She is sixteen. {Arizona Teen Photographer}

She is a great friend.

She is kind.

She is smart.

She is compassionate.

She has a great laugh.

She is a loving daughter and sister.

She is beautiful.

She is many things and now,

she is also sixteen!

Like Butter. {Mesa, Higley, Chandler, Gilbert, Gold Canyon, Arizona Senior Photographer}

 

I love butter.  I like it on stuff,

between stuff

and in stuff.

 

I especially like it toasted on med high heat in my cast iron skillet right before I crack fresh eggs from my backyard. 

 

Okay.

I think you get the idea. 

I LIKE butter. 

Now what does that have to do with these pictures?

 

I went to a comic relief program put on by a local high school, and this girl was in  several skits, but her best performance  was in a  parody of Paula Dean’s cooking style in which Paula, who is more obsessed than I,  “adds just a little more budder.”   For those of you who know me, know that I am kind of stoic and it takes a lot to get me laughing.  I don’t typically LOL very often.  But this girl made me Laugh OUT Loud!  I even approached her as she was surrounded by her adoring fans after the show was over to tell her what a great job she had done but then felt like a dumb creeper and left without saying anything.

 

A few days later I got an inquiry for senior pics and my girls’ recognized her name and said this was the girl who made me LOL.

 

K.  The world of butter lovers is small in a huge way.

 

And now a little more about the girl who made me laugh.  Her name is Abby.   She is beautiful and sweet and talented and smart and on her way to big things.  She is a southern belle blossoming in the desert.  I know where she gets much of it from too.  Her mom.  Wish I could have shrunk them both and brought them home in my pocket.  Think of all the butter fun we could have!  They are now my new BFFs.  Butter friends forever!

 

Can I just say one more thing about butter before I leave you to drool over these amazing pics?  There is a photography technique where the background is out of focus and the subject is in focus.  Photographers call this the butter effect and has nothing to do with food.  Can you see why?

 

Butter.

 

Butter.  Almost toasted on med high heat.

 

100 degree heat.  And she didn’t even break a sweat!

 

Butter.

 

Butter.  Help me now!  I really must stop talking about butter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

THANK YOU Abby for making me LOL and for lots and lots of butter!  xoxoxo

 

Hmm.   I hungry.

The Love Hate Relationship of my Life in the Desert

 

I have a love hate relationship with the place I live.  It used to be pretty concentrated on the hate end (Eww, you hot ugly thing!) of the scale, but time and patience has balanced (beautiful winter, how I love thee and the delicious garden tomatoes that I am STILL getting from LAST spring’s tomato plants) it quite a bit.

 

After growing under the shadows of the beautiful three peaked Mt. Nebo in the Rocky Mountain Range and living in or visiting places like Japan, Hawaii, Fiji, New Zealand and Tonga, moving to a desert climate was quite a shock to my system.  I need color  like I do food.  And not just any food.  Like a buffet.  Yes, that is it.  I need a color buffet! 

Gradually I have come to love or at least tolerate many of the things I used to hate and I have learned how and when to find or make color around me (Check out my etsy shop where I display some of it).

 

I won’t bore you with a list of all the things I love and hate about the desert, but I will select one item.  That would have to be the cactus.  Actually,  it is cacti when referencing them in plural.  Did you know that?  It still feels funny coming out of my mouth.  Cacti.  CACti.  cacTI.  CACTI.

 

 

 

Of course there are so many varieties

 

 

 

but the barrel  cactus is the one most associated with the Sonoran Desert.  It is tall.  And pokey. 

 

 

And a little on the unattractive side.  But, just as many people find shapes in the clouds, we find characters in the cacti.

What do you see here?

 

 

And here?

 

 

 

So.  Besides the cacTI,

 

 

dead looking plants

 

 

and rocks and stuff

 

Did you notice anything else?  Like

*

*

*

*

there is SNOW on them there mountains?!!!!!!!

 

And that is one of the things I LOVE about living in the desert.  I love winter time and that even though it is rare, sometimes is snows here!  And it is just the perfect amount of snow.  Enough to see, touch, make a little snowman, and drive 1/2 and hour home and have a picnic in your back yard. 

NO KIDDING.

No driving in it. 

No shoveling it. 

No scraping it off your window. 

No tracking snow and rocks on the newly mopped floor. 

No kids trapped home on snow days. 

Nope.

Just enough snow to build a mini snowman,

 

get back in the car and know that you have just enjoyed snow in the most perfect way for you. 

I guess I may be a desert dweller after all.

I love you dear desert. 

But please don’t ask me how I feel about you in July.

Once there was a snowman!

More on this guy tomorrow!