Calling all small business owners!

Do you know how important it is to have great photography for your business? If you are selling products online, or through a catalog, it can make or break your profits.  Your customers want to know exactly what they are buying, the colors, the textures, the tiny details.  If any of your pictures show these characteristics inaccurately, your customer may leave dissatisfied.  I personally do shopping for many of my props on Etsy, or Ebay and can tell you, if I'm matching fabrics, I need color accuracy.  If a photo looks like there is poor lighting, or white balance, I will not buy the product.  Beyond accurate, your photos should be crisp and bright to be appealing. 

If you research how to sell more products you'll find many articles (like this one, this one , or this one) about how important pictures are to your listings and websites. This is where I come in.  In April I am providing, free of cost, four sessions for business owners just like you. From cakes to crochet, models to musicians, any small business can benefit from good photography. Not only will you get digital files optimized for the web, but I will share your product on my Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest accounts. Not local to San Diego? No problem! Simply mail your items (contact me for shipping details) Contact me to book your free product session! And please share with your small business friends.

Somewhere over the rainbow...

 Our Littlest munchkin turns three today! We had a cute little party with friends yesterday, that turned out great. I have three little girls, and all three of them looooooove horses, and naturally My Little Pony.  So this year we took Littlest's favorite pony, "Rainbow Dash," and designed a rainbow party.  It was a very colorful celebration to say the least.  Here are some of the highlights.

The doggie, knew exactly where the crumbs would fall :)

 The princess absolutely HATES the birthday song...

And my oldest daughters absolutely loved the blue sparkly slime we made :)
Note: many of the ideas (and tutorials) for the party can be found here, on my Pinterest board.

Not just any Mug Cake

Most of you know I'm obsessed with Pinterest ( you can find me here.)  Well, this is my year of action, and I'm determined to not just leave all of those wonderful ideas on the computer...I will actually bring them to life! One of the trends on there lately is to make desserts in a mug.  It's pretty clever really.. One or two servings, so you don't have an entire cake sitting there tempting you all week until you finally binge and shove it all in your face and drink a gallon of milk to wash it down (just me?) Less clean up, with just the mug and for you use to mix and eat it with. And tiny amounts of ingredients, that you usually already have in your cabinet! So I dug around on Pinterest, and saw what the basic ingredients in most of the cakes were, and made my own wonderful, preggo approved recipe. And now I'm going to share it with you :)



 First I gathered all my ingredients into these great little 2 oz cups (totally not needed in real life, but they were cute to photograph :) We in the chef business like to call this "Mise en place" you can learn all about that here. (Full recipe at the bottom)

And then one like this, because depth of field is fun.

 Don't forget the Vanilla!!

 Literally dump it all in the cup and mix it up.  It will be thick and lumps are ok, kinda like brownie batter.

 And voila! (more French for you.) Moist gooey cake fresh from the microwave.

Ingredients

4 tbs flour (any kind)

2 tbs cocoa

4 tbs white sugar (or stevia)

2 tbs brown sugar

3 tbs oil (I used coconut oil)

2 tbs milk

1 tbs sour cream (or softened cream cheese)

1 capful of vanilla extract

Combine all ingredients until moist. Lumps are ok. Throw that baby into the microwave and cook on high for 1-2 minutes (1:30 is my fave for a gooey center.) If you need more decadence, throw a marshmallow or ice cream on top.  Let me know how you like it!