but apparently the thing has nine lives, because it’s still working today!

I managed to keep myself in check these last months, you know I had a few other things to worry about, like um, getting married, and my father in law passing away, but when I got the "get ready for the iPhone" email from Apple on the 12th I was a goner. And I’ve pretty much been refreshing The Unofficial Apple Weblog, MacRumors, and any other semi-reliable site for more information. And it has been coming: A guided Tour! YouTube! Rate Plans! All that’s left to do? Wait in line. So you know where to find me Friday. I’ll be expressing my inner nerd and joining my early adopter husband to get our very own iPhones. Now back to updating iCal, address book, creating an iPhone playlist, or maybe I’ll just go play with my paper version…

Continuing Education

Today Sciarrino and I went to a "discovery day" for her new Rebel XTI. I myself have a Nikon D50

How funny is this little bike. I could have made her stay on that all day, but she was already a little queesy from the swinging, so on to a more stationary object:

How to get people to laugh, tell them innappropiate things like, "lift your boobs up a little." Hehehehe.

Sciarrino just scored these jeans, then of course we just happen to park in front of this shop moving downtown and she finds two more cute pairs, three jeans in one weekend, ladies, we all know how hard that is to do. Then I got on the rock:

So I think I might go to the Nikon "discovery day" later this month, but what I really want to do is go to a real photo workshop. Okay if I had my total once in a lifetime wish it would be an Image is Found private shootshop, but then who wouldn’t want that?!?! I do have a birthday coming up (quick someone tell Bj!).

edited to add. Feels like this would be a great time to mention that Apple’s browser Safari is now available for free beta (meaning it is still working out its bugs) to Window’s users. Safari is the faster browser, and the BEST for viewing pictures. Here is why it rocks at color.

All By Myself…

Okay this morning I went thrifting BY MY SELF. This is actually not something I do that often, as I find it way more fun with friends. But since everyone works on Fridays I don’t have a choice really and the sales, well they were calling my name. So I bit the bullet and headed out early this morning. And I came back with some awesome stuff:

Each one has four sets, and is a different pattern. I love the bubbles the most. Each set was only two dollars! These sweet old ladies sold them to me, and told me they had been used in many a baby shower, how cute! They had a third set, but it had a grape motif, not something I’m fond of, so I’ll keep me eye out for more later. I think I’d need a few more to host a real shower.

Back in the thrifting groove

Okay so there is a big church rummage sale going on here in town and today was the first day. I hit it up last year and it is one of those "everything is really junky until you dig deep" sales. So we (Sciarrino and I of course) dug deep and came up with:

That big thing is a teachers aid. I freaking love it, the main character’s name is Tip, is that not awesome? I have know idea what I am going to do with it, maybe cut it up, I don’t know, but type is great so I figured I couldn’t go wrong with it. Two of those patterns are Violet sized, and the other one is vintage batman, robin, superman, soooo cute, had to get it because both my brother and Bj had superman PJs when they were little. The "In Other Words" books are thesauruses (and behind them a children’s dictionary). I just love design and the content inside. And since I collect dictionaries, I thought the thesauruses were not that big of a leap. Check it out:

classic.

Awe, his pants are too small. I am going to have to scan some of these in for something.

Look up MAD and STUPID = awesome.

Oh ya I could do this all day, but that’s good for now. 🙂 And something else I have been searching for, ever since I used one on my wedding invites/seating cards:

An electric typewriter, LOVE IT. Good thing it came with a manual because somehow I turned off the correct key (but for five dollars it was a deal, and there are lots more if you go this weekend!). Oh and all these pictures were taken in doors with OUT natural light, can you believe it? I finally caved and got a speed light, okay well Ribbon Jar did, but I’m borrowing it. And since another blog entry about it seems silly now check this out:

Emilie has the best expressions, I love her, and I couldn’t resist this as she was eating BLACK ice cream (so something I would have done in the day) Plus the flash is really good for cave dwellers (a.k.a grandpa who won’t open his blinds):

No lens glare! You guys probably don’t even know I wear glasses as I avoid pictures with them like the plague, I can’t get over this thing, I’ve been saying I wanted one since I saw it on Dooce like forever ago, but it’s so expensive and yadda yadda yadda, now I just feel like an idiot waiting. I actually got the SB-600, and I looooove it.

And time goes by

Yesterday I spent the day in Portland visiting Michele and little V, who turns a year old next month, which I can scarcely believe. Seriously the thing about life is it doesn’t stop when things get hard, or good, or busy, or crazy, or sad or anything, it just keeps going. Totally reminds me of the Ben Folds song Fred Jones Pt. 2, I digress…

Violet was as happy giggly and crazy as usual, with slightly more teeth.

And these eyelashes!

Okay so yes, she is one next month and as her godmother I want to do something special for her. I was thinking of a sort of ceremony that I’ve heard about where you cook three (?) things for the baby and then offer them up together and the baby chooses between the three and depending on what she chooses it means something about her future. I can’t remember where I heard about this and am probably messing it up totally but I think maybe it’s an Indian or Hindu thing? Does anyone know? Sorry if I’ve offended anyone on my total lack of Hindu knowledge, it’s bad I know, so thanks for any help!

Weekend Photo Journal

This weekend we headed up to the tri-cities to visit Bj’s parents. I don’t really love the trip, well okay I pretty much loath the four or five hours it takes to get there. It gets dark before our trip is over always so I run out of things to do and I’m horrible at just sitting still. It’s weird that I love road trips, but I think that is because we are going somewhere new or looking at some place differently. So I decided to take that approach to our drive and whipped out my camera, looking for interesting sights. The bulk of the drive goes through the Columbia River Gorge, which is pretty, but driving by it fast makes it seems mostly brown and blah. Turning north towards the tri-cities at the end of this section we got some nice setting sun light (my favorite!).

I’m going to guess a cigarette caused this one, why don’t people get in more trouble for tossing those nasty cancer sticks out their car windows? It’s litter! Anyway. the way home was the same light but basically backwards because I could only shoot out the passenger side window so it was like everything was back lit.

Good for the clouds though. I love clouds like this, not the usual gray all over the sky kind so much (those tend to bring lots of drizzle, these are just for looks). We stopped at a viewpoint with the best green benches:

Awe. I love him.

It was actually really chilly with the wind whipping through here but the light read as so warm.

Bj turned the camera on me. And then it got dark. 🙁

Wedding – The Reception

Oh my gosh I’m finally updating, whoo hooo. I didn’t mean to make you hang so long after that last post, oops. But it’s finally getting a bit sunnier and my spirits are up and it’s time for more happy fun wedding pictures. This is going to be the last set I think, I pretty much covered everything. Although on alp+whg I might post all the details, who did what for us and where we got everything as a resource for other brides in the area, since it took a while to track down everything we wanted. I so love looking at these pictures, and I really want to get all my frames up so that I can have them around the house as well. In addition to all of these

First of all since only a handful of people attended our ceremony I wanted to do something so that we could have a kind of entrance. We had the reception start at five and we didn’t walk in until 5:45 ish I think. In between we walked around outside taking pictures. Hmm maybe I will have to do another post about that. So when we were set to come in Emee (our super extraordinary planner ) had everyone line up and in walked all of our attendants before us in pairs, introduced by our Dj, before we walked in "Mr and Mrs William Henry Garrison the fifth!" So exciting. It was great to see all my friends lined up like that. All the pictures snapping I felt like a movie star! We walked straight through to the dance floor to have or first dance.

I chose that black and white floor instead of the normal wood one and love it. Totally went with our black tie dress code. So Ceara sang our first dance as well, which was just so amazing. Brian and Melissa accompanied her so beautifully. It was the same song they did at the

We had listened to all these "wedding bands" but they were too cookie cutter for us, we wanted something different, more romantic and special. Emee suggested Johnny Martin. He plays little gigs at hotels around Portland, but then he knows a bunch of guys who can accompany him when he plays big band stuff. He only does forties music, but that fit perfect with our old school style we were going for. We also had a DJ for MCing and dancing later.

After we danced we went with the wedding party back to the entry way to collect our buttons. Sciarrino and I had made up one for each person, specific to them.

It was attached to the seating card. We did not come up with this idea, it was in a Martha Stewart Wedding mag one year. Can I just tell you we had the most fun doing these. I went to the library and checked out every clip art book. Sciarrino did some cool stuff with colors and text, and that button maker, that thing is a blast.

Bj wanted to have a door prize, to which I was like, "what?" I had never heard of anyone doing that so we came up with this compromise. We had three boxes that corresponded to three keys on the place cards. Our guests went to try their key and the winners got one of three things: an iPod shuffle with "WHG+ALP and our wedding date engraved on the back", a titanium spork, and a DVD of Zoolander. Each gift had a note about why that thing was important to us (we love Apple, we had a year long bet about a spork, and Zoolander was our first date). Oh and before I forget, check out those trees. They were picked by our dear family friends and my dad had them brought up, we put little spots on them and they just added the perfect touch to the room. We also had a candy bar:

Somewhere in here we ate but it was really a blur of eating and congratulating. I don’t think I have any pictures of the food, it was a plated service, salad and then chicken and stuff. I ate like two bites, it was good, but we were just way too busy. Good thing it was almost time for cake:

I have no idea why people cut cake. Anyone know? So this cake was so hard to do. Well it was hard to find someone who would do it. Bj really wanted a hexagon, and we couldn’t find anyone to do that, or any cake we really liked until we went to Joeseph’s bakery. They gave us four miniature cakes to try and we were in love. When we showed them the picture we wanted with all the sugar flowers they went in the back to talk about it and I was afraid it was going to be a million dollars, but it ended up only being five dollars a person. They painted the sugar flowers all different colors of green, layering them together and it was so beautiful. The cake was oh so yummy. Next we brought out the champagne. Remember I had

The toasts were wonderful. Especially Sciarrino’s special toast to my mother for all her help with the wedding. She totally deserved it.

Then I got to dance with my dad. We had no song picked out until like the week before. We wanted something that Johnny could play so we could dance with the live band. It turned our really fun because we danced to Mack the Knife. It was really fun and upbeat, totally us. He had come in that morning to my hotel suite to practice. I was like "dad, quit whipping me around so much." He was all, "oh come on, it’s fun." I replied, "it’s not that, I just don’t have a bra on." hehehe. I was a little more secure in my dress so he swung me around like crazy. So fun.

Then it was time for everyone to get out on the dance floor.

Doesn’t that look cool with all the layers? We took some shots of the Sprague high school alumni:

I love all these people oh so much. Then it was time for a little surprise:

Cotton candy to keep everyone going. So yummy. I could totally have a cotton candy machine in my home. I’d probably die of sugar overdose but yum, yum, yum. By this time things were quieting down a bit, and most of the older people had gone home. I looked over to see Taylor being pestered to death by my little sister and her friend. I had to send the photographer over (so glad I had him stay all night):

Oh Taylor buddy, LOL, sorry! Bj re-enacted our

(uh, hum, ya right). Then it was time to make our mad dash exit, through the tunnel of love:

and we were off.

Could this post BE more picture heavy? I think not. Anyway then we were off to this awesome hotel suite. The next day we had a brunch for everyone who stayed in town, which was so wonderful because so many people had come a ways and we got to see them again. I don’t really have any pictures, but I got all blotchy saying goodbye, so that’s probably a good thing. There you go! If you’d like to see the pictures of us walking around let me know, I put a few up but I have some more fun ones. Oh and just click the category "I’m getting married" to see all the wedding stuff at once. And again all these pictures were taken by our wonderful photographer Eric.