Life Dream... Accomplished

Ever since I was a little girl I have wanted to be a professional photographer. I have always been enthralled by the whole idea of photography, and especially portrait photography. I have taken little steps towards becoming a professional photographer, like experimenting with my awesome Pentax (which is little more than a point and shoot), taking photoshop classes, taking a photography class, searching the web for awesome pictures, creating my own idea file of pictures that I like etc...

David has been so good to support me in this dream. He helped me turn it into a goal instead of a dream. Owning my own DSLR and running a photography business was something that I wanted, but deep down I wasn't sure if I would ever be able to actually accomplish it. There are just so many other things that I could see taking priority in my life. However, David knew that I would regret it if we didn't make every effort to realize this dream. We started saving to purchase a camera. We developed a plan and my dream seemed to become more and more realistic. Then I received an e-mail from Mindy Black, the amazing photographer who did our wedding pictures. (See her website here!) She told me that she was selling her camera and that she remembered I had been interested in buying a camera. It didn't take very long for David and I to realize that this was the perfect opportunity for us! So this weekend we met up with Mindy and now I have my very own DSLR! It is everything I have ever hoped it would be! A special thanks to Mindy who sat down with me and taught me the ins and outs of the camera and her little tips to making shooting with this particular camera a bit easier.
Here she is! She is a Nikon D70 and she came with a 50mm lens and a 18-70mm lens.

I played with her all weekend, and then yesterday I went out on my first photo shoot! One of my best friends, Hayli Dickey, is leaving on her mission November 4th (She is going to Argentina! I'm so happy for her!) and we decided to go and take some missionary pictures for her. I haven't uploaded them onto my computer yet, but I will post a couple of them soon. They turned out really well!

I am not going to start a photography business for a while yet, I have my hands full with the graphic design company that I am starting! But I am SO excited to be one HUGE step closer to my dream. Now that I have a professional camera, NOTHING can stop me! I am so excited for the opportunity I have now to start developing my skills and developing my photographic style.

The moral of this story is: Marry someone that loves you more than anything and will do anything to help your dreams come true. Because if you do that and you work hard enough, pray hard and are determined enough... the two of you can do anything you set your mind to.

ps. There are three new posts beneath this post! (The Big Party, Taushas Baby Shower, & Davids Birthday.) Sorry... I decided to take the morning and catch up on all the blogging for all of the pictures that were on my camera. Just thought I would let you know, because I don't want you to miss out on any of it!

The Big Party

This last weekend was a crazy weekend for David and I. I feel like we drove all over the northern part of Utah, multiple times. Which is probably because... we did. I had a teaching conference in Tooele, so we drove from Logan to Tooele, then from Tooele to WJ to spend the night, then I went back to Tooele in the morning for my conference, then BACK to WJ. Then we went to Sam and Wendy's new house (which is about a half hour drive from the Peaden house) to watch the BYU game and have a Big Party to celebrate their new house. Then we drove back to WJ, then we drove to Mountain Green for Hayli's farewell (that we missed because we thought it started two hours after it actually started), then we drove to Morgan, then back to Logan. Then to top it off, yesterday (Monday) I drove to Ogden to take a pre-test for the Praxis, then to Mountain Green, then back to Ogden, then back to Mountain Green then back to Logan. I realize you all don't really care about where I was driving and how many times I drove there... But I am hoping for some sympathy about how much driving I had to do this weekend! Whew.

Now on the the Big Party with the family! The football game was a bummer, so i'm not even going to talk about that. But on a happier note here are some pictures that leave a warm fuzzy feeling in my stomach. :)

David and I in our matching "Peaden" Jerseys. This is what I gave David for his Birthday. I had them custom made. I love them! One of my favorite songs is by Reliant K, and starts out: "We should get jerseys, cuz we make a good team." David sings the song to me often, and I thought they were the perfect gift! This was the first opportunity we had to wear them for a real event! Whoo-hoo! (Also, do you like my hair? I just got a new haircut and really like it.)

Here is the fam playing games. Pretend like I am sitting on that vacant spot of carpet right in the middle of the picture. We had 7 people, which isn't enough people to play two-four player games, and is too many to play one six player game. So what did we do? Bruce played BOTH games. He was playing a game of Canasta with David, Sam and I.... and a game of Ticket to Ride with Wendy, Amy and Jeff. It was hilarious. Only Bruce would have been able to pull it off! He is so smart, and so good at both games. I think that it actually put us all on a level playing field, which was nice. :)

Here is another shot of the Ticket to Ride Game.

I couldn't help but snap a few pictures of David. He is just so cute!

Isn't he adorable? I love this boy so much. If you look close you can see his poor eye though. I found out later that he was only wearing one contact the whole time because his other contact was bothering him! Crazy boy!

I did not take these pictures, because as you can see... I am asleep. David and Amy conspired against me and took these pictures after I had fallen asleep on Davids shoulder. I was tired! It had been a long day and it was late. The only reason I put these pictures on here was so you would know what a wonderful husband David is to let me fall asleep on his shoulder while the Ticket to Ride game was finishing up. And ALSO so you would know what I have to deal with. David and Amy are quite the conspirators! They come up with all sorts of tricky things and put their plans into action without giving you the chance to object. (Just kidding, I love you Ames!)

A closeup of my nap. You can see Davids hand on my shoulder, making sure I didn't fall off. He is so great!

ps. Wendy- we decided to pretend like we didn't ACTUALLY have the first party at your new house (Seeing how it is tainted by the BYU loss and Sue couldn't be there etc...) So we are going to have to have another "Big Party" there soon to make up for it!

Tausha's Baby Shower

On October 10th one of my dearest friends, Tausha Bentz, had her Baby Shower! I can not believe what a beautiful pregnant person she is! Tausha is someone who is beautiful whether she is wearing a beautiful gown competing for Miss. Utah or whether she is in her exercise clothes doing a workout video! This day was no exception. Taush is a wonderful person and I am so grateful to be able to count her as a friend (a sister really!). I am so excited for her and Steve to finally have their new baby girl!

This is a picture of the wonderful lady herself! Doesn't she look great?

I knew that I wanted to make something cute for her bridal shower, and I knew that I wanted it to be personalized and practical. This is what I came up with!

I think that it really turned out well. You can NEVER have too much storage space, and this is cute and fun!

Tausha's sisters are amazing and they really went all out when decorating for the Shower. These paper orbs were awesome! I made them teach me how to make one before I left. So adorable.

Here is the closeup of one of the paper orbs. They were darling. If you want to see more of the adorable decorations, you can click this link and look at Tausha's blog-post about her shower.


Tausha's sister's (sisters-in-law, I suppose, but it's all the same right?) not only had incredibly cute decorations, they also had really fun games. One of the games was called "Baby Bum Gum" or "Baby Gum Bum" or something like that. You had to stick a piece of gum in your mouth and try to form a baby's bottom out of it. Then Tausha chose three winners. Haha. I was one of them!

This is my "Baby Gum Bum" and gift I got for winning. So cute! (Sorry... I realize it is sideways, but I really don't want to go back out of blogger, change the orientation, and re-upload it.)

The closeup of my Baby Gum Bum.

This cake was amazing for sure. Markell made it, and I am amazed. She did such a great job.

This is a picture of all of the sisters. Markell, Steph, Taush, Lindsi and Kayla. I am amazed at how beautiful they all are. It's not really fair for so much beauty to be in one family!

Me, Tausha and Bekah (Bekah is also expecting a baby girl soon!) It was so good to be reunited with my friends for an afternoon. I have no idea why Kayla is not in this picture though. She should have been! Love you Taush!

Davids Birthday

Davids birthday was October 11th. (I realize that was forever ago, but I am TRYING to catch up on all the things I have neglected to post about. Gimme a break!) The weekend before his birthday (So the 3rd and 4th) we were at my parents house for General Conference so we celebrated Davids birthday because we were with his family on his actual birthday. It was a blast, and I decided I needed to post the pictures I had taken from that weekend.

Here is the birthday boy himself, holding his incredibly wrapped presents (They are wrapped incredibly if I do say so myself. I mean... look at those bows!)


I don't remember taking this picture, but I love it! So funny. Don't worry, we gave him more than just ONE candle to blow out... we gave him 25!

See! Here are Davids 25 candles, balanced delicately on the edge of his amazing birthday cake. See how happy he is? Yeah. I like it when he is that happy.

This is a closeup of the birthday cake. Don't judge my handwriting skills. Or the massive amount of sprinkles that seem to be attacking the cake. It turned out much better than the green-glob fiasco Jenna and I tried to make for Fathers Day a couple of years back. I promise. I am improving. (If you want to see some REAL disasters, click here! After you look at them, you won't be judging my handwriting so harshly. And I am NOT a professional.)

Don't worry... this post isn't over yet! In fact... we are just about halfway through right now! I have a couple of pictures from the day that David and I celebrated his birthday. We celebrated it on the Friday before his birthday because we were going to be with his family in WJ on the actually party day. I didn't get as many pictures as I should have, I am sad about that now... but nothing I can really do about it! (Actually, I think that there are more on Davids camera... but I don't know where that is right now. It's becoming a problem that we use both of our cameras all the time!)

The morning of Davids birthday I made him breakfast and then sent him to work. It was lucky that I didn't have any classes that day because I had a TON to do! I had decided to send David on a scavenger hunt to like 8 different places. I had a lot I had to get ready though...

Here are some of the pictures from the scavenger hunt:

This was in the institute classroom where David and I met. Thank goodness for Brother Patty and "Scripture Study: Power of the Word" at 8:30 in the morning!

The spectrum was an obvious choice for a clue in the scavenger hunt! I also sent him to the third floor of the TSC (our second date consisted of helping his friend get engaged there), Aggie Ice Cream, the racquetball court in the HPER, Chilis, the Logan Temple etc...

I was only one step ahead of David during the scavenger hunt. I would put the clue in place and then run to the next location to put the clue there. It was totally nervewracking! I thought he was going to catch me. But I didn't want to set the clues out ahead of time for fear someone would move them or take them or something. The above picture is him finding his clue by the spectrum. He is the one in the light blue shirt in the background by the doors. Ignore the person bending over in the foreground. I couldn't help that he was there. I am just happy that I got this picture. At the time I was hiding by the bushes behind the HPER!

This is a picture from my parents house, but I wanted to end with a picture of David and I. I love this boy so much and hope that he had a wonderful birthday. He deserves it and so much more!

(For a picture of the present I gave to David for his birthday, go to THIS post!

Contest!

So I don't know how many of you know... but I am in the process of starting my own little Graphic Design Business (mainly for wedding invitations). I am really excited about the whole thing and SO grateful for a husband who is so incredibly supportive of me. Almost everything is on the brink of being completely ready to start going full force! (Right now, I am doing the invitations for a few weddings for really cheap in order to get some samples up of what I can do.)

The only thing that is missing is.... a name. David and I have spent quite a bit of time trying to come up with a name that is memorable, professional and fits my personality. I have decided to ask for YOUR help!

Please leave a comment with any ideas that you can come up with! If you suggest something, and it is what we decide go with... you will win a prize! In fact, you get to CHOOSE your prize.

The prize choices are:
1- a design of your choice (This can be anything really: wedding invitation, baby shower invitation, graduation invitation etc...)
2- a $10 dollar gift card to the restaurant/store of your choice (or a ten dollar bill, however you like it!)
or 3- THE GRAND PRIZE (I can't tell you what the grand prize is right now... but I will tell you all soon!)

Please help me out! Any suggestions are welcome. You can use any part of my name, Shantel Elise Peaden, or anything else. I can't wait to hear what you all come up with!

Graduate School

I don't know why I haven't already posted about this... because it is a MAJOR event in our lives. Here goes:

David will graduate with his Bachelors Degree in Accounting and Economics this December. This means that he is (we are) off to the big, exciting new world of Graduate school! We have been trying to decide where the best place is for David to do his Masters Program. There were hundreds of factors that went into our decision. David and I would start talking about our options and an hour later we would realize that within the last hour we had gone through 80 different options/things to take into consideration without being ANY closer to a decision. (This would usually result in both of us starting to laugh, sometimes uncontrollably.)

We finally narrowed down our choices to Utah State, University of Oklahoma and Oregon State (right love? I always get the "University" and "State" part confused. There were a lot of things to consider and Pro's and Con's to all three of the choices... but we finally made our decision!

David will be attending Graduate School at the one and only:

UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY
We love it here so much, and we are so happy to be spending another year here. David will start his Masters Program in January and he will graduate with his Masters or Accounting next December (it is only a one year program... which is great). There are a lot of factors that played into this decision, and we are really excited about it. Because we will be staying here in Logan, that means that I will be doing my student teaching at South Cache Middle School!
Whoo hoo! I am so excited. My beloved Adviser/Teacher here at Utah State , Julie Wheeler, said that my cooperating teacher is one of the best around! (Technically I haven't been placed yet, but this is where Julie told me she is trying to place me.)

Good things are happening for David and I. We are excited to be spending the next year close to all of you whom we know and love. If David decides to pursue his PHD, who knows where we will end up!

Birthday Boy

Sunday, October 11, was my darling David's Twenty-Fifth Birthday! I wanted to do a post on his birthday about how wonderful he is, but we were at his home in West Jordan and with all the family around there wasn't much time for blogging. So here is the belated birthday post:



Here are a few fun facts about David:

• He served his mission in Nashville, Tennessee; Spanish Speaking.
• He is graduating this December in Accounting AND Economics.
  
• He is the smartest person I know. Getting a 95% on a test is SO not good enough for him. Really... he is brilliant. And not only is he school-smart... he is life-smart.
  
• His favorite chips are Nacho Cheese Doritos
• He loves fruit flavored candy more so than chocolate candy
• He would rather stay up until the wee hours of the morning than get up early.
  
• The majority of his clothes in his closet are Navy Blue. There are very few shirts that are not a shade of blue or have blue on them. (In fact... right now I can only think of two. Haha.)
  
• His eyes are blue, but change shades according to what shade of blue he is wearing. Love it!
• He sings me songs all the time, and when I am really lucky he sings me songs in Spanish.
  
• He loves Utah State, and especially Aggie Basketball. He is known for being at the Spectrum at 7:00 am on game days in order to sit on the front row center court.
  
• He loves sports of any kinds, and he quite frequently will spout off on names and numbers and statistics and years... which leaves me quite shocked at just HOW much information in that big brain of his is completely devoted to sports.
• When we were engaged, he loved going to Bridal Fairs just as much as I did. (How can you not, free food, lots of candy, fun ideas.)
• He has gotten into his swimming suit, gone outside in the middle of a Logan Winter and done Snow Angels.
  
• He has been known to play a game with his friends where they would walk into random apartments and pretend like they lived there. (For example: sitting down on the couch and reading the newspaper, getting a drink of water etc...)
  
• He is incredibly supportive of anything that I choose to do, whether it is trying out a new recipe for dinner, trying out all of the flavors of Aggie Ice Cream, starting my own business or wanting to be a stay at home mom.
  
• He loves to play "Attack."
• His favorite dinner is anything that is made with Potatoes. Potato Supreme being the very favorite, but anything with potatoes following directly after.
• He can make grilled cheese sandwiches that are approximately 306 times better than the grilled cheese sandwiches I make.
  
• He hates pickles and olives (two of my favorite things) and tomatoes (a hate that we share)
  
• We met in an institute class where David waited until the last day of class to ask me out. He then persisted through me saying no to him 4 times, before I finally agreed to go out with him. He also was persistent even though I took off to Virginia/Washington DC for four months. How grateful I am for the persistence of this boy. (He insists that he is persistent not stubborn, which is a statement that his grandmother also frequently employs.)

This is a short list of the things about David that make him unique. These are the things that endear me to him more than anything else in the whole world! David is kind and thoughtful and wonderful. I am so grateful to be married to someone who makes me fall more and more in love with him every day. Happy 25th Birthday Love!

And now for a whole bunch of photos of the wonderful boy:

ps. Do you like the new Halloween Background? I love Halloween!

Halloween

I love Halloween. I can't even tell you how much I love Halloween. It is my absolute favorite holiday. I realize that this may shock some of you... I can almost hear the gasp and then the question, "What about Christmas?" Don't worry dear friends, of course I love Christmas because of family and the birth of our Savior. But there is just something about Halloween that has secured it a spot as my favorite holiday.


There are many reasons that Halloween is my favorite holiday:

• You get to dress up
  
• The decorations are so fun, creative and unique.
  
• I love the whole "Spookiness" factor
• It is the only Holiday that is commercialized to be exactly what it is! There is nothing but dressing up in fun/creepy costumes and eating candy!
  
• Everyone can participate (None of this "You can only participate if you are currently dating someone/married" crap you see around Valentines Day. Yuck!)
• Pumpkin Carving! Need I say more?
  
• Pumpkin Carving with my family and the Olivers! (I decided I do need to say more, this counts for two points!!!)
• Fun Halloween parties
• Did I mention that you get to make/wear fantastic costumes? (For all of you who don't know, I made a Victorian Style Ballgown a couple years ago. 10 yards of fabric and 100+ hours and I had a magnificent dress to wear for Halloween that year, and the year after, and most likely this year too!)
• Cute Halloween Treats that you can make to look like ghosts, or witches, or pumpkins or spiders etc...

I could go on forever... really. But I will stop there. However. I must show you this incredible candelabra. I love it. I want it. I am going to make one just like it. Mark my words, before Halloween arrives I will have one of these beauties in my wonderful apartment.

•