Lest We Forget

“In war, there are no unwounded soldiers” ~ Jose Narosky.

More Photos from the Wedding

We got the rest of our photos a little while ago.

I am not at all surprised to say that we love them!!

Gen did a fantastic job!

The majority of the photos are in a Facebook album.

I am working on something special for a few people in terms of presenting them.

I am also, of course, looking at prints for around the house as well.

(Photo in this post are Copyright © 2012, Genevieve Georget/Fifteen:Fifty-One Photography. http://www.fifteenfiftyone.ca/)

Wedding Photos

Normally I don't check my phone until we are in the car driving to the office, but for some reason this morning when I woke up, I turned towards my bedside table and saw my phones charging away and I had the urge to check them for messages. There were emails for work, emails for Stephanie Beach Photography emails from friends and of course emails from spammers. There were a couple texts and a bunch of Facebook posts (mostly likes and comments on photos I posted yesterday). And then there was a tag from fifteen:fifty-one photography and that made my morning. It was 6am and my day was already good - thanks Gen!! :)

The above and below photos are screenshot captures I 'borrowed' from Gen's blog (Photo Copyright © 2012, Genevieve Georget/Fifteen:Fifty-One Photography. http://www.fifteenfiftyone.ca/) --- hopefully she doesn't mind. :) I was trying to choose my favourites from all the photos, and kept changing my mind between so many of them, so you get these two here and the rest are on Gen's blog until we get our awesome little CD next weekish.

My Summer Rollercoaster

I have never really enjoyed roller-coasters. When I was a kid, I could tolerate them, but did not enjoy them. When the family would head to Canada Wonderland or even during our trip to Disney World, my mom and brother would venture onto the craziest of rides while my dad and I sat quietly watching our crazy family members. To this day, I do not understand the thrill and can no longer even tolerate the beasts. But I go on them every once in a while to make sure my dislike of them is still valid and every time I do, I come out a little worse for wear, but alive. To say that the last few months have been a roller-coaster ride with all those dizzying highs and nauseating lows, barely even begins to cover it.

For just under the last two years, Dave and I have been planning our Fall wedding. Since it was a long engagement, we ended up having this vision of our wedding being way off in the future of Fall 2012. It was beautiful and awesome all at the same time, our friends and families were having a ton of fun and Dave and I looked amazing in our wedding clothes. But, it was still way off in the future, something we could enjoy planning and looking forward to, but nothing to worry about. It was 'round about 3 months ago that I realized that it wasn't way off in the future anymore and that we needed to step our planning into high gear.

For whatever reason, there was absolutely no slow period at work and as a result, we ended up working very long hours at the office and trying to squeeze our regular gym appointments and now all the new wedding meetings/tasks into the mix. It resulted in a lot of stress, some of it inevitable, while some of it was completely avoidable and yet wasn't avoided.

Next came raise time at work. This was at first abysmal but after some very good conversations with my boss' boss, it got resolved for the better and I was moved from hourly to salary and was given a much more tolerable raise. In fact, as stressful and upsetting as this time was, the actual process, was pretty straight-forward and pleasant as everyone pretty much agreed with my position. But it left me feeling nauseated nonetheless.

The 2 month mark quickly came and I was really feeling the physical and emotional draining that was happening to both myself and Dave. To be able to meet deadlines both in my professional lives as well as my personal life, I had to take some time away from blogging and to be honest, pretty much everything other than work, going to the gym, and wedding planning. There was time for friends and family, but even that was cut shorter than I would have liked due to work and stress loads.

Then, about a month before the wedding, my grandfather was suddenly hospitalized. It left my entire family in an awful state. My mom drove roughly 3 hours a day to visit him with my aunt and getting the updates from her was not only difficult because it was pretty clear that he would not pull through, but also because of the pain and sadness I could hear in my mom's voice each time we spoke.

Two weeks before the wedding, he passed away. There was a private graveside memorial attended by his family and closest friends where he was laid to rest beside my grandmother. It was quiet and peaceful, exactly what he wanted. As a child, you are sad because a family member is no longer around. As an adult, you understand what has happened not only to the one who passed, but to everyone else as well. You can visualize the unspeakably painful day when your own parents become sick and you are forced to deal with their mortality.

Luckily, we have a really amazing circle of friends and family who supported Dave and I through this time and some great co-workers who picked up our workloads so we could take a day or two off to try to cope and spend time with our family.

We returned to our wedding planning and trying to get things settled at least somewhat at work. After a very long last week at work, we had made it - 2 glorious weeks off! We spent the week before the wedding not paying attention to work emails and tying up all the lose ends for the big event. We made lots of ribbon flowers and decorations; managed to pick up over 600 bulbs that we had ordered and get them into our wedding favours a few days before-hand (thanks mom and dad); arranged drop-off times and locations with vendors; finalized and issued schedules for the wedding party and our families; picked up suits and dresses; and did what seems like a million other things. The rehearsal day came, and I was super stressed and a little nervous. Everyone got there eventually and things went pretty smoothly for the rest of the night.

Something happened that night though, as at some point while I was sleeping, all my worries drifted away. When I awoke, I was super calm and stress- and worry-free. I came to the mindset of, if something went wrong, it didn't matter, there was little to nothing I could do about it now and I had done my very best up until this point. I am not sure how I got to this mindset, as that is typically not my style whatsoever, but it was a great place to be for my wedding day.

This post is longer than I had anticipated, so I will not go into great detail here about the wedding day itself, mostly because I feel it deserves it's own post, but let me just say it was amazingly awesome. There were a few tiny hiccups, but nothing that mattered then and definitely nothing that matters now. It was a beautiful day and I came out of it as a wife to a loving and caring man, who I love more than life itself. I am now Mrs. Koning and all of the roller-coaster lows of this summer are made a little easier to handle by this fact. I am honestly and truly happy.

As a reward for getting through this post, I am going to share the following image with you. Dave and I took it on Honeymoon #1 to Niagara Falls. My camera had felt a little neglected this summer so gave it lots of attention during this trip and I hope that the next year of traveling and honeymoons makes it feel loved.

Mrs. Koning

I was away for quite some time as you may or may not have noticed, but while I was away I got hitched and am now Mrs. Koning!!

The wedding was amazing and I am now married to an amazing, loving man who makes me very happy. I will likely be posting more about the wedding in the future, but for now, please enjoy the above photo from our wedding photographer, Genevieve Georget of Fifteen:Fifty-One Photography.

Buttermilk

This goat is awesome --- but also kind of a dick.

Stephanie Beach Photography Blog

I have officially launched the new and improved Stephanie Beach Photography blog!! Come over and check it out. There are lots of new posts for our most recent work and even the past blog posts have been updated!!

Absent due to Major Changes

You may have noticed my absence on my blogs as of late. Not only are Dave and I very busy with our wedding preparations (which I am hoping to update you all with shortly), I am also working on some BIG changes for my blogs and for my photography business overall.

Some of the changes need a fair bit more research before I can announce them, but the changes for my photography blog should be ready sometime this weekend!! Hopefully the changes for this blog won't be far behind.

I am super excited to share it all with you and I hope you check in to see what's going on.

99

number of days unil wedding = number of luftballons

number of days until wedding = number of problems (of which a b!itch is not one)

101

number of days until wedding = number of Disney dalmatians

That time of the Year again

So like the title says, it’s that time of the year again when work gets insanely busy and so does my personal life. The time of the year in which I realize I am getting old. The time in the year when I want to get so much accomplished and yet have no time to do anything.
Don’t get me wrong, March is one of my favourite months (not only because it is my birthday month), but right now I am just feeling a little overburdened and really want this month to be over so maybe, just maybe I will have time to myself.

One Minute Writer #58

Complete this thought: I usually forget...

a) anything I am trying to remember
Like a lot of people, I will leave a room with the clear intention of something specific. It may be going to pick something up, starting a new task, or looking into something I need an answer about. I will get to moving and halfway there I will forget what I was going to do or get. Sometimes I will have the clear intention of getting something from upstairs, decide along the way that I should go to the washroom and then forget to get or do the thing that made me go upstairs in the first place. It is very annoying.

b) my iPod before I head to bed
Almost every night, I listen to my iPod to fall asleep. This happens to be the same iPod I take to work with me on occasion and the one that goes with me to the gym to help me workout. 9 times out of 10, I will forget to take it upstairs with me and will get settled in bed only to have to get up and go back downstairs to get it from my purse or gym bag. Also very annoying.

OPI Spotlight#1 (and #2)

So I didn’t forget about this and instead have a one-two-punch as my first OPI nail polish spotlight.

The photo shows Kyoto Pearl with Red Shatter on top. This combo makes me think of candy canes, though having done this shortly after Christmas, the season might have had some influence on that opinion.
To be honest, when I bought Kyoto Pearl and tried it on its own, I wasn’t entirely happy with it as you could see the brush lines even after two coats. It covered well, but I really didn’t like those brush lines. That being said, it is the perfect undercoat for shatters!!
Shatters in general are really neat but as you have little to no control on how the shatter splits up, the overall look can go many ways. For example, I loved how this looked on my thumb (pictured above) but wasn’t entirely happy how it shattered on a few of my other fingers.
One downside to shatters, for me at least, is that the shatter results in a 3D effect on your nails. This sounds cool and was neat, but it left me with lots of little bits I could pick away at on my nails and as trying to not pick at my nails is one of the main reasons I use nail polish, this kind of defeated the purpose.

The Day the Honey Ran Out

Dave and I recently celebrated our 8-year anniversary. For the occasion I decided to make an extremely delicious strawberry shortcake dessert. To try to make things fit into our new lifestyle a little better, I decided to sweeten it with honey rather than white sugar. I managed to get enough honey for the dessert, but I had to decapitate my honey bear in order to get the very last bits of honey from the jar.

Dessert was delicious though (recipe will be posted later this week on Road to a Better Me).

A Colourful Addiction Part II

So Christmas has come and gone and my OPI addiction has been fed for the time being. An updated list is below of the colours I now own. Italics denotes a new colour.

OPI Name	General Description
Top Coat	N/A
Natural Nail Base Coat	N/A
Natural Nail Strengthener	N/A
Kyoto Pearl	a Sheen-like White
Give Me the Moon	Iridescent Light Purple
A Grape Fit	Medium Purple
Honk if you Love OPI	Dark Purple
Suzi Says Feng Shui	Medium Blue
Yoga-ta Get this Blue	Dark Sparkly Blue
Jade is the New Black	Medium Green
Steady as she Rose	Light Rose/Pink
Suzi & the Lifeguard	Medium-light Sparkly Pink
My Address is ‘Hollywood’	Medium Sparkly Pink
Bogata Blackberry	Dark Sparkly Burgundy
Malaga Wine	Dark Burgundy
Teenage Dreams	Glitter Pink
Black Shatter	N/A
Red Shatter	N/A
My Private Jet	sparkly black/bronze
Funny Bunny	plain white
Black Onyx	black
Over the Taupe	taupe
Otherwise Engaged	sheer pink
I Vant to be a Lone-Star	light sparkly blue
Stranger Tides	pale dusty green

 

As I now have so many, I am thinking of doing some photos and/or descriptive reviews of them now and then. Who knows though, there is a lot going on right now and I very well may forget about this.

I am looking forward to the release of OPI’s Spring collection called Holland. It has some sparkly colours, pale colours and more intense colours. A nice range of colours that I want to own.

2011 in Review

This year-in-review post is a little late as we are nearing the end of January now, but better late than never right? Let’s see, 2011 was a pretty big year for me and my family. I think the biggest things that happened are pretty obvious but let’s try to go through things chronologically shall we.

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January 2011
Dave and I announced our engagement. Since Dave proposed on the 30th of December in 2010, we did most of the announcing early in 2011. Our families and closest were informed that day after he proposed, but the world found out through Facebook and this blog in January.

February 2011
This was a big month for me. Not only did I learn that my brother would be having a boy (and I would therefore be getting a nephew), but on February 28, 2011 I officially started Stephanie Beach Photography as a small business. I got a domain name, website host and design and got an official business number from the Province of Ontario. It was an exciting and somewhat scary time for me, but I am very glad I did it.

March 2011
My birthday happens every year, but this year, as I turned 27, I think I might have moved from mid- to late-20s. It is a scary thought, but I think I am getting old!

This was also about the time when I got my own office. An office at work with a four real walls and an actual door. It is still pretty awesome. My own office came with a larger workload and much larger jobs to manage. Though I had shadow managed jobs before, I started working on even larger jobs as a shadow project manager around this time as well.

April 2011
April was the month where Dave and I searched for and purchased our first home. We wouldn’t get possession of it and move in until later, but the exciting purchasing process definitely happened here.

April was also the month where Dave and I joined Goodlife Fitness and signed up for personal trainers. It was (and still is) expensive, but we have been going ever since and I am glad we started and stuck with it.

May 2011
Though it may not seem like much, May 2011 was when I learnt that my 2009 accident had come full circle. An advance green light was installed at the intersection where I was t-boned. It left me with a weird, but satisfied feeling.

May 10, 2011 was the day my baby was brought to me…my Nikon D3s arrived in the mail! It was a wonderful evening and the next few months allowed me the time to really learn the amazing abilities that my full-frame camera has to offer.

June 2011
Dave and I got our house! It was purchased 6 weeks prior to us moving in on June 15, 2011. At the same time, my brother purchased his house (literally we put offers down on the same weekend and ended up closing on the same day). We have been here for over 7 months now and I still love my house! We have done some work on it, mostly painting, organizing and decorating but we are planning more significant updates later on.
July 2011
Jackson Robert was born on July 19, 2011. He was (and still is) adorably perfect and I love him to bits. My only wish is that I had more free time and could go visit him more, perhaps I will plan a trip to go see him in the next couple of weeks.

July was also a big month for my photography business as I shot my first wedding as the sole wedding photographer.

August 2011

As Dave and I had combined our bank accounts when we purchased our house, I had been spending the months following that event making sure all of my automatic payments, etc. had ceased or been transferred from my old account. August was the last of my ‘student plan’ capabilities at BMO and I therefore closed my very first bank account. My mom and I opened my BMO account when I was 12 or so as I had  gotten a paper route. I remember going to South Keys or Meadowlands with Chris to get to a BMO ATM when we were in school and getting a PLoC for when Dave and I bought the Honda Fit (though we didn’t end up using it then). Good memories, but the account wasn’t worth the bank fees. Seriously, why would I pay bank fees?

September 2011
This was the second quiet month for The Great Abyss (and my other blogs too). I was struggling to keep my head above water. To be honest, I still haven’t figured it all out and have been getting more and more comments from friends, family and even clients about how I manage to do everything that is currently sitting on my heaping plate. I could be doing much better if I focused on one job rather than the two official ones I have. I could be organizing my wedding in a much more timely fashion if I so chose. But I have chosen to try and do a great deal right now and I am doing okay at it (in my opinion).

October 2011
October was primarily spent trying to get things straightened out. It was the first time in my life that I knowingly carried a balance on a credit card and ended up having to take money from my personal line of credit to deal with it. This didn’t last long as before the year was done, any debt Dave and I had was taken care of, but it was an uneasy and uncomfortable time for me.

November 2011

Dave and I put chose our venue and put down the deposit, making our wedding date officially September 29, 2012.

November was also the month in which I finished my first conceptual photography series. I am very pleased with how 99 Luftballoons turned out and have received many great comments/reviews from friends, family, classmates and followers on the internet (aka strangers).  The final product and the responses from everyone have inspired me to think of more conceptual ideas and work towards getting them completed. You can view the images on Flickr (link above) and there will be a series of posts on my Photography Blog shortly.

December 2011

After a long search (I may have been looking for all of 2011), Dave and I selected our wedding photographer. We put down the deposit and are very happy with our choice.

December was also the month in which I finished my last course of the Algonquin College Digital Photography program. Though I got my grade in January, the last class was in December. I am very happy to be done with the program and have learnt so much. More to come on this later on my Photography Blog.

And of course, Dec. 30, 2011 marked one year since Dave and I got engaged.

 

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So that was pretty much 2011. Some of the items above are a little forced to be able to get something in each month (you may have noticed). The big ones are obvious as I said before. Announcement of our engagement, birth of my nephew, purchase of our first home and starting my business officially. I started working towards my photographic dreams by starting as a wedding photographer and a conceptual photographer. I also started taking on much larger jobs at work as a project manager and shadow managing on even larger jobs earning myself my own office.

My goals for 2012 are pretty simple. I want to have a great wedding that everyone enjoys; continue advancing my photography business; continue working on my conceptual photography ideas; get closer to achieving my health goals; start my travel goals; and continue to make our home truly our own. I am also looking forward to watching Jackson grow up and really get his own personality.

One Year Later

A year ago today (at roughly this time) Dave and I got engaged. We have been happily engaged and planning our wedding since. There have been a few snags in our wedding plans as of late, but things are moving along nonetheless.
We are going to be getting married on September 29, 2012 at the Southway Hotel and Conference Centre (aka the Southway Inn) in Ottawa. We have found  made a great deal of the remaining decisions, or at least started the process of doing so and are meeting with our planner at the hotel in the new year.
Of course, I have quite a large spreadsheet for the plans and today I started printing out things and compiling a hardcopy binder (softcopy just wasn’t cutting it anymore due to the large number of contracts, pamphlets and business cards).

Our engagement announcement went into my hometown paper quite some time ago. It was difficult finding a recent photo of the two of us, but I eventually found one on which we both agreed.

Christmas 2011 Wish List

I have been getting a lot of questions from people as to what to get me and/or Dave for Christmas. So like last year, I decided the best thing to do is to make a wish list.

Dave’s Wish List:
The Book of Cain
Diablo Archive
Archer TV series (Season 1, 2 and/or 3)
Bob’s Burgers TV Series
Movies: Bon Cop bad Cop, Hanna
Sin War Trilogy eBooks (Google eBooks; #1, #2, #3)
Gift Cards: Google eBooks, EB Games, Future Shop, Amazon, etc.

Steph’s Wish List:
Once again, I have broken it down into Camera and non-Camera related items.

Camera Wish List:
4’ wide white paper background;
8’ wide white, black or grey paper backgrounds
~4’x6’ piece of high quality black velour fabric
Bowen's softboxes
Radio trigger system (compatible with Bowen's 400 lights & Nikon D3s camera)
Bowen's battery pack
AF-S Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II Lens
AF-S Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 G ED Lens
AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED Lens
AF Fisheye-Nikkor 16mm f/2.8D Lens
Photo paper (Epson Premium Photo Paper [4+ stars], 8 1/2"x11")
Computer ink (for the Epson Artisan 800 all-in-one printer - code 98)
small white/gold reflector (maximum 10" or so but folds smaller - example).
Photo Books (Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers: The Ultimate Workshop, HDR Photography Photo Workshop, Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers; A Professional image editor’s guide to the creative use of Photoshop for the Macintosh and PC, Photo Recipes Live: Behind the Scenes: Your Guide to Today’s Most Popular Lighting Techniques)
Variable Neutral Density Filter, 77mm
Lens Cap Strap Holder, 77mm
Handy-Dandy Camera Strap

Everything Else Wishlist:
gift cards (Ricki's, Henry's, thecamerastore.com, Amazon, Lululemon, Photojojo)
picture frames (8x10 or larger, compilation frames);
Movies (Gnomeo and Juliet, Winnie-the-Pooh Movie, The Little Mermaid, Life After People, Sandra Bullock/Hugh Grant/Julia Roberts/Drew Barrymore movies)
TV Series (Being Erica, Powerpuff Girls, Beverly Hills 90210, Charmed)
National Geographic Magazine Slipcases for Years 2008 onwards
Nikon Lens Mug
Time Lapse Camera
OPI Nail Polish (you can find a list of colours I already have here. There aren’t many specific colours I want, but I would like the Natural Nail Strengthener, Any colour of Shatter, A bright orange colour, pastel pink, traditional bright red, pastel green, a plain white, a light grey colour, a taupe like colour, a true black colour, anything from the Femme de Cirque Line)
OPI nail polish case like the one below:

For any of the books, movies or TV series listed in my list above, you can find them in my Amazon Wish List.

My list seems (and is) much longer than Dave’s but once you widdle out the thing that people are not going to buy me (like the very expensive camera lenses and lighting equipment), it isn’t that big.

A Colourful Addiction

I love OPI nail polish!! I have a hard time going to any of the stores that sell it here in Ottawa and not buying multiple colours. But since ‘I’ decided that I have a lot of OPI nail polish, I figured I should put a hold on buying it for myself. So to be able to still get some kind of a fix for the stuff, I decided to blog about it. Originally I wanted to take some studio shots of my nail polish to go with this blog post, but those will have to wait as right now I just don’t have the time.

 

Painting my nails is one of the few ‘girly’ things I do. I think it is fun and it also helps me from biting/picking my nails – which is pretty awesome for the times I want to grow them out.

 

The below table outlines the name and general description of the OPI polishes I have to date (and yes, there is a spreadsheet that this was copied from).

 

OPI Name	General Description
Top Coat	N/A
Natural Nail Base Coat	N/A
Kyoto Pearl	a Sheen-like White
Give Me the Moon	Iridescent Light Purple
A Grape Fit	Medium Purple
Honk if you Love OPI	Dark Purple
Suzi Says Feng Shui	Medium Blue
Yoga-ta Get this Blue	Dark Sparkly Blue
Jade is the New Black	Medium Green
Steady as she Rose	Light Rose/Pink
Suzi & the Lifeguard	Medium-light Sparkly Pink
My Address is ‘Hollywood’	Medium Sparkly Pink
Bogata Blackberry	Dark Sparkly Burgundy
Malaga Wine	Dark Burgundy
Teenage Dreams	Glitter Pink

Playing Catch-up

The time has come, again, for me to write another post about how busy I have been and how poorly I have been doing in keeping my blogs up to date. That all being said, I am working on some more posts for the rest of November and into December. Hopefully I will be able to get some more regular posts going until Christmas when I should have some downtime – maybe.

Lately Dave and I have been busy with not only work and the gym, but making the last few decisions on where our wedding will be. Once we have worked out a few more things, I will post about all the details (so far).

 

I have also been working diligently on my final photography course assignment and am pretty happy with how it is turning out so far. I have been learning all sorts of new tricks and am going to start posting some tips and tricks on my photography blog – so stay tuned for that.

 

For now though, bear with me once more as I try to sort through the craziness that is life.