Homemade Laundry Detergent

I finally decided to give homemade laundry detergent a whirl, I say finally because it's been something I've been meaning to try for a long time. Anyways I found a crazy simple recipe. It literally took me less than 15 minutes to do this- that's less time than it would take me to drive to the store. Anyways, here's what I did...

These are what you need to buy for the laundry detergent adventure that I chose.

Step 1: Grate a bar of ivory soap, like so.

Then combine 1 part washing soda for every 1 part grated Ivory soap. For the one bar I got about 2 cups. I combined in a mason jar and shook it up to mix. 

Then when you do a load of laundry you insert 3 tblsp of this as you would a powdered detergent, and I used the vinegar in place of fabric softener. Here's my laundry ready to go!

And the settings I used, I always go with cold water when I can

Sorry the photos are kind of dark. It was night time and I have horrible lighting in my house and don't really care enough to edit photos of my laundry. But yeah that's all there is to it. It's dirt cheap, easy, fast, and better for your skin, and my clothes came out nice and clean so I'm pretty satisfied with this adventure! Crunchy mommy signing off- until next time!

MDP: Casey's Maternity Session

I had another awesome maternity session last night! Thank goodness we didn't get rained out, sometimes it's great when the weather man is wrong! Casey asked for a rustic setting so I hunted down a local dude ranch and off we went! It was a gorgeous afternoon and we got some great photos! Casey was simply glowing. Can't wait to see her beautiful baby girl behind my lens in less than a month! Oh my! Here are my favorites.

5 months!

Oh me oh my! Tyler turned 5 months last week. This one really hit me, he is only 1 month away from his half birthday. That's a little crazy! Of course I am a major planning dork and already have a game plan for his first birthday. Tyler really is progressing- he has started rolling over again, though he doesn't do it often, he has also started to "scoot" during tummy time. You can hardly notice he's doing it, but one minute he's facing one direction and the next he's somewhere else. I have a feeling we may skip the rolling as a form of transportation and make more progress with this "scooting". He seems more interested in doing that. We also finally went down to babies r us and used Tyler's Christmas gift card. We got a couple (eating friendly) bibs. and a toy (I can't decide if it's a dinosaur or a dragon. He doesn't have wings, but looks a little more dragon like to me, he so soft and Tyler seems to like it. The pediatrician suggested at his 4 month visit that we could start feeding him solids whenever we felt he was ready. I just don't really feel like he's showing signs of wanting to and I've heard starting solids too early has been linked to allergies so I've been hesitant, but that's probably an adventure we'll try soon.

A lot of the photos came out like this cause I was using the flash- can't wait to get my lighting equipment!

Meet my new friend

He's yummy!

MDP: Kim's Maternity Photos

Yesterday I was so lucky to be chosen to do Kim's maternity photos. Her fiancee is currently deployed so he was obviously unable to join us. I would like to say a special thank you for his service to our country, and hope that our photos will give him a glimpse of this special time! Kim is so beautiful and absolutely glowing, she made my job way too easy! We chose a location with bright colors to match her bubbly personality- even though there was a last minute (ok second) change I'd say the photos were a great success. I can't wait to meet their little girl and capture some of that adorable baby cuteness behind my lens. Because with a mama this gorgeous you know the baby will be too! Here are my favorites!

And if anyone can tell me how to rotate photos on blogger I will love you forever!

Copyright Notice

Friends, family, and patrons of Michelle Duclos Photography: I would like to share with you how thrilled I am to have the opportunity to share special photos of my family and yours through this virtual world we know as the internet. However, in this world comes copyright issues. People who would never dream of stealing a photo from a museum or copying out of a book without proper citation take things off the internet without a second thought, so I figured I would take it upon myself to lay out my intentions for my photography and words. This is so well intentioned people don't do something I would prefer they didn't. The photos and words in this blog belong to The Duclos Family and/or Michelle Duclos Photography. They are copyrighted. The words I am not as passionate about- if you would like to reference my words, please just site the source, as you would any other written work. The photography, however, I have stronger feelings and I would appreciate if those feelings are respected.

1. Photos of web quality are absolutely NOT made for print. If you see a photo on this blog or facebook please do not download it to your computer and please do NOT print it.

• I will be creating a gallery on my photography web page mduclosphotography.smugmug.com for photos on my blog that I feel family/ friends may want to print. Please contact me for the password to this gallery. I will be starting this from Jan 2013 on. It is hard for me to remember to order photos for others so this way family and friends can do it on their own. When we have professional photos done those will be ordered in a different way. 
• If you are a friend or family member of a patron of Michelle Duclos Photography please contact the client for the password for their gallery, which will be located at the same web site as above.

2. If you are a patron and have a disc and printing rights please know that this gives you permission to print your images ONLY it doesn't give you the right to edit them. I edit the photos the way I do for a reason. Thank you for respecting this. Also please respect the quality of my images by ordering from a reputable lab if you choose to not print with me. Do NOT print on your home computer and do NOT order from your local drug store. Places that make excellent prints are costco, mpix, and shutterfly. 

3. If I do give or send you a print that print has been designed to be that particular size you may scan it to your computer, but please do not enlarge the image as that will create poor image quality. If you need a bigger size please contact me or refer to our family gallery to get the photo in a larger size. I will never be offended by you wanting a larger photo!

I know you may not feel this way about images you take with your camera, but this is how I feel about mine, and I ask you to please respect this. I know this isn't a very fun blog post, but I wanted to get it out there and have something I could easily reference in the future. If you have any questions/ concerns about this please ask. I am very flexible and willing to work with you, I just want my images respected and for them to keep the level of quality that I intended for them to have. 
  

Mama Got a New (ish) Car!

Let's travel back in time shall we? Way back to when Kevin and I just met. We were happy, in early dating bliss. At this stage there is no financial talk or joint decisions made as a couple- you're still on your own in that department. Well during this blissful budding romance Kevin decided his current truck wasn't worth fixing so he bought a shiny new truck. Unfortunately he was $5000 in the hole with the old truck so add that to the cost of the shiny new truck and we get a shiny (giant) payment. Though I am told the average car payment now-a-days is actually larger than said car payment it was still too much for me. Fast forward a couple years and I decide my car had too many miles (ha!) and I needed a shiny new car with a shiny (moderately sized) payment. There you have it- we were paying more in shiny car payments and full coverage car insurance than we were paying for our house. Not good. Something had to be done.

So since I was not upside down in my car payment we sold my car and bought said junker.

A 1996 Jeep Cherokee with 220,000 miles. At the time the driver's seat was tied down with a rope and the car needed a ton of help. We initially made it drive able and safe and Kevin has been fixing other things as we go, but for $1100 it has been a pretty fabulous little car. But after selling our house in Denver we were able to do some serious changes with our finances including (finally) paying off that shiny (giant) car payment. So what had to be done? Well mama needed a new car! So this is what we got (with cash mind you).

Oh yes, pretty isn't it? It's a 2000 Land Rover Discovery II. It has dual sunroofs, it has massive tires, it has shocks, it has CUP HOLDERS, this baby is loaded. Oh the things you miss when driving a junker. Mama's happy and that means everyone's happy.

The story isn't quite over yet though. We have a little more work to do on the jeep which we will sell in the next few weeks then we will buy another car and sell the truck. Exactly what we're going to do is up in the air. Stay posted...

Whole30 Week 1 in Review

So I'm doing a diet called whole30 click the link if you want official details. Basically for 30 days you cut out all grains, dairy, soy, sweetners, legumes, potatoes, and corn. All items you eat must all have less than 5 ingredients, and you must recognize all of them (essentially eliminating all processed foods as well). Final rule: no creating desserts or other junk food by using whole30 ingredients. Whew- so I bet right about now you're asking yourself what the heck do you eat??? The short answer is protein, lots of veggies, some fruits, and healthy fats! The goal is to kill unhealthy cravings, reset your metabolism, as well as rid your self of all the junk that's in so many foods now-a-days. The benefits? All kinds of benefits are reported but most common is more energy, better sleep, clearer skin, less digestive problems, and healthy weight loss! There are also reports of people with countless ailments going off their medications successfully! The best thing about it is without the calorie restrictions it hasn't affected my breast feeding one bit! I took some pictures of some of the food I ate so you could get an idea.

Doesn't look half bad eh? I drank a lot of water, hot tea, mineral water, and the occasional black coffee. I probably ate more fruit than I was technically supposed to this week to help ward off cravings so that's something I can work on in week 2. The first 3 days were killer for cravings and I had minor headaches, the rest of the week I've been feeling good! If you have questions or want recipes just let me know I'd be glad to share!