Christina and Camera CHANGES

agg why do I have no idea how to start posts?

ANYWAY…. how was your weekend? Mine was great! My Dad was home, and a break from school is considered great no matter what, haha. On Friday, I talked about my goals for February (and I have already failed the journaling one… I didn’t journal on the 1st. I know, I’m a horrible person. Seriously. I might be able to catch up on that, but I don’t know, haha. And I ramble way too much.) but I also hinted at a couple fun new changes to Christina and Camera. Soo… here they are! I’ll also be sharing the results from my question about what posts y’all what to see.

 

Two posts per week// I’m changing up the amount of posts per week.  They’ll probably be a little shorter, but hopefully around the same length. I really want to get more content out there, and I love blogging, so we’ll see if this works out.

Email List// I seriously haven’t been able to use this like I wanted too. Most bloggers send out emails with their posts, but if I’m email subscribed to them too, it gets annoying. Soo… what do you guys want to see in the email list? The stuff that I normally put in there are things I want to feature on the blog, so I really don’t know! Maybe more personal stuff??? Honestly I have no idea.

More personal// Honestly, I’ve been treating blogging like a business. Posts have to be done by a certain date, I must have this amount of followers, I need to be as professional as possible, yada yada yada. While this mindset is great for some people (aka those who actually blog as their job) I really need to stop. Healthy goals//deadlines are great, but I don’t need them to be set in stone. Y’all’s favorites of my posts are generally the personal ones, and the impersonal, business-style posts don’t get much feedback. how did I just figure this out!?! Basically, I want to post more things that are peeks into my real life, and more things that are personal to you guys.

Post ideas// Here’s the part of the show post where larry comes out and sings a silly song I share the results for what you guys want to see. Plus does nobody get that reference? Please please someone get that reference. I don’t want to be the only Veggie Tales fan out there… *looks around awkwardly*

ANYWAYS.

I suggested 8  categories, and you guys also made up 2 more.

1. Devotional//Bible study series 4 votes
2.  DIY//Crafting 4 votes
3. Desk tour//organization ideas 5 votes
4. The Lego Vlogs 1 vote
5. Book reviews 5 votes
6. Tags//Q & A// Collabs 3 votes
7. Recent photography 4 votes
8. Planner//planning 5 votes
9. Animal related one of your categories, 1 vote
10. Movie reviews one of your categories, 1 vote

So. I’ll be sharing pretty much all of the categories with 4-5 votes this month (except Bible Study series, I’m still working on that, but hopefully I’ll be sharing that sometime in March or April.

 

SO.

 

Bye, see you all on Friday with another post! Please chat with me in the comments.

the pictures in this post are from unsplash, a lazy photographer’s best friend 

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Our Florida Winter: Photoshoot

How has your week been? Mine has been good, but busy with school. I can’t wait for Christmas/New Year’s break! Do y’all like the Christmas “redesign” of the blog? It’s not as good as the regular one, because Mukta designed that one, but I like it. It’s fun to change things up! 

Anyway, today’s post is “winter” photography. If you could call it that… I’m a Florida gal, so our winter is basically the same as summer (except we kinda freak out at 65 degrees “It’s so cold! It’s going to snow!”- and yes, that is a real conversation). Plus the majority of these photos are of my cutesy little sis Em. Hey, I won’t complain if you won’t!

#sorrynotsorry

I decided to split the post into two categories: nature/outside and Emily/sibs (my siblings). So…. let’s get started!

I don’t really know why I took this photo (maybe it was a lighting test) but I actually kinda like how it came out. The quality isn’t great, but I like the different elements. The stones are so pretty, and I love the layering of the steps and the plant.

This picture is weird… I like the detail of the cherry tree’s trunk, but the angle is really crazy… what do you think?

There were a couple of tiny flowers by our sidewalk, so I tried to take a picture of them. Believe me, it’s harder than it looks! I was literally lying on the ground hoping that none of our neighbors were watching me… the things we do to get a picture!

THIS PICTURE IS SO PRETTY. I literally have no idea why I like it so much… but I love the pine cone.  Plus we have some bokeh in the back… yaaaaaassssss!

I can’t decide which I like better- the pine cone in focus or out of focus. In this picture, I really like how sharp and clean the grass is, plus I like the bokeh.

BEHIND THE SCENES/// I moved the grass so I could focus on the pinecone… it was way harder than I thought! Steadying the camera was MUCH harder with only one hand…. plus I was lying on the ground.

I don’t love this picture, but I wanted to show y’all how huge our cherry tree is. It might not be super big, but we planted this thing from when it was TINY. It was about the size of a marigold, I kid you not. It’s so huge now! We planted it at the end of February in 2017, so we haven’t even had it for two years.

The light was so pretty coming from the top of the tree, so I had to take a picture!

I love the way the light is coming in through the leaves! This picture is so pretty 🙂

Now for the part of the post that you OBVIOUSLY came for… my cutsie patootsie sister Em plus my brothers! Plus an overload of camera mirror selfies (that sounds weird) of me!

C: Make me a cool rapping singer. Here I’ll sing for you “BOOM BOOM BOOM I’M A RAPPER”  I obliged. 

C: Take a picture of my eye… with sunglasses on! 

Okaaaayyyy?

Em’s face the entire time that C was posing “as a cool rapper”

I don’t normally like color contrast like this, but this is adorable! I love her expression… J was posing for me like this, and she decided to copy him.

OH MY GOODNESS I’M FRAMING THIS… How cute, though? I love it. 

Wouldn’t you love to knock on a door and have this cutie answer? How adorable! 

BTS (behind the scenes): She was actually trying to slam the door on me while I was taking them. She was literally saying “Out, Tina! Out, Tina! Chris-tin-a, get out!”. 

If you look past the blurriness, she’s adorable! 

“And what are you doing here, my good friend?’ (not what she was actually saying lol)

I tried to capture pictures of her running… and failed.

I told her “Pose for me”  and “be a model” (she doesn’t know what a model is lol) and this is what she gave me. 

I love her messy face… She looks so deep in thought.

She was mad at me when I wouldn’t let her “see it, see it, see picture”… I haven’t taken the picture yet!

But when you tell her to smile for the camera… CUTENESS ALERT! I love this picture!

Need I say more?

She found this random green ribbon… and she loved it!

Selfie of me! Probably not the best part of my fave to take a picture of… hello acne + freckles 😦 

I have no idea what he was doing…

 

They have ganged up against me! I took both these pictures within 10 seconds of each other…

 

 

MIRROR SELFIES

These were so fun to take! I might make one my profile picture!

Sorry for the long post… I hope you enjoyed! Let me know what picture was your favorite!

How I write my blog posts

Have you ever wondered how I write my blog posts? It’s definitively not one size fits all, but my current method works well for me.

Planning

This step might seem minor, but it’s actually very important! About a month in advance, I pick the posts for the next month from a list that I keep of things I’d like to post. Then, I add them to an excel sheet that I keep (excel is like sheets for google) going.

I used to use monday.com for this step (just because I had a 30 day free trial) but it’s expensive if you want to keep using it, so I just decided to use an excel sheet.

Here’s an example of my excel sheet for June, July, and August:

Once it’s added to the excel document, I open a google docs and start planning the post. For example, in my bible journaling post, I listed all the supplies I would include and found links and prices for all of them. Most of the time this is just a simple bullet list of what I want to include in the post (for some posts, I don’t even do this, like a photography post).

Photos

I try to include photos in all my posts, even if I grab them from Unsplash (like the one above). If I need to actually take photos with my camera, I do that, but if I’m getting the photos online, I pick the one’s I plan to use. Then I add EVERY SINGLE photo that will be in the post to an empty draft. This includes my “Hello” Photo, signature, and dividers.

Writing

 

This step is pretty self explanatory: actually writing the post! This includes typing captions for photos, and actually building a post. I generally do this in 1-4 stages (depending on how much work it is).

Then, I schedule the post! I write my posts about 1-2 weeks before they go live, which relives me of stress. For some posts that are more personal and need to be written closer to when they go live, I try to prep as much as possible ahead of time.

I hope you enjoyed this little peek into my blog post planning+preparing process (triple points for alliteration)!