Favorites
Make sure to click on the "Vote Here!" button under your favorite photo.
The five with the most votes gets moved up here!
The five with the most votes gets moved up here!
After our fun beach portrait session, I knew Jeffrey would be great to shoot during his Bar Mitzvah at the Westlake Village Inn. It was a beautiful morning and the outdoor ceremony was on a great Italian looking terrace. Jeffrey did such a great job and deserved every minute of his celebration.
Jeffrey's mom did a great job with the centerpieces and other design elements...
Jeffrey and his family love to travel and Tahiti is close to their hearts. Pati from Guilty Temptations did a great job creating these tropical hut cakes over "water and sand".
Other great vendors:
DJ: Robert with Dream Team Entertainment
Video: Marcus CLayton Productions
To see more of Jeffrey's day, please watch the video below:
http://karenard.com/blog/2010/11/westlake-village-inn-bar-mitzvah.html
Christine's laugh and smile are so completely infectious! I enjoy being in her company so much. And anyone I can bond with about West Indian food has got to be a fabulous person and potential BFF! Christine and her son recently did a fun mother/son session. Doesn't she look like she's 16?
Jaimie Dee - Atlanta Wedding Photographer Says:
Sooo cute!!! :) Love the back lighting!
(11.18.10 - 06:39 PM)
http://karenard.com/blog/2010/11/motherson-portrait-session.html
My girlfriend, and fellow photographer, asked me to take same family pictures recently. The sweetest boys with the energy of, well, the energizer bunny.
We also did some shots of her and her man and a few portraits for her new site.
Tamara Says:
Thank you for taking such beautiful family portraits for us. You are a very talented photographer and wonderful friend! We will cherish our gorgeous photographs for many years to come! Thank you Karen!
(12.11.10 - 06:00 PM)
http://karenard.com/blog/2010/11/tarzana-family-portraits.html
My daughter and I actually did our third decorating class in mid-September but I forgot to blog the photos. (If you missed the first two installments, you can find them here and here.)
Assignment number three was a two layer floral design. If you've been following along, you know one of my challenges has been making my cakes too moist so they fall apart when crumb coating (no matter how water-downed my frosting is). This time I baked the cake just a bit longer and once it cooled I wrapped and refrigerated it. Things I learned:
Wrapping and refrigerating my cakes, along with the extra bake time, definitely helped!
When you do a two layer cake, you do a ring of frosting along the edge before you add your filling. I always wondered how to stop your filling from squirting out! lol My daughter did a chocolate cake with a chocolate fudge filling and I did a spice cake with regular frosting filling.
This is the crumb coated version... I forgot to get a shot of the frosted version before decorating it. Some times I feel a bit rushed by our instructors... and they always look at me funny when I whip out my camera and slow things down. You'll see in the last shots a cornelli lace pattern, made with tip #2. Thin consistency of icing is best for this.
Making Mums is frustrating. My flowers ended up looking like weeds. It's okay, though. I like weeds. I just wish I had more time to practice these. I think, again, that my frosting was too warm from my hand because the petals kept flopping over. We loved using the flower nail though, and we can't wait to try making roses. We started with a blob of frosting on wax paper and used tip #80 for the petals.
Cornelli lace is fun to make. The leaves were made with a #352 tip. Please note my weedy flowers. Actually, I think they remind me of a Yucca plant.
Its fun learning what all the tips do. The shell boarder was with tip #21. We have been keeping our tips in a very fancy ziplock baggy. I'd love to get one of those tip organizers though. We would feel so professional!
Thin your icing for the lace! Here is my daughter's...
http://karenard.com/blog/2010/11/cake-decorating-101-3-of-8.html
Not many people plan a home remodel and a wedding at the same time. Especially when the wedding reception is to be at that home. But Doug and Andrea took it all in stride. Even the rainstorms that slowed the progress down had no effect on their bliss. Nothing was going to stop these two from sharing their day with friends and family. Even if family was over 7,000 miles away in Malaysia. Thanks to modern technology, Andrea woke her dear parents up at 3am and Skyped the whole wedding so they could see their little girl get married! They even dressed up. So sweet.
The ceremony was at the First Baptist Church in Woodland Hills (one of the cutest little churches in Los Angeles, with a traditional steeple) and the reception was at their finished home in Calabasas. Even the rain behaved!
I love black and white wedding photography, especially a classic portrait like this next one...
And of course my favorite vintage-y, fine art ones...
One of their friends was in charge of setting up the Skype broadcast to Malaysia and showing Andrea's parents the whole ceremony.
I love this photo of Doug and his mother...
...and Andrea with her parents as well...
Their entire wedding was DIY, with Andrea's sisters and her BFF Gloria (co-owner of the new West Hills Yankee Doodles) handling the cake, food and decorations.
Andrea changed into a more traditional dress half way through the reception. She ordered these creative favors from China.
Man, I love those portraits of them. If you'd like to see more of their wedding, please view the slideshow below. We also did a killer day after session so make sure to come back next week to see those!
http://karenard.com/blog/2010/11/calabasas-wedding-andrea-doug.html