I am so completely in love with the bag designs over at Bring Your Own Bag! I’ve been trying for some time to always make sure I bring my own bags when I shop. It is just so wasteful to walk out of a store with a plastic bag that will end up in the trash as soon as you get home. When I can, I recycle them - the ones with the “2″ code on the bottom can be recycled in my weekly pickup - but why let them get out in the environment?

It is just incredible when faced with our overwhelming consumer society to realize how much stuff we have that we don’t need at all that will just hurt the environment some day. I’m doing spring purging right now, and it makes me sad. I’m giving away as much as I can - donating it to the local outreach organization.

Reading about Compact living just drove it all home earlier. Think before you buy. And Bring Your Own Bag!

For more about the Compact, you can read this article or The Compact blog.

On Thursday, I received the email I’ve been waiting for - the exciting invitation to be a member of the WPJA - Wedding Photojournalists Association! Oh goodness, ever since I discovered the WPJA last year, I have wanted to be a member. So when I got the news - I was so excited! I think I have told every single person I have talked to since then! What an honor, I can’t even put it into words.

Today I’m already at the hotel where I will be photographing Andi & Jason’s wedding — I covered the rehearsal dinner last night, and Mike suggested that I just stay here since I could get a room at the block rate and it would save me from driving home at 10:30 and leaving 12 hours later to start shooting again. It is going to be a long day - the ceremony will be at 7:30pm, and dinner will be served at 10pm, with the reception scheduled to end around 1:30am in the morning! Tons of celebrating, dancing, and rejoicing by all - it is going to be a blast! Elaine will be with me of course, and we’re being joined by my friend Jennifer Wilson who is coming in from New Braunfels to shoot with us. Tonight we’ll be crashing at the hotel all over again so we don’t have to drive home. So worth it to avoid the drive time!

Wheee! It is going to be a long day, with coverage starting late this morning - but I’m so excited about it all!

I’ve said for over a year now that I feel a strong pull to volunteer for Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, and organization of photographers who volunteer to be on call for families in need who are experiencing the loss of a child. I’ve always talked though about how hard it would be to do it — just thinking about it makes me cry.

After watching the video clip of what they showed on the Today Show this morning (props to Robyn for pointing it out in one of the forums that we are on), I realized that my excuses and my fear of the pain were nothing compared to the pain that families go through when they are experiencing this, and if I was in their shoes I would probably give anything for photographs of those precious moments with my child.

So I did it. No more excuses. I signed up, and am now waiting on approval from the group to formally be a member. I should know within the week. And while I hope a call never comes, I will be there, ready and willing, if it does.

I almost didn’t write about it here, but realized that I must. I want to get the word out about this wonderful organization and what they are doing to help people.

If you’re a photographer, I encourage you to volunteer. I applaud you if you do so already.

If you or someone you know is ever in need of a photographer to capture the precious moments with your child, please be sure to contact the group. As they said at the end of the video, many parents don’t think of it at the time, but no parents have ever said they wished they hadn’t done it.

So I’m not using the recommended yarn for my Einstein Coat, but I am getting gauge — so it shouldn’t be a problem, right? WRONG.

While waiting for things to upload to the server, I took the bottom portion and held it up to me to see the length; the top portion of the coat is only 39 ridges of garter stitch. My project? Yeah, not even close to the length it needs to be. Not close at all. Not even if it is reaaaaaaally stretched out.

No point in keeping this up because it won’t fit. I’m resisting the urge to throw the yarn ball across the room right now. *sigh*

I’ve just blogged about the photos from Liz & Dave’s Texas A&M Engagement Session, and I just had to post about them here too. I love them so much. Plus Liz is a knitter! Whoo hoo! I love knitters. Knitters are the BEST. So go check out their photos, and feel free to leave comments and let me know what you think!

I can’t WAIT for their wedding at the end of March!

Now, on to the CHALLENGE!!! I am trying to be a good blogger and make a point of posting to the wedding photography blog much more frequently. I need you guys to keep an eye on me. My goal is to post 3 times per week - defined as 12:00am on Sunday through 11:59pm on the following Saturday - for the entire month. What I post is up to me, of course, but my goal is to make them pretty photo heavy as usual.

Where do you come in? Well, if you catch me not posting, and you are within a 2 hour drive of my house in Houston (so that includes Austin, Galveston, College Station, and a lot of other places too!) and you’re the first to point out in the comments on my last post on the ChristineTremoulet.com site that I’ve missed a post — you win a FREE PHOTO SHOOT! Valued at $250, my 1-2 hour lifestyle sessions are done on location - so I come to you. You can use it for an engagement session, a bridal session, a Fearless Bridal (aka Trash the Dress) session, a newborn session, a family session, a senior session … really, anything at all! The only stipulations are that you have to be close enough for me to drive to get to you - I can’t afford to fly across the country to do it - and I have to do the shoot in April or May when I’m not booked unless we make other arrangements.

So keep an eye on my throughout the month of March, and you could win a FREE session!

Yesterday’s post ended up being all about knitting, and I guess I needed something soothing to focus on after the week I had had. No week starts of well when it starts with a crunch to your car which causes some pretty major damage.

On February 23rd, I assisted a photographer from Santa Fe with a wedding here in Houston. She had photographed the daughter’s wedding last year, and the couple who had been a couple for years decided to get married at last. The photographer had told me that it was near the Galleria, at their house, but she hadn’t told me the address until the day before. It was in River Oaks. Or, as I told Mike later, in the “Terms of Endearment” neighborhood. Seriously huge houses. In a part of River Oaks I’ve never been to, on a private lane. A huge tent was set up for the party after the ceremony, which was officiated by a well known judge in their living room. A gorgeous black-tie affair. Incredible, just incredible. We had a really great time photographing it all.

I left at about 1am, and set the GPS for home. (I had come from downtown, so I wasn’t going back the same way that I came.) Driving off, I misunderstood which road I was supposed to turn onto, and turned a block early on what was a dead end road. Crap.

Being River Oaks, there are no curbs, but many of the yards are lined with bricks or a wrought iron post & chain fence, about 10 inches tall.

I’m really good at making 3-point turns, or in this case a 5-point turn since it was a narrow road. I decided I would just turn around and get straightened out, heading back to where I needed to be. No problem, or so I thought.

I needed to watch the brick mini-wall that was behind me, so I slowly backed up, and then went forward — and my bumper, which is about 12 inches off the ground, went right OVER one of those wrought iron poles. Totally cleared it, which then caused me to basically hit the pole with my radiator instead.

Crap.

The CR-V started to make a horrendous sound. I got out to see if I could see anything, and the pole was fine, but clearly my vehicle wasn’t. Gah. I decided to drive to the nearest main road and see if I had any problems driving. It drove just fine - it was just the bent fan kicking on when I stopped that I heard making that awful sound.

I cautiously drove home, keeping an eye on all the gauges the whole way.

Monday morning, I went to leave for an appointment that was right by the Honda dealership. I figured I would go to the appointment, and then go to the dealership and get it fixed. As I backed out of the garage, I saw a liquid on the ground - blue liquid, so most likely the coolant from the radiator. Again driving cautiously and watching all the gauges, I went to the appointment and then to the service department.

As soon as the service department specialist came out and looked at the damage, he informed me that I needed to take it to the Collision Center. Seems the shield under the CR-V is mounted to the bumper, and the mounts were broken. You could see exactly where I hit the pole at all of 3 miles per hour. It wasn’t going to be the inexpensive fix I was hoping for. Oh, no. It was a big fix.

I called the insurance company, and started a claim with the option to cancel it if the repairs were low enough that we wanted to pay instead. Turns out that the whole thing was over $3000 with the rental car, and really? We have insurance for a reason. Just for times like this when stupid things happen.

It took them less time than they estimated to repair it, and I picked it back up last Friday with a shiny new bumper, new radiator, new AC condensor, some new hoses, a new tie-rod, and a long list of other things. Good as new.

As for me? I’m fine. I wasn’t hurt at all - the only thing wrong with me was a bit of a bruised ego from the stupidity of it all! I still can’t believe I hit a freakin’ pole and it did that much damage!

I feel like I’ve been constantly busy, and yet I have nothing to say. Weird, huh? I blame it all on Twitter. Twitter has eaten my brain. If I can cram it all into 140 characters, do I really have that much to say?

Last week I had several meetings that I scheduled while Mike was out of town the week before. They needed to be in the evening, and I didn’t want to leave Jason home alone for extended periods of time on a school night. I looked forward to Friday, as I’ve made myself set a standing personal appointment with Twisted Yarns and the Friday knitting circle to make sure I get away from the computer! (I move it if I have to, but I really try to avoid doing that — I find that taking a break is actually a good thing!)

When I went to the yarn shop, I brought along all of the pieces of my Cambridge Jacket that I knit out of the Brooks Farm 4-Play yarn and handed it off to LynnAnne to do the seaming for me. The pieces have been done for well over a month now, and it was just sitting there waiting to be seamed. I would rather knit something new. My spare time seems to be quite valuable these days, and why spend it with something I don’t love doing? I feel a little bit like I’m cheating, and at the same time a huge weight to finish it is lifted off of my shoulders. So that made it all worth it. Once she finishes with that, I still have to put on the collar and do the crochet edging, so it isn’t quite finished yet. I have a feeling I won’t be wearing it this winter unless I turn the air conditioning on really cold in the house!

Two weeks ago I started the “Do Your Own Math” shawl available to Knit at Night Guild members - basically a garter stitch shawl. Another one of the Twisted Yarn knitters had made one some time back, and I bought the 5 skeins of Mountain Colors Bearfoot needed that very day, so inspired by hers! (It didn’t help that it was the holiday gumball sale that day - I got the yarn at 20% off!) As I started, restarted, and restarted it again, I realized that while the joy of being wrapped in Bearfoot is a good thing, I’m also less likely to wear a shawl because I’m not very tall and it might make me look like a big blob. I also noted that the gauge I was getting was pretty spot on with the gauge required by the Einstein Coat, which I have wanted to make for years. I’ve never made one though, because it was going to be too heavy if made out of regular yarn for regular Texas wear. But the sock yarn, knit loosely? So far, fabulous! So we’ll see if it all works out. I’m 50 ridges into the 166 or so required for the bottom half of the coat; it has been going very fast! I *heart* Garter Stitch!

Yes, photos. Uhm, I seem to be terrible about taking personal photos lately. Working on that - photos to follow, hopefully.

Friday night our friend Brittany came over to knit with me (she is working on the shawl that I had started, since I inspired her to do it - and then stopped making mine), and we all watched “Grandma’s Boy”. Oh goodness. That was just hysterical. Seriously hysterical. It seemed I needed a good mindless movie. I keep quoting lines from it to Mike! Plus how can you resist a movie where the main character is a video game tester? Oh, and there was knitting in the movie, which made it all appropriate!

I have been knitting more today along with getting housework done. I feel a lot calmer going in to Monday, and I attribute a lot of that to the joy of wool!