The Nifty Foodie's Life

A while back, I entered Millie for a pet photography contest sponsored by local photographer, Lacey Rabalais. As you may already know (especially if you follow me on Twitter), I take TONS of pictures of Millie, mostly on my iPhone, but none of them are anywhere close to looking frame-worthy.

I thought winning this mini session would be a great opportunity for Millie to run around, let loose and get photos of her in her prime hyper, happy element. Luckily, because of friends (and some readers), Millie won the free session!!

When Millie saw Lacey with that camera, it became a fun game of **catch me if you can** for her. She was running in circles, and whenever she finally calmed down for a picture, she started running again. Eventually, her little puppy-ness caught up to her and she calmed down for some tremendously adorable photos!

Check them out here!

I have to say, Lacey really did an awesome job with Millie. She played right along with her and was very patient with our excited puppy. Her photographs perfectly captured Millie’s personality too. I look at every single photo, and tell myself that’s SO her ::insert emotion here:: face. It’s so wonderful to have these captured in photos. Thank you, Lacey!

After Millie’s session, Lacey graciously offered to host a pet photography session GIVEAWAY on my blog!! Wahoo!!

Credit: Lacey Rabalais Photography

This is only for my local Baton Rouge area readers, though, since Lacey can’t exactly drive to Vermont or say, Paris in 10 minutes.

Also, check out Lacey’s specials this month for Military Families, Families with adopted children, and of course, for your PETS!

Giveaway Details:

• One person will be randomly chosen to win a free 30 minute session, which includes an online gallery to view your pictures and also, receive a disc of 10 images from the shoot.
• TO ENTER: Just leave a comment here or on Lacey’s blog about your lovely pet or pets by Sunday, November 7th at 11:59pm.
• You must live in the Baton Rouge area to be eligible to win.

Best of luck!

No, there’s no baby secret here. It’s been a little over 9 months since my husband and I got married. Yeah, time really is flying!

So, way back in the engaged days, we met with my photographer who had these GORGEOUS sample albums. I had no idea where she got them from, but my cheap self didn’t want to ask since she designed them (Sorry Amanda for my cheapness…). So, I googled the heck out of flush mount albums and found these.

I was still feeling cheap, so I couldn’t buy these on any old website. No sirree…I checked eBay and found ONE. One 8×10 10 page album (holds 20 photos) for $35. Talk about lucky….I was ecstatic and bought it up!

After the wedding, I knew that I wanted to print out 8×10′s for this album, but heck, I was broke and the price of 8×10′s on Mpix, which was recommended by my photographer, were WAY too high.

Fast forward nine months, I get an AWESOME email from Mpix saying 8×10′s are 50% off!!! So, I did not hesitate to print 20 8×10′s for $30 total. I printed them on metallic paper, because I’ve ordered those before and I think it just makes the colors POP. It’s not super metallic, just slightly shimmery. I highly recommend printing pictures on that paper through Mpix. They have great sales pretty often on printing too!

So, just a disclaimer, I’m not good at taking beautiful pictures of albums, so just imagine these 1000 times prettier. They totally are!

I’m so glad to have finally finished this book. Since we don’t have a coffee table, it’s resting soundly on the mantle against the wall behind a wedding figurine we got. I can’t wait to show this beauty off!

Ever since I’ve gotten into blogging, I’ve always wondered about people who would want to take my blog content. I mean, I just have a measly WordPress, but you never know if someone is out there to steal your great ideas and get the credit that is due to you!

Luckily, from what I’ve seen, no one has stolen images and credit has been linked back to my blog when fellow bloggers use my ideas. However, just to prepare myself, I got my two blogs copyrighted.

Image source

MyFreeCopyright is a website that allows you to copyright your blogs or other creations for free. If it did come down to it, this would serve as proof that your entries were originally from your blog. In my opinion, it’s better than nothing, and heck, what does it hurt?

So, what are you waiting for? Copyright your blog!

I’ve always been intimidated by Adobe Photoshop. I’m not very good with graphics, and what do all of these tools really mean anyway? Bleh, I didn’t care….

So, I never really gave it a second thought to edit my photos. However, lately, it seems that a lot of people do indeed use Photoshop or some editing software to make their pictures really pop! So, when I started seeing beautiful pictures on blogs, I decided to play around a bit.

That’s when I found a FREE Photoshop online. It allows you to edit your pictures enough to where it truly makes a difference!

Uhm and it’s virtually made for dummies. It offers tools with easy to understand names, which really motivated me to make a pretty picture!

For example, here is a picture of the watermelon sorbet I made last night. I took a picture of it on digital macro setting with my Canon SD1100IS. Nothing to be impressed over, really!

I thought it looked great! That is, until I uploaded it to Photoshop, went into “edit” mode with it and did some magic. I can’t remember exactly what I did, but it involved sharpening, saturation and exposure. I just really played with it, but I think it made a HUGE difference!

Doesn’t it look tasty? I think I shall have another bowl when I go home!

If you have been intimidated by Photoshop before, trust me, I figured this out on my own. You can totally do it too!