Christmas is Soon!

Over the study break and when I came home, we've been doing lots of baking, baking and more baking — Shortbread, cookie cutouts, chocolate covered pretzels, caramel popcorn, ginger snaps and more! In addition to baking, my dad and I have been decorating them, and then I've been photographing them for iStock on a white background. We had a lot of fun making them, and I'm so happy with the end result! Here are some pictures of our delicious adventures :)

My favourite were the Citrus Snowflake cookies at the top. I was very impressed with my dad's piping skills! 

Emma comes home soon, and I can't wait to have the family all together again!

5/8

I am now 5/8 done my university career, or half way done my third year. I can't believe there's only three more terms to go! It's been a fairly busy December. I went home on the 3rd for a relaxing study break at home — but instead each day was filled with decorating, baking, eating, studying, and taking LOTS of pictures! I have sorted through most, but there are still lots to upload to iStock.

I travelled back to Mississauga on Tuesday, wrote my only two exams on Thursday and Friday, and now I'm home again. I am pretty excited because I have quite a bit on my to-do list this year and I'm only here until January the 3rd.

Hopefully now that I'm home I will have plenty of time to blog, even though the days are filling up more and more. I have fallen behind in the Blogspot world since being busy with exams and trying to keep my photography blog as up to date as possible. I'm looking forward to having a [hopefully] relaxing holiday with friends and family!

Albright-Knox Gallery Tour

Today, a bunch of my Sheridan professors and classmates and I crossed the border for a gallery tour. We went to Buffalo, NY to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. It was a surprisingly short drive, even with the hassle of being stopped at border security. We saw a lot of amazing pieces of art, and many famous works I remember studying in my art history classes.

One of my favourite pieces by far would have to be the scribble wall drawing by Sol Lewitt, shown in the picture below. Yes, it's a drawing. Taking 5,026 hours and 1,717 pencils, this amazing piece is completely mind-blowing! There was also a room on this one photographer who travelled the world based on suggestions of people she had met. The entire wall was filled with mini-photographs.

It was a great day filled with friends, laughter and lots of art!

Art and Art History Awards

This post is looong overdue! On November the 15th, I attended the annual Art and Art History awards at Sheridan. I was informed before that a bunch of my friends and I were all going to receive awards. I was very surprised to see that I had won two awards - Excellence in Sculpture 1 and Excellence in Photography 2. For all of the sculpture award recipients, the sculpture professors had created these fun little sculpture-trophies. Mine is shown below - unfortunately, I dropped it while hugging a friend, but I was able to fix everything except for the plexiglass bird (which was my favourite part). I just love how the one detail says "cut this out." I also won a gift certificate to the Sheridan bookstore as part of the sculpture award, which will definitely come in handy! For the photography award, I won a year membership and a bunch of publications from Gallery 44 in Toronto, which is a centre for contemporary photography. I can't wait to get there and sign up!

Now I am pretty much done my classes - I just have two left on Monday, and then two exams mid-December. I can't believe how fast this term has gone by, but I am also very excited to go home for the holidays after my exams!

Christmas Decorating

When I was home, I was able to take a short break from printing to help my parents decorate the outside of our house for Christmas. It was a lot of fun to put the colourful lights and glass balls on the trees, and we definitely lucked out with the great weather. You may recognize the red ornaments from last Christmas and my iStock portfolio. I'm looking forward to taking more pictures of them when we get some snow! :)

Ready for the Show!

It's November 13th and a while since I've blogged, so here is what has been going on in my life. I have been busy working on my final projects for classes before the holidays. Only 2 more weeks of class to go! I've also been working on the items I will be showing at the "Christmas in the Gallery" art show at the Southampton Art School and Gallery.

I went home last Thursday night so I would have the entire weekend to finish things up for the show. It was an extremely busy, but successful time! A huge thank you goes out to my parents who let me use their ink and printer, for all their great ideas and for helping in all my creative production-lines. Each night I went to sleep with the sounds of our printer working away in my head. 17 calendars, 156 note cards, and 12 framed photos later, all the work is finally done! I am back in Mississauga for the time being, but I can't wait to go home again in December to see my cards and stuff on display!

Here are some pictures of a selection of things I will have in the show:

Hallowe'en

Happy Halloween, everyone!

On Thursday, I completed my part of our class's collaborative mosaic we are making for a kindergarten class in Toronto. It is a large work of Ontario birds and fish. I was lucky enough to get a segment with almost a whole bird! I had so much fun working on it and can't wait to see how the final mosaic will look! Here is a picture of my piece:

Paul was able to visit me this past weekend and we went to a Halloween Party at my friend's house downtown. It was good to see her and we had a lot of fun! On Saturday, we both did some school work, went on a photo adventure at a gorgeous park, and went out for a delicious sushi dinner. On Sunday, we went to a local church, and then we parted and finished up our school work for the week! It was a fast, but very fun weekend!

Photo Blog

I started this blog as a way to share my art with the world, but it very quickly turned into more of a personal blog. I have been toying with the idea of creating a second blog, dedicated to sharing my photography.

On October first, I launched this wordpress blog that will do just that. I kept it "secret" for a while to see if I would be able to keep it up. So far, so good!

I have it linked in the sidebar with my iStock portfolio link, and I have it in my "Favourite Blogs" section as well, so you can easily see when there is a new post. I encourage you all to check it out! Feedback and comments are always welcome :)

Surprise Weekend

On my first post in October, I commented that I couldn't wait to see what surprises October had in store for me. I made sure I specifically used this word, because of an even that Emma and I started planning in August— a Surprise Party to celebrate our parents' 25th Anniversary. We had it planned so that our parents had no idea we would even be home that weekend, so seeing us, and everyone else (including our family from Ignace!) was a complete surprise. I will never forget the look on their faces when they saw us!

Planning an event 3 hours from where Emma and I live entailed a lot of hard work and stress, but with the help of friends and family, we were able to pull everything together to create an almost seamless event. We had such a great time celebrating with our closest family and friends. I wish the visiting never had to end!

I wasn't able to take my camera home, so I will share some pictures my dad's friend took.

Anniversary

Congratulations on 25 years of marriage to the most amazing couple I know. I love you guys so much and you are truly an inspiration to all. :)

Print: Boot Camp

Our first Project in my Print Media was called "Boot Camp." We are silkscreening all term, and the focus of the assignment was to get us used to the process. We had to choose subject matter that involved 4 layers, and make 50 prints in total that were completely unique. My subject was a salt shaker, and this is what it looked like:

Then, since I had to have 49 different prints, I experimented with colouring, layering, transparent ink and composition. I had a lot of fun with this project and learned so much about silkscreening while doing so! Here are a few more prints I made:

Thanksgiving Weekend

This weekend, I went home for Thanksgiving. It was very nice because for a long time my sister and I were debating whether or not to actually go home, but eventually the driving situation worked out, and Paul offered to visit me Friday morning, and then we waited for Emma to arrive on the GO Train and we went home from there. Unfortunately, at the exact time we headed out to pick up Emma, there was a major accident that closed the QEW highway and all the traffic was diverted onto the street we were going to. The drive to pick up Emma turned out to be almost two hours longer than it should have been in the first place!

It was such a relief to finally be home! On Saturday, we did some work around the house, and I started printing photo note cards for the art show and sale this fall. I was able to make 60 in total, mostly winter and Christmas themed, since the show starts in late November. Then I went to Paul's mom's house to celebrate her birthday and Thanksgiving with some of his family and relatives.

Sunday morning consisted of church, a delicious breakfast-lunch, and a photo-adventure drive to enjoy the amazing weather! I have a "Super Real" photo assignment coming up where we have to use photomerge and HDR. I was able to get some good ones with the beautiful fall colours. When we went home, the delicious turkey was ready and we helped make dinner. I also made some Annual Events Calendars for the show, but they required a lot of printing and work, so I made 14 in total.

I had a great weekend home! On Monday, we had the long drive back to Mississauga. On the way, we stopped for lunch at a small picnic area area right beside a beautiful lake.

Now that my fun is over, it's back to the books to study for those darn midterms!

Photo: Double Bind

Our first photography project this year was called the "Double Bind" and focused on binaries and dualities. For my take on the project, I decided to explore both by taking two pictures at the same time and in the same place, but it opposite directions. I used my camera and my dad's camera to take them. I had so much fun with it that I ended up with almost twenty pairings. Here are my favourites all together before I printed them:

Little Jars of Happiness

When I was visiting Emma a couple weekends ago, when we were at the mall, we stumbled across this amazing scented candle! We were at a store that sells an abundance of amazing scents - all in candles, body lotions, candles, shower gels, etc. The store is already addicting as it is, but when we smelled one of their mint-chocolate flavoured candles, we had to get them! I started burning it throughout the week while doing my homework in my room, and I absolutely loved the way it was able to disperse its scent throughout my room, and even to some other parts of the house!

This weekend, I recently purchased two more miniature candles in cute little glass jars. One of them was one I have wanted to get for almost a year now — every time I was in the store I would stop to smell it. The scent of that one is called "sweet pea," and the other one I got is "warm apple pie." Obviously, the apple pie candle smells like apple pie, but I can't describe the sweet pea scent at all, except that it's amazing. Especially since the days are getting colder and colder and darker a lot sooner each day, I love being able to burn my miniature candles to give me a little bit of warmth, light, and a great scent while I work!

October

October is finally here! For me, this means one of my favourite seasons has begun. After a crazy combination of hot and cold, cloudy and sunny, nice and rainy days in September, the temperature is finally cooling down into a steady pattern. I am excited to break into my fall wardrobe of long sleeve shirts, jeans, boots, sweaters, and my favourite: scarves! If I had all the money in the world, I would have a few closets dedicated to this addiction.

This is my first weekend since moving to Mississauga that I have nothing planned, and surprisingly, I am happy about that. I had so much fun visiting with Paul, watching my two good friends get married, spending time with Chelsey and going to see Emma, but they did create for some busy weekends. Now I can finally relax, organize, work on my projects and start making study notes for my upcoming midterms. I'm also getting some pictures together to display in the Southampton Art School and Gallery later this fall.

I am very excited for October and all of the people, projects, experiences, events, and surprises it will bring!

Awake!

It's after 11 pm on Sunday night and I should go to bed soon, but I wanted to blog since I haven't in a while. This weekend was very busy, but also very fun - which is the BEST possible kind of busy! On friday, I met up with Chelsey and we spent the afternoon catching up on each others' lives since we saw each other in August. For dinner, we went to a nice restaurant in Oakville for their "Taste of Oakville" festival. We chose a mediterranean place which was cozy and very delicious, and even provided leftovers for today's dinner!

That night, I hopped on a GO Train and headed to Emma's new place. I meant to only stay until yesterday but we ended up having so much fun that we extended our visit until today (which is actually quite typical, if you know us). We went to the mall, beach, lounged about at her house, got some work done and had an adventurous time getting dinner on Saturday night! I was able to meet the family she is staying with while on co-op. They are very sweet and Emma is fortunate to live with such nice people.

I also took some pictures for my photography project. Here is one overlooking the city and train tracks:

Taylor and Josh's Wedding

Yesterday I had the privilege of being a part of a very special event - my friends Taylor and Josh's wedding. I met Taylor on the very first day of high school in 2005. In grade 10, she started dating Josh and they have been together ever since. I was so excited when I heard they were engaged in February earlier this year, and even more excited that she chose me to be one of her bridesmaids!

Their wedding was a truly beautiful event! I had so much fun getting ready, dressing up and talking and laughing with Taylor and the other bridesmaids. Taylor made an absolutely gorgeous bride! The ceremony went surprisingly well for me — I thought either I would stumble down the aisle or sob through the whole thing — but I walked fine (despite the 3-inch heels) and was too excited for them to cry (although I came close)! I will never forget the look on Josh's face when he saw Taylor coming down the aisle with her father, and the smiles on their faces when they were pronounced husband and wife.

The photo shoot was a blast and the photographer was absolutely amazing! I can't wait to see them on his website when he updates it. We had a lot of fun doing different poses and watching Taylor and Josh get their pictures taken. The reception was also very fun. By that time, I still couldn't believe I was sitting at the head table — I felt so honoured to be part of their day! I'm so excited for them to begin their new stage of life together and hope they have a truly amazing honeymoon this week :)

Photo credit goes to my amazing mom and dad!

Thoughts on Week 1

After my first week of classes, I think I am in for a good semester. All of my studios — Print Media II, Photography III and Experimentation in Past and Present Techniques — seem awesome! Since they are all classes that I have chosen myself (and aren't courses I have to take), I know I will enjoy them all. It also looks like I won't have to buy too many supplies or materials on my own for them also, which makes me, and my wallet, very happy. I am already working away on my first projects in all of them and I'm excited to share them when they are done!

My UTM classes are Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology and Baroque Art and Architecture, which are classes I kind of have to take, so I'm not extremely excited about them, but they seem like they will be fine! I actually haven't taken Baroque yet since classes started on Tuesday and it is on Mondays.

This weekend, Paul drove down for a visit and we ended up having a great time! We explored Mississauga both on foot and in car, but not on public transit — a first! This year, Paul has his own car and it is very nice to have him drive me around! We went for a walk to enjoy the beautiful weather (especially after the cold spell we had) and ended up geocaching! There are a lot around where I live so we will have to find them before the snow arrives! We also went for a nice sushi dinner to celebrate the fact that we've been dating for 4 years. It sound like a really long time, but definitely doesn't feel like it!

#100!

Today, I woke up to go to my first day of school, but before I headed out, I checked my computer because there was something I was checking for. I checked my iStock, and as I had hoped for, I got my 100th download! This was the picture that sold:

My first day of class was really good! Besides the Sheridan strike complicating transportation, all my classes went well and I'm really excited for the upcoming term. Photo III started off with a lesson on custom white balance, something I was never able to figure out before today. I'm writing a quick post so I can go downstairs and hang out with my new roommates and catch up on how our days were, so I will leave you with another picture from iStock that I sold today, and is very appropriate for the first day of class:

PS. If you like my new blog background, check out the site www.patterncooler.com — you can pick from so many background patterns and even change the colours and scale!

Moved in

Today, my amazing parents helped move me back in to my townhouse from last year in Mississauga. I've pretty much unpacked everything and I'm ready for my first day of class tomorrow — Print Media II and Photography III. It's kind of amusing to me how my Sheridan classes take up so much of my schedule. This term, I have 18 hours of studio classes and only 5 hours of class at the university! Below is a picture of my room this year. It is basically the same as last year, but I rearranged my desk and have a new dresser. I also have two new roommates who seem very nice! I'm excited to get to know them better as the year progresses!

Maternity Photos

On Sunday I had the opportunity to take some pictures for a friend during her pregnancy. It was so much fun and the two of them made a great couple! I am so thankful for the opportunity to take some pictures for them!

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