Vote for Laurell!

Hey lovely, lovely blog readers; I have been neglecting you, but I've been in the mad rush of the last few days of this semester. There is a myriad of super-exciting stuff coming up in my life in the next six months and I can't wait to share my heart on here, but right now, I need to remain mysterious about it all. :) However, the lovely Laurell who I photographed this summer has been nominated for an MSN inDiscover Award and I wanted to call on all of you to VOTE for her!

This girl is so talented; check out these videos I recorded at her gig at the Media Club a few weeks ago! And after you've done that, GO VOTE.

See you soon!
J.

oh, holiday shopping.

The Christmas season is upon us! It seems to be coming a lot earlier this year; which I can't complain about. A few years ago, it was almost December 20th and I just kept thinking, "It doesn't feel like Christmas, It doesn't feel like Christmas" and that was depressing. So, it's safe to say, it FEELS LIKE CHRISTMAS! The stores are playing all the Christmas tunes, a Faith Hill Christmas special was on TV last week (DVR'd and watched it twice!), and today, I went to the malls to shop! You think I would be shopping for Christmas gifts? Um, no! Today was about me. I'm a little self-centered hey? Well, I had not been shopping in a loooooong time so I hit up my favourite store (at least around here--nothing beats a Banana Republic outlet, but I would have to cross the border into WA to get to one!), RW & Co. Americans, I think this is, *gasp* an only-Canadian store...seems impossible--usually it's the other way around! I pretty much cleared the store out. ;) Well, not really, but I got two camisoles, a gorgeous blouse, and this tight little black dress that fits me so perfectly I think I may just live in it this holiday season. Oh, as well as a skinny purple headband and some faux diamond studs. And a cardigan!

After I did some damage there, I did sneak in a little bit of Christmas shopping; finished two gifts for friends and got one item for my brother. I passed by Payless Shoes and before I knew it, came out with two pairs. I found this absolute steal; check out these silver pumps!! I ADORE THEM! & They will go so perfectly with my "tight little black dress that fits me so perfectly I think I may just live in it this holiday season."

And just because I like to keep my style eclectic; I found these babies for $6.

Happy Shopping!!

beauty

Lately I am just finding the biggest joys in the smallest of things. It's like God has just opened my eyes to his creation for the first time! Every morning I drive East along the most beautiful country roads on my way to school. It's a twenty minute drive and I love to just put on a worship song and look at everything I'm driving past! It's seriously SO incredible some mornings. Yesterday morning it was a clear, gorgeous day and I was driving at eight o'clock just as the sun was rising. WOW. It was a cold morning as well and everything was just so stunning.

I had to run some errands downtown Langley in the afternoon after class, and while I was driving home, I was headed North. If you know the Lower Mainland/Vancouver area, you know that there is a massive mountain range everywhere you look facing North. Well I know this, but how often do I stop and look at it? We had a cold-ish weekend (lows of 35, highs of 50) and there was fresh snow on the peaks of the mountains. I was driving north and I couldn't help but say aloud, "This is SO stunning. I live in SUCH a beautiful country." Sunday evening my Mom and I with our dog went for a walk in Ft. Langley and the sun was setting with the most incredible sky in the world. Usually Vancouver is pretty overcast and grey; it's rare to have blue skies, but when they are blue the sunsets are incredible. Anyway, I have just been marveling SO much at the beauty God has created. I am seeing Him in so many aspects of my daily life. Awesome.

A rainbow last Autumn.





The gorgeous sunset of Arizona.





The stunning hills of Sedona, AZ.

A Saturday Full of Laughter

Oh man, I am truly too, too fortunate to be able to have days like this. I have been wanting to put together a fun shoot with two of my old high school friends for months. Basically all Autumn. But y'know, school got in the way and it just never happened...until yesterday! We were planning to head down to the beach but it was just too cold (well, 50 degrees: that's cold!) so we stayed at Melissa's beautiful house and shot most of the day inside. We spent a total of 4 hours shooting and had so much fun. It was so good to see these girls again and I laughed so hard that day I believe I sprinted to the bathroom twice. Yes, they are that funny.

Morgan & Melissa & I



Melissa and Morgan.



Sooo many more photos coming, but I think I'll wait until I reveal my brand new blog... say it isn't so!!!

jess @ the shaky monkey

Last night was such a perfect evening! There was a wind and storm warning in effect over the majority of the Lower Mainland, which is always exciting. My parents and I were driving on our way to Chinese food last night and the power for the entire street went out with a big boom: pretty cool to see. Thankfully the restaurant still had power and we had an amazing meal. I just love Chinese food...y'know...the North American kind. Hah! Anyway, after Chinese my Mom and I hopped over to this cute little coffee shop called Shaky Monkey. My friend Jess works as a barista there and last night she was having a little concert. I love hearing Jess play. Whenever she house-sits for us she records a new song on my Mac and then I have them all on my Ipod. I'm such a fan. ;) Anyway, here's some beautiful photos of Jess doing her beautiful thing!

She's so entertaining when she babbles in between songs. ;)

















Love you Jess!! And you could possibly kill me, but I'm sure people want to hear your music, so I'm going to post these beautiful youtube videos. These videos were recorded by the girls Jess' counselled--on the floor of a camp cabin last summer in Ontario. ;)

This song is called "Lynsey's Song."


This song is called "Maybe"--and it's one of my favourites.



And finally, SOO good. Sheesh, I love her. I love her lyrics and she's just so honest and pure about love and relationships. Amazing. Gotta be one of my favourite "break-up-but-not-bitter-about-it" songs. She's so transparent. SO excited to see what God has for her and her music and her life.

the summer sun.

For being a girl who really likes rain, there's just something about that warm glow of the sun. I think I fully started to appreciate sun more when I became a photographer... I'm finding out that I prefer warm sunny images to dark moody ones. :) It's amazing how much light can change the look of a photograph. I think that is the key to becoming a better photographer! Learning how to manipulate light and use it to your advantage; something I am trying to do all the time.

Blog readers, I hope you are all doing well! Thanks for stopping by; this is basically just a blog post to say I'm alive (I feel terrible if I go more than 48 hours without blogging, so I rarely do!) but just swimming in schoolwork and business tasks right now! I'm excited though! God has been totally blessing me lately and speaking such truth into my life; I'm excited to share what's up--one thing I do know is that I booked two completely awesome couples this weekend for summer weddings. That always makes my day!

Here's some photos of me working my Shootsac during the summer in Chicago when I stayed at Sarah's house. Sarah took the photos of course. This was during a fun little break while we (Sarah, Vickie--the other intern--and I) were shooting Emmy and Alan's incredible wedding.




Oh sun, I miss you. This wedding was held on such a beautiful day; I've never seen blue skies so incredible.



I miss these girls a lot!




Happy really late Tuesday, or early Wednesday. ;)

just another rainy friday.

Doesn't get much more attractive than this, folks.

I made this little quiz on Facebook once,

a "how well do you know Jamie Delaine?" quiz.
One of the questions was: when does she feel most beautiful?
The answer? After a run.
I'm powerful, accomplished, productive.
Even without makeup and blow-dryed hair...Yes, it's possible.
Life at it's finest. This is how it's to be lived, for little moments and days like this.

If you are a twitter follower of mine, you would have seen these two updates on Friday.
1. "i'm going for a run" just came out of my bro's mouth. end of the world. woah. i immediately changed and off we go. pumped to have company!

2. &my sedentary bro kicked my behind in a 5k. pretty sure the last time he ran a 5k was 2yrs ago. i run them 3x a week. life is unfair folks.

I love running. I love the feeling of stepping out my front door into the fresh air with my floppy eared black doggy by my side, Nikes laced up, Ipod headphones on and ready to go. Every step I run I get stronger, and the next time, I can run longer. There's something so satisfying about the progress of learning to run; running harder, faster, longer. It's a time for me to think, to get away from textbooks and computers and the internet and just (if anything) see a little bit of the world. So often my day consists of waking up, going right to my car, entering into a whole bunch of different buildings, driving home and going to bed. How often do we take time to just go outside? Not that often, in my case. Running solves that lack of outdoors for me. & nothing beats the feeling of accomplishment when I'm done.

This run was hilarious. I don't think I have ever run in rain QUITE this heavy. I think there was one post about a rainy run a few months ago: here it is. Oh wow. Ok, I called that a few months ago, turns out it was over a year ago. Oh time! Anyway, this rain was pretty serious. About two minutes into the run we were already soaked. My makeup was gone by the 1km mark and I took my wet sweatshirt every minute and wiped my entire face off. I'm a trooper, what can I say? ;)

Here's to many more days lived in the moment.

jason mraz | live in vancouver

Saturday night the beautiful and wonderfully talented Jason Mraz played downtown Vancouver at the Vancouver Centre for Performing Arts--I'm ashamed to admit, I didn't even know this venue existed! It's so beautiful! I love love loooove live music. x4. For real. Yup, believe it. :) So, I was actually in Chicago at the Barlows, on my birthday no-less, when I saw that Mr. Mraz was coming to Vancouver! I immediately facebook'd my best friend Jess who was serving as a camp counselor in Ontario and also messaged my brother Brandon who was away for eight weeks at an internship program in Seattle. As you can see on this map, the distance was quite amazing. ;) Ah, I'm such a nerd! Anyway, we were all brought together for this amazing night.

P.S. I have this love/hate relationship with concerts--it's like a homesick feeling. I always wish that I could go and re-experience the concert again and again and again for the whole week. That's why I would rather see a movie I've already seen when I go to the theatre rather than a new one. I like to experience things again. That's why I read books twice. 

So, you see, the people above in the photos with me are maybe two of my favourite people in the world. Maybe. I just love them soooo much! The top right hand photo is of Lisa Hannigan who opened for Jason and was FANTASTIC. Artsy. Folksy. Indie. In a Vintage Dress. Beautious. Check out her myspace for sure! Jess+I were head over heels for her. Jess has a thing for Ireland. ;) & then there is Jason Mraz doing his thing on the bottom left.

Story time folks! Ok, see that photo on the right? Well Brandon took that of Jess+I on his cameraphone. The concert had this cool thing before it started on the screens that if you wanted to text a photo or a message to the number listed they would play it on the screen. So Brandon sent this photo in and throughout the night it played on the screen! And, if you check out the photo on the left, there's me and Jess! We're famous! Another funny story: the photo that kept flashing right before ours was of Erin Gilmore, the beautiful Vancouver wedding photographer. I've never met her, but we're Facebook friends and with her amazing blonde curls, you can't mistake her. ;) I messaged her this morning on Facebook and turns out she was the one who took that photo on the left and once she knew it was me she posted it on Facebookk. So thanks again Erin! :)

This photo would just be Brandon & I and our sexy faces. Yup.

thursday's thoughts.

I do not in any shape or form have a plan for this blog post. I'm sitting in one of the many study areas of TWU, with a cup of hot water (life of a student, I swear 50 cent teabags everyday, or twice a day, add up!) looking outside at the torrential rains. Seriously. Rain, rain, rain. I really love it. It just gets me all inspired and creative, but at the same time, restless, because right now I don't have that much time in my life to be inspired and creative.

Here we are, November 6th. I cannot believe that two full months of school has flown by already; two months since I wrote this entry the week before school. Four weeks left of semester one; which means four weeks and one semester left of my university career; as far as my eyes can see that is. I am turning into a really big twitter freak. I seriously adore it. If you want to know in one-sentence updates what is going on in my life, follow me. I find the emails that I receive telling me I have another "follower" really exciting. I do. So please make my Thursday. All of this talk about twitter to say that one of my favourite photographers Millie Holloman twitter a quote the other day: "life is like taking a trip, you can only see what's in front of your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." Isn't that great? So true. The lovely thing I am learning and believing more everyday is that God can see the whole trip; it's like God has these unbelievable high beams that are gazillion times better than my car's crappy headlights. He has supernatural headlights. And to boot, He made the road I'm traveling on. Just hard to get my mind around sometimes.

Lately I've just been getting a little itchy all over. Not literally; bad image--but figuratively. I just have sooo many things I want to do, and I am such an impatient person in the way that if I want something, I am just going to go and GET it. I'm not going to wait. Why wait when there is this great big world and I serve a great big God who is desiring to bless me and challenge me and see me experience amazing growth as I learn and pursue everything I have dreamed about? This time of waiting in my life is wonderful and good and right for me right now. As an entrepreneur I can just sit and dream sometimes about where I want to take my business, what other kinds of businesses I desire to open, other opportunities that will come my way. But right now, it's a little hard to act on any of those dreams--the capacity to which I am committed to school and work right now is so healthy for me. It's teaching me patience. It's teaching me to trust that I am in school for a reason! I have this desire for learning for a reason. But at the same time...I'm fidgety. A few days ago I was in the middle of another one of my oh-too-regular five hour studying stints and I just felt like screaming, "Where is my camera!? Give it to me! Let me step out the front door into the pouring rain with a friend and an umbrella and let me CLICK! PLEASEE!!" I seriously considered acting on my desire but I stayed inside and went back to economics.

I am just looking forward. Sounds like a sentence fragment, doesn't it? I am just looking forward. Forward to what? The best I can explain it is, forward for the sake of moving forward. Progress, growth, expansion; learning to love more, learning to give more, learning to listen more, learning to be a better daughter, friend, cousin, niece, granddaughter and eventually wife and mother. I was running yesterday and a list I had wrote about two years ago came to mind... "101 Things I Want to Do Before I Die" -- I have to dig it up again and maybe blog a few things I wanted to do. It's neat because I wrote it two years ago, and the last time I looked at it, God has already fulfilled about 15 of the things!! And this was without me actively pursuing them, it has just been His gifts and His blessings. Awesome. Anyway, my list is something I want to pursue more with purpose and also revise a little bit. I mean, seriously, after writing 90 things in one afternoon I got a little hyper. If I remember correctly, one of the 101 things was "Dress up really fancy. Go to a Ferrari dealership and convince the salesperson I have enough money to purchase one. Spend all day with them negotiating all the details and taking it for a test drive. Spend hours meeting with them and phoning your "husband" at home to discuss it. At the last minute, decide you don't want to purchase it." Seriously, Jamie...Seriously! Haha!!

So thank you for reading my rambles. Thanks to my blog readers who actually check this blog regularly for my regular rambles. I love it. I love your comments. I love my twitter followers. I love my facebook friends. I love the emails of encouragement you send: I. Love. It. :)

& I love this photo. Alaska Cruise, 2008.

urban wedding magazine

You may remember Kristina and Marshall and their beautiful wedding full of amazing details on August 31, 2008. Well, something pretty excited has happened in my business in the last month! Their wedding was chosen to be published in the Urban Wedding 2009 Directory, a Lower Mainland/Vancouver publication. It has been an absolute dream of mine to see my wedding work in print since this business became a reality last year! It's so exciting to hold the magazine in my hand. These cute little mags (they are only about 7" by 7" in size) will be available at bridal shows all throughout the Lower Mainland for the next few months. I've also added a new section to my website, called press, to display this current publication and hopefully ones in the future!

autumn, not fall.

I'm not sure when I discovered the word Autumn, probably around age four I'm guessing, but I know that ever since then I've liked it better than Fall. I love how the word Autumn look... a pretty uncommon order of letters. It rolls off the tongue better than Fall. I hear Fall and I think splat. On your face. On the ground. Not pretty. Autumn is a much more romantic word, don'tcha think? Autumn. Autumn. Autumn. My favourite season by a longshot. The crisp air. The slow reappearance of scarfs and boots and tights and sweaters. Tea becomes my best friend once again. Coffee comes alongside for special occasions. Autumn means a new school year is starting, kids are back in school, one grade finished another one starting, Thanksgiving and family time is coming (and now already gone), Christmas is drawing near and finally, the new calendar year is coming: 2009. I'm just at such a place of excitement in my life right now. Although overwhelmed at times, I know that God is working all things out for good--more than good, for wonderful! I can't wait to just walk in everthing He has planned for me. Enjoy these photos of just some of the beauty He's created! Wow.

Why do I like dead leaves so much? So pretty.



I was taking these photos before Paul and Shawna and the kids arrived for their session last Saturday, and I saw this tree, this sun, this park. I thought, y'know what: if it didn't rain so dang much in Vancouver, I'd want to get married on a Saturday just like today, under this tree in the beautiful Autumn weather. Just a random Jamie thought that you get to hear. :)



I love the light pouring through the leaves. I'm definitely going to be printing some of these photos BIG and framing them somewhere in my room.

my mom's 51st birthday

My mom, my best friend, my everything, turned the amazing age of 51 on October 18th! Because I was a little busy shooting Sarah and Mike's wedding that day, we celebrated with a buffet brunch after church on the 19th! It was such a gorgeous gorgeous day and church was incredible. The brunch was a lot of fun with just immediate family and close friends--It was such a fun time to celebrate my mom!

The photo on the top left is Brandon and my Mom, and on the bottom right that's my Grandma (who will be 93 in January!!) and my Auntie Sharon.



All the girls! I love them all. L to R: Auntie Lyla, Auntie Sharon, Mom, My cousin Kristy, Me & our friend Joanne.






Oh my parents... ok, first they start off with a self-portrait, they check it out & decide they aren't happy, they attempt again, with much protests from my Uncle Steve and Brandon (check out the hands reaching for the camera) and finally they give in. :)





Just me and her!





The whole group of girls! Looks like we didn't really care about much of the men today for some reason...maybe it's because we're prettier? Hah!









My amazing parents, married 20 years as of last February.




I love this shot of them.

We finished the afternoon off by driving to White Rock to check out one of the BC Lottery Homes--of course one of my favourite things to do. I love homes! Here's to another fabulous year Mom!

portland, OR | travel

As I mentioned in Friday's post my family spent all of Friday, Saturday and Sunday in Portland, OR. What a beautiful city! I have been blessed enough to have been raised in a family that does a lot of traveling--especially throughout the United States. I think we had been to Portland probably twice before, but I never really got to "experience" it! I think the problem with having been raised taking two or three vacations a year is seeing too much at such a young age; I took a lot of what I experienced for granted. Because of that fact, I have such a "bug" to travel back to almost every state I've already been. I think when I was a kid, it was all about getting back to the hotel, questioning where we were going to have dinner, wondering where we were driving to tomorrow. It's probably only been the last two years that I've really grabbed a hold of the true blessings traveling holds! I just love it. I love just taking a couple hours and walking around a city; especially at night. One of my absolute favourite, favourite memories in the entire world was August 2, 2007--I walked around the city of Paris in all its glory until after midnight. There is SO much beauty in the world it just blows my mind and just draws me closer and closer to God every time I see it.

OK, so that was a side-track about my traveling experiences, but back to Portland. A wonderful weekend of...a little bit of rest (not that much sleeping in!) but mainly time with family. Family is the most important thing in my earthly life to me--almost all of my dreams and plans are centered around the wonderful gift called family. As my brother and I grow older, we're attending different schools, no longer driving together to youth events, he's worked part-time for the past three years, and as my business just continues to grow and grow I feel like our family of four rarely gets together as a unit! Vacations are a time of "re-centering" for us and I love it. Just random times of laughter in the car or conversation over dinner, nothing is better.

Friday evening and all-day Saturday was spent with my mom at the Rose Quarter Arena attending the Women of Faith Conference. It was amazing, as always! The speakers and the music was just amazing. (Side Track: Have you all seen this video, called Honest Wedding Vows? It cracks me up when the groom says to the bride, "You think everything is amazing. It's the only adjective you know.") Saturday night my Dad and Brandon picked us up and we went driving around some cool parts of Portland they had scouted out earlier. We walked mainly around this area called Nob Hill--it's SO neat! I found this incredible clothing store: it's like Portland fashion defined in a store. I love that. Think warm cozy knits, with a little bit of military fashion, with a dash of hippie with a little bit of indie groupie--the store had flooring that was the child of green shag and green astro-turf. I only had literally ten minutes to shop but I scoured the store the best I know how and changed into eight outfits in the time period of five minutes and found a shirt. Success! Ah, I don't think I can explain to you how beautiful Nob Hill was! The first store I spotted was Paper Source and I knew the area was going to be fantastic. Throw in the changing autumn leaves, the endless supply of cute little coffee shops and the fact that I was wearing my favourite brown riding boots: a good day.

We decided to go to dinner at P.F. Chang's --one of my favourite favourite restaurants!! We don't have any of them in Canada...or at least not in B.C. anywhere, so we love going out to eat for some good Chinese food there when we're in the States. The last time we went was in Arizona in March. I secretly want to be asian; I love learning about asian culture and especially asian design. Anyway, we had to wait for over an HOUR for our table, but thankfully Powell's Books was right across the street! One of my dad's co-workers had told him about the "best" bookstore in Portland that we had to visit. Let me tell you, I was not disappointed. The store had I think, seven or eight different rooms: all labeled by colour that contained different sections! I headed right for the "Business" section, of course, and picked up a few great books and then I finished with a few books from the Christian aisle. We finally got our table at P.F. Chang's and had an amazing meal. When we got back to the hotel, I scurried down to the hotel gym and had a great late-night workout. Phew! After all that, we were finally in bed.

Sunday morning we woke up and headed to Aloha, a suburb of Portland to attend LivingHope Fellowship Church, pastored by Jess and Brenda Strickland. Brenda is one of my mom's friends from way-back-when and it was neat to see her again and attend their church. I SO enjoyed the worship and Jess' teaching. My family always comments on how great it is to be able to feel "right at home" when we attend churches in other cities. No matter where we are, we're instantly connected through our faith!

I realize I have written a very long short story and it's time I concluded. I find my "vacation blogs" are always suuuuuuuuper long because I'm usually writing them on my laptop while we're driving on the highway--which is what I'm doing right now. When all you are staring at is mile after mile of dotted white lines, I don't really have a motivation to stop writing. Enjoy the following pictures--a random smattering from our trip.

Our favourite restaurant! We're pretty much addicted. Out of the four meals we ate out this weekend, three of them were at Applebee's. Sheesh.







OK! HAH! Story: so the first night (Thursday) we stayed in Seattle, just because we didn't want to arrive into Portland really late. So, my mom found this hotel with a great rate, especially under the "Senior Rate" which was 50+. Well, both my parents are over 50 and my Dad will be 60 in 2 months, but we don't think anything of it. So because we got the "senior rate" for our room, look what the nice people outfitted our toilet and bathroom with!! Yessss!! I always wonder what I would do if I got stuck on the toilet seat and couldn't get up. Problem solved.







Oh autumn leaves!



Brandon has a hard time smiling for photos. He likes to rock the "uninterested" face.



Dad and I; and just me prancing down the street.



We were walking along the street when I spotted someone I recognized! OBAMA! Say it isn't so. I was pretty star-struck and had to snag a photo to prove I saw him.



Mom and I.



Photo on the Left: CUTE, right?
Photo on the Right: The face Brandon gives me when I make him take photos too long. As he was moving, he was probably saying, "And THAT'S enough." -- I'd bet $50 US on that. And not just $50 CDN. $50 US! And if you know anything about our plummeting exchange rate lately, you will know that that means I'm pretty dang confident that he was saying that.