Unique Photo Opportunities - Kasey K Photo

When I say "Kasey K Photo is available for ALL your photography ideas & events", I mean it!



Here are some unique, awesome photos by Kasey - and while it may not be for everyone BEFORE a wedding or reception, it's an incredible way to get extraordinary, one of a kind memories with your wedding dress before it heads to the cleaners & then is packed away forever.

Check out ALL Kasey's photos at the Kasey K Photo website or at her Kasey K Photo Blog or catch her on Facebook at I Support Kasey K Photo

NEW Call to Artists from ECVA

Episcopal Church and Visual Arts latest Call to Artists "Seeking and Serving".

An online exhibit for Episcopal Church & Visual Arts, Advent 2010

“Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these
who are members of my family, you did it to me." ~ Matthew 25:40 ~


The Baptismal Covenant from the Book of Common Prayer concludes with five questions which draw out what it means to follow Jesus in the world today. The fourth of these questions asks:

"Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?"

The answer, as with the other questions, is "I will with God's help."

The Gospel in its most distilled form comes when Jesus teaches that we are to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. This love of neighbor Jesus illustrated beautifully in the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). Jesus concludes the story by asking which man who saw another injured on the road was the neighbor to him. The answer is, "The one who showed him mercy."


See more info at the link provided at ECVA, and enter soon, the deadline is November 7th.

Honored to be part of ECVA's latest Online Exhibition

I'm honored to be included in the latest call to artists from (ECVA) Episcopal Church and Visual Arts, Justice and Peace. One of my 3 entries, School Daze is included in this recent exhibit. ... check out the awesome art from artists around the country, and ponder on the meanings associated with them ... lots of great pieces here. (Look for the next call to artists coming out soon too!)

THANK YOU ECVA!!

Granddaughter Jorden and Auntie Kasey singing "Hallelujah" from the movie Shrek

Last night Jorden was wanting to see pictures and movie clips on the computer, so Kasey was searching sites for things she might enjoy... Toy Story, Disney, Sponge Bob, Shrek and more... ... There was one from the movie Shrek, that included the song "Hallelujah".. Jorden loves that movie, Kaine has it for her to watch, and she seemed to know many of the words to the song... so when she started singing it so well, I took out the camera to videotape her... it is so cute!! (*said as a proud gramma*) So here is just one of the video's I took featuring Jorden and Kasey... (I hope to get a compilation of the clips I took of her singing parts of the song into one video later).



*Note: Don't forget to turn off my playlist songs so you can hear this one better.*

Mass Birthday Celebrations...

Today my side of the family celebrated the August and September birthdays in our families. We usually host the party since all 3 of our kids have birthdays during this time, and my Mom's birthday is also in August, so we have the celebration here.




We provided spaghetti, BBQ chicken wings, texas garlic toast, salads, ice cream, cupcakes and sherbet, chips and snacks, beverages, and others brought things too. Our daughter in law, Janel, made some yummy birthday desserts - carmel apple dessert, and mint brownie cake...another sister brought some cookies, one of my sisters brought corn on the cob, a niece brought tomatoes, another sister brought veggies and dip, and we had a major feast, a fun time, and good celebration.

Here are some photos from the birthday party celebrations.






Mums for my mum(MOM).. I love this picture of my mom.. we celebrated her 79th birthday as well today.







Here are some of the August and September birthday people... others who aren't in the photo must have been off in some other part of the house or outside... too hard to keep track of everyone..*L*




Poor Jake... too many people, he had to find refuge under the church pew on the front porch.. *lol*

Spaghetti for 50 or so.... and FREE Church Pews...

Tomorrow is the mass birthday party celebration for the Aug. and Sept. birthdays on my side of the family. We are hosting everyone here, although not everyone will be coming because some are camping, some working, some have other things they had already arranged. But we will have about 50 or so people, so I made spaghetti sauce and noodles this morning ...combined them together, and will reheat them, casserole style, in my Nesco roaster tomorrow. We'll also have honey BBQ chicken wings, salads, garlic texas toast, corn on the cob, mint brownie cake and carmel apple cake (made by DIL Janel!)..and more. Jorden slept in late, but when she woke up, she had fun playing in the plastic bin of balls as I finished combining the spaghetti.. such fun!! *S*




In getting ready for tomorrow, I've decided to get rid of some things I was going to save and make into something... not sure what I was going to make those things into...but I'd been saving the large desk and radio cabinet now for over 2 years and it was just taking up space... so, with the help of son Kaine, he helped load them into my car and off to GoodWill I went with the donations.

I had a method to my madness however, and couldn't just leave a big blank space where the stuff had been before, so, since our Church is giving away FREE pews, I decided to get one. They are almost 14' long, and John had to take the trailer up to Church to haul it home... it took Kaine and me (John can't lift that much weight) to get it out of the Church, but Kaine did the most work...and it took Kasey and Kaine and me to get it into the front porch, having to lift it high above the outside railing on the porch because there was no way to make the turn from the steps.

Anyway... it's now on the porch, and makes the porch look SOOOO long, but it will offer much more seating space for large family gatherings, and so far, I like it!




If anyone would like a FREE CHURCH PEW, let me know, and I'll put you in contact with the person in charge of the distribution.

So, now off to finish doing other things since Jorden is tucked in for the night.... tomorrow the chaos will start after 1.

Jorden & Daddy (Kaine) are here!!!

Younger son and his daughter are here for the weekend... hurrah!!

We're glad to see Kaine is indeed alive and well after last week's scare (his workplace had called us - his "next of kin", to report he hadn't been heard from at work for 2 days!). It was a big mix up, Kaine WAS at work, but the one man didn't realize it, and after a few hours of madly trying to reach him by phone, calling upnorth at many people, friends, local places we'd heard him talk about, and praying a lot, some of his friends called us back and told us his car WAS at work. I called the workplace, and the person who had called us to report him missing checked it out, and did find him, and was apologizing a lot for the "inconvenience".. which almost made THIS Mom go into frantic mode, okay I DID go into frantic mode.*L*! But anyway ...glad to hug the son and have him indeed be alive and well! *S*





And GREAT to see Jorden again too.. she grows up so much in just a month or two!! They arrived late last night, but we kept her up for a few hours of fun .. here's our budding artiste as she draws and paints ... such a sweetie!! So glad to have them here for the long weekend!





She liked drawing, but when she decided to use the pen on her face, I switched to painting on the board with water... one of her paintings looks a bit like an elephant..*L*

So, after playing with the plastic balls, and getting out every toy around, it was bedtime, and Jorden was eager to sleep it seemed.. she laid her head down as soon as I laid her in bed, and sound asleep in minutes! More fun tomorrow...can't wait!

Busy and EARLY Start to this Friday ...

Up at the crack of dawn today... headed over to work by 7:30 a.m., finished what I needed to do, then off to the Milwaukee area by 8:45 to pick up the newslettter, fast trip BACK to work again, rushed to get the newsletter taped, labeled and sorted ...then off again at 10:40 to head to Clinton to pick up grandson Jeff from the bus... whew! Took along the newsletters to stamp while waiting ... and trying to shoo away some stray, very thin German Shepherd dog hanging around the house.

After getting Cooter and Buck out for a break, and Jeff arriving home, we headed to Janesville for a quick shopping trip at Woodman's, then home to eat lunch. Man, I'm tired just writing this.. ha!

After a fast lunch, we headed over to GoodWill to see the Halloween decorations that I promised Jeff we'd visit. Picked up some nifty cobweb stuff to decorate their rooms with, and halloween stickers, and we were back home to make out the payroll, throw a load of laundry in the washer, and crash for an hour or so before doing more to prepare for Jorden and Kaine's visit tonite!

I think a short power nap is in order... zzzzzzzzzz

The Start of Something .... I can feel it coming in the air tonite, O Lord..

"..I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord,
I've been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord.." (I love this song)

I found a really COOL old trunk at GoodWill ... and I am thinking it would be very good to use with the many "war" memories...things I have found at various places, as well as friends who have given me war stuff, and many things from my father-in-law, Paul (who was in WWII in Iwo Jima).



I've just put a few of the things out to see how they might look in this old trunk and they aren't necessarily going to be displayed in this way. I didn't, however, pull out all the old photos, like the ones in this installation piece I did of Paul's war memories... I was thinking of putting more of these old war photos as the background in the trunk, but I'm not sure if I want to permanently afix them to the trunk. (maybe I should consider getting duplicates of the photos to do things with?)




At any rate... I am hoping to be able to use this trunk in awesome ways to bring awareness of the self-sacrifice that many veterans made for ALL of us!



I wish I had Paul's uniform to use in this art assemblage installation .. but it will be in a permanent display at a VFW museum in the San Antonio/New Braunfels area, and that is an honorable place for it too.

I would love to hear any ideas, helpful suggestions, etc. as I continue to explore possibilities with this..thanks!

Old Church Altar Rail ... before and after...

A few weeks ago I did some dumpster diving at the Church renovation dumpster and saved this old altar rail, that was around the pipe organ area to prevent people from falling into the sunken area that it was in. I think it will be a cool addition when I use some of my assemblages in exhibits or prayer station workshops ... it will kind of set aside an area as a sacred space. I spray painted the already distressed wood a cherry red, not coating the piece entirely, then sanded it down, and washed it off. After it dried I coated it all with a dark walnut stain. I like the red distressed look of it now.

Here are before, during, and after photos...



(after spray painting, before sanding it all down)


I may still spray a light coat of polycrylic on it when the stain dries more.. and then it's ready to be used!

Grandson Friday!! (with guests too)

Today is probably the last Friday I'll have all three boys for awhile... they start school next week, and all three will be in school now (at least part of the day for the youngest)... wow, how fast they grow up!

A friend of ours from Church had some serious health issues and had to be taken to a hospital in Milwaukee, so since I had the boys today, I offered to take the two older girls as well... it was a busy, but fun day!

We walked up to the Church construction site, to take a few photos. They were putting in more of the driveway, have lowered part of the floor in the Church Nave area, started framing in part of the office that will be my part of the office, more work on the elevator areas and more.











Kasey came home from a morning photoshoot and spent time with all of the kids before heading off to her next job. Jeff likes to check out the photos with Kasey.

Then it was lunch time... between 7 of us, we devoured 14 hot dogs, and had potato chips or cheetos that some of the kids tried to eat with chopsticks and yummy chocolate drop cookies too.... yumm!

We had pesky wasps that were hiding under the deck chairs and had scared us inside, after Jake was stung by one, so, while we waited for Grandpa John to come to the rescue with wasp spray, we played the fan/ball game... it was just a little mild chaos. The purpose of the game is to toss the lightweight plastic balls at the ceiling fan blades (having the fan turned on HIGH), and then ducking as the balls come flying all over at you ... lots of laughing, screaming, scrambling for balls and fun!



After a few games of "Shark Attack", which Savannah and Mariah really got into along with the boys, the kids went outside for some sprinkler fun, and to make rivers with water and the hose in the sandbox... ahhh, a break for the ole gramma here..*L*

All in all, it was a fun day with the kids! Now I'm off to spray some more of those wasps that have decided to swarm around the deck still... eek.

Business cards from laminate samples

I found a string of laminate samples for .99 cents, so I added a label to them, sprayed them with some polycrylic and "VOILA!", business art cards! I have about 100 made so far, and enough for about another 100.

Kind of neat using found objects for business cards for my found object assemblage art, eh?

Happy Birthday to my MOM!!!

Today is Mom's 79th birthday... Wishing her many, many MORE too!! Love you MOM!! xoxoxox