Lisa & Ryan's wedding featured on Bride Chic!

Lisa & Ryan's wedding was recently featured on Bride Chic! Check it out!

http://bridechic.blogspot.com/

Yes I know that my name is spelled wrong. In fact it happens constantly, and in case any of you actually thought at this point that my name is Diana Marie, it's not, it's Diana Maire (pronounced Mare). And it's Diana, not Diane, which people always seem to mess up as well! Oh well! What can you do?!

3 month portraits: Baby Brendan

Brendan's family has been featured a lot on the blog lately! You may remember his mom Lisa's maternity photos back in November. His Aunt Lisa's wedding was featured in February, and now, its finally his turn! Everyone, meet Brendan. You'll see him a lot over the next year.

This last one reminds me of the Lion King a little bit. I can just hear "the circle of life" playing!

Friday Favorites (On a Monday)

So...I have a valid excuse for not posting Friday favorites on Friday. It was 80º.  In San Francisco, those days only come around a handful of times a year, and I think they should automatically become holidays. "Sun days" if you will.  I just couldn't stand to sit inside on the computer so I packed up a lunch and some drinks and headed to Dolores Park with some friends. Trust me, you would have done the same :)

So, here are the (belated) Friday Favorites!

#1 Favorite New Project: Making my own sourdough. I like cooking, but I REALLY like baking. I'm pretty picky about food, but I've never met a baked good I didn't get along with, so baking suites me well. The newest item to come to my baking resume is sourdough bread from scratch. Its super simple to make your own bread, it just takes a bit of a commitment. You need to "feed" your sourdough starter almost everyday, and the bread takes forever to rise once you decide to bake it, but its totally worth it. I started my sourdough starter about 6 weeks ago, and I'm currently letting my third batch rise. Its really nice to have the dough pretty much made and waiting in my fridge! Here is the recipe that I used:

http://www.io.com/~sjohn/sour.htm

#2 Favorite recently discovered blog: Little Green Notebook. Since Eric and I are planning on moving soon, I'm getting excited to decorate and have been checking out designing blogs. I love how this blog explains how to do things. Most decorating blogs just post inspiration pictures, but this blog is like watching HGTV, and then receiving written instructions for how to do everything you just saw! It's sooo helpful if you are like me and don't really know where to start!

http://littlegreennotebook.blogspot.com/

#3 Favorite new music. Passion Pit. I'm not actually sure how new it is, but its new to me! I usually don't like "electronic" music, and tend to favor more soft, indie rock type bands ( I could listen to Band of Horses all day everyday) but something about Passion Pit is kind of addicting.  Listen to the song "Sleepyhead" and if you like it, you will probably like most of the songs on the cd.

Sunrise

I am not a morning person. So much so, that I need at least 1/2 hour of doing nothing in the morning just to make sure that I'm behaving like a human being. It's usually more likely for me to see the sunrise if I haven't gone to bed yet. Today however, it was the first day of daylight savings, and I had an 8 am appointment with a bride. My half hour of doing nothing turned into my half hour of shooting out my window, because the lighting was gorgeous, the fog on the window was gorgeous, and I sort of fell in love with mornings. Maybe I'll try to get up early more often. Or maybe, I'll just stay up a whole lot later :)

Friday Favorites

Supposedly thinking about your favorite things puts you in a good mood. I'm gonna test it out once a week and list to you my favorite things of the moment. They will all be completely random, and things that I just happen to love at the moment (yes it does change weekly).  BUT I promise I will attempt to list things that people will actually be interested in, and I hope to introduce people to some of their new favorite things! So...here it goes....

#1. Favorite new project- Brewing my own beer. I'm not sure what it is, but ever since I got married I want to make everything. Maybe it's because I finally have all the tools to actually make things, or maybe its winter and I have a little more free time on my hands, or maybe I'm just getting old and domestic.  But Eric and I have made beer before, and tomorrow its a date to have a beer making party at our place. Some friends are coming over and we are brewing a batch together and eating homemade pizza and learning about how to make some delicious beer.  I also plan on designing labels for the bottles. I'm excited.

#2. Favorite new music. I can't stop listening to Miike Snow. No its not a typo, its actually spelled Miike. And its a band, not a guy. And they wrote the lyrics to Brittany's "Toxic", which for some reason makes them even better in my mind. I recommend the song "Animal" and if you like that, buy the whole cd, you will thank me.

#3. Favorite book. This hasn't changed for a long time and I keep letting new books attempt to replace it, but so far nobody can beat "Skinny Legs and All" by Tom Robbins. Tom Robbins, you are the only author who could make me care about the fate of a dirty sock, a can of beans, and conch shell. Its a whitty and entertaining book about art, history, politics, sex, and religion, partly told through the eyes of the objects mentioned above. It's amazing, to put it lightly.

#4. Favorite shopping obsession. www.shop-ruche.com Sometimes I just look at their website and dream of the day when all my clothes will be that cute. It's like the store Anthropologie (my all time favorite), for about 1/3 of the price. And they do free shipping for returns. Just look at some of the adorable things they have right now:

Golden Gate Park Engagement Session: Kelly & Chris

I shot Kelly and Chris's engagement photos last week in Golden Gate park and on China Beach. We had originally planned on shooting in front of the giant windmill since that was where Chris proposed.  But we got there and the whole section was roped off because of all the rain we had gotten that week! We considered hopping the rope and going in anyways, but there was a crowd of about 40 that would have witnessed it, so we decided to go elsewhere. Instead, we went directly below the windmill to this spot with gorgeous lighting and an awesome brick wall. I think it was meant to be!

That picture makes me giggle every time I see it!

Golden Gate Park Portrait Session: Becky & Dave

Becky is Eric's aunt (so...my aunt in-law, if there is such a thing!) and she needed some headshots. She mentioned that when she got married to Dave, they didn't have a photographer at the wedding, and really don't have many photos of just the two of them. We decided that while taking care of her headshots, we might as well do a little photo session with her and Dave! Here are a couple of my favorites

And the headshots....Dave didn't actually need one, so we took a silly one!