DETAILS

the who: This discount is for family, children, and baby sessions only.

the cost: The cost for a session is $125.00. Book any time between now and the 18th of February, and receive a 25% discount on prints, and a 10% discount on products (albums, collections, digital sets). The session MUST be booked and PAID for by the 18th of February.

OH it gets BETTER (yayyyy!!!!): If you refer a friend (0r choose to book TWO sessions in 2011), and they (or you) also book and PAY for their session fee on or before February 18th, you AND your friend receive 50% off prints, and a 15% discount on products!!!

Even Better (still more!!): Anyone who spends $1,000 or more per session will receive a complete set of full size, full resolution, full awesomeness digital files, with printing rights, with a custom cd, as well as suggestions on where to get the BEST printing.

THE NOT SO FINE PRINT: Sessions can be booked any time in 2011, but the session fee  MUST be received by February 18th, 2011 to hold your place, and to hold your very special deal. There will be absolutely NO MORE sales this year, so this is your one and only chance to get this discount. Travel fee’s will be assessed to anyone outside the state of Maine. PLEASE READ THIS PART: There is a $300.00 MINIMUM print order required for these sessions. (but you get a LOT of great stuff for that!!!)

daily mantra:

i struggle with enormous discrepancies: between the reality of motherhood and the image of it, between my love for my home and the need to travel, between the varied and seductive paths of the heart. the lessons of impermanance, the occasional despair and the muse, so tenuously moored, all visit their needs upon me and i dig deeply for the spiritual utilities that restore me: my love for the place, for the one man left, for my children and friends and the great green pulse of spring…{sally.mann}

***

dear Mikki and Katie….

i have really been awful at this, huh? no excuses. just…..{picture me with my shoulders shrugged and a scrunched face and a look of ‘blah’ and i am wearing sweatpants and i am still in my flip flops even though its November because i think real shoes hold me back or something and i’m generally uninspired even though you both are cup overflow-ith with it as soon as the light of one eye opens and passes your long eyelashes in the morning}.

deep breath because that was a run on sentence, i am sure of it. {sorry Mrs. Mellor}

i am looking for full-on soul restoration of epic, Bob Villa “This Old House”, proportions. i go through this about once a year. where i feel the need to reinvent myself and become a different, a hopefully better, person. i don’t know if i ever do it or just decide whatever this is, might be good enough. perhaps this rebuilding is something that can be compared to the growth rings on a tree. i haven’t figured it all out yet. but i will though.

pinky-promice.

love always darlings,

dear Mikki and Katie…

i stood at the mail box. i didn’t open it at first. i love getting the mail even now that i am 30. what is inside? is it a letter from an old friend, my Grammy Tyler, or other relative? {oh handwritten letters are divine} bills? {most assuredly} checks? {rarely} a book that i ordered on a whim from Amazon? {i collect books during the summer that i won’t even get to dream of reading until January} i open the door to the tin box with red flag standing on bent metal post {it wasn’t me who hit it this time with the car… no…really}; just a tiny bit at first and then i peek with one eye inside the darkness…this is my way. i would say that the neighbors find me odd, but probably they just think i’m crazy.

inside?

bills. bank statements. the Rite Aid flier.

and the Anthropology catalog.

sigh….heaven.

i think to myself as i grab the stack…when i can afford everything in the Anthropology catalog i will be living the good life…

i think this all the way in, and past the threshold of our house, and see Katie coloring at the marred kitchen table constructing one of her brilliant drawings of cats. {complete with stripes or polka dots}.  on top of our too big for our little house table is Penelope the cat, stretched out and yawning and exhausted after morning of…well…laying on the table and yawning. Penelope is Katie’s muse.

“Penelope is silly today, huh Mom? she told me so.” you say this, Katie, as if she really did. so i believe you.

i toss the Anthropology catalog on the counter. and then pick it up again. i look at the cover for moment and curl my bottom lip over my teeth in pensive indecision for a moment. and then without another thought, freely throw it into the trash can. without even a page turn or a look see or a glimpse.

good life?

i have it all.

i have it in you two.

all my love darlings,

p.s. daily.mantra::  the world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning…ivy.baker

dear Mikki and Katie…

i can smell a tantrum in the Walmart toy isle from across the store. the embarrassment that oozes through the mile long isles of worn concrete floors and potato chips in bulk can be felt by every cringing mother thankful that it is not their own child (this time). the elderly people shake their heads in colossal shame, thinking poorly of “the young people of today”, and the underpaid clerks brace themselves for a clean up of epic proportions after the lady, with her screaming babe on her hip, abandon her cart mid-experience. i wish i could say that neither of you two have blessed me with your own spectacular rendition of Midsummer Night Dream meets Macbeth in a toy tragedy, but alas, I have not been spared this all too familiar motherly experience. (hence my plague like avoidance of any toy isle….ever.) still, i have yet to blame a child for any such antics, even in my hot faced, ever so close to crying and/or my ready to severely discipline state of mind. because, girls, there is “too much”. of everything. and we all get wrapped up in the “too much” mentality.  i stepped on yet another “Littlest Pet Shop” walking down the hall sleepily in my bare feet on the way to the shrine (otherwise known as the coffee pot) this morning, and cursed all that is commercial and excessive in explicit, inappropriate detail. and while i feel that daddy and i don’t spoil you rotten, the mounting “i want this” comments coming from the other side of the noise picture box where a commercial presents yet another plastic thing i am bound to swear about has gotten out of hand. and yes, i had a lot of toys when i was a child. too many to count or even care about. but it’s even worse now because instead of just a couple isles of semi nicely made toys there are 12-24 isles of plastic stuff made for a dollar and sold for $14.99. (next week it will go on sale for $9.99 to make room for more and more and more and more). and by the time you guys have kids, there might be 24-50 isles of worrisome, dizzying, “too much”.  and while it may seem like i am standing on my soap box and preaching about the evils of toys, let me say that i don’t think they are evil at all. i love toys. i even love the Littlest Pet Shop animals that i curse on a semi-regular basis. what worries me, girls, is what you can’t find in those endless isles of mass production. and that is attention. and that is a simple conversation. and that is (most times) education. and that is the joy that comes from togetherness. and that is love. and while a toy may certainly BE loved, one-thousand of them can’t.

oh and this “too much” thing applies for us adults too. there is WAY “too much” of everything for us too…and it all makes me want to crawl into the 19th century sometimes (only with toilet paper and toilets because that is just good stuff there) when things were harder i’m sure, but there was less stuff and more to talk about.

all my love darlings,

p.s. daily mantra: “sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” {dr.seuss}

Daily Mantra:

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There’s more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine

{the.indigo.girls}