Mama Toto Baby Photos

*Feel free to leave comments below after the slideshow
❤Mama Toto "Lil Pumpkin" Baby Photos❤
A big thank you to Tessa Lippmann for connecting me with these lovely Mama Toto Mamas and their Lil' Punkins. I've been wanting to connect with more Mama Toto Groups in Santa Barbara and the change of seasons was the perfect excuse to get outside and do a little autumn photo shoot with these sweet little ones....

I can't get enough of these babies...what about you?!! 

Halloween Creekside BASH

Halloween Creekside BASH THANK YOU!
Co-Hosted by King Bee and Gale and Fred Krupica
Saturday October 27th 2012
www.kingbeesb.com

Thank you so much for joining us in our fiendishly PHANTASTIC celebration at the Creekside!

We'd like to thank Al and his staff at the Creekside, our intrepid volunteers for all the time they put into helping us decorate the place up for the party, to Joseph Souza at My Photo Booth for providing the photo booth fun for the night (and Danielle McShane for connecting us)!, and to Alma and Tamara for taking pics of us all throughout the night. 

I've managed to put a slideshow together of pics I took with my camera along with pics that they took. We hope you enjoy it! 

I've done my best to be sensitive to which pics to post but if for some reason I have "slipped on the banana peel" inadvertently and posted a pic which you don't want posted, please let me know asap which one it is and I will take it down~

Thanks again for joining us!

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With Devilish Delight....
Rach, Gale, Fred and the King Bee Boyz

P.S. Come join King Bee at Red's on Sat. Nov 17th if you're in town! The boyz and I would love to see you all! 

Ann and Amanda's Beach Photo Shoot

❤Ann and Amanda's Beach Photo Shoot

*Please make sure to check out the slideshow at the end~

Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~Elizabeth Stone

The relationship between mother and daughter, in my opinion, has the potential of being one of the most rewarding relationships in our lives as women. And as a photographer that relationship is one of my favorite to celebrate and honor!

For about a year my girlfriend and fellow Djun Djun Mama Goddess Ann Luan and I have been talking about doing a photo shoot with her and her daughter. And after multiple conversations and life changes, we arrived at just the perfect evening for the photo shoot. We all three agreed that it couldn't have been better timing in any possible way....

What happens when you mix perfect lighting with gorgeous weather, a beautiful mother and daughter, the Pacific Ocean, lots of PINK!, and a violin?

Magic.

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*If you'd like to order prints, you can click on visit gallery and individual photos from there. 

Angela, David, and Leo Family Photo Shoot

 ❤ *Please make sure to check out the slideshow at the end of this post! There were so many beautiful photos from this shoot we did together~ 

"When you look at your life, the greatest happinesses are family happinesses."  
~Joyce Brothers

I've known Angela for many years as a fellow Djun Djun Mama and watching her grow into her pregnancy and then into motherhood has been a particular joy. She has always been a radiant creature but motherhood seems to have brought out an even more beautiful inner fire and glow!

It was an honor to finally have the chance to photograph her along with her husband and sweet little one...Leo! Oh my gosh, the little guy has about a million and one different faces and smiles and was more patient during the photo shoot than many adults often are. He stuck with us until the end of the evening as the sun set over the Pacific and the air chilled a bit. 

Once you see Angela's and David's smiles you'll see where Leo got his joyful expressiveness~ ;-)

It was truly a beautiful day have the opportunity to spend celebrating a girlfriend and her beautiful family!

Please make sure to check out the slideshow below....these are only a few of my very favorites from the shoot!!!

Kim E. Custer Memorial

Kim E. Custer Tribute

“The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.”

― Lao Tzu, Te Tao Ching

I'm feeling like time is so precious. We never really get enough of it with the people whom we love. I just lost my uncle, Kim E. Custer this summer. I was fortunate enough to have lived out on the West Coast close to him for several years and then was able to spend time with him last summer in both Vermont and Indiana.

Kim was charismatic, funny as hell, driven, intelligent, hard-working, generous, passionate, and a hilarious story-telling…he was also drop-dead gorgeous with blue eyes, dimples and those Custer Good Looks. For much of the 90s he was the face of Mitsubishi, working as the head of Public Relations. He was a force in the car industry throughout his life. Quite simply, he was passionate about cars and about people.

Both in his life and since his passing, Kim has brought so many of us closer together. I feel a deeper bond with both my family back in Indiana as well as with many of his friends whom I have just come to know recently. It’s as if he still continues to connect us all even after his death.

In my last conversation with him, I told him how loved he is and has been. I have to believe that he understands that. I knew he was well loved but didn’t really appreciate how many people’s lives he’s touched until he passed. Hundreds of people from around the country and abroad have shared their stories and memories of Kim.

So many people have given so much to Kim in the past several years...starting with my family back in the Midwest and around the country who have come together to show their love and support of Kim. His brother Lane and sister-in-law Anne had taken him in during this last year to help him get through tough times. He was surrounded by siblings and family who loved him deeply as well as good friends around the country (he also lived with two of his dear friends Dave and Bill in Vermont the year prior).

I'd like to send out a big thank you as well to his good friends Deb Pollack and Dan Gardner who also managed to put together a West Coast Tribute in his honor this past month.

I wanted to put together a slideshow of a few moments throughout his life that capture the charisma and charm that he always had. I think he’d like to be remembered for that fire in his spirit.

Here’s to you, Kim. You will be very much missed. I'm so grateful for the time I had with you, though it doesn’t feel like it was enough. 

Santa Barbara Writers Conference 2012

*Please make sure to check out the slideshow at the end of this post and feel free to leave your comments and memories!

Monte Schulz, Owner
Nicole Starczak, Director
Grace Rachow, Director of Volunteers
Staffed by an intrepid group of workshop leaders and hard-working volunteers!

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

Ray Bradbury

What can I say? This year’s S.B. Writers Conference was one of my very favorites by far. In the last thirty-five years, the conference has only seemed to get better and better. In the past ten years of my involvement I have made lifelong friends through the conference and every year come out of it a changed person.

Many friends often ask me, “What is it you guys do all day? Just write?!” To me this conference is about intellectual exhileration, socializing, celebrating our creative lives, supporting each other in our literary pursuits, and coming together once a year to remind ourselves that we—as writers—are not alone in the world.

Monte and Nicole with the intrepid Workshop Leaders

The Tireless Volunteers of SBWC 2012!

Owner Monte Schulz, Award-Winning Author Fannie Flagg, and Director Nicole Starczak

It’s a week so packed with delicious fuel for your muse that we each come out of it completely inspired and absolutely exhausted. I think that I slept something like thirteen hours the first night after the conference ended. Between nightly talks by award-winning authors like Dorothy Allison (Bastard Out Of Carolina) and Fannie Flagg (Fried Green Tomatoes) are seven days filled with morning and 
afternoon writers workshops from every genre under the sun (historical fiction, literary fiction, screenwriting, nonfiction, women’s fiction, memoir, young adult fiction, humor and more). As well as book panels by new authors, screenwriters, literary agents, editors, and publishers. It’s no wonder that this conference has a national reputation: Men and women fly in from around the country (and often out of it)...hungry to work on their craft.

For me the most magical moments of the conference are those that come in the moments "stolen between"….random conversations over coffee breaks after you haven’t slept for eighteen hours with someone you might never have met if it weren’t for the conference. Or listening to one of your workshop leaders belt out a tune and play guitar at the Talent Show at the end of the week. Or sharing a laugh with Fannie Flagg about a Dating Show she appeared on in the 70s and is shocked somebody actually has a copy of! ;) See the photos below….

There’s a bond that is made between writers here at the conference. If you’ve been thinking of going but can’t muster up enough reasons to go here’s a good one: You will come out of it a changed person. And the conference—like any good intoxicant—is addicting. This was my 10^th year and I wouldn’t think of missing it. It’s come to punctuate the year for me in a way that only a few other events can do (Summer Solstice, my birthday, and Halloween!).

One of my favorite events, the Wine and Cheese Party!

Here’s to all of you who were here with us this year and to those who would have liked to be!

If you attended the conference and would like to get copies of some of these photos, feel free to just send me an email.

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Enjoy the slideshow and Viva La Muse!!! ;)

Heather and Kenneth's Danish-American Wedding Celebration!

March 30th, 2012

Phoenix, Arizona

"Hvor godtfolk er kommer godtfolk til."

"Where good folk are, good folk will come."

I had the recent honor of being in one of my best friend's weddings to a true Danish Gentleman and man-of-the-world, Mr. Kenneth Steiness. It's a dream to see a dear friend embraced with so much love and to be cherished and loved as the goddess I have always known her to be! I was one of three bridesmaids (with Lisa Link Philips and Lizzie Story-Hieronymous) and had an absolute blast being a part of the celebrations throughout the week. I also had the opportunity to play my ukulele during the ceremony which was especially fun. I wasn't able to photograph the whole event b/c of my involvement in the wedding but their super cool photographers--Shauna and Mike--with Visionyard Photography--were able to capture the whole event and will have their photos up in about six weeks.

These are a few of the pics I took throughout the week amongst all of the celebrations that took place over five plus days! I wanted to share the delight of this event with those of you who were there or who know Kenneth and Heather and who appreciate the joy they've brought into all of our lives!

It was my first experience with a Danish wedding and hopefully not my last! Their wedding was the perfect example of how two incredible people can literally bring together so many different groups of friends and family from around the world. They had aunts, uncles and parents flying out from Europe and around the country...and by the end of the week I literally felt that I had been "adopted" into a whole new community of men and women both in and out of the country.

Enjoy the slideshow below!

And to my new friends and "family"~ I'm so looking forward to seeing so many of you again in the coming years whether it's in Santa Barbara, Arizona, Ohio, Denmark or Iceland!

much love and many thanks~

Rachel

Venue and Catering: "The Secret Garden," Phoenix, AZ

Awesome Make-Up: Kelly Wisniewski

Super Cool Photographers:

"The Vision Yard"

Shauna Stansell and Mike Kaal

Live Music:

The Ash String Quartet, Bills Barns and Band, and

The Static Dance Band!

Enjoy the slideshow!!!

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