A little slice of my life.

Many of my updates lately have been all about photography. Which is swell and all (since this is, after all, a photo blog) but I have a tendency to neglect the portion that tells my story. The entire name of this blog/business is Laura Kaster Photography, and it's about time I focus more on sharing the "Laura" portion of the equation. I actually meant to post this last week, but got a wicked bad stomach virus (I turned into what I like to refer to as "Exorcist Laura" - not fun).

So, in no particular order, here's some fun non-photography stuff I've been up to lately:

A month or so ago, I went to Goodwill to drop some stuff off that had been taking up space in our apartment. After dropping them off, I made the mistake of entering the store and impulse-bought a papasan chair and a cute lamp and lampshade. Well, the lamp wasn't exactly cute at that point (it was painted what I like to call "Grandma Pink") but it definitely had potential. 

A couple of weekends ago I decided to awaken that potential and spray-painted it a nifty blueish-turquoise. It was way easier to spray-paint it than I thought it would be! If this whole photography thing doesn't work out, maybe I could rescue ugly things and spray-paint them back to life. Watch out Etsy artisans, you might have some competition!

In case you're wondering why I took photos of the lamp in our kitchen, it's because we live in a garden apartment (aka an apartment on the ground level, quite a common occurrence in Chicago), so we don't get a ton of natural light. In our kitchen we have these fantastic glass squares that let in a ton of light, hence making it the ideal place to take well-lit photos.

Which is why this photo also features my *clean* dishes and my knife collection.

In case you haven't noticed, Pumpkin is a Persian and is quite fluffy. During the bouts of 100+ degree weather we had over the summer, the poor girl resorted to sitting right in front of the air conditioner to get some relief from the brutal heat - I figured that was a pretty big hint that it was time to get her shaved.

Since all of the groomers I found in Chicago were hoity-toity and super pricey (or could only groom her on a weekday), Brian and I decided to invest in some electric clippers to shave Pumpkin. We figured it couldn't be that difficult - after all, if the people in the YouTube tutorials we saw could do it, then by golly we would have no problems doing it!

...yeah. We were wrong. So wrong. Even lots of treats and promises of catnip couldn't get her to sit still.

Don't get me wrong - we did shave her. Just....not all the way. Her hair has grown out a little so it doesn't look as silly any more, but still. You can tell that it's cut like when a five-year-old decides to cut their own hair with children's scissors.

Of course Pumpkin decided to be Little-Miss-Sassy-Pants and was very uncooperative for the camera for once in her furry life when I tried to capture the last remnants of her haircut. Brian theorizes that it's because she's getting older and more resistant to my demands requests...which of course makes me sad, because I don't like to think of my cute little fluff balls as "old".

Word to the wise: even though it's super-cute, if a cat presents you with her belly, do not give her a belly rub. In the immortal words of Admiral Ackbar: "It's a trap!"

I *almost* got this in focus! If only she weren't so darn sassy!!

The recent more temperate weather in Chicago is getting me really excited for my favorite season: Fall! Crunching leaves, crisp air, pumpkin-flavored and themed everything, Halloween (Brian and I are planning on dressing up as Han and Leia from Star Wars - yes, we're nerds and we're proud of it!) apple picking, spooky stories....I could go on and on. 

And let's not forget about my favorite sport to watch! Football season is starting (yay!) but a majority of the first few Packers games are either on ESPN or NFL Network (boooooo - we don't have cable because we're cheap). Brian and I really want to go to a game at Lambeau this year, especially since the last one we went to was in 2010. Which is way too long ago for my liking.

...so we're going to the season opener against the 49er's. YAY!!

This photo is courtesy of Sherah G* Photography. Pretty much sums up our relationship: Brian's somewhat normal, and I'm kind of crazy. ;)

That's about it for now. Until next time peeps!