by Amy | Nov 3, 2014 | Blog, The Art of the Moment
It’s November! Which means, it’s time!!
Christmas mini sessions are happening. As promised, here are all the details you need.
I’ve got two dates to choose from. Sessions last about 15 minutes {but if friends are here for their session before or after you, feel free to stay and visit as long as you like!} Sessions can be scheduled at any quarter hour, but space is limited–so be sure to get your spot reserved quick.
Saturday November 15th from 1-4pm
Sunday November 23rd from 12-5pm
Session fees are just $50. You’ll get five fully edited images, with a print release and a release to share them on social media, and a custom Facebook cover collage. Files will be delivered electronically about a week after your session. Once they are in your hands you have my blessing to print them anywhere and use them as you please on all your Christmas greeting cards.
For groups of friends, sessions are $50 for up to 5 people. More people than that, it’s just $10/head–and you’ll all get the files.
**Other discounts do not apply to mini sessions
I’ll be collecting and creating more props before sessions start. I’ll have big wrapped gift boxes, a sled, faux snow, ice skates, chairs, mugs, blankets, and twinkle lights. But, you know I love creativity…so feel free to bring along something of your own.
What are you waiting for?!
Call or Text me–574-361-7268
Email me–amyallender@gmail.com
Message me via the Facebook page
Or…use the contact form here.
Thanks to all of you who had interest in holiday sessions again this year! I’m so excited to let the merriment begin!
by Amy | Oct 30, 2014 | Blog, The Art of the Moment
Meet the Rogers family. {No relation to this Rogers family.} As you can see, they recently welcomed a new addition into the fold. Her name is Aurora and she precious! I know you can’t tell right now, but she’s a red-headed gem. I just love that red hair! It makes me think about another soon-to-be ginger baby I am chomping at the bit to meet. {Read this if you have no idea what I’m talking about.}
The Rogers clan also has two gorgeous dogs. When they asked if the pups could come, I was over the moon with excitement. You know I love dogs. I’m glad they came. It’s nice to have portraits of the whole family–two-legged and four-legged members included.
After a walk around the neighborhood we took that bundled up baby inside for her very own session. Since she was about a month old at the time, I’ll call it a not-quite-newborn session. She stayed wide awake the whole time, which is fine by me because this one has lovely deep blue eyes that will just make you melt.
Aurora was so well behaved for a wide-awake baby having her first portraits taken. She was pretty curious about the bright lights and that click, click, click sound. And there was no fussing…until we forced her to sit in a bucket. She held out for a few shots, and I’m grateful for that. Because she looks pretty darn cute!
Eventually she’d had enough and insisted on being taken out. Mom tried to console her, but to no avail. The fussing did, however, lead to this precious candid shot of Mommy trying to convince Aurora that buckets are fun, wonderful places to sit.
She was so much happier when we just let her be.
And when she was completely worn out and fed up with all this portrait stuff she was delighted to be held and fussed over my her mommy and daddy. I love these natural, real-life shots that give us a peek inside the love this family has for their precious baby girl.
Thanks for letting me hang out with your awesome family! Happy travels and best wishes as you move away from Minot to a warmer {less Practically Canadian} location!
xo
Amy
by Amy | Oct 27, 2014 | Blog, The Art of the Moment
Everybody, meet Sam. He is my second-to-last senior of the season. He’s smart, and witty and was polite {and game} enough to oblige me as I had him trek from one corner of his family’s gorgeous property to the other. Those are qualities I always treasure in a senior client. I’m being very honest when I tell you that this guy is a true gem and I had an absolute blast taking these very country, outdoor senior portraits.
When Sam’s mom told me he was a big time reader, I was so excited to pull my stack-of-books stool out of hiding and into the open air. Not to mention that I really dig the jewel tones of the books next to those orange pants! Seriously, how cool are those jeans?! You might recognize the books {and a few other props} from a photo I posted to instagram {you should follow me @theartoflivingproject}. I know quite a few of you were curious when I showed you a trunk filled with oversized books, suitcases and chalkboards.
Sam comes from a big family. {One of his sisters married into the Rogers clan I showed you a couple months ago. If you like these photos, you should go check out that one too! See it here.} While we were taking his senior portraits, siblings were popping in and out of the house, an adorable dog was trotting through the yard and delightful smells were wafting out of the kitchen window. While that might be distracting to some photographers, I’m so happy Sam decided to have his portraits taken at his family’s property–it was a blast to be around such a busy, fun household. I love seeing people in their element, and at home, in this beautiful yard, he was very much at home.
Now. Let’s talk suits. You know I love suits at senior sessions…but this one just took the cake for me.
Okay, so I guess technically it’s not a suit. But, it sure is classy. Very European. These photos remind me of Ireland for some reason. Whatever it is, I love this suit and these photos are magical.
As you can tell, I had a great time with Sam! Thanks for hanging out and fighting the wind with me {did I mention we almost got blown over a few times?} I hope you love your photos, I know I do!
Remember to go over to the Art of Living Facebook page to vote B&W or Color in Sam’s photo contest. If at least 40 people chime in, he’ll win an 8×10 of the winner. And, if you like what you see here, I’d love it if you liked the page and shared it with friends so more people can start mastering the art of living.
xo
Amy
by Amy | Oct 14, 2014 | Blog, The Art of the Moment
This is Patrick. He’s graduating. And he let me have the good pleasure of taking his senior portraits. I can’t speak for him, but I can tell you that I had fun times a million while shooting his session. We hit up some of my favorite, rustic locations in Minot, then took a drive out to that trestle in Burlington that I’m so very crazy for.
He put up with my many awkward comments, he climbed and sat and was patient as I got just “one more shot…” And while, that line might actually mean “Let’s do a whole bunch more…” Patrick was totally willing and good spirited through my long list of ideas. I think it paid off, and I think you will too.
One of my most favorite things about shooting senior boy photos is that they usually bring a mom along. {I think I might have mentioned this before.} Patrick’s mom is awesome. I had a great time chatting with her while we waited on wardrobe changes. And–she gets to take full credit for showing me this awesome wall! What could be more perfect for a senior photo?
Seriously, friends, I cannot imagine a more perfect day to take in the fall colors of Practically Canada. The hills of Burlington were simply lit up with colored leaves. An ideal backdrop for gorgeous photos.
Thanks for an awesome night, Patrick! Happy senior year!
by Amy | Oct 13, 2014 | Blog, The Art of the Moment
Gymnast Senior Portraits
Just a heads up, it’s going to be a senior photo kind of week here at the blog. Several weeks ago the perfect storm of senior sessions happened: Four senior sessions in one week. For me, that’s a whole lot. But there are simply no words for the amount of fun I had getting to know these upstanding young people. We walked balance beams, traveled to the rail road trestle, hauled a drum set into an open field and rode a four-wheeler to remote corners of a family farm. It was an amazing week and I’m excited to be showing you three of those four sessions this week.
Tonight, meet Jenna. She is gorgeous, an amazing gymnast, giving, fashionable and compassionate. I’ve had the pleasure of having her in my youth group small group for two years now–and I count myself lucky for it. She’s the kind of person who just makes you happy when she’s around.
Okay, enough bragging on Jenna. You all know how much I love seniors. I could go on all day. Instead I’ll start showing you these amazing images. Like this one that we all drooled over when I first posted it on the Facebook page last week.
The results are pretty amazing, but I’ll admit, working with balloons in an open field in North Dakota proved to be a difficult task. Let’s just say many minutes were spent waiting for the wind to die down before we snapped a few good ones.
Oh, and earlier when I said she was athletic, I meant to say…she’s a brilliant gymnast. {Which explains how she gets so mad high on those jumps and how her toes stay pointed.}
She even let me come to her gym to see her in action. For good measure she brought alone a sample of the medals she has earned over the years…I told you–she’s amazing.
Congratulations, Jenna! Thanks for hanging out and making me just a little cooler in the process.
by Amy | Oct 10, 2014 | Blog, The Art of Adventure
I’d probably be a more successful blogger if I narrowed my writings down to one specific topic. But, like my life, my career and my choice of ice cream flavors…I just cannot seem to pick just one thing that I like best. Life if just too interesting, not to discuss and write and dream about. So, I guess that’s how it’ll continue to be around here. A grab bag of stories and odd moments, of life and art and work, all rolled together.
One reason I simply cannot bring myself to write only about work or daily devotionals is that Practically Canada is such a bizarre and fascinating place.
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It’s no secret that Minot is on the small and isolated side of the city scale. But once a year they put on a festival that is the crown jewel of Practically Canadian living: Norsk Hostfest. Practically Canada is chock full of residents sharing Scandinavian heritage. During Hostfest these folks, as well as other Scandinavians from around the globe {seriously, the globe} flock to the North Dakota State Fair grounds here in Minot for five days of Scandimonium celebration.
What is Hostfest? That’s a very reasonable question.
It’s a five day festival that encompasses the entire state fair grounds complex. Inside are vendors selling handmade items using old-fashioned Scandinavian techniques, Scandinavian food {Lutefisk anyone?}, cultural music, entertainment, and nightly concerts. It’s kind of like a fair, but held indoors and everything has to do with Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, or Iceland. There are imports for sale and Norweigen wool sweaters and viking drinking horns.There are free stages with entertainers from those countries {magicians from Sweden, tenors from Norway, etc.}, cultural cooking demonstrations, and speakers. Bigger concerts take place at night and feature well known artists like Bill Engvall, Josh Turner and Jennifer Nettles–they perform in the Great Hall of Vikings {#obviously.}
There is a lot to see and do. A lot is even very fun. But the whole event {at least to an outsider} has a very Dwight Schrute-ish quality to it. You know how, on the Office he talks about his weird German farm traditions like they are completely normal and everyone else is crazy because they’ve never heard of it? That’s kind of how Hostfest feels.
With highlighted games like “Ring the Trolls Antlers” and “Knock the Fleas Off the Black Plague Rat” you can really help feeling like Belsnickel is around every corner ready to ask if you’ve been “Impish or admirable.”
There are people who walk around in a Dala Horse costume. Yes, that’s people in there.
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There are men in traditional dress roaming the halls playing the accordion. And wooden trolls to have your photo with.
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There are tons of people and hoards of married couples come in matching his and hers Nordic sweaters. {#wantonesobad}
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But, for me {and Derek} the prize of prized is Viking Village, where people exhibit viking craftsmanship {blacksmithing, silver hammering, wood carving, weaving…} Everyone is dressed in period costume. Outside they do demonstrations of viking battle techinques. This year we were lucky enough to catch a demonstration of viking games. Simple, family friendly games like these.
Tug of war. Put two people in a loop of rope. Have them wear it around their waist. Then they get down on their hands and knees and start crawling away from one another. Whoever gets dragged across the line loses.
If that’s too tame, have the participants wear the rope around their necks. {Notice the sweater in the spectator section.}
Or what about this one. Sandwich a person between two people. He wins if he can get out of the sandwich.
Or there’s this game {which we didn’t see in person, but I’ve saw featured in an ad for the Hostfest Pre-Event}.
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It’s crazy. It sounds crazy. But it is fun. Like I said, people come from all over. Lots camp out in their RV’s for the week, in the parking lot, so they don’t miss a moment. There are about 1,000 RV lots available. Tickets to the festival plus camping fees will cost you upwards of $700. And although that includes free coffee and a polka jam session with Minot’s accordion club, I’m not sure it’s worth it. It’s fun…but maybe not that fun.
Until next year, Hostfest…
by Amy | Oct 8, 2014 | Blog, The Art of Art
The latest Community Canvas is complete! A few weeks ago I took a “downtown” themed community canvas to Minot’s end of summer block party in downtown Minot. I’d been asked to bring it to the street festival for kids to paint on as they strolled between games and activities.
As, you can imagine, I was a little nervous when I arrived and discovered that my fellow children’s activity vendors included face painting, a bouncy house and games that gave away real prizes. After I set up and several parent’s asked it I painted faces {to which I had to say “no”} I figured the canvas would be a giant dud.
However, to my pleasant surprise, as soon as I started filling in a few spaces on my own, droves of kids started showing up, wanting to paint as well. It was a steady stream of kids for two hours straight! Sometimes there were more kids wanting to paint than brushes! The community canvas turned out to be a big hit. Crazy, I know. I had so much fun. Even the tiniest artists worked hard to stay in the lines and use the right color. Only one {who I’ll call an abstract artist} went totally rogue as you can see by the yellow streak in the red door.
I guess, it just goes to show that kids are attracted to creativity. Their little hands want to create and be creative. As grown ups, I think we should try our best to let them do that as much as they can.
So here is how the canvas progressed. Start to finish. First the outlined painting that I showed you earlier.
This is what I brought home from the block party.
When I bring it home I basically just retrace the black outlines. In this case I added a few other details as well, like bricks, window glare and cloud color.
As of now, this painting still doesn’t have a home. So, if you are in the Minot area and know of a business or nonprofit that would like to have a Minot-inspired art piece…created by the children of Minot–get in touch. I’d be happy to let you have it. It doesn’t exactly match my personal decor in my home.
I feel so super blessed by the opportunities the Minot art community has given me lately. At the end of this month I’ll be doing another Community Canvas, but this time it’s actually a “Classroom Canvas”! I’ll be drawing up an owl themed canvas for a first grade classroom to paint. It’s going to be fun times a million.
Amy
by Amy | Sep 26, 2014 | Blog, The Art of Art
Remember in August when I told you about that awful, just awful auto-correct? Also, before we move further, look how cute my cat is. She’s precious.
You know, the one that said, “I have a Canadian all dressed up with no place to go.” If you missed it, read that post here.
After complete silence for nearly a month, I realized that the street festival that I was originally asked to take my Community Canvas {read here if you don’t know what that is} to sort of got moved to Saturday, September 27th. I say it sort of got moved because it’s technically not the exact same event. That was the Festival on Main…which never happened. Now it’s part of the Fall Block Party. Pretty much the same thing, only it’s held on 1st Street instead of Main. {For those of you local to Practically Canada, go here for details.}
So, anyway, after weeks of hearing nothing back…and discovering that it kind of had been rescheduled, I decided to reach out to the victim of my sloppy texting and ask if I could bring the canvas down. Mostly, because it’s huge and in my dining room, and I have no desire to finish it by myself.
To my pleasant surprise, she was happy to hear from me and said they were thinking of getting in touch and asking me to come with the canvas.
Phew!
What a relief. I triple read my reply and told her I’d be there.
Next week I’ll show you the {hopefully} finish product…barring another sudden rain storm that cancels us again. But tonight I just wanted to tell you the conclusion of the text tale. And, to peer pressure you in to coming to see me tomorrow downtown. I’ll be setting up around 11am and planning to stay until it’s finished, probably around 1:30pm. If you are in the area, whether we have met or not, I’d love for you to come paint with me. It’s as easy as filling in the lines, just like a coloring book.
If nothing else, you can say you saw the well dressed Canadian in person.
Amy
PS–For one more laugh I’ve decided to add in the photo of the conversation we had last month….
