I now present...

Hey guys! I'm so so excited to present to you my official photography site! I've joined the world of professionals and hobbyist photographers alike at SmugMug.com. If you've been following my blog, you have probably seen some of the photos here, but there are some on my new site that have never seen the World Wide Web yet! So bookmark this site:

http://abigailelizabeth.smugmug.com

Please let me know what you think! I plan to change up the look once I figure out how! Y'all know me, it takes me a while! I'll still be writing often here--this is home base--but I needed a nice place to hold some of my best work where it can be easily viewed.

Also, I have some photos from my latest shoot with precious Cade and his mom Courtney! Courtney and I rode on the A&M Equestrian team together. We headed out to Trinity Park in Fort Worth on a cool fall afternoon. These two are so photogenic, they made my job easy! 

That's all for now! Thanks for checking in!

Vote for the People's Choice awards!

Faith sent this to me and it makes me really happy to be able to vote on something so important! ;-) check it out!

It's a "gourd" life.

Where has the time gone people? I've neglected my blog! I have been productive though, not just catching up on tivo'd television like some past weeks. :-) In case you're wondering, I'll catch y'all up on what I've  been up to.

Also, I just want to apologize for the cheesy title. I never have been good with those things! You'll see why I picked the title later on.

First of all, I'm running again. I signed up for my very first 5K race and it's on November 23. That's really soon! Here is the web site if you want to check it out, but put on some sunglasses cause it's blinding! Zach signed up too and I'm really excited to achieve this goal--just finishing a 5K. So meanwhile, I've been running my feet off it seems, but I'm able to run a whole 3.6 miles(a little more than the 5K) and I'm working on doing it faster. The difference recently is I'm running outside, which makes me feel like I'm really going somewhere instead of like a hamster on the treadmill like I usually do. :-)

I'm also working on my photography portfolio, and I hope to have it all nice and pretty online really soon-- like in the next week. I'll let y'all know right here as soon as it's up! That way, you don't have to scroll through the blog to see my more professional photos. I'm studying up on Lightroom, so that's what's taking the longest right now. But I DO love that program!

Enough gabbing. This isn't "Through Abby's Pen"-- it's time for some photos! I have to explain the photo below. The Thursday night before Halloween I had a lot of stuff to do, and Zach was planning to come over. I came home to a beautiful bouquet of flowers and the sweetest card from my man--for no reason! I just had to brag on him. The meal was something new I found and highly recommend. It's like an Italian chicken cordon bleu-- chicken stuffed with pesto and mozzarella. yumm!

Next, we carved a pumpkin. I've never carved a pumpkin in my entire life, so this was a learning experience. Artist man Zach drew a cartoon cat design I got from Stephanie on the pumpkin and we got to work hacking away with... a KITCHEN knife(I found out later there's these things called pumpkin carvers... oh well! That would be too easy!). After 2 hours of work, I was worried the design wouldn't look so great, but we lit a candle inside and voila!

I'm so proud! :-) We stuck Party Hat Pierre out on the porch. I had to, since this is what the teenage boys across the landing created! Please tell me I'm not the only one who thinks this is hilarious.

The next day was Halloween and since the Paint Horse Journal editorial staff is awesome, we dressed up as a group-themed costume for the APHA costume contest. Somehow, we have a plethora of nice cameras and lenses, so we decided to be paparazzi and a celebrity. I got voted the celebrity part, so may I present Paris-Lindsay Olsen, with TMZ, orange county papp and a camoflauged photog?

That evening, Zach and I headed over to our friends Katie and Brad Gaultney's house. Stephanie and Taylor were in town, and Katie had planned a fun dinner party. She got us ladies awesome masquerade masks--I'm the one on the left. :-)

Check out all the dinner table details! I'm so proud of Katie. :-)

This photo makes me laugh! Remember my ring from Sorrento? Katie(on the right) purchased the ring she's sporting in the south of Italy as well...several years before me. :-)

Side note: I'm reading this book called Pompeii by Robert Harris right now, and looking back at this post "Don't Judge Me For Sweating," it makes me laugh. The book is set in Pompeii AD 79(the year Mount Vesuvius erupted, destroying the town) and there are whole paragraphs describing the horrendous August heat... See, I wasn't making it up!

Anyway, so the day after Halloween Katie, Stephanie and I met up at Toulouse-- a cute French bistro in Dallas. So fun and so French!

Last week, I flew to Little Rock, Arkansas, and drove up to Mountain Home, Arkansas. The fall colors were absolutely stunning in the Ozarks. I was writing a story about trail riding, so I had to experience the beauty of the surroundings to get my photos. :-) It was a great trip. here are two photos that I know we won't use, so check 'em out!

Finally, Zach and I came across this car in the grocery store parking lot the other day. I think it looks like the car Cruella De Vil drove in 101 Dalmations. What do you think?

WITWWW and happy halloween!

It's Halloween and it's election time! I've got a collection of blogs, videos and sites for your enjoyment. Thanks for the links friends!

Tell 5 friends video. 

This one took me a while to get into but it's timely and pretty funny!

Proper facebook etiquette blog.

Love it!

Here is an example of one of the posts:

The writings on the wallCan you please confirm as to whether it is necessary to immediately post back after a Wall post? My friends and I have fallen out over my ‘neglect’, and their ‘obsessiveness’ of this.
I would only immediately post back to make a pleasant, delicate, intelligent and refined retort. Perhaps your lack of ‘attention’ to your friends posting is a reflection on either their lack of inspiration (boring posts), or your lack of judgement to offer a clever reply.
As a suggestion, there are all kinds of things that one might say. ‘Hello’ offers a universal nice start.Though three postings to avoid are: ‘Sorry, do I know you?’, ‘Wipe your post off my Wall’, and ‘Ooo I think I left my underware at yours’.

Cake Wrecks blog

Think your wedding cake or birthday cake was the worst? Compare your disaster to these priceless confections. This site has cool cakes and bad decorating jobs.

Here are 2 of my favorites.

Good:

The van gogh

The bad: 

excerpt from the blog:

Lost in translation?

"I know what you're thinking, you crass people, you. You're just bursting to say something devastatingly witty that involves the word "crap" right now, aren't you? Uh-huh; I knew it.
Alright, then, rather than stifle it, let's just get this all out of systems, shall we? It'll be cathartic. Turn to the person next to you...what, there's no one nearby? Ok, go get someone. I'll wait.Ok, are there at least 2 of you here now? Good. Now, look at the cake, turn to the person(s) next to you, and make all the obvious, disgusting, and profane jokes you can think of. You get extra points for saying the exact same thing at the same time. Running low on material? Try guessing what that inscription says, or what occasion the cake was for. (For example: Just-Found-Out-My-Boyfriend-Is-Cheating-On-Me Day, with an inscription that includes the word "eat".)All done? Got it all out of your system? Can we discuss this like rational adults now?
Nah, I didn't think so, either."

Graph jam blog

Can't really explain it. It's graphs that diagram pop culture things? Pretty funny! This one makes me laugh because I just bought another laser pen yesterday. For my cats.

Pumpkin sculpting

Amazing!

Want to live on the Shire?

This is for you, Jashley and Grant. I could TOTALLY see you guys living here!!

Gin the Dancing Dog from Britain's got talent.

This dog is so awesome!

That's all I got for  now! I'll have photos from the weekend... after the weekend! We had a costume contest at work and my department won again!

Falling in love with Fall!

The past 2 weekends have been so much fun. I got to have friends come and stay with me! That doesn't happen too often, so I was really excited. I've got some photos to share--offf course. :-)

First though, I wanted to show y'all Alfred's latest Pierre-proof spot--the top of the refrigerator. I walked in the house to see him perched atop one of the higher spots in my house. Pierre's maximum altitude is the coffee table.

Alicia hung out with me weekend before last, and we had a great time. We played the piano, watched Northanger Abbey, ran errands, went to see Willy and played with the cats.

The highlight of the weekend was getting to see Michelle Branch at the State Fair of Texas. If you have known me for any length of time, especially the high school days, you know that Michelle is one of my top 5 favorite artists, and I wore out her cds. I'm pretty sure i've listened to the Spirit Room more than any other cd I own, know all the words to all the songs and her music has gotten me through all of life's romantic highs and lows. Zach and I saw her last year at Billy Bob's with her duet partner in the Wreckers, but I was sadly disappointed that she didn't play even one of her solo songs. 

This was NOT the case at the State Fair. Lucky for us, she delivered a solo acoustic concert of all her older hits and some new ones coming soon. I loved her updated versions of my favorites, and I was so happy that she played almost all the songs I love the most! I'm so glad Alicia and I got to go!

This past weekend, my friends Faith and Damon came to visit.(sorry! I think I'm done with the blog links already!) These talented graphic artists both like to take photos, and so we spent some time checking out what Dallas and Fort Worth had to offer in the way of architecture. 

Here's Faith and Damon taking photos of the skyline. I'll do some PS work, Faith, to get ride of those powerlines... :-) I just wanted to show you!

Shooting in the evening/night made me really want to get a tripod. There were so many shots I would have liked to have taken, but I made do with leaning against things. Here's my Dallas skyline pic.

Zach was keeping watch over my car, but the light was perfect for a silhouette. He was in his suit for work, not to model for me this time. ;-)

After dinner at El Fenix, we went over to Victory Park. I was surprised at how well this photo came out sans tripod!

The next day, Zach and I  went to Six Flags Over Texas theme park with Faith and Damon--thanks to their season pass coupons! But first, Pierre got some more love. What a chunk he is! Also, I have to tell y'all that my piano definitely got a lot of use because Faith is an amazing pianist. :-)

I'm a big chicken, but I braved all the rides yet again. Faith has always been able to get me to ride scary coasters, ever since I was little!

After our hard-hitting theme park trip, the four of us tucked into burgers at Al's burger joint in arlington. I didn't bring my camera into the park--good thing--so here is the proof of our excursion. :-)

Here are Faith and Damon. Aren't they just precious? ;-P

We ended our fun day with a double feature of rented scary movies. yikes!

That's all I've got for now folks! This weekend should be super fun, so I'm sure I'll have more photos in the next few days! Hope you have a happy Halloween!