Numero uno, so today’s the last day to vote for my little blog space in the BlogLuxe awards. But I will honestly say the other blogs in the eye candy are so fierce (ohmygoodness, did I just use that word?) that I am truly honored to even be nominated among them. Seriously.

Secondly, I am working on answering the questions that were asked in this post, so I should have that post up sometime in the next couple of days. Or weeks.

You know, coming back from vacation is always hard, because you have to unpack and get right back into the swing of things (and driving 12 hours is really not good on the pregnant uterus, so I have spent most of the day just trying to recover and let baby girl stretch out) but luckily, my mother in law stayed here while we were gone, so we came home to a spotless house. And fridge.

Yes … my fridge is spotless.

No … you can’t have her.

But the reality of going back to normal life is setting in, so it may take me a few days to answer those questions.

In the meantime, enjoy my ham …

She needs to work on being more photogenic, don’t you think?

So we’re on vacation this week. As you’re reading this, we are probably in the car. Listening to the most annoying voices ever from the backseat (die, Max & Ruby … DIE!), eating our picnic lunch WAY too early (ahem, Keli), having your adorable wife read emails and facebook posts out loud when she’d much rather be reading a book (ahem, Ken) and stopping to pee every 15 minutes (she’s 3 … I’m pregnant … your guess is as good as mine).

I’m always nervous to post that we’re away from our house in case someone decides to break in, but let me set some things straight.

a. we don’t have anything worth stealing,

b. trust me, we don’t buy expensive electronics or gadgets or artwork or jewelry,

b. if you do break in, please clean up after yourself, because the *last* thing i want to do is clean up YOUR mess when we get home.

Besides that, we are too cheap to board our dogs, so we have someone staying at our house with our two ferocious dogs.

No, seriously.

They’re, like, insanely mean. See?

No, wait.

Okay, here’s Macey in her most heightened state of awareness.

Oops, that’s not it, either.

All right … just make sure you do NOT throw a stick!

Well, unless you want her to chase it over and over again.

Okay, okay.

Whatever you do … don’t let your kids anywhere near them! There is no telling what they’ll do!!

Ugh. NEVERMIND.

While we’re away, I’ve got some scheduled posts ready to go, including one from one of the coolest chicks I know who I pretty much want to be in another life. I mean, besides the fact that we’re practically twins already.

But I thought I’d do something a little different on the blog this week …

That’s right. Anything. Shoot me some questions.

Within reason. Nothing perverted. Or weird. Or about my current weight.

You can ask about photography or camera equipment or editing programs or what I did before I had kids or sewing or how I can lick my own elbows or what I do in my spare time or exactly what I did to become so awesome. You know, the usual.

At the end of the week (probably during the 10-hour drive back home next Saturday), I’ll go through and answer them.

And please ask something. Because there’s really nothing more embarrassing than opening up the floor for questions and then hearing … *crickets*

In the meantime, watch out for these two.

They will totally rip your head off.

You know, after they roll around in some dead grass and lick themselves.

So I was just twittering the other night while Ken was away watching baseball, and I noticed a few of my friends mentioning that they had been nominated for the 2010 BlogLuxe Awards. I moseyed on over to vote, and ummmm …

This sounds so cliché, but I’m completely honored beyond belief to have even been nominated. Seriously. Look at that list of amazing blogs! I’m even a contributor on one of those blogs (but I am selfishly pulling for my own blog, thankyouverymuch.)

So thank you to whoever nominated my blog. Thank you thank you thank you.

Anywho … you can totally vote once a day until July 12. Just sayin’.

But I am TRULY blown away to even be on that list.

I literally feel like I am in the midst of greatness.

Canon 50D • 85mm • ISO 125 • F2.5 • shutter speed: 1/2500

… and I’m stuck inside for most of it. Stupid allergies.

I decided to bring spring inside with an updated blog look – inspired by Beth’s beautiful new design. Oh, the adorable bumblebee PS brushes and beautiful green background are from Pixels & Ice Cream.

And a special shout out to plain m&m’s for keeping me from losing my mind while working on the custom css. Holla!

So … what are your weekend plans?

ps – join me here tomorrow for this week’s You Capture – the theme is feet!

Hello there … miss me? More on my absence later. In the meantime, the awesome weight losers over at Shrinking Jeans asked me to take part in their awesome Team Shrinking Jeans Bash for their Team In Training through The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

I’m so excited to be a part of this since I was totally going to take part in the training and the race before I found out I was preggers.

Basically, you can give a donation to Team Shrinking Jeans and enter to win one of a gajillion amazing door prizes. Okay, not quite a gajillion, but there are a lot of seriously GREAT prizes.

Including your choice of one 11×14 from the following prints …

So how do you enter?

GO HERE!

So a few weeks ago, a friend of mine on Twitter DM’d me to let me know that she had seen a picture of Emma on a tumblr blog.

Now, going into this whole situation, I didn’t realize that tumblr was basically a place where you can “like” stuff that you find online, and it posts to your tumblr account.

Having said that, I don’t care. I don’t want pictures of my daughter ANYWHERE other than on THIS BLOG unless I have given SPECIFIC PERMISSION. Period.

I have it posted on my blog, people.

So when I found a picture of my 2.5 year old (cute as she may be) on a blog with a background of someone scraping up cocaine … well, I was not thrilled.

Shortly after I posted a screenshot on Flickr, the background was changed, but I was still extremely upset.

I just don’t get it. If you like a picture that someone has posted, fine. But a picture of a CHILD on a blog with this type of content is unacceptable.

After a little researching, I found that the picture was originally posted on a tumblr blog called “we heart it” and was then re-blogged to over a hundred other blogs. I don’t know what to think about that. Yes, the blog linked back to here, and that’s cool. But still. It’s my daughter.

I don’t really know where to draw the line.

Ken isn’t bothered by this in the least, but it’s my baby girl. Yes, I made the choice to share pictures of her publicly, but I guess I was just naive about how fast a simple picture can spread around the internet. And frankly, I’m weirded out that a LOT of people are looking at pictures of my kid and re-blogging them all over the place. Especially when I’ve found blogs where people have posted pictures of Emma as if she were their own child.

Plus, I have to think of Emma when she’s 16 – will she want to find random photos of herself on random websites?

Since then, I’ve gone “friends and family” on Flickr with pictures of Emma (so you have to be listed as a friend to see any images of her) but it’s such a drain, because I’m currently doing a Project 365 and would like to be able to post a picture of her here and there, ya know?

But then the picture that was found on that awful background was taken from this blog.

So now what?

Add watermarks to all of my images? I do that now, but I can’t go back through the plethora of posts and add watermarks to all of those. Delete all images of Emma on my blog? Ugh. Go private? Double ugh.

Put my fingers in my ears and “la-la-la” my way through it?

I don’t know. I’m gun-shy about posting pictures of her, now. I just don’t like seeing pictures of her in other places. Is that MY problem? Am I naive in thinking that if I post public pictures of her, no one will take them or use them in other places?

The funny thing about all of this is that I am not considered a “popular blogger.” I don’t get asked to speak at conferences or do product reviews or go places for free. I don’t know how many followers I have right now, I don’t know what my stats are (nor do I care), the only reason I even have ads is because my husband makes me, and I write for me … with the exception of the occasional tutorial post for those who were me a couple of years ago.

So how in the howdy doo are these people even finding me?

This is not a new subject for me, nor will this be the last time I post about it.

broken images are pictures of Emma that I have since made ‘private’ on Flickr

As usual, I guess I just need to make sure that I’m comfortable with the images posted here to ensure my daughter’s safety and comfort level – both now and in the future.

I can’t believe I missed delurking day!! And the bad thing is that things have been so crazy around here lately, I missed actually delurking on other blogs, as well.

Although, to be honest, I try to post occasional replies on blogs that I read regularly.

Anyway, even though it’s not “delurking day” or anything, please feel free to delurk yourself and post a comment here. I’d love to hear from readers out there that I didn’t know I had!

xo

Have you ever heard of Parents Connect? It’s a fun website by Nickelodeon that focuses on the joy of being a parent – I love that their tagline is, “We’re not perfect. We’re parents.” So true!

Anyway, they contacted me a few weeks ago to write up a tutorial on taking better photos of your kids, so I did!

First of all, if you’re visiting from I ♥ Faces, I am sorry that this is the first blog post you’re reading. Normally, I’m pretty upbeat and happy, but today is just not one of those days.

And if you’re not visiting from I ♥ Faces, then won’t you visit me over there today to talk about more ways to get better pictures of your children?

So I had some rss feed issues that pretty much ran me into the ground for three hours until my husband came home and fixed it. Unfortunately, it ended up being this feedburner plugin that sent my blog into a tailspin. I don’t know what happened between yesterday and today, but I am not a happy camper.

Anyway, I had planned to do a nice little picture post from a shoot I had with Emma, sharing my camera settings and processing techniques, but now I am all blogged out.

Oh! In the process of trying to fix the issue, in my usual panic and delete mode, I deleted the old Twelve Paws feed. It’s gone. Kaput. It is supposed to redirect to the new feed, but in the meantime, please just update your RSS feed to this right here if you want to continue following my blog.

Thank you … and I apologize for the huge mess this has created.