happy halloween!

we had a halloween party at trio's on sunday night- it was so fun! dan and amy came with us. they were hansel and gretel, i was cleopatra, and brian was "osama bin brian." :)

good times

so, i had probably the funnest bridal portrait session ever this saturday. the bride emailed me ahead of time and told me to be as creative as possible- that she didn't want to be a generic bride- she wanted to look like she was in a magazine. that's what i like to hear! saturday was SUCH a long day because after the ride to memphis, i had a 3-hour bridal session with brooke at 3 different locations, then i had to drive to wynne after that to just barely be on time for the engagement party i was photographing for a wedding i have booked in june of next year. i left my house at 9am and didn't get home until 11pm! whew!

yesterday (i love sundays!!) brian and i slept in until 10 and then i made some coffee and some veggie omelets, we read the sunday paper, and then around noon we rode our bikes from our house to the river trail, over the "big dam bridge" and past burns park in north little rock. it took over 2 hours, probably 10 miles. it was GORGEOUS!! mom, you're coming with us next week. :) i kept thinking the whole time "i love arkansas! i can't believe this is available to us whenever we want without a car!" there's a great paved trail to the dam and the dam is so cool to ride over! anyway, we had a great day. the weather was too good to be true.

well, i don't think i've posted about this yet, but brian's going to the bank this week!!!!!!!!!!!! everyone cross your fingers!!!!!!!! we got frustrated with the place we originally found, because the landlords were being really lazy with getting back to us about ANYTHING (i.e. they would have a meeting about our floorplan and wouldn't return our calls afterward for 3 days). so, we rode our bikes around the places we wanted, and we found another place. well, i called the property manager, he met us up there, and the very next day he came by trio's to drop off the floorplan, the previous 6 months worth of utility bills, a copy of the lease, and the lease application. he seems very eager to get us in (hello! who wouldn't be in this economy! the people at colliers are retarded!). we LOVE the space and the only construction we need to do is to break down half a wall. nothing compared to the $25,000+ construction that we'd have to do at the first place. i'll take pictures soon and post those. i hope so bad we get this place. it's in the location we want (a little better than the other place, actually). it was weird- brian and i left thinking, "this is too good to be true..." HOPEFULLY it works out!

here is a photo of brian and i at the top of the dam on our bikeride, and just a few (i'm not done looking at all of them yet) of my favorite pictures of the bridal session from saturday (i haven't included any of this part of the session, but when we were downtown, walking around looking for good spots, we passed a fire station, and we asked the firemen to pull the firetruck out in the driveway to use it for photos- she laid across the front while 3 cute firemen watched- it was priceless!):

i like this picture of us- i always love it when brian gets a good "real smile" picture. :) we were having a lot of fun!


this is at memorial park in memphis, down the street from ruth's chris.


this is downtown memphis, in an allyway. there was some cool old tile floor from what i'm guessing used to be a business, but has long since burned down. it was a cool contrast from her new, fancy dress.


her mom pointed out how awesome the colors were in front of this gift shop. such a great backdrop for a fall wedding bridal shoot!! i love that she's barefoot in a lot of them.


this is one of my favorites for sure! she looks like britney spears. :) we passed this construction area on our way dowtown and i made them stop because these circles were TOOOOO cool.


looks like an artsy magazine picture, huh? LOOOOVE it!


bold and beautiful bride


a little action shot- it looks like she's running in a gerbil treadmill!! :)


i love this one too. it's a very good "mood" picture

i need to go outside

the weather is more than perfect. and i'm too busy to have a sun-drenched, relaxing deep inhalation outside these days. pooh! here are a few enticing pictures of "outside" that are making me feel restless:


White Rock Mt., AR:


Geometrical Pinecone that fell on Brian's truck:


my friend the campfire:


beautiful tree along the Buffalo River Trail, AR:


a VERY good way to wake up in the morning, Lake Oachita, AR:


i'm pretty sure i'll survive until our next outing, i was just looking at these pictures and they were making me feel anxious to get out there NOW!! :)

cute engagement pics

last weekend i took some engagement pictures for a cute couple- here are my favorites:

no, i will not get a cold... no, i will not get a cold...

yep, it's that time of year again, apparently. i'm not too bad off, and i'm hoping to fight it, but i feel achy and tired and fog-headed. i thought at first it was all the deadlines i had, but i think it's the "dreaded gombu" as mom calls it. :) (that's funny, i haven't said or heard that in years...) NO FUN! i'll just give myself a vitamin c iv and hope it works. :)

so i finished the trio's wine list, and we had our wine seminar on sunday. i always get SOOOO nervous before these things. i've done quite a few of them, but i always have to take deep breaths before everyone gets there. a flaw of mine is to make sure everyone thinks i did well on whatever i try to do, so when you're presenting your wine list (WITH YOUR PHOTOS ON THE COVER!) it makes for quite a bit of pressure!! it went well, and people had good things to say. i'm getting more and more used to this kind of thing, but it still wears me out!

now that the wine list is finished and capi's is coming together, i can now focus on the 3 1/2 photo sessions i still need to finish!! sheesh, i have no clue what i'm going to do when i have a kid! yikes.

i'm looking forward to a san fran christmas more than words can describe. i can't wait to meet katie and re-acquaint myself with my little german boys, and have alex and nathan read to me... ahh, life will be good. it'll be so fun, and i HATE that i can't stay longer... why can't life be how you want it? oh, i guess that's why they call it "life" and not "what-kerry-wants-when-she-wants." i was always rooting for that to be reality, but whatever... :)

good night!

a day in the life (inspired by kristie)

okay, my day is drastically different than kristie's and allie's, but it's just as busy and a whirlwind of fun (but no free humor like they get from those baby-waby-boo-boo-faces). :) i do have quite a crazy husband, though, that keeps me laughing!

9:00am- woke up to what i thought was a monster trying to break in my house (but was actually emma putting ALL her weight into trying to open the back door with her front legs because she was CERTAIN that the thunder from the morning rain would kill her)
10:00am- actually woke up enough to be functional :)
10:00-12:00- worked on the trio's wine list that is supposed to be COMPLETELY finished tomorrow (eek!)
12:00-5:30- went to trio's and kept working on the wine list, in between answering phone calls, joking around with co-workers, tasting all the food that capi is working on for her menu (and by "tasting," i mean capi comes at me with a fork full of food that will be shoved in my mouth, ready or not!) today we tried a banana tart, a chocolate-peanut-butter molten cake, a marshmallow creme molten cake, greek chicken wings with tzaziki, baby lamb chops, and carrot cake. Also, I made some honeyed peaches for the Bellini recipe that the bartender, Alexia, created (Bellinis are pretty much champagne with peaches- YUMMM) that we also "had" to try. i tell you, i have a VERY hard job. :)
5:30- went to kinko's to pick up the wine list pages that i made by strategically splattering wine on paper (they turned out great!), then went to boulevard bread company to pick up the cheese and fruit trays that we'll have at the wine seminar i'm hosting for the staff tomorrow at trio's (and i got some gourmet food shopping in... they have so many cool things! i got some eggplant tapenade, homemade cheese dip with grilled corn in it, some COOL cheeses, and some TO DIE FOR smoked almonds with sea salt). then i went to kroger to get some pepto (because capi made my tummy hurt from all that food!) and i picked up some things to make brian and brandon a box lunch for their hunting trip tomorrow (brian is waking up at 4am to meet him in conway to leave!).
7:00- finally got home to some newly-bathed, happy dogs whose daddy let come in for the night, and made dinner (tomatillo and beef quesadillas topped with the queso i got at blvd, with a side of chipotle-sour cream rice)
8:30- ate dinner (yes, it always takes me at least 1 1/2 hours to make dinner, no matter what it is). then we watched a movie and had a cranberry margarita (don't remember what the movie was called- it was one of those movies that we didn't really like but couldn't stop watching...)
12:30- tucked brian into bed and got on the computer to work some MORE on the freaking wine list and decided to procrastinate by posting a blog. :)

okay, back to work! hope you enjoyed my day. :) hee hee!

Pinnacle Mt. pictures

Long time since last post= Novel

Surprise! It's a new post! :)

I'm writing in part to humor the people who harass me for not posting often enough, and in part to procrastinate on the 1,934,083,008,093 things I have to do in the next 2 weeks...

Things are movin' and shakin' around the Guice household. We're both moving in a million directions a minute, but still seem to find time to relax and cuddle on the couch with a good movie at least once a week, so things are good. :) We took the girls on a hike on Pinnacle Mt. last weekend, which was so great... except for the whole "Speckles-is-a-scaredy-cat-and-got-too-scared-to-go-up-the-steep-rocks-and-laid-down-and-WOULD-NOT-MOVE-so-I-told-Brian-to-go-ahead-with-Emma-but-ended-up-having-to-CARRY-the-35lb.-dog-up-half-the-mountain-and-down-the-other-half" part of the trip. :) I got quite a good workout that left me sore for about 3 days. :) Ha!


We're still in the torturous and educational process of trying to get Brian's practice up and going. Right now we're working with the landlord of the space we've found (and LOVE) to get approved for the floorplan changes we've made. I think it's such a great location- we've wanted to go with the whole "industrial modern" theme and this has it! Brick walls, black ceiling tiles with track lighting everywhere... it's just about perfect. Right now it's a boutique jewelry/handbag store, so we have to build walls to create the exam room, office, etc. The other HUGE thing has been that the bathroom they have is not ADA compliant (Americans with Disabilities Act), which means it's super small and won't fit a wheelchair. We assumed that the building owner would be responsible for the construction to get it compliant (duh), but we've had to fight more than we thought for that. It's also been a hairy lease compromise, but we're at a good place... and then the economy was flushed down the drain and we're worried about getting the money he needs to start it up. :( I'm still hopeful, and we've decided to go ahead and do what we can to get the money, and if he doesn't get it, we'll take a year, he'll find something in the meantime, and we'll revisit it next year. I really like the location, so I'm hoping things work out- cross your fingers for us that Bank of America wants to give us a bunch of money! :)

As if that's not keeping my mind occupied enough, I've been tied up with photography, having a photo shoot at least every other weekend (which equals about 10-20 hours of editing the following week). It's been great, and I'm still in love with photographing and learning something new everytime. Meeting all kinds of cool, interesting people is a plus too!

I've fallen absolutely, madly in love with my job at Trio's. The people, the food, the atmosphere, the hours, the creative freedom... oh, i'm in love. I feel more invested in this job than at ANY other job I've ever had (except my own photography business, of course). It's just so weird that I seriously feel like I was BORN to have this job. We're opening a new restaurant called "Capi's," scheduled to open by the end of this month, and I've been very involved in the creation of this place. It's always been a fantasy of mine to open my own restaurant, and through this process I've realized 2 important things- 1. I'm having SO much fun being so involved and having the creative freedom to really be a part of this restaurant and 2. I realize that I NEVER, EVER want to open a restaurant on my own... Capi has been a walking panic attack (understandably!) and I know I wouldn't be able to stomach that. I'm pretty close to tearing my hair out, and all I'm responsible for is the entire beverage program (choosing, ordering, pricing, menu-creation of wine, liquor, cocktail recipes, infused and hot teas, etc.). I'm engulfed in that, as well as the new wine list I've created at Trio's. The "creative freedom" I talked about also spills out to using my photography at this job: Capi "comissioned" me to take the photos for the covers of the wine lists at Trio's and Capis, and I've created a little "art project" by strategically splattering wine on parchment paper that I'll scan onto parchment paper, lighten, and print as the pages for the lists. I think it's going to look awesome! It's just such a rewarding job, and I'm so thankful that I went in at such a perfect time to be hired. I've also bonded eerily well with all the staff, and it's just amazing.... it takes up most of my time, but I LOVE it!

Emma and Speckles are outside dogs now. The wood floors and the girls just didn't get along very well. They never played because they just slid and scratched all over the place, and we have such a great backyard with no places for them to be able to dig out, so it just made sense. It was selfish of me to think that it was horrible for them to go outside, because they've been SO happy out there! They play more, they aren't freakishly hyper when we go outside to say hi (which we've made a point to do at least 3 times a day), and it's been such good weather lately! It's been a good transition, but I still miss their cold noses on my leg while working on the computer. :) They're still our sweet little furry daughters, and are so funny. I can't believe Emma will be 7 YEARS OLD in 3 months! Weird! I got Emma for Brian for his birthday around our 1-year anniversary. She still acts like a bouncy little puppy. :) Sweet girls...

I cut my hair off last week! It was longer than it's been since I was little, and I cut about a FOOT off!! I found myself putting it in a ponytail within 20 minutes of walking out the door, so I figured it was time for a change. I like it! I found a good salon and the girl did a great job. It's a good change for me. I wish I would've taken a "before and after" photo, because it really was a lot of hair!! I'll post a recent long-hair picture with a new short-hair picture when I take some. I'm thinking of offering a "trade" with another photographer I know to have some professional pictures of Brian, me and the girls for some pictures of her and her dog for some Christmas card pictures. Even though I'm a pro, we haven't had photos taken since our wedding! We need some good ones... I may try to do the timer-thing, but hopefully you all will get a good photo of us for Christmas. :)

Well, my goodness, I realize why I can't post often- I write novels when I get going!! :)

Here are my photos that will be used for the wine lists- I think they turned out awesome! It's also cool to be able to add to my resume that I've done "commissioned product photography." :)