Jo – Page 39 – Jo McVey Photography

Butterflies, Flowers, and Lacey

Steve and I are leaving for our honeymoon today! We’re driving up to New York (yes, driving) and spending a couple days walking around Manhattan and seeing the sights. Then on Thursday, our 9-day Caribbean Cruise leaves from Brooklyn!! We’ve never been gone for this long, so it’s been quite the ordeal trying to pack everything we need and get the house and animals ready for our friends Phillip and Jenni to house sit for us. Part of getting the house ready was mowing the lawn yesterday afternoon. I’m always the designated poop cleaner upper (yay me!), and I always clean up the dog poop in the backyard right before Steve mows so that he won’t be driving over, chopping up, and spreading dog poop everywhere. I know. It’s gross. But I’m just keeping it real!

Anyway, yesterday when I was doing this lovely chore, I noticed what I thought was a piece of paper in the grass. So I went over to pick it up, and saw that it was actually a beautiful butterfly!

It was sitting so still that I thought it was dead. But I gave it a little nudge, and it moved a little bit. So, hoping that it would continue to stay still for at least a few minutes more, I ran inside to grab my camera and was able to get this beautiful shot. Then I realized that Steve would be mowing here in a few minutes, so I tried picking it up to set it on a flower, but it started hopping around and I could barely hold onto it. Finally, once I got it into my hands, it flew away over our neighbor’s roof. I’m glad I was able to snap a picture when I did. I’ve never seen a butterfly like this before. It’s belly was pure white and fluffy like a cotton ball. Steve said he thinks it was a moth, but to me, moths are ugly and butterflies are pretty, so I’m going to stick with thinking it was a butterfly.

Since I was already outside with my camera, I thought it would probably be a good idea to take a picture of one of my rose bushes to prove that I actually do have somewhat of a green thumb! Here is a plant that I haven’t killed, everyone!! There’s hope for me yet!

Now onto the main reason for this blog post. My baby girl, Lacey, is at the vet right now. She had been throwing up all night and this morning, and really hadn’t moved from the same spot she was laying last night. Whenever I feed the kitties she is always the first one to the food, and if we’re not careful to separate the kitties when they eat, she would eat all three helpings. But this morning, when I went to feed them, she just laid there and wasn’t even interested. I put some food right in front of her face and she just sniffed it and put her head down. This has never happened before! None of our kitties have ever turned down a meal (well except Fancy when she’s being picky), and none of our cats have ever been sick either. I’m not sure if she ate something she shouldn’t have, or if she got sick some other way, but I just can’t be excited for our honeymoon until I know she’s going to be ok. It’s horrible timing, but I’m glad we noticed this before we left today, and were able to get her to the vet before Phillip and Jenni started house sitting. She’s only been sick since last night, so hopefully the vet will be able to figure out what’s wrong with her and fix her up good as new.

When I called the vet at 7:15 this morning, they said they didn’t have an opening until 10am, and we were supposed to leave for New York at noon, so they let me bring her in at 7:45am, and they said they’d try to squeeze her in between patients to try to get her out of there earlier. Normally I would definitely stay with her while she was being examined, but we still have a little bit of packing to do, and I need to do a few more things around the house, so reluctantly I left her with the vet, and they said they would call me when they have an update.

So please pray for our little kitty Lacey. She’s normally our most energetic cat, and it makes me so sad to see her in pain and not herself. I hope we can find out what is causing this very soon. I’ll post an update when I know more. Thanks for your prayers!

Update: Lacey is home from the vet. He thinks it’s probably something she ate because she had a lot of blood and fat in her stool. She’s still not eating or drinking but the vet gave some intravenous fluids to help with dehydration. We were sent home with 2 different medications for her to control diarrhea. Doctor said she will probably be feeling better by tomorrow. Keep praying!

Update #2: Praise the Lord! Lacey is back to her old spunky self! Jenni and Phillip did an amazing job taking care of her while we were gone on our honeymoon, and by the time we came back, it was as if she had never been sick. They did have to take her in to the vet while we were gone because she wasn’t getting better after 2 days on the medicine, so they did an x-ray on her to make sure she hadn’t swallowed a foreign body that was lodged in her intestines. Luckily the x-ray came back clean, and within another couple days, her energy level picked up. Thank you to those of you who prayed for her! I don’t know what I would have done if we came home and she was no longer with us. And a special thank you to Phillip and Jenni for taking such good care of our baby (and other babies) while we were gone! 🙂

Table Assignment Cookies

As some of you know, I took on the huge task of making the table assignments for my wedding reception. They weren’t just table assignments, they were chocolate chip cookies decorated in the shape of wedding cakes with everyone’s name and table number piped onto them. And I had to make 75 of them. It was no small task, and the only excuse I can give as to why I procrastinated so long was that I didn’t know how long they would stay fresh after I made them, and I didn’t want people to have to eat stale cookies.

Another issue I ended up running into was how to make chocolate chip cookies that wouldn’t spread out excessively during baking. If you’ve ever made chocolate chip cookies, you know that you can just put a glob of dough onto a cookie sheet, and when it’s done baking it will be completely spread out and flat. Well, I didn’t want that to happen with my cookies, because I really wanted them to maintain their wedding cake shape. I went through about 3 recipes before I found one that wouldn’t spread while baking but still tasted good. When Steve was taste testing the cookies, he immediately spit out the first batch, it was that nasty. Ha! Luckily the 3rd time was the charm.

I ended up staying awake until 3:30am the night before my wedding so that I could finish the cookies and not have to work on them the DAY of my wedding! Luckily I had my friend (and bridesmaid) Tiffany staying at my house, and she was such a big help.

I started out by adding a cup of butter, 1/2 cup of brown sugar, and 1/3 cup of granulated sugar to my mixing bowl.

I blended the butter and sugar until thoroughly combined and creamy, then added one egg yolk and 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract.

Then, I mixed all that together until it was thoroughly combined.

Here is where the dough really starts to take it’s shape. I sifted about 2 cups of flour into the bowl (one cup at a time) and mixed until it had the consistency I wanted. I could tell it was pretty much ready when the dough started getting dry enough to where it was scraping the sides completely clean as it was being mixed. See how there is barely any dough residue on the walls of the bowl?

I poured a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips into the dough and mixed on the lowest setting on my mixer. I didn’t want to break up the chocolate chips too much.

Here is the trick to making chocolate chip cookies that won’t spread out. Freeze the dough for about 5-10 minutes before rolling it out. Then when you cut out your cookies with a cookie cutter, they won’t fall apart on you when you’re trying to lift them onto the cookie sheet. You might notice the dough starting to get too soft after a few minutes of rolling it out and messing with it, and if that happens you can just stick it back in the freezer for a couple minutes to firm up again.

I rolled the chilled dough out between two sheets of parchment paper so that I wouldn’t have to mess with flour everywhere. It actually worked really well.

Once you have your dough rolled out to the correct thickness (I think I rolled mine to about 1/4 an inch or so), take your cookie cutter and start cutting away! I normally cut all my shapes and then peel away the outer edges, instead of trying to remove the cut out cookie from the rest of the dough.

Line your cookie sheets with parchment paper (this also helps them not to spread too much) and chill the raw cut out cookies in the freezer for about 10 minutes before placing them in the oven. You want them very cold and firm before you bake them. This is the main thing that helps them keep their shape.

Bake the chilled cookies at 350° for 10-12 min. I baked mine for 10 min because I didn’t want them to get too brown and crunchy.

Once your cookies have cooled, it’s time to decorate! You can find instructions on making Royal Icing here.

I outlined each of the 75 cookies and let them dry overnight. You really only need to let them dry for about an hour or so, but it was about 3:20am on Wednesday night and I decided that I was done with cookies for the night. You can see how I had to “glue” one of the cookies back together on the left side of the above picture. If a cookie ever breaks on you, it’s very easy to glue it back together with some Royal Icing, and then when you finish decorating the cookie, you can’t even tell that it was ever broken.

Once the outlines are dry, you can thin the rest of your icing to a syrup consistency and flood your cookies. I pour the thinned icing into a plastic squeeze bottle to make it easier to spread onto the cookie. You will probably need to use a toothpick to make sure the icing gets into all the corners.

Steve even helped with one or two cookies!

Here’s what the cookies will look like once they are completely flooded. I love this method, because you can get such a nice smooth surface to decorate.

After we had flooded all 75 cookies, I needed to make some more Royal Icing so we could go back over top with lavender and write the names and table numbers, and add some decorative dots around the edges.

Tiffany was a little too generous putting the icing in the piping bag, and she had to squeeze about half of it out.

Writing the names was definitely the most tedious part! My hand was starting to hurt after only a few names.

Tiffany did a great job putting lavender dots all around each cookie. That might have been even more tedious than the names!

It was 3:30am when we finally finished. Oh, and I didn’t even mention that I had to paint that Thank You sign at the bottom of the picture. On the other side of the sign it says “Just Married”. My sister in law and photographer, Stacey Pentland, had us hold up the signs in our wedding attire so that our thank you cards could have that picture on them, and so we could have another picture of us holding the Just Married sign.

All in all, I’m glad I did the cookies. Everyone seemed to love them, and it was a nice personalized touch to our wedding.

Kitty Photo Shoot

So I was uploading some photos that have been on my camera for a while, when I look over to my left, and my cats are all gazing out the window to a beautiful sunny day. I couldn’t help myself. I had to start snapping pictures with my Sigma 30mm lens. Love that lens! It takes the best pictures ever! I don’t use it as often as I should because it has no zoom, so it’s really only good for photos where you can move your body quickly to zoom in and out as needed. Which, for me, means that I mainly only use it for portraits or close ups of objects or food. That being said, here are some of the photos I took of our kitties today. Hope you like them!

Oh, and if you like what you see……I’m available to take pictures for you too! Well, as long as you’re in the Nashville area that is. 🙂 Or in CA when I happen to be visiting. Since I’m just starting out, I can offer you beautiful pictures at next to nothing!

Lacey has such beautiful eyes.

I love this one because the green from the grass is reflecting off of her blue eyes, so it looks like her eyes are green toward the top and blue at the bottom. Such an awesome effect.

Lacey is my little poser. The other two kitties don’t cooperate with me very well and get annoyed if I have my camera in their faces for too long.

Finally got Lazarus to look at me. I had my aperture set so low that only his nose is in focus and the rest is out of focus. For those of you who don’t know many photography terms, aperture has to do with how much of the picture you want in focus. The higher the aperture, the more in focus the entire picture will be. As you can see with this photo, I had my aperture set very low so even though his eyes are only a fraction of an inch further back than his nose, they are still slightly out of focus. If I had focused on his eyes, then his nose would slightly be out of focus. Hope that makes sense.

BIG yawn! See how Lazarus’ upper canine tooth is not very sharp? I’ve always wondered how that happened.

Such a handsome boy.

Fancy wanted to get in on the picture taking action…..or so I like to believe. She is the least photogenic out of all three cats. She hates having her picture taken, and never looks at me when I want her to, but I find ways to make her do it anyway. 🙂

All three kitties looking out the window. Of course Lazarus has to ruin the picture by turning his back to me.

Fancy is beautiful when she finally lets me take her picture! She has such pretty eyes, and they reflect the green grass so well.

Hello pretty girl.

It’s like she knows she’s having her picture taken. “Here, Mom. This is my good side, and I’ll even gaze upwards for you so that my eyes are looking into the light.”

Seriously. Have you ever seen a more photogenic cat? Of course, I’m a little biased since I’ve raised her since she was 8 weeks old. And now she’s already 4 years old! Where has the time gone?

When my parents were here, my dad was playing with the kitties by shining the light that was reflecting off his watch onto the walls. The above and following pictures were captured during that time.

What are you looking at?

Oh, you’ve got your camera out? Okay! Let me just lay right here and pose for you!

Fancy is staring at the light on the wall across the room. She pounced right after I took this photo.

Here’s Lacey, copying Fancy’s last pose. And oh look, my parents made it into the photo! Ironic since they were actually in the room while I was taking these pictures. 🙂

Ok, I’m open for business!!! Great photography at a very cheap price, or maybe even free if you’re lucky! I need to expand my portfolio! I can only take so many pictures of animals before it starts getting redundant.