The happy moments

I'm so proud of Jake. He started this lawn care business with a little help from my family and made it something that could give us income. From the end of May until now he has had 13 clients! With hardly any advertising that is a good job!!

Now that lawn care season is approaching us quickly he decided to jump into WFG with my dad. This was completely his decision! I told him if he didn't want to he didn't need to. But he also knew we needed the money, so I'm sure that helped push him quite a bit! Well, in WFG you have to get several licenses. First there is your life license, then your mortgage license and then your securities licenses. YESTERDAY, Jake passed his life license test!! I am SOOOO Proud of him! It isn't the easiest test, the testing center makes it tricky. I took it twice and failed both times, someone on my dad's team took it 11 times and then passed it! You have to have some real determination to pass this test. There are some people that pass it on their first try, more power to them! Anyway, Jake passed! I'm so proud of him. He's so determined to help our family financially and I'm so happy with him.

Anyway, that's my public spill on how good Jake is doing and how much I LOVE him!

4 more days

And then I can eat normal food...basically.

By sunday hopefully I will have my before photos from the doctor and you can see what HCG Shots do.

Journaling updates

Over the last few weeks we have been working on many projects, so if you don't like long posts or you don't like a lot of pictures, don't keep reading - this will be both.

Remember my post with this LOVELY wallpaper? Well soon (hopefully) it will no longer be there. I've gotten about a full wall of it off, that took me about 4 hours. I started last Saturday and haven't had time to continue since then...so my goal is to have it completely off and painted before Christmas. I will keep you up to date and take several during and after pictures.

Next on the list of my projects --- the pantry! I found this post on tipjunkie's blog. I was inspired...or really tired of having a non-organized pantry.

Before:

I went to the dollar store and walmart in search of the cheapest containers I could find. Now it is organized :) Labels and all.

After:

Today while Jarren was running around upstairs instead of in his "cage" in the living room, he discovered what he could do when you pull down the dishwasher door. I went to hurry and get my camera to take a picture and when I came back he had this face....he wasn't sure if he was being cute or if he was in trouble.

Yesterday, I found out from Jake that because of how stressed out I have felt this last week, he and rob were going to take Jarren all day and he bought me a massage at a salon in American Fork, it's called seven salon & spa. I had a swedish massage for an hour, it was heaven.

Anyway, while I was sleeping in this morning and Rob had Jarren, they stole my camera and had some fun. The next two pictures are from that.

Isn't he getting SO big!?

The last couple of weeks we have been trying to work on our front yard, with some help from Rob and my parents we are coming along...slowly. I know we are going to have to get it done before it gets cold, but since it's our only day to really get anything done together it's hard to focus on one project...especially since it is now BYU football season, Jake has to see some part of the game, if not the whole thing.

Anyway, there were TONS of weeds in the front island area and the side of our yard next to the highway was like 10 bush/trees combined into one big one. So we went to work on it.

Here is my man piling branches into the trailer that Rob and my dad cut down.

Here is Rob...don't mess with him and his saw.

This is the side tree/bush thing.

And another angle:

This is the island that my mom and I worked on, you should have seen my mom jump backward 5 ft in one jump when she found wilbur, the snake. I won't even mention how many pregnant wolf spiders we found in there that creeped me out. Ok maybe I will...where my mom is standing there was like a whole village of them.

This picture is the some-what after picture of the side. It looks even better now, these pictures are from about 3 weeks ago.

This is the island some-what. It is now missing half that dirt, we moved it over to the tree/bush area.

And last but not least on my journaling updates: There was a big case lot sale and Maceys, Kohlers, Albertsons and Smiths this weekend. So we went through all the ads to find the cheapest things at each place and went to hit all the sales. We bought stuff from each place since each place had better deals than the others. It took us like 3 hours but we had a lot of good savings. Now my dungeon closet actually looks like a cold storage! Some what... and what cold storage could go without a million boxes of XanGo? Not ours ha.

That is the end of our updates..for now.

Except...again, I will advertise for myself. If you know anyone who needs photography done please send them here or here. Thanks!

Happy Harvest

So I randomly bought a "Good Housekeeping" Magazine off the rack the other day since I've been feeling really crafty lately. I found this article in there. I thought it would be fun to try the pumpkins in a bowl.

I headed to walmart, my one stop cheap place. I bought a decorative bowl, some pumpkins, purple, green and black ribbon, and some "maple leaf" garland to put around the bowl.

Next I hot glued the ribbon around the pumpkins and put them in the bowl. The article actually says to use double sided tape but I like my hot glue gun. It's a really cute center piece on the table, I think I might go buy some more pumpkins to add to it though, so it's more of a "heap" like the article says.

I think I just might buy a good housekeeping magazine more often!

Sneak Peek

My Cousin who got married in May let me practice taking bridals with her. I am pleased with how they turned out. We did some in-studio and some on-location. Jake was a good sport and tagged along to help with the reflector when needed. I love him :)

Anyway if you are interested in seeing how some of them turned out. Click here.

I'm in love..

..with the Dollar store in American Fork. I believe it's called Dollar Tree? It's amazing. I've found many dollar stores that aren't even worth going into, but this one has everything you would want from a dollar store.

I just though I would announce my new love to the world.

My sugar playing in the sugar

We have created a studio in the front room of our house. This way I will have somewhere to do photography during the winter, I will still do "on location" but with the cloudy utah sky during winter time it will be more difficult. I set up one of my backdrops, bought some gumdrops and a candy jar and let Jarren go at it while I took pictures. He can be such a ham for the camera. Click HERE for more pics.

Studio

It's official...I have an in-home studio. WOOT!

A few new things..

Besides my camera, I should probably post a few more updates.

First off, a Photography note, if you have any family, couple, baby or children photography done by me starting now until December 1st, you will receive 3 free Christmas Card layouts of your choice. So Schedule an appointment now. Either, leave comments, email me (jao.photography08@gmail.com) or call me, for those of you that know my number.

A Jarren note. I think that I'm never going to get my child out of my bed. EVER...well maybe when he turns 19 we will have to ween him from our bed so he can go on a mission. He goes to bed in his own bed around 9:30 and by 2am he is awake again, unless we give him a bottle and lay him in bed with us, he is up for hours! So I give in, get his bottle and put him inbetween us. The problem with this is...well one, we don't get our own bed but mostly...I don't get a bed. Either he turns sideways inbetween me and Jake and kicks me out of the bed with his feet (He doesn't do that to Jake), or he just keeps rolling into me until I move, and takes over my side. See below, these are two of his favorite positions in my bed. Both on my side. If he isn't on exactly my side he is laying sideways taking up both of our sides so I end up laying sideways on the bed with my head half hanging off and my feet dangling off Jake's side. Jake leaves for work around 2 or 3 each morning, so he doesn't get included in this morning ritual. I swear it will never end. It started when we moved into the house, which is when he got his own room. I've tried everything, including trying to let him cry it out...he will just cry and cry and cry and cry..you get the point. I gave up. Any ideas are appreciated.

On a ME note, I got my hair done. I wanted to keep the length cause I'm trying to grow it out, but I needed a change. So I went darker, once again. I also added bangs and more layers that I can make messy and cute. It's fun, I'm just trying to get used to looking in the mirror and seeing hair in my face...I haven't had bangs for almost 3 years now. Even then, they weren't this thick.

On a Me and Jake note...Lawn care is slowly coming to an end. We loved the extra income while it lasted, but now we are going to jump back into WFG. Jake's determined to get a few promotions by December. I'm proud of him. (It helps that I bribed him with a 4 day trip to NY to see his buffalo bills play live and stay in buffalo for 2 days and then go to New York City for 2 days...ok ok some of it is for my enjoyment also, I want to take pictures there so bad!)

My new baby

I haven't had enough time to fully play around with her yet, but I got my new baby last night.

Yes...my new digital camera. It's beautiful. All of the reviews on this camera are nothing but wonderful. I'm so excited to not have to use my film camera anymore.

google it!

Google it!

Go to google images and type in your own answers for the topics below. Pick your favorite image on the first 3 pages of results and post.

1. First Name: Jessica 2. Middle Name: Ann

3. Last Name: Oliverson (My baby was on there!)
4. Bad Habit: chewing gum?

5. What am I doing right now: Cooking Dinner

6. Grandma's Name: Zena

7. A pet I have had: Sugar

45. My first job: Kountry Korner Grill

34. My age: 22

379. Where I grew up: Highland, UT

23. A past love: snowboarding

1. One of my best friends nicknames: Nickikit

It gave me pictures from my blog

2983472. One of my favorite places: Hawaii

tag others:

Kirk

Jenn

Jessica

And anyone else who wants to do it that reads my blog.