A confession. Well, more like an announcement.

People always say that having a kid changes everything. Being a mom now, I can definitely attest to that fact - although I'm not sure it changes everything, it certainly changes a lot, and as such time has become so much more precious than it ever was before.

Among the many changes that came once Owen burst onto the scene was that my priorities shifted. Family has always been number one, but usually everything else wasn't too far behind. Now, pretty much everything else (with the possible exception of my day job) is a far distant second. Everything I do now is to help make our family life better.

I think a large part of this reasoning stems from the fact that I myself did not have a lot of time with my own mother before she passed away. What little memories I did have of her (like making chocolate chip cookies, hanging out with her after preschool, etc.) I clung to with the same desperation someone clutches a winning lottery ticket.

I don't want my son to have to cling to memories of me like I was forced to do. I want him to have a super-huge-happy-fun-time library full of them, that he can access like a large mail-order catalog at a moment's notice.

Although I don't think I'll be dying anytime soon, I have a tendancy to be overly paranoid, and I've already had one near-death experience in my early twenties that has convinced me to live each day like it's my last. And on my last day, I want to spend with my family.

With this re-commitment to family, I have come to realize that although I love photography, I enjoy it more on my own terms and with my own timing. I also have been becoming more interested in further exploring other creative ventures (like cooking, design/art and fictional writing) that I'd like to devote my time to instead.

So, I guess that's a long way to say that Laura Kaster Photography will be going on a permanent hiatus until further notice. I'm by no means done with photography, I just need to take a break for awhile and reassess how I want to move forward and what my new goals are.

Until next time, blogosphere.

Some of my recent faves.

Is it just me, or did Fall come and go at lightening speed this year? After being afflicted with morning sickness last autumn, I was looking forward to actually enjoying my favorite season of the year. Alas, it was not to be. I've instead resigned myself to the fact that for the foreseeable future I'll be stuck in large poofy jackets and my warmest hat which makes me look like a Swedish country girl.

Meh...at least Christmas is coming. :)

In the meantime, I've found some new favorites that have been helping me overcome my autumn-went-away-too-stinkin-fast-itis.

1.) The Gap. It's cold out, and Owen needed boots - well, not necessarily to tromp through the snow in since he can't walk yet, but at least something to cover his little feet other than socks that are typically ripped off at the first opportunity. Since he inherited his father's giant genes, I had a heck of a time trying to find baby boots that fit him. In swooped The Gap to save the day. Thirty percent off with free shipping AND $25 GapCash for every $50 you spend?! Yes, please!

2.) Mastering the Art of French Cooking. An oldie but a goodie. I snagged a banged-up used copy from Half-Price Books and cooked a few of the vegetable/sauce recipes in the past because I was too chicken to actually attempt one of the more difficult recipes. I finally grew a pair this past weekend and made a pot roast that included a whole freaking bottle of wine. Making it was reminiscent of giving birth - first there was the fear (this recipe is SO COMPLICATED! AHHH SCARY!!), then came the courage (I can do this! I BELIEVE!!), then there was the anger when things didn't go my way (Screw you Julia Child! SCREW YOU!!), then the triumph when I was able to make the recipe bend to my will (Ah ha! SUCK IT JULIA!), and finally, the best part: acceptance that the entire process was oh so worth it after taking that first bite of that heavenly pot roast (om nom nom).

3.) Young House Love. Since I now live in a house that I can (mostly) decorate to my liking, I'm constantly looking for design inspiration to help make it our own. This wildly popular home improvement blog has some neat thrifty ideas of  how to make your house into a home. Plus their personal stories are pretty amusing.

4.) Table for Two. Can you tell I'm a foodie? :) I actually discovered this one through a photographer I follow and admire. I visit this one from time to time to find relatively easy and delicious recipes. Plus, the blogger has such a talent for photographing food - every picture is the very definition of food porn. Now please excuse me while I wipe my drool off the floor.

5.) My new iPhone. After fighting the urge to purchase a smart phone for years (and suffering through much pointing and giggling at my ghettofabulous flip phone) I finally caved. It's shiny. It's pretty. It's way too addicting. And I'm thinking about naming her Stella, because I'm weird and name inanimate objects.

Five months of cute. And a sneak preview...

I started typing out a long blog post about how much life has been crapping all over us lately, but after I had a chance to step back and reassess I realized not many of you would want to read that. And really, who can blame you? I sure wouldn't.

So, instead, here's some snapshots of the last few months with my favorite new little man (and guest starring my favorite big man and two favorite fluffballs). Plus, a little sneak peak of a wedding I shot last month. More to come!

When Brian doesn't get enough sleep, he looks a little like this:

When Owen is hungry and cranky, he looks a little like this:

And a little sneak peak of something non-baby related. :)

Just some snippets.

Now that we're done with the move to the new place, I finally feel like I can breathe. Let me tell ya: moving with a newborn is about 10 times more difficult than moving normally. And no matter which way you paint it, moving sucks, so it sucking multiplied by 10 is pretty darn sucktacular. At least we had helpers, including ever-generous parents and friends.

In the shuffle, I lost track of my Nikon so I made do with my crappy little point and shoot, which frustrated me to no end (so. many. blurry. photos! UGH!!!). Now that I unearthed the DSLR, I've been snapping photos like a mad woman trying to make up for lost time.

So, without further ado, here's a quick snapshot into our life nowadays:

Sokka loves the abundance of windows at the new house, and is having a blast chasing the critters that torment him from the outside.

My son has what I affectionally call "Crazy Eyes".

Pumpkin likes to think that she's Owen's babysitter.

Brian's a pretty awesome dad. Even if he occasionally sleeps on the job. :)

If you look closely, you can see Owen spitting up. Oh babies.

A smile! Granted it was because of gas (and a few seconds after I took this photo he started screaming) but still...I'll take what I can get. :)

...And Baby Makes Three. Five if you count the cats.

Wow, it's been awhile since I've written a post! Life has just been so nutty lately that it hasn't been high on my list of priorities, which instead have consisted mainly of preparing for Baby K's arrival, working on the move to our new place in the 'burbs (which we're finally done with, thank goodness!), and dealing with a diagnosis of gestational hypertension, which caused me to go on modified bed rest for the final days of my pregnancy.

Originally Baby K was due to come on May 13 - however, with the hypertension coupled with a false labor I had a couple of weeks prior, my doctor had a feeling that he'd come early. Turns out she was right!

On April 27, after 21 hours of labor and four hours of pushing (which my OB said was a "superhuman" effort) our son Owen Stewart came into the world.

7 lbs., 11 oz., 20.5 inches long. 100% adorable (not that I'm biased or anything).

:)

More updates to come, so stay tuned!

Wow.

That word pretty much sums up my life as of late. Here's a not-so-short summary. You have been warned. :)


The car.
I still remember when Brian brought home the Saturn in the fall of 2007. I was so angry at him because, although it was a newer car than the '78 Porsche he had previously, it had a manual transmission! After a few half-baked attempts at learning stick on the Porsche that included lots of stalling and screaming for my life, I let Brian drive me around in the Saturn like a little old lady who never bothered to get a driver's license.

Fast forward to fall 2009, when we moved to Ohio. Since Brian was in school full-time, and I needed to get one of those job-type things to help support us, I no longer had a personal chauffeur to drive me to and from interviews. So, I finally buckled down, had a heart-to-heart with the Saturn, and conquered my fear of driving stick.

After a rocky start, and despite all of the car's quirks (like only half of the dashboard lights working, no back-up lights, a clicking sound whenever you turned on the heat and/or air conditioning, etc.) we became great pals. I felt a strong attachment to that car and drove it with pride, despite its inherent ghettofabulousness.

You can imagine how heartbroken I was to discover recently that the car no longer idled. I won't bore you with the specifics of what went wrong, but after not being able to fix it after two months (!) in the shop, we knew it was time to let it go. With a new part-time job for Brian starting in January and a baby on the way, it was time to get a new car.

Although the new one is pretty and works far better than the Saturn ever did, I still can't help but miss the car that taught me how to drive stick. That drove us to Disney World and back. That wore three different state license plates throughout its life.

R.I.P. Saturn. We love you and we'll never forget you!

Photo courtesy: Brian Kaster (aka the bestest best husband ever!). And in case you were wondering, the handicapped signs were put up AFTER we parked there (no joke...gotta love Chicago!). At least the city didn't slap us with a ticket!

The roof over our heads.
Our former landlord, who we really liked (and trust me, he loved us in return!) sold the building we're living in to a couple who don't speak much English and had zero experience being landlords. Very long story short (trust me, it's full of drama and lots of frustration), let's just say that we can't wait to move out after our lease ends into a house in the 'burbs. True that I'm not thrilled about moving away from the city, but I am excited to be closer to family, friends and some fresher air.


The cats.
They're still fluffy and crazy, as always. :)

Shortly after returning from Christmas, however, we noticed that Sokka's appetite had decreased dramatically and his ribcage was starting to show. For a cat that would chase us down and consistently wake us at 5:30 in the morning begging for food, we knew something was amiss. We brought him to the vet to get it checked out and a few days later got the news that Sokka has diabetes.

We're not quite sure how it happened (he used to be a couple of pounds overweight, which we gradually fixed, and kept him pretty active) but of course pregnancy hormones plus my natural predisposition to worry led me to blame myself for letting him get to that point. After a talk with Brian (who is great at talking sense into my oft-non-sensical brain) I realized that it likely wasn't my/our fault, and all we can do at this point is to help him feel better.

So now we'll get to discover the joys of living with a diabetic cat!

Sokka, taken a few months ago (I didn't have the heart to photograph him while he still looks like "skeletor cat"). I'll post an update pic after he chunks up a little. :)

The baby.
After the morning sickness finally subsided in early-mid December, I took a few weeks to simply enjoy feeling like a human being again instead of the pukey, food-hating zombie I was for essentially three months. It's been a blast to feel the baby starting to move, and it's amazing that it's now full-on kicking and rolling around in there!

We journeyed to Evanston on New Year's Eve morning for the anatomy scan, a detailed ultrasound that is essentially a guided tour of the baby's many parts and my uterus. For a majority of the scan the baby was pretty stubborn, which proves that there's some of my genes in there somewhere!

When it came time to locate "the goods", the baby miraculously had no problem showing us the parts, and we found out that we're having a BOY! And we're so stinkin' excited...although I think Brian is more relieved that he won't have to suffer through what he calls "Pony Princess Cartoons".

...whew! Now you know why it's taken me so long to post anything. Life's been pretty crazy lately, and it's only going to get crazier in 2013. It's time for me to pick back up my camera and start clicking away again.

Let's do this!

AWOL. With darn tootin' good reason.

So, I'm sure you've noticed that this blog has been a little....quiet lately. Which is kind of ironic, because my life has been pretty darn eventful as of late.

And here's the reason why.

FYI - Head is on the left, body on the right. 

I think this is a very sufficient excuse for my temporary leave of absence, wouldn't you agree? :)

That and the morning sickness...which no one tells you lasts all day, for weeks on end. I'm told that the light at the end of the tunnel is coming, but in the meantime I'll keep stuffing my face with ice cream and whatever else my body decides is worthy of digestion, thank you very much.

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!

Knock-Knock-Knockin' on Heaven's Door

It finally happened: we took our first actual vacation in two years.

When deciding on a destination, we wanted to make sure it would be both relaxing and fun, especially since our last vacation was at Disney World (which was a helluva lot of a fun, but not terribly relaxing!). Since we're once again living in close proximity to Wisconsin, we decided to return to Door County (aka: The Cape Cod of the Midwest) for the first time in about five years.

In case you're curious, here's a quick summary of what we did:

• White water rafting along the Peshtigo River in Athelstane, Wis. There were a lot of rocks, and I got stuck in about half of them. Brian managed to fall out of his raft on some Class 3 rapids.
• Went to a wine tasting, and got a little tipsy. Bought too many fridge magnets and bottles of wine.
• Swam around the pool.
• Read a novel.
• Napped.
• Ate some really tart cherries. And cherry-flavored foodstuffs.
• Watched the sunset over the bay.
• Went para-sailing after we weren't able to go "regular" sailing because the winds weren't cooperating.
• Climbed up and down 90-some-odd terrifying steps in Cana Island Lighthouse.
• Poked around the kitschy shops in Sister Bay, Egg Harbor and Fish Creek.

Luckily for me Door County is very photogenic, so it wasn't too difficult to capture its natural beauty.

Brian enjoying the Sunset over the bay. :)

On our last night up north, we went to a fish boil in Fish Creek.  A fish boil is a Door County tradition where whitefish, potatoes and onions are piled into a large pot over a roaring fire and "boiled over" to remove the fish oil collected on top. Our "boiler master" did an awesome job of explaining the process, and of course making the flames erupt under the pot.

And yes, it was delicious. Even Brian, who is not a fan of eating fish, enjoyed the meal.

These guys worked FAST! My quick shutter speed barely kept up!

It was a wonderful trip, and I'll remember it fondly. And now I'll leave you with a quintessential summer photo.