Millie has taken over

Some people take pictures of their kids. I don’t have kids but I have a dog. So I take pictures of my dog, Millie. My Instagram feed is full of pictures of this cuddly fur-ball. If she’s not cuddled up at my feet, she’s sitting at the table while I eat lunch, placing her paw on me for attention, or staring at me while I’m taking a bath. She really is a great dog who deserves room on my Instagram feed.

Please ignore my hideousness in the above picture on the left. She made some very intense eye contact with an aggressive paw placement and wouldn’t relent until I showed her some attention. I’m glad I was able to capture that.

Follow me on Instagram (@hannahbunker)!


A new look & name for my photography website

I’ve had a few photo sessions recently and with a little pick-up in the photo biz I decided my photography website needed a pick-me-up too. It was embarrassingly outdated. Remember Belvedere Photography? Well, that’s no more. Here’s what you’ll be seeing from now on:

You know me. You know who I am. Why was I using the word Belvedere? I guess when I started out I felt I needed to put a name to my creative projects. Now, it’s just Hannah Bunker Photography because it’s as simple as “that’s who I am.” I have a link over on the sidebar but if you’d like to get busy with the typing or copying-&-pasting you can put the actual url into the address bar: hannahbunker.com/photography. Feel free to bookmark and share with your friends. Here’s what you’ll find there…

You’ll notice that it’s kind of a quirky website. Well, that’s me. I explain everything on my website like I would if we were talking face to face. My personal favorite is how I explain the contract…”Basically we’re just agreeing that I get paid and that I won’t make you do death-defying tricks during your session like tossing fire or posing with an uncaged lion.”

I would totally say that in real life.

And another big part of the new site is I’m now working toward offering and selling prints and gallery wraps. I’d love to venture into other boutique products and probably will some day but I’m starting small.

Putting together all the details has certainly been a learning experience…even over the past two years. I’ve always wanted to figure out a way to offer affordable photography, portrait prints and art for my clients while still maintaining a business. It’s a learning process but when we look at the whole scheme of things, you’re getting great photos from a (ahem) talented artist who offers quality products all for a great price compared to the market cost for photography at my level. It’s a process I think will constantly be evolving.

While I’m waxing philisophical why don’t you just tune me out and hop on over and browse around for a while. I’m pretty proud of what I’ve done with the joint. Let me know what you think!

 


6 Super-Cheap Organization Ideas

Despite what my husband may think, I’m a deal-finder, a lover of cheap solutions, and a do-what-you-can-to-make-it-happen kind of girl. This goes for finding cheap organizing solution. I hate spending money on organizing knick-knacks around the house because I’d rather spend money on other things…like fancy coffee, crafts, or food.

Below are a few tips and and examples of cheap solutions I’ve found to maximize storage and get our house more organized.

 

1. Tension rod for cleaning supplies.

This idea is genius. Instead of wasting precious cabinet space on spray bottles, I hung a tension rod in the back of the cabinet and hung all the spray bottles by the nozzle, allowing space for other items that need to sit in the cabinet.

 

2. Curtain rod as a towel rack.

There is absolutely no room to hang towels in our bathroom. That’s why I’m glad I found this idea on Pinterest to use cheap curtain rods as towel racks on the back of our door.

 

3. Decorative serving tray as a catch-all medicine cabinet.

We have one medicine cabinet in our bathroom…and it belongs to Aaron. All of my products were segregated to the counter top but it soon felt cluttered. We had used this tray for something in our wedding so I just screwed in two D-hooks to the back and hung it on the wall. Now, all of my products are off of the counter and I’m not fighting with Aaron for cabinet space.

 

4. Magazine racks for flat iron/curling iron storage.

I hate how there’s no built-in storage in our bathroom cabinets so I had been throwing all of my hair tools in the cabinet at random. That led to tangled cords, wasted space, and frustration. So I bought these magazine racks at Ikea (2 for $10) and used L-brackets to hang them on the inside of the cabinet doors for hair tool storage. And see the brown and silver thing holding the curling iron to the left? That’s an oven mit….another useful tool to wrap your iron in after you use it.

 

5. Glas jars as knick-knack storage.

I’ve developed a bit of a hoarding habit with glass jars. I use them all over the house to hold little miniscule items that would be strewn everywhere otherwise. We use everything from spaghetti jars to pickle jars to baby food jars (we mix baby food with Millie’s hard food…it’s cheaper than wet dog food and goes farther). As you can see below, I use jars for my hair accessories and for all the office supplies.

 

6. Plastic Rubbermaid tubs for pantry storage.

I’m very proud of this idea. Since we got married I’ve always thought of buying the fancy Elfa pantry storage system but every time I could, I just couldn’t bring myself to forking out the money. There had to be something cheaper! One day when I was cleaning I found five empty Rubbermaid tubs that weren’t being used and I decided to screw them into the pantry door to give it a try as pantry door storage.

Sure enough, it worked! This move maximized our pantry storage by 80%! Once where food had been tumbling off the shelves, we now had three extra empty shelves! I’m sure you can find these at the dollar store. As far as durability, they’ve been up for quite some time and have yet to crack or break!

There you have it! What are some cheap organization tricks you use in your home?


Now Contributing to Dancing Upon Barren Land

Hello, dear friends and readers. I’m very excited about sharing this post today because it is something that is incredibly close to my heart.

In mine and Aaron’s infertility journey I have had the opportunity to meet some wonderful people…like this lady, Lesli. She and I have become very good friends over the 6-or-so months that we have known each other. This lovely lady runs both HOPE Infertility Support at Lakewood Church here in Houston and also Dancing Upon Barren Land, an online infertility support ministry. I count her as one of my dearest friends.

How we met is a really great story! I found the Dancing Upon Barren Land button on Jones Design Company’s blog early last year and visited Lesli’s website. I subscribed and a few short days later she sent me a sweet email introducing herself and inviting me to visit HOPE since she could see I lived in the Houston area. For months I intended to go but was never able to while she and I emailed back and forth every once in a while. I finally was able to make it to HOPE in the month of November and she and I have been buddies ever since. Not only that, we found out that we live only ten minutes from each other! It’s crazy to me how I found someone so close through a blogger that lives in Washington state!

Here comes the part that I’m super-excited about…

Lesli has asked me to be a contributing writer for Dancing Upon Barren Land! She wrote a wonderful and sweet post yesterday about this new endeavor and I wanted to share the post she wrote yesterday introducing me as a part of the team. You can see that here!

I’m so excited about this opportunity and to be able to minister to women and to couples who are going through the battle of infertility. It’s such a hard road to walk and I’m truly honored to be able to help anyone who is going through it. So keep an eye out on Dancing Upon Barren Land, subscribe to the website, stick around and read some of Lesli’s inspirational writing, and I’ll also let you know when I’ll be contributing!

In the meantime check out Lesli’s post from yesterday called Two Hopes Collide and tell her I said Hi!


Date Night

Within the past two weeks Aaron and I had a goal: to go on one date night where we don’t talk about work or fertility or bills or any of the other crap that goes on in life. It would be a date night where we just enjoy each others’ company and spend quality time with each other.

Someone recently innocently said, “It’s probably easier for you guys to spend time together because you don’t have kids.” To which I informed them that that particular night was the first night I was spending with my husband in a week. That comment stung a little but I know that they meant there weren’t interruptions every time we wanted to spend a second alone together. They meant it completely innocently so there’s no hard feelings however, it’s not completely accurate. Aaron and I do have a hard time setting aside quality time because of our schedules. Actually, the majority  of our relationship has been on opposite schedules. When we dated, I was in Houston and he was in Colorado. We got married and he opened Starbucks at 4 in the morning while I worked nights at a dance studio. We had similar schedules for about six months last year but since he started his counseling internship in January, we really only see each other late at night before bed, and weekend evenings.

We decided to set aside some time this past weekend for a date. Our favorite part of town is the Heights so we went to Aaron’s favorite joint for dinner (Lola) then went to Fitzgerald’s where we saw Sucre play. I had read on A Beautiful Mess that Elsie and Jeremy were going to be in town for his band’s concert so we decided to check it out.

After dinner we stopped by Revival Market to grab some coffee. Their iced vanilla lattes are the best!

I’ve been building up the courage to wear these shorts in public. High wasted coulotte-type shorts might not be the most flattering for my figure and pasty white legs but I love the retro vibe and thought this was the perfect occasion to wear them.

Then we headed to Fitzgerald’s for the concert.

And I got to meet one of the coolest bloggers…Elsie from A Beautiful Mess. I was a little star-struck. I told Aaron, it’s like the extra in a movie walking up to the movie star and asking to take a picture. I told her that and she was like, “No way! That’s not the case.” She was very sweet!

And because I always get so frustrated that we go on adventures and dates and we NEVER get a picture of us together, before we left we set up the self timer outside of Fitzgerald’s and got a picture of us together.

What a lovely night! I love my husband more than I could ever explain!


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