The Craziness of Las Vegas…
Posted on April 26, 2012 by Christine | No Comments
Greetings from Las Vegas! I flew over here yesterday to photograph a wedding and to kick off the Hot Mama Boudoir Tour 2012! (Yes, I’m going on tour. Vegas, Paris, London, Boston, New York City, New Orleans, San Francisco, maybe Los Angeles. Lots of travel coming up this year!) Wheeeeee!!!
Elaine & I went out to dinner last night at CraftSteak at the MGM Grand. It was surreal being at the MGM without 20,000 other photographers, which is what I’m used to from the past 4 years of WPPI. I didn’t see anyone I knew! Well, duh, obviously I wouldn’t. But I kept finding myself looking as I walked past Rouge, or when we walked in to Craft. It was just so strange.
At the end of dinner a very cliche group of guys were seated next to us. Drinking it up. Living the high life of Vegas. Talking about how they weren’t high rollers, they were just rich. Oooooookay.
Walking back to the hotel, we saw a guy drinking his Jaeggermeister straight out of the bottle in a plastic bag. Now if that isn’t asking for disaster, I don’t know what is!
It lead to Elaine & I trying to figure out why Vegas just feels so different from New Orleans. Both are cities that people go to to drink a LOT. But Vegas? Everything is HUGE, and big, and expensive. Bright lights. Night life. Clubs. Everything here is just designed to be over the top. But more importantly? It is DESIGNED. Elaine said it is like they manipulate all of your senses. There is no day or night on the casino floors of course, but when we got out of the airport shuttle at the Aria (where we are staying), I immediately noticed the fragrance in the air. It is even stronger at the front desk. No matter where you go in the public areas, there is this fragrance.
It makes me sad that some people come to the United States and only ever see Las Vegas. This city is a place all its own. It is decadent to the point of excess. It is sensory overload. It is crazy. I love being here, don’t get me wrong, but it is all so unreal.
We talked again about the difference between Vegas and New Orleans this morning. New Orleans has history. Old buildings. Small buildings. The scale of the city is normal, versus how HUGE everything is in Vegas. And most of all, it isn’t designed to be so over the top. Not like Vegas. There are still lots of bars, lots of crazy, lots of drinking, and plenty of wonderful restaurants, but it is just so completely different.
I bet my sentiments of “All of the USA is not like Vegas!” are echoed by people around the world. I know that all of France isn’t like Paris, and all of England isn’t like London. And yet like so many other tourists, I can’t wait to get to those cities.
When you leave the Strip, Las Vegas is much more serene and normal. I’m looking forward to doing that tomorrow and Saturday when we leave for the rehearsal and then for the wedding. The venue is 15 minutes off the strip, although we do have plans to shoot here on the Strip afterwards as well.
Las Vegas is a fascinating place to see, that is for sure! Even for as crazy strange as it all is. I love the bright lights. There is people watching galore. Wonderful hotel rooms. Opulence. So many cool, cool things. I’m looking forward to heading to the Bellagio and watching the fountains, seeing the Bellagio Gardens, maybe taking in a show, going to the Venetian, and so much more. At the end, I know I’ll be glad that it was just 5 days, and to be heading home for a night before I jet off to Paris next week!
Tags: Aria | Las Vegas | MGM Grand | wedding photography
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Taming the Email Inbox BEAST!
Posted on April 17, 2012 by Christine | 5 Comments
Ah, email. My Inbox & I have a true love-hate relationship … or at least we used to. Because as much as I *love* getting emails and hearing from people, sometimes there was just too much stuff in there! I wouldn’t even call all of it junk mail, because it really is stuff I want to see. Email lists I’ve signed up for take up space, but I don’t want to read them right away, like my little love affair with CopyBlogger, Kristen Kalp of Brand Camp Blog and Jamie Swanson of The Modern Tog. I refuse to give them up. I just can’t miss anything they have to say!
And then there are the Facebook, Twitter & Pinterest alerts, the coupons, and the just everyday stuff that shows up in the Inbox. It just got to be too much. I wanted to hide and avoid my email – but I couldn’t do that!
Now? Now my Inbox & I are madly & deeply in love again! All thanks to these three quick & easy changes. If you use Gmail, try them out – I want you to love reading email again too!
My first tip is actually one from Jamie of The Modern Tog. In this post of her organizing your email series, she pointed out the most BRILLIANT thing EVER. You can set up a filter in Gmail to sort all of your email subscriptions in to a folder, bypassing your inbox completely! (See love affair noted above.)
She has full instructions on her site, but the main thing you need to know is that in the “Has the words” box, copy and paste the following:
TrueRemove OR unsubscribe OR safeunsubscribe OR SafeUnsubscribe
Since mailing lists are required to include some version of a way to unsubscribe in their emails, those words should pick up almost every email subscription list you’re on! Brilliant, right? I know! *high fives Jamie!* To make it happen, then select “Skip the Inbox” and “apply the label” and select “read“. Then click on “Also apply filter to XXX matching conversations” so that it looks at all your current emails plus all new incoming emails, and click “Create Filter“.
Bam-OH! All of those emails skip your inbox, they are marked as read, and Gmail goes back and moves everything else in to your inbox as well!
My second saving grace has been SaneBox (using that link gets you $5 and me $5, just so you know). SaneBox has a full suite of features to save you time. There is priority filtering, follow up reminders, unsubscribe, defer, social network integration. I went ahead and tried it out because even with all my subscriptions being hidden away in my “To Read Later” folder, I still had a lot of fluff in my Inbox. Not things I wanted to get rid of, but things that weren’t worthy of my immediate attention.
My favorite part? When I hooked it up to my Gmail account, it created a folder called “SaneLater” and everything that isn’t a subscription and caught in the first pass is reviewed by SaneBox. Then, based on what it already knows (ah, the power of computers!) and what it has learned about me from me training it, it pulls out anything that can wait until later. Facebook alerts, sales stuff, whatever! It all magically bypasses my inbox for me!
When I first set it up Friday night, it freaked me out. I thought my email was broken. I suddenly had no emails for over an hour. Wait, what? Oh! There they were in the SaneLater folder! I’ve only been using SaneBox for 5 days now, but it has made my email experience SO MUCH BETTER! SaneBox does cost money after the 14 Day Trial, but really, to have my sanity back? That is a small, small price to pay!
Now I can *finally* do that “only check your email twice a day” thing. I check my Inbox several times a day when I’m available, but I only check my “SaneLater” and my “To Be Read” folders once or twice a day. SaneLater did pick up some things that really should have fallen in my Inbox, but that was ok – as soon as I chose to remove the SaneLater label and move it to the Inbox, it learned that that was what I wanted and has continued to do it ever since!
My third trick? Boomerang! Boomerang has several different features that are pretty cool. Top of my list? Well, as you all know, I’m a night owl some days. I’ll come home from a day full of photo shoots and just not have it in me to sit down and go through my email for a few hours afterwards. But I don’t want clients to always know that I’m writing them at 1am in the morning. With Boomerang, I can write an email at 1am (or 3am *cough*), but schedule it to go out to the client at 9:30 in the morning. Looking like I’m working normal office hours, instead of being always available, always online. This has been one of my favorite features of ShootQ for years, so having it in my Gmail now is fantastic! Boomerang also lets you set an email to reappear in your inbox after a certain amount of time if no one has responded to it – great for reminding you to check the status on something with a client. There are other perks as well, but those are my favorites. Boomerang is free to use for up to 10 emails a month, and after that there are very reasonable plans available as well.
Now if you write me a personal note, I might actually see your email in my inbox and get back to you! Now whether I write you at 1am or not … you’ll never know. *grin*
Do you have any tips and tricks of things I should check out to make my inbox & I love each other even more? Or have you used SaneBox or Boomerang and think there are cool features I should check out? Let me know in the comments!
Tags: Boomerang | Email | filters | Gmail | Inbox | Sanebox
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A New Low… Weight Low, That Is!
Posted on April 16, 2012 by Christine | 33 Comments
I can’t believe it has been almost 4 months since I started doing the 4-Hour Body plan. As of yesterday, I am down 24 pounds. Wait. Let me repeat that for you so it sinks in. TWENTY FOUR POUNDS!!! 24! 24! 24! I’m right on the brink of being down 3 clothing sizes. TWENTY FOUR POUNDS!
1 pound shy of the half-way point of my original goal of losing 50 pounds, which I thought was so impossible when I started. Now it is completely within the realm of possibility of doing it within a year! HELL FREAKIN’ YES!!! *High fives all around*
I went in to Anthropologie and tried on a dress that fit! I didn’t buy it because it wasn’t what I was looking for, but it FIT. You may recall, that was one of the catalyst that finally made me start the plan.
I’m now down to about the weight I was when I met Mike 10 years ago. Yes, I haven’t seen this weight in 10 years. zOMG. (Since it has been so long since I updated, I’ll also add that I hit the 20lb loss mark on the exact 3 month date – 3/21 – which was pretty damn awesome.)
I’ve turned in to a total nut about shopping for clothes lately. Seems it isn’t quite so treacherous when you don’t have to shop in the plus department and you can shop in the regular misses sizes. It is a fun game of what size can I wear today?! I’m also finding myself wanting to walk up to anyone that I think will listen and tell them all about how they should cut wheat out of their lives. Uhm, if I’ve done that to you and you really didn’t want to hear it? Sorry about that. But I still think you should do it.
I learned this past week that if you put on shorts that fit you 24 lbs ago and then you put your phone in your pocket, the weight of the phone will pull your shorts down. It is pretty funny, because I can drop them without even opening the button. Of course, I can’t find any shorts that I like, and it is only getting hotter in Houston by the second.
So to recap (because people always ask):
Try to tell me you just CAN NOT do this, and I will tell you that you can, but you obviously are not ready to do it. But you CAN do anything.
It is really cool to me to watch the impact that this is having on so many areas of my life. I feel more ME than I have in many years, which was a journey that was started before I changed how I eat. It has taken on a whole new level though since January, which is part of the catalyst of acceptance and bringing everything under the brand of “me” at my Christine Tremoulet site. I can’t put it in to words, it is just awesome. I love my life more than before. I love me.
This is the photo that was one of the main things that launched me in to doing this diet – Mike & I on December 18, 2011.
This one was taken on the 3 month mark, in the same dress, to give you a sense of how much I’ve lost. Brittany commented that it would be a cute dress — if it was 2 sizes smaller! It just hangs on me now! (Also? I miss shoulder pads. Shoulder pads were my friend with my sloping shoulders!)
Just for random amusement, here are two snapshots that my friend Kelli Nicole took when we were at the Hunger Games premiere for her birthday in March. She posted them to Facebook and tagged me, and I was ready to do that thing where you remove the tags because you hate the photo … and then I left the tag because I didn’t hate how I looked at all! In the top one my head is turned at almost the same angle as the catalyst photo above – and I only have one chin! Victory is mine!!!
Have you tried 4-Hour Body, or the Paleo diet? How did you do? Success stories? Considering trying it and want to talk to me more? Leave a comment – I would love to hear from you!
Tags: 4 hour body | diet | four hour body | goals | weight | weight loss
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Growing My Boudoir Business…
Posted on April 10, 2012 by Christine | 7 Comments
Back in 2007 I launched my wedding photography business. In 2008 I moved in to my first studio in the Heights and launched boudoir sessions as well.
By 2010, I began to accept my superpower. I love, love, love doing boudoir sessions for women because I can help them see themselves as I see them – AMAZING. I can help them grow their confidence and rediscover their beauty. I can help them see something far deeper than the beauty that magazines are always trying to convince us of – so very much more.
Most women opt to do a boudoir session with me involving lots of pretty frilly lace lingerie – but some women don’t want boudoir photographs. They just want incredible photographs that they can give to a loved one, share on Facebook, whatever the case may be — and I’ve always given every client that option. They can wear whatever they want!
For years, I’ve run both a wedding photography business and a boudoir business. They overlap a little bit, but not much. Very few of my wedding clients have booked me for boudoir sessions; a few more of my boudoir clients have booked me for their weddings. It has always worked because weddings are mostly on the weekends and my boudoir sessions are during the week. But focusing my marketing energies on one takes me away from the other one. I can’t do as much for either one as I would like.
I’ve struggled with feeling divided for the past 6 months or so.
This past week after shooting a wedding, it hit me. I love weddings! I love the families coming together to celebrate, the traditions, the unique touches that make it their own, the dancing, the music, the cake. But even as much as I love and adore them, it still is not at that magical level as my Hot Mama Boudoir work and my women’s portrait sessions.
Life is short. I want it to be magical. There is nothing quite like that moment when my client sees herself the way that I see her – the way that the rest of the world sees her. It has taken me a few years to reach this point, but my boudoir business is so busy it is time to cut back on the number of weddings I take. From here on out, I’ll gladly accept weddings of past clients, along with their friends & family — and mine of course too! Beyond that, I’ll consider others based on my availability. Brittany & I have such a great system down already for weddings, we won’t skip a beat.
If I want my boudoir & portrait work to have the reach that I can see it having, I have come to terms with accepting that I can’t do it all. If I focus all of my energy in one direction instead of two? Hang on tight, it is going to be awesome!
I’m going to start sharing more of the contemporary women’s portraiture work (a more accurate name for my work – with or without lingerie involved) that I’ve done over the past few years on my Christine Tremoulet site. Meanwhile, the Hot Mama Boudoir site will live on as I merge the brands together. I’m working those logistics out. And if you have any suggestions you want to share on how to do that, I’m open to hearing them!
2012 is going to KICK ASS. I can’t WAIT to share this with you! Want to do a session with me? I’m going on TOUR!!! Las Vegas, Paris, London, Boston, New York, New Orleans, Tampa, San Francisco, Napa, and more! Check out the dates and meet up with me for your photo shoot!
And because every post is better with a photo, here is one from Kayla’s photo shoot that we did – a perfect example of my Contemporary Women’s Portraiture sessions!
Tags: Beauty Photographer | boudoir photography | Christine Tremoulet | Contemporary Women's Portraiture | Glamour Photography | hot mama boudoir | Houston | Texas | Wedding Photographer | Women's Portraits
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Wish Upon a Wedding…
Posted on April 9, 2012 by Christine | 2 Comments
Two years ago I first learned about Wish Upon a Wedding and immediately volunteered to be a Wish Granter – before Houston even had a chapter! I was so thrilled to learn that there was a non-profit devoted to granting the wishes of a couple facing terminal illness or special circumstances that might not be able to have a wedding otherwise.
Last year I was contacted by the Houston chapter and asked if I would grant a wish for Alexis & Christian. I didn’t hesitate for a second to tell them yes – and I’m so glad I did! Alexis & Christian are just the most amazing people, and spending time with them together makes my heart sing. If you don’t know them already – you should. Make it happen.
Shortly after their wedding I learned that the Houston Chapter had board and committee openings. I applied to be the Marketing Chair, and after a review by the national & Houston boards, my application was accepted! I’m so honored to be giving back & helping to spread the word about this amazing, wonderful group!
Now we need YOUR help!!!
- Know a couple facing a terminal illness or a special circumstance? Learn more about how to apply to have your wish granted! This is a REALLY BIG ONE – we need to get the word out to help people! We need YOU!
- In the wedding industry and want to volunteer to be a Wish Granter? All the details for you are here. (DO IT! It is the most AMAZING experience to give back!)
- Interested in helping out with the board or being on a committee? The details you are looking for are here. We need you!
And last but not least? Come on out on Thursday, April 12, 2012, for the Second Annual Tacky Wedding Pub Crawl benefitting Wish Upon a Wedding! Open to *everyone* – dress in your tacky wedding finest (or not!) and join us as we go from pub to pub on White Oak in the Heights! Tickets are $10 until 2pm on Thursday afternoon, and $20 at the door – get yours here! Prizes, laughter, and good times are waiting for you!
Tags: charity | Houston | Marketing Chair | Non-Profit | Volunteer | Wish Upon a Wedding
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I’m Quite Clever
About Me
Hi! I'm Christine. Wife to Mike. Mom of Jason. Owned by 4 cats. Houston & Destination Wedding Photographer & owner of Hot Mama Boudoir. Blogger since 2000. Living in Houston, Texas since 1985. Living in a 1920 Bungalow in the Heights since 2011.
Want to know more? Just ask.
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