Happy Howloween

From our Lil' Devil


& our witch


Thanks to Jaclyn and Jason for the awesome costumes as part of our pumpkin carving prizes.

Two is better than One

So another photo project that I just completed recently is taking a year of "Weekly Me" Pictures. Something that was harder than the Photo a Day surprisingly. I think this is because with the photo a day it was something I was comfortable with, being behind the camera as where the Weekly Me, I had to be in front of the camera. Well let's just say I am glad that project is over. BUT don't worry I love the concept, I just think it needs changing up a bit. So I have decided to do a Weekly Us photo project for a year. So every week Brett and I will take a picture together, not only do I feel less narcissistic doing this but we definitely don't take enough pictures together as a couple.

So here is our Weekly Us that we took yesterday.


We are in week 3 of Weekly Us so you can check out the badge on the right hand side of the blog or go here to see all the photos.

Also, if you are so inclined to look at my year of Weekly Me photos you can do that here as well.

Lazy Butts

I don't take out my big camera as much as I used to. I rely way to much on my iphone or my point and shoot (hey, I like the convenience) and if I lose or drop them its not as expensive to fix as my Nikon (okay maybe my iPhone would be). I just need to take a break every once in a while and take some pictures. So that is what I did this week and I took pictures of my favorite subjects, my pups.

This is them doing what they do best, being lazy butts.








Then they get fed up with me taking pictures and really just want me to leave them alone.


its a good thing they are so cute.

Carving it Up

The month of October really crept up on me and I just started to get used to the idea of it being October and now its merely a week before its over. So I guess that it is natural for us to start getting into the Halloween spirit. If it wasn't our friends, Jason and Jaclyn throwing a Pumpkin Carving Party yesterday we could have possibly made it through Halloween without doing anything Halloween related. It's not that we don't like Halloween because we do but this year I will be in San Francisco for work and it won't be like last year which was too much fun (I really wish we could do that again this year, maybe next year?) when the family came into town and we all hung out. I am really bummed that I will be missing out on Halloween and the Nevada Day parade.

So yesterday in preparation of the Pumpkin Carving Party we went to Target to get some carving tools and ideas. While there I found some great Halloween Cupcake items and decided that I wanted to make some cupcakes.

The cupcake mix was the Halloween mix with orange and black sprinkles out of the box but I did make the frosting from scratch and dyed it myself. Sometimes I can bring it. Believe me they are as yummy as they look.

In preparation for the Pumpkin Carving Party we were searching for ideas, we are pretty competitive and wanted to bring our A game. I happened to find a pumpking carving book at the grocery store that had very out there crazy ideas for pumpkins and well that is were we got the inspiration for our pumpkin.

First of all we decided to get the biggest pumpkin we could find, this one weighed about 30 lbs and only cost us $5.98 (at Walmart!). We put the beer there so you could see how big it is.


We ate, did a beer tasting (I think this was to handicap all the carvers) and then the carving started. It was a lot of fun with some competitiveness but overall it was just a lot of laughs.


Here is Brett working hard on our prize pumpkin

I promise I did some work as well, I promise.

So here is our completed pumpkin lit up outside.


and with all of the other pumpkins from the night.


We ended up winning "Most Original Pumpkin" for our cannibal pumpkin. Here are some pictures I took later on when we got home since I forgot to take some before we put them oustide last night.


This is the little pumpkin being eaten by the big cannibal pumpkin, the poor little pumpkin was so scared that he puked his guts out.


We had such a good time and were so glad that we were actually able to get into the Halloween spirit if only for one night.

Photo a Day

Back in October of last year I decided to do a photo a day, on a whim. Who would have known that I would have kept it up for an entire year. But I did. Tonight I took my 365th photo.



You can see all the photos here:


Or if you want to see them full size you can go to the flickr website http://www.flickr.com/photos/saramcg/sets/72157608352084618/show/

Although its not always easy to remember to take a picture I definitely enjoyed looking back on all the photos from the last year. Let's just say you can categorize my photos into pictures of dogs, food or trees. Interesting.

P.S. This was on my list of 101 things to do 1001 days. So booyah, one more thing crossed off the list.

At the Dog Park

We actually got to enjoy what a real weekend feels like; no travelling, no weddings, no sickness, no work- just us. To boot, the weather was gorgeous. Knowing that this good weather is not going to be around for much longer we decided to take the pups out to the dog park.

I thought it would be cute to take a video of what Maggie does when we pull out her leash. Although I am not smart enough to release I shouldn't have rotated the camera. Thinking I could edit it before I posted it online realizing I didn't have the right equipment and would need to purchase Quicktime Pro to convert from .mov to .avi so I can then rotate the video. yada yada well needless to say I still thought the video was cute but you are just going to have to tilt your head slightly to watch (I have learned my lesson I promise)

Maggie's Excitement from Sara McG on Vimeo.

The dog park we typically take them to in Hidden Valley was closed (we only discovered that after driving out there) so since we were already out in that part of town we decided to head onto the Sparks Marina. I knew there was a dog park there unfortunately it doesn't have separate areas for small dogs and big dogs like Hidden Valley does (its a big deal for us) but thought that if we couldn't take them to the park we could at least walk around the Marina for a bit.

Thankfully it was gorgeous at the Marina.


We got to the dog park and both the pups raced in and raced straight to the water.


Sammy watched the big dogs but he wasn't so interested in playing with them.


Sammy and Maggie can only play for so long then they either get bored or tired. So after about 15 minutes of them walking up and down the shoreline, sniffing at things we headed back.


This is Maggie on the car ride home, she just loves car rides she thinks they are exciting and is always up for the adventure.


Sammy on the other hand hates the car and always pretty sure that we are taking him to the vet. No matter how many trips we take them in the car that DON'T end up at the vet he still doesn't trust us.

Either way I am glad we were able to get out and enjoy the weather while it was here.

So, what do you do now?

"People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring. "
-Rogers Hornsby

I've been hearing a particular question in one form or another since just after my first internship with the Giants. It pretty much goes like this:

"So what are you doing now that the (Giants/Aces) season is over? Just sit around and do nothing?"

Ha! That's not the case at all.

Actually, after the first internship, the answer was "yeah, pretty much," because the Giants stopped paying me, and also because they stopped giving me things to do. After the second internship, I at least got to say, "I'm waiting for a full-time job, and also I engrave bats."

But every other off-season, it's still a grind... it's just a five-days-a-week grind rather than the 11-12 days in a row during the summer. Lately, I've been:

• Scrubbing our tickets database until it's clean, shiny, and without duplicate accounts.
• Working to keep the Aces relevant during the offseason (check out our Twitter feed!)
• Crunching attendance/weather/wins-and-losses data from around Triple-A baseball to see what giveaways and promotions moved the needle in 2009.
• Strategizing new marketing concepts for next season.
• Working on the new advertising/marketing campaign for the Reno Bighorns, which the organization purchased last spring. (If you're in the Reno area, check it out! Tickets start at just $7, and it's a pretty fun time.)

So you can stop being jealous, I'm not actually sitting around surfing the web until April rolls around. In the meantime, got a great giveaway or promotion idea? I'm all ears...

Yummy.

Find it at your local grocery, next to the sandwich hairspray!

great idea gmail

It's super rainy and gloomy today in Reno. I don't exactly hate it but let's just say when I go into my gmail inbox I don't necessarily want to see my inbox all rainy and gloomy as well.



I mean who at google thought it would be a good idea to put gray skies and rain in my inbox. It's depressing.

Today I decided I wanted something more fun...something that would make me smile regardless of what the weather was like outside.



So I decided to go with ninjas. They are protecting my inbox ;) and doesn't that just put a smile on your face.

Photobooths are the way to go

Photobooths are by no means a new concept, actually they been around since 1889. Let's just say that recently they are making a come back, especially at special events like weddings.

I had seen one back in August when I was working at a wedding and when I got home I told my sister all about it. Considering that they were getting married in a couple of months and were looking for guest favors and what to do for the guest book. The photobooth was a perfect solution as the company they were using would create a scrapbook of the photos that guests could sign AND then the guests could take a photo strip home as a favor.

As you can see they also have props like feather boas, hats, etc. that you can dress up in.


You can do them in color or the always classic black and white.


Brett and I have a million ideas of things we should HAVE done in the photo booth but instead did boring, classic photo booth poses. So if you do end up renting one please invite us as we really want to try out our new poses.



see...we really need a couple of re-dos.


Needless to say the photobooth was a hit and only gets better as the night goes on and your guests get some alcohol in them.

The company that Jenny & Travis used is Tahoe Reno Photo Booth. They are great and I highly suggest them!!!

Congratulations Jenny & Travis!!!

This week has been insane....while my sister and her new husband have been on their honeymoon I have been recouping. I can't believe it has already been a week since their wedding. So I guess it's about time to actually do a recap of the wedding.

I was one of her matron of honors. You might wonder why my sister has more than one matron of honor. Okay, here's the story, there are three sisters in my family. When I got engaged I asked both of my sisters to be my maid of honors and it started a tradition of us girls always being maid/matrons of honors at each others weddings. It really helped us in having to pick just one sister. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. I actually can’t believe that we are all married!



My poor parents, three wedding in just about three years. Just kidding I know that they couldn't be prouder that we all found that one person that we want to spend the rest of our lives with.



That our family of 5 has become a family of 10, and soon a family of 11. My youngest sister and her family will be welcoming a new member in late March. We couldn't be happier for them. I am just bummed that I didn't get a picture of all 10 of us (at least the professional wedding photographer did!). Either way these girls are getting a new sibling!!!



It was an amazing wedding. I can't believe that there are no more weddings in our family in the near future. It makes me a little sad. Also it made me a little nostalgic for Brett's and my wedding, I can't believe that its almost been three years since our wedding. It feels like just yesterday. I had to throw a picture of us in because well it's our blog and lets just we were looking good and some might say that "we were the best looking couple in here".



But back to the happy couple, CONGRATULATIONS you two!!! I am so excited for you guys and wish you all the best.



btw, this is my favorite photo!!! Travis, I love that you couldn't wait and jumped the gun on the kiss. It just shows your love for Jenny and your excitement to jump into the marriage.

Sisters

"My sisters and I, friends are we, Best of friends we'll always be"

Growing up my parents always told us girls that no matter what you will always have your sisters, which was usually followed by "okay now hug each other and say you're sorry". They never let us forget that nothing is stronger than your relationship with your sisters. Its never been the easiest relationship but it has always been the one I treasure the most. In my family there are us three girls. We are close in age and even though we didn't always get a long we have always been each other's best friends, our support system when things are rough and the first ones we call when we have good news. I can't imagine my life without my sisters, I guess I should thank my parents for having three kids and for only having girls.

Today, Jennifer is getting married. This marks a whole new chapter in our lives, as all of us sisters will now be married. We may no longer be the Smith girls but we will always be sisters. I think McLandall or McHaldes girls (you know a combination of all three of our new last names) could really catch on. Okay anyways, today is exciting and it reminds me of how strong my bonds are with my sisters and how much I love getting to celebrate these moments in life with each other.

Now, I just have to go work on my matron of honor speech. It's payback time, when Jennifer gave the speech at my wedding she made sure to remind everyone how dorky I was growing up and how surprised she was that anyone married me. Nice, huh? I guess that's what sisters are for: to keep you grounded and keep you humble.