Camping Trip #1 - Buck Creek State Park

This past weekend we went on our first successful camping trip of our entire marriage!  With all the other attempted camping trips, I was either pregnant or sick or both, or the campground was completely full (Memorial Day weekend, stupid us), or we got rained out.  But this time everything went beautifully!  The girls went to bed just fine (if not a couple hours past their bedtime), there were no bugs at all, the weather was beautiful, and the smores were oh so yummy!  The only bad thing was it got down to 53 degrees that night instead of the forcasted 60 degrees and we were all pretty chilled by the time we woke up, but that's ok!  Nothing that coffee and hot chocolate from the gas station can't fix.  I can't wait until our next trip, which will be to Hocking Hills in a couple weeks!

Here's our humble little campsite.

A view of the campground.  It was pretty full.

Katie posing in front of her very own tent!  She was so excited!

A view of the lake.  Beautiful!

Katie swinging "high, high, high!".  You can tell by the look on her face that she had never been on a swing that big before.

Ava having a blast on her swing.

All three of the kids, oops, I mean two kids and one husband all swinging.

Ava falling asleep.  This was about and hour past her bedtime.

Katie contributing to the record high pollen levels.

My favorite part of the trip!  All of us sitting around the campfire and just relaxing together and being a family.

Rachel oxo

My girls...

A couple weeks ago, I took my two girls to John Bryan State Park for a photo shoot.  I got my new lens, a Canon 50mm 1.8F, and I was anxious to try it out.  Let me tell you, I LOVE that lens!  I don't know if I'll go back to the other one.  This one is so much better it makes me think that my original one might be broken.  These pictures turned out so well I was giddy!  A couple of them are a little grainy and I was little frustrated with how the shadows have a green cast to them.  But I'm still learning.  I used the actions sets available for free from the Pioneer Woman's blog.  They are gorgeous!

A busy month...

Well, I haven't checked in here in a while, but if you knew everything that has been going on this past month you would understand.  I'm not going to bore you with all the dull details, but I am going to do a little shameless show-and-tell!  I am convinced that in order to be a good seller on Etsy it takes more than having a quality product, it takes great photography too.  Your thinking so what else is new?, right?  The more I work on my business the more I see how important the photography is.  Its not just the color accuracy, good lighting, and multiple views.  It's scale photos.  You know.  Showing your product with an object that is universally a standard size (like yourself!) so people know exactly how your product will look when they get it in the mail.  People like that.  I've been selling the same bags for a while now and they sold here and there, but I had no scale photos.  As soon as I added scale photos of me holding and using the bags they got twice as many views and sold really fast and even made it into the Etsy blog a couple times!  I was so excited that I was selling so many except I made the mistake of just relisting items as they sold without them being made thinking I could keep up.  Very bad idea.  I've been more than swamped this past month.  Among all the bags I sold I also received three custom orders for bridesmaid bags!  Here are the pictures of them lined up all pretty:

I am so happy to finally be caught up and refreshed and ready to go again!

Hope your having a great weekend...

Rachel ox