Hello? Is this thing on?

I started blogging years ago. Back when I had far fewer children, much more time, and many more functioning brain cells. I blogged about recipes, homemaking, Christianity....life. And then I started my business. At first I only blogged business sessions. Then I heard suggestions that I should blog about myself too so that my clients can get to know me before they book a session. I tried that, but honestly, it was hard to find a balance. I didn't want my clients to know everything about me or I figured they would never book a session at all! ;)

Now I'm back to being business-free. With more children, perpetually less time than I had the day before, and.....not many functioning brain cells.

(Coffee boosts that a little bit - or at least masks it - but I still don't think I can completely pull the wool over anyone's eyes on that one.)

When I announced the closing of my business, I stopped blogging client sessions and made the decision to keep my business blog address (this one) and turn it into a personal blog for a few reasons:

1. There was nothing in the title that would infer that this a business blog. I'd like to pretend I'm awesome like Ana White and just named my blog after myself due to that awesomeness. (Because she IS. Awesome.) But in reality, I only originally labeled it HeidiStoneBlog.com because HeidiStonePhotography.com was already in use for my business website.

2. I had just paid for a 2-year renewal on this web address. And I'm cheap. Somehow it seems like a better use of money to just use the address I already have than to let it go completely to waste.

All that to say, here I am. And what I'm wondering now is.....am I talking to myself? Has anyone actually followed me around from blog to blog over the years? Do only my close friends read this blog? Do my close friends even read this blog? Mom? Anyone?

SO. If you would be so kind, would you mind leaving just a one-word comment below to let me know I have some sort of readership?

I mean, I know there are like....at least two of you. Website traffic reports are only so accurate. Even if I have no readers, I'll still keep blogging. But you know, I'm just curious.

In The Hard Stuff

Distractable

I would certainly label myself as easily distracted. Occasionally this can be a good thing, but overall it's just not. This afternoon started out as normal. I put the younger kids into their naps and hopped onto my computer to check Facebook before heading back downstairs. After a few minutes half an hour, I realized I should probably get on with my day. I switched the laundry and pondered how old my (now seven-year-old) son would need to be in order to send him a mile up the street, across a busy intersection and to McDonald's to buy me a Coke. My mind decided on "older", which was all that really mattered.

When I got downstairs, I realized that I needed to photograph one more set for my sister-in-law's maternity album. This particular set includes chocolate. (What maternity album would be complete without a picture of chocolate?) So I reached up above our sink to find our s'mores goodies stash. My hands found no chocolate, so I grabbed a chair and heaved myself up there to see what was up.

I did find the chocolate, which seemed soft. (I've noticed that before in that cabinet. I think it must be our fluorescent light underneath or something.) But I also noticed marshmallows.......

Which were promptly made into Rice Krispie treats and gobbled up.

And this is why my kids say I look like I have a baby in my belly all the time.

The end.

Bye Bye, Studio

As if I needed a final goodbye to my business, last week we tore down the wall which we had built 3 years ago to create my small studio.

In May of 2009, here's what we made:



It was a cute little room and it served its purpose quite well over the past few years. It even lived through a total floor renovation.

Here's the view from the kitchen:



It was a little tight, even with our table going leafless in the above picture. I was getting a little crazy with the tiny size of our kitchen. I mean, it's not that it's that tiny, but we do have seven people eating around that table multiple times a day. So in that regard, it was pretty cramped.

Anyway, last Saturday evening we took down the wall. It was constructed in such a way that it really wasn't all that difficult. The bottom had been glued to the concrete floor and the top and sides were secured with screws. My husband always joked about how unsecured the wall really was, but I kind of laughed when I realized that he was kind of serious about that.

It didn't take us long to bring down the wall.



As soon as it was down, I felt a rush of freedom fall over me.



I was getting my open floorplan back! And I didn't even know how much I had missed it!

(Please ignore my insanely messy kitchen. It was a Saturday. And clean kitchens and weekends just don't mesh well around here.)



We're smart folks, so we do this kinda thing barefoot.

Anyway, after we pieced it up and dragged it out to the garage, I was left with this:



YAY!!! I can see into the kitchen from the far side of the living room now!



We obviously need to insert another row of laminate there and fix up the ceiling a bit, but that'll be coming one of these days weeks. For now, I am perfectly content with my almost-back-to-normal kitchen. :)



And I'll be sure to post pictures when it really IS back together.

The Best Part

A garage sale.
Why on earth would I think that having a garage sale with five kids running wild would be a good idea?

Oh wait, I know. Because our freezer is crap and we need to buy a new one and because it seems more fiscally responsible to sell our junk to other junk-seekers in order to get money to buy a new freezer rather than just donate it and take a loss.

So as I ran our garage sale today, I considered what the best part of having a garage sale could be. And I think I've figured it out.

The best part of having a garage sale is.....

making $50 for all your hard work.

coming inside to find the unimaginable mess your kids were able to create in less than six hours.

closing up shop just before a big rush of would-have-been potential buyers arrive at your neighbor's garage sale.

wishing you were drinking a fountain Coke but realizing that you can't go get one because you're running a garage sale.

going to the neighbor's garage sale and buying things to put in your house that will probably be in your garage sale next year.

Well.....I thought I had figured it out.
I'll keep you posted on that.

Keepin' It Real: My Shower Is Neglected

I have always hated cleaning the shower. And let me tell you why:
Because I never clean it.

I know how that sounds. And I know what you're thinking. And you're right.
But it's just. so. hard. when I hate doing it so much.

So anyway, today after my shower I thought to myself how maybe if I cleaned it right after my shower while the bathroom was all steamy and everything was already wet - maybe THEN it wouldn't be so stinking hard to clean.

So I grabbed some baking soda, sprinkled it around and then, figuring THIS time would be so much easier than all those OTHER (three) times I've cleaned my shower, I went to grab some vinegar.

So vinegar and baking soda are pretty standard cleaners for me around here. I use them in all sorts of cleaning concoctions alongside sea salt, lemon juice, and a few other miscellaneous ingredients. But again, THIS time would be so much easier. So I just grabbed the vinegar. And some paper towels.

I sprayed the vinegar onto the baking soda and watched it fizzle up like that volcano experiment you do in third grade. Then I got to scrubbing.

I was surprised how quickly things seemed to be improving, but there was still a LONG way to go before shower perfection was to be reached. After a few minutes, I recalled that some people (probably most) use a rag for cleaning their home.

I have always considered the idea of using a rag to clean, say, my toilets.....really disgusting.
I'm sorry, but I have. And if you clean your toilets with a rag, by all means, carry on. But it's just not for me.

However, seeing as I was working in the shower, I thought this would be acceptable so I called for my servant boy son to bring me a rag and set to work with that.

WOAH.

What the heck? Is this seriously the only thing I have needed all these years to make my shower look amazing?

I feel so ashamed and (eh hem) a little stupid for not knowing the power of a rag over paper towel when cleaning! The simple combination of baking soda and vinegar seemed to be helping a lot too - and I did start straight out of the shower (though it was pretty much dry by the time I actually started scrubbing) - so I can't say for sure what the clincher really was, BUT....

I am super-dee-duper happy that my shower is cleeeeeeeeeeaaaan!!

And to prove it, here's a crappy iPhone picture:



Just pretend it's a good picture, would you?
Thanks.

And now, I must ask....
Does anyone know if it was the rag power or the volcanic activity that actually did the trick?

Indiana Dunes

Last month we visited Indiana Dunes for the first time ever.

It was.....pretty awesome. Living in Indiana, the land of NO STINKING WATER, has been a little difficult for me over the years. I grew up in western Wisconsin where we have just as many lakes as Minnesota but without the awesome state catch phrase. In fact, when I first moved here, I asked my husband where they swam. And do you know what he said??

The pool.

LAAAAAAAAME.

So anyway, in case you haven't ever been to Indiana, I'm just warning you now. Don't bother looking for a lake to swim in. Because there are like....two. In the WHOLE. STATE.

But back to vacation...

We arrived at the beach around lunchtime on the weekend of the 4th of July. Possibly not the best planning, but thankfully Lake Michigan is pretty big so we still fit. It was gorgeous.



And also, it was 8000 degrees with some thin clouds in the sky. So we put on sunscreen.

We set up camp and attempted to create a makeshift tent canopy thing using our stroller, towels, and several random "weights" like our cooler and large sticks found at the end of the sand.

We're high class people.

The whole canopy thing really didn't work, so then I just resorted to covering up my babe's skin as much as possible by keeping him in the shade of a towel.

We spent several hours in the sun - though we had no idea exactly how many hours because we had left all our electronic devices in the van to bake. So after...um, a while....we decided we should probably consider heading home. But of course, the kids had been dying to run up the giant sand dune behind us, so we figured we'd better oblige or else face unbearable amounts of whining all the way back to van and until they passed out on the way home.

(I'm just kidding. We have good kids. Sort of.)

We walked across the sandy beach to get there and by the time we reached the bottom of the dune, I was ready for a large Coke and a barn fan in my face.



Once I caught my breath, I realized that the pictures I had seen online simply didn't do this place justice. And I know mine don't either. You really have to SEE it to...um....see it. It's pretty incredible.

The kids, having an endless supply of energy, ran up right away. And then I waddled my way up after them, figuring the view was probably much cooler at the top.

It wasn't.

No, I'm just kidding. It was cool. But probably not worth the 8 gallons of sweat I deposited in the sand on the way up.

To commemorate the event, I took 110 pictures of the kids all grouped together. (I know, I know. But it's the curse of the digital era.) They pretty much all looked like this:



So I'm not going to show you the other 109.
It just seems like the right thing to do.
You're welcome.

I don't really remember much about going back down the dune. I think I might have just rolled my chubby self all the way to the bottom. At any rate, I thought it would be fun to take pictures of the kids coming down, so I forced them to wait until I made it and was poised and ready.

(I've always kind of hated that phrase. "Poised and ready.")

So they started running. And I started photographing.







They seemed to have a much better time doing this than I did. But again, I don't really remember. I think the sand burnt through my feet and all the way up my body to my brain cells.

When the kids reached the bottom, Keaton said that he had thrown his flip-flops at some point running down, so I sent him back up to look for them. He found one. ONE.

*sigh*

While he was searching, I took a picture of a seagull. (Lake gull?)



And then they closed the beach due to "dangerous conditions". So we left.

The end.