Family Time

Yesterday, we spent the evening with our precious niece and nephew and their parents, of course. It was great to just spend some quality time with them, and of course I snapped a few pics.
Here is Zaven concentrating hard on opening a little favor his Mom gave me.

I instructed him on this one..too funny! He's so cute these days, always calling out to me "Auntie Kara...!!" Love it.

Little Miss Arin is 2 months today! Seems like just yesterday, this day was here, as we witnessed her entrance into the world. She just gets cuter and cuter. One of her happier moments in the evening.

Serious.

With a chin just like her mama.

A couple more late night pics of the little guy. He was watching Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and gave me an opp to get some shots of him actually being still!

Holding on to his little frog stuffed animal. Precious.

It was a great night spent with some of our favorite people!

Carrot Cup-cakes

Shant and I were sitting in Porto's bakery-cafe yesterday, and my itch to bake something became stronger. One of my favorite types of cake is carrot cake, so I thought what better item to bake-in cupcake form? I really didn't have any occasion to bake for, so I told Shant that I was making them for Church. I have to come up with some excuse or else he'll give me grief..why? because, when I bake, he tends to eat it all..in one sitting! And, he's watching his figure. Nowadays, baking is twofold: to eat of course (or let others eat) and to take pictures of to practice my shooting! What better than to combine my two favorite hobbies?? Here are a cup-le pics ;-)

By the way, they turned out really moist and they are from a Cooking Light recipe..so they are somewhat low-fat. I'll link the recipe at the end of the post.

Topped some with a little toasted coconut.

Link to the recipe. And, I did make a few modifications, as I usually do. Added crushed pineapple and chopped pecans to the batter. Doubled the recipe. And didn't use as much powdered sugar that the frosting called for, as it tends to be too sweet. And if it's too sweet for me, you know it's too sweet!

Arin's dedication

Last weekend, the family got together to witness baby Arin being dedicated into the Armenian Church. Unfortunately, my shots inside the Church didn't turn out so great, but here are a few of my faves from the day. We had lunch together at Golden Skewer after the dedication. If you are ever in Montebello, check this place out-their Armenian food is delicious!
My beautiful family.

So precious, big brother holding sweet Arin.

These next few pics crack me up. Arin looks like she thinks her Uncles are really weird!

My cute nephew having fun.

All this partying tired her out.

Hope everyone is having a Blessed & relaxing weekend!

A picture's worth a thousand words

Here are some pics from my last photography assignment. Well technically, it wasn't the last, but I didn't have time to complete the final assignment. I promised my teacher I'd do it anyway and I have every intention to do so..when I find the time. Speaking of time, where does it all go?? The last few weeks have been crazy busy, and I'm just completely exhausted these days. Glad to have a 3-day weekend with no plans in order to rest up!
The assignment was to take pictures that corresponded to a list of words the teacher gave us (in simple terms ;-)
Glowing.

Immortal.

Balanced.

Soft.

Dull.

Disturbing. Um yeah. That's what you get when you roam the neighborhoods of Venice.

Silly.

peanut butter cake

Made this beauty today..can't wait to sink my teeth into it. Got the recipe from Deb at Smitten Kitchen. Check out her website, it's the bomb! I would say mine looks pretty darn close to hers!

Good night my SWEET friend, I'll be eating you tomorrow!

do not enter

As if this stopped me...

I'm starting to act like a real photographer..showing complete blatant disregard for signs stating things such as "no trespassing" or "do not enter"...sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to get that shot. I found this old train sitting on a track and just had to shoot it.

I love this shot!

I even got so bold as to climb onto the trains to get some shots, but my fun was stopped short, and for the first time, I literally got chased off by some old, straggly train conductor-looking guy.

Auto Club Speedway-

For the past three years while working in the Commercial Bank, our group has hosted a Nascar fantasy camp for our clients, and I have been lucky enough to be a volunteer (Insert wink smiley here.) Actually, I have to say it is a nice chance to hang out with some of our clients and more importantly, get a free day off work to hang out in beautiful Fontana, CA.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with fantasy camps, they are basically a chance for all of those clients, predominantly men, to fufill their wildest fantasies in the area of sports by participating in various activities set up for that particular support. For Nascar, each participant gets to drive 8 laps around the track by themselves and then weave their way though an obstacle course. The latter part was new this year and I didn't even take a minute to go see it.

A couple of my co-workers all suited up and ready to start their engines! cheesy, i know..

One of the giveaways for our clients is a picture of them in front of one of the stock cars, all framed up and ready to take home at the end of the event. As we all know, budget constraints are everywhere, so being a volunteer, you don't get this luxury because a billion dollar bank can't possibly afford an additional frame and picture, right? However, as we can all appreciate, there are always ways around these types of policy constraints, right Neha? Ah, the beauty of being a volunteer!

Bored at the registration desk, I mean some of the details..

It really is pretty out in Fontana, in an uncivilized kinda way ;-)

We ended the day with a nice lunch and speaker in the garage. Fun day.

Here are those pics I was talking about..

Lastly a reflection pic of Neha!