This is a story about one thing leading to another, and I’m pretty proud of it.

After moving into our home in 2006 it was quickly apparent that our derelict garage was unsafe because a large black walnut tree had grown up next to it and shifted the foundation of the garage over time. The garage was listing and warped. I’m sure when the garage was built, the tree was probably a few feet away from the corner of the garage. The tree itself towered over everything on our block. It had been growing long before our home was built in 1890.

The rotten old garage was demolished in early 2007. The demolition took my dad and husband only half a day. Parts of it they just pushed over.

We really loved the tree, the shade it provided to our backyard and it’s general impressiveness.

In 2007 we decided to rebuild a garage and the change in zoning laws meant that the tree had to be removed in order to fit in a new garage. My father suggested saving the wood from the tree for floorboards or other household projects we had vaguely looming for the future. He connected us with a tree surgeon he trusted and the tree was taken down.

The tree cutter knew that we wanted to make maximum use of the wood. He took great care to preserve the long sections of branch, the main trunk and the valuable crotch. (go ahead and snigger. I did. It’s a funny word until you learn how valuable black walnut crotch is to woodworkers. Then you tend to throw it around with a bit more confidence…)

When the stump was cut, we discovered the entire base had been eaten by termites may eons ago. It was hollow. The whole tree could have come down in a violent storm. It would have destroyed any of the 8 houses it shaded, depending on which way it fell. It was a small consolation for taking down such a majestic thing.

The kids, neighbors, and local rabbit family had great fun playing on the logs for about a month. I had to catch my breath when I pulled this shot out of the archive and saw my own children looking so little…

The next step in this journey was to get a miller on site. We found a great portable saw mill person from Wisconsin. He set up his machine first thing on a Saturday morning and sawmilled till dark. I had encountered a few millers who would not come because there would be too much metal in the tree. For our guys, his fee was based on board feet, plus the cost of any blades that were broken when they hit nails that had been driven into the tree over the years. Metal simply destroys blades. All in all, guess how many blades were broken? Bearing in mind this is the Chicago suburbs….? None.

He mostly milled one inch boards to be used as flooring, but he also did a fantastic job cutting the main crotch and smaller branch crotches into gorgeous planks.

The one inch boards were loaded into his truck. My dad took an additional load in a trailer the following week. The boards were placed in a kiln to dry.

The remaining special pieces were advertised on craigslist and a woodworkers forum. A lot of grumpy old men took time out of their busy schedules to email me and tell me my wood was no good because it probably had metal in it. Finally, a nice guy from the forum came by the house to have a look. He bought up a few of the nicest pieces and promptly went back and told everyone on the forum that they were fools. He had bought some great pieces from “a nice lady who is just try to prevent her walnut tree from being turned into firewood”. Black walnut is the wood used to make those $7000 tabletops you see in magazines. The rest sold pretty fast…

After the boards dried and were cut into floorboards up in Wisconsin, my dad brought them back from the kiln in 2009.

They stayed in our basement and garage, carefully stickered (laid on small boards with air circulating between them) to prevent warping. We knew they were going to be part of the house someday.

The tree was put down in it’s new home as kitchen floor in the fall of 2011 and sealed in early 2012. Every tradesman that came into our home to work on the project, even the electrician and HVAC guys, commented on the floor. The head carpenter about burst with joy when we asked him to make a desktop and mudroom bench with some of the spare planks. Hopefully I will be sharing some more images of the full finished project next month.

Here’s the floor in place now.

Environmentally, this was the ultimate choice. Total use of the tree with little waste and hardly any transport (100 miles to Wisconsin). Diesel fuel was used in the portable sawmill. Not sure there is much of an alternative for that…

Financially, we came out ahead. The cost for good black walnut flooring is about $10 sq ft. We used 450 sq feet, so the value of the wood is $4,500. The cost of cutting, milling and transporting, minus the profit made by selling the special pieces was less than $3,000. By comparison, oak floor would have probably cost about $1,500. So we paid a premium for nicer wood, but not top dollar.

The kitchen floor has been a surprisingly emotional aspect of the house renovation, perhaps because my father, who is now gone, was so intertwined with the process. I also like to reflect on the number of hands that touched the wood and made it part of the house — very different from factory boards. There was the cutter, miller, board sawyer, kiln operators, floor installers and carpenters. The architect and builder incorporated it into the renovation properly. The children played on it, the woodworkers used it for their projects and now we walk on it every day. Majestic.

So on March 21st I drove the kids to my new favorite patch of prairie around dusk and we had a quick run around with the camera. My husband’s only request was “nothing too posed” and this was fine by me and the kids. I think the whole session lasted 20 minutes, by which time the kids were getting rather into our little prairie exploration and didn’t want to go home for dinner.

Today, March 31st, just 10 days later, I’m proud to announce that the portraits are printed, framed and hung in our main hallway!

I’m privileged to guide clients through the portrait process every day, creating and choosing images for their wall displays, and I gotta say that choosing my own portraits was just as fun…

Some notes:
* The chair is in the picture to show scale. Eventually there will be some kind of darling little occasional table in this spot…
* The image of the children running is 16×20. With the frame and mat it is 20×24 in total. The wall is only 60 inches wide, but it is obvious that this print is not “too big”. Many clients feel an 8×10 is a “big” print and I hope this helps to illustrate how important it is to choose the right sizes for your space.
* Do you want your prints to come ready to hang like this? This option is now offered! (Believe me, it’s so convenient to receive your order fully framed and ready to go.) There are about 10 different frame styles from which to choose – just enough variation without being overwhelming!

As if! Here they are on a recent lazy Sunday morning…

Neighbors since I was five years old, I do sometimes think we are actually related — I even remember attending their 25th wedding anniversary party! I look at each of their faces in the portrait below and see so much friendship and happiness. I see many good memories and the potential for many more. Traditional portraiture does have it’s place, on occasion. 50 years of marriage qualifies as a good occasion.

{ Of course, being like family, they are not exempt from me posting portraits like this, too… }

I wish Ruth and Ron (my other parents) heartfelt congratulations on their 50th!

If you ask Dorrie where she is from, she will tell you matter-of-factly: “Sparkle, England.” I’m starting to believe she’s right about that.

Happy 5th Birthday, my sweetpea.

Of course I brought my real camera. Hello, I go everywhere with that thing. Everywhere. Even the grocery store.

However, there were 642 pictures taken with my real camera which I don’t have time to deal with now, as much as I would love to, so I’m sharing these iPhone pics instead!

Tech notes:

• I run my iPhone pics through the free Photoshop app. These are all taken with a 3GS. I use the “vingette blur” function, which also boosts contrast and saturation, then I add one of the preset borders. That’s it. Yes, I do know all about Hipstamatic, the darling of iPhone users everywhere. I’m just not a fan.
• The funky edge that creeps into some of these shots is the bright blue cover on my phone partially obscuring the lens.
• Last week I saw some prints made from iPhone pictures for the first time. They were good. Who knew!?

— Heidi

These are the days, and they are almost over. A few more months of preschool and then my baby is off to kindergarten. There will be no more afternoons of just the two of us. Her baby fat is melting and she’s complaining of growing pains in her legs. I had to capture her littleness just one more time.

If you’ve never seen photographs of Dorrie before, just be aware that she can *work* it. The child has camera magic. How did she figure it out? It’s a mystery.

I admit to lamely trying to get her to hold the umbrella this way or that way. She would be patient for about two seconds and then ask, “Can I do MY moves now?”. Her moves are better. These images are her moves and they are completely spontaneous.

I love you, sweetpea.

(The studio will be officially closed until January 4th 2010, but I will be checking in regularly. Happy New Year!)

I took a short hiatus from client shooting during the first week of July to spend time with family visiting from the UK and North Carolina. Below are some quick snapshots from the whirlwind that was last week. In just three days we had a visit to Cantigny with my sister and her kids, BBQ at my parents’, a trip to Wisconsin for some water-skiing lakehouse fun, plus a pilgrimage to Wrigley. I took four kids to THE BEST EVER Cubs game….

July 6th marked the beginning of chillout summer time. Me and the kids hang out at the park, pool and zoo. Sessions are being scheduled like normal again.

I am shooting sessions and getting new products lined up for fall. I’ve ordered samples of BEAUTIFUL little albums, funky vintage frames, and fall brochures. Plus, check out the display at Y&Z (under my studio) if you are passing! There are six big mama 20x30s lining the wall!

Finally, July 10th is my birthday. Yay! On Saturday, July 11th I think I will be drinking white wine and nibbling olives at the studio in the afternoon. Impromptu party anyone??! You are invited! 4-7pm! Kids are welcome. Drop me an email if you’re stopping by so that I can grab appropriate amounts of wine.

Remember, drop me an email to let me know if you are coming by the studio on Saturday!

(* I told the stylist not to bother drying her new ‘do’ — she was headed straight to the pool on this crazy hot afternoon — love the little cornrows that she put in lieu!)