I can't believe it's already November!
Hello everyone and welcome to a new series of blogs I will be writing at the end of each month about business successes and endeavors as well as all the fun things I’ve had going on in my everyday life :)
Whew- October screamed by though, am I right? I feel like just yesterday we were coming out of August (I mean the increase in hot weather these past couple of weeks certainly hasn’t helped deter that thought). Between various power-outages across California, totaling my mom’s Prius with a deer (long story), and renaissance faires, October was a relatively quiet month on the actual “photographing people” part of my business!
I had my Magical Minis on October 6th, but besides that, most of my photography work was on the back end! As many of you know, I relaunched my website after switching providers and am SO happy with the results! I also enrolled in a brand-new photography business course that I am absolutely stoked about to help bring a little more bookkeeping organization and top notch client service tricks to Morgan Potter Photography. I am learning so much and I am so excited and thankful to all of the awesome peers in the business who offer up their amazing knowledge and experience to their fellow photographers.
I also got invited to my first ever Mastermind group with some other super talented solo-preneur ladies in the wedding business in Sacramento last week! We had a fun first meeting getting to know everyone and I can’t wait for next month’s.
In between long nights redesigning and carefully selecting each and every photograph now presented on the new site, Fall made itself visible here in Sacramento and I got to do some of my favorite Autumn activities!:
BISHOP’S PUMPKIN FARM
This super fun pumpkin patch up in Wheatland has been around forever - and by that I mean I went there on a field trip when I was in kindergarten. That being said I haven’t been back there in ages and even though we picked a terribly busy day to go, Damon and I, my sister and her boyfriend and friends all had a fantastic time!
Damon and I were first out of the corn maze and celebrated with Halloween-colored Dippin’ Dots, we had a fun train ride, enjoyed apple cider slushie floats (10/10 highly recommend), and picked out our most favorite pumpkins from the patch (I got a very cool one that looks as if it were spray-painted orange and dark green!)
E.V. Cain Renaissance Faire
Formerly known as “Cain’s Crossing” renaissance faire when it was at the peak of its bigness and popularity, this tiny little ren faire is no reserved exclusively for the 7th graders at E.V. Cain middle school in Auburn, Ca. Which, fun fact, is actually where it all started!
When I was in seventh grade in...oh gosh let’s see here, in 2005, the middle school hosted their second renaissance faire in the hopes of enlightening students further about the history of the renaissance period we were studying at the time.
We were broken off into “guilds” such as candle-making, jousting, blacksmithing, braiding, badminton, etc. and we got to apprentice for the day under these different guilds and share with fellow students what we learned.
Eventually the move to make this school-only faire bigger happened around 2009 and it got moved to the local park and became open to the public as well as additional schools around the county. Unfortunately it lost traction a few years later and went back to being a school-only event, but it is still really fun going and volunteering to help make it a day to remember for the kids just like when I was in school!
My family runs the “for fun” House of Payne booth which hosts a variety of renaissance devices to induce public humiliation, torture or decapitation if it were a death sentence. Needless to say- some kids are fascinated and keep coming back for more to be locked in the stocks or to have their heads “chopped off” for the millionth time and other stayed clear…(that was probably because of my very tall and intimidating father dressed in his executioner’s garb more than anything).
Did you know?
- The British liked the chopping block execution more than a guillotine like the French because they didn’t like quick deaths (guillotine was far too quick and painless). It would sometimes take several chops for a head to come completely off - especially if it was towards the end of the day and the blade was getting dull (although the executioner could be bribed to sharpen it beforehand)
- There were stocks (or a pillory) in every town square in Britain to lock up petty thieves for an indeterminate length of time. Sometimes hours or days- rain or shine namely for the sake of public humiliation.
- Executioner’s wore hoods or a mask to hide their identity from fellow townsmen (you wouldn’t want your neighbor to know you chop heads off for a living...unless he was stealing from you).
- Because so many people were of poor health or starving (and did not weight very much), hanging was a very long and drawn-out way to die. Slowly strangling to death for twenty minutes or more made a longer drop or even beheading greatly preferred.
Halloween
I was all alone on Halloween with Damon and his dad off to Texas for the 2019 Formula 1 race, but I had an awesome costume and the possibility of having trick-or-treaters for the first time EVER since living on my own!
Although it was very exciting to get my first ever trick-or-treaters, there was a depressingly small amount and after an hour I headed out to me and my sister’s very good friend Roman’s birthday Halloween party! (We met Roman way back in 2013 when we all studied abroad in Florence, Italy together!)
We passed the night watching Roman provide the last of the trick-or-treaters with “tricks” (he is a magician and comedian and had a wallet he could set on fire...most kids stared blankly and wondered where the candy was), as well as some hilarious musical performances (Roman and his friends are all terribly talented in music and they make up funny songs to perform). It was a super fun evening and always an enjoyable way to celebrate his birthday and Halloween!
(Also enjoy the photo of the cute cake none of us ate....Roman always has a "stand-in" cake an then orders cheesecake because we all know which one is better...)
Indoor Soccer
And although not really Fall-related, some of you may know that I play twice a week on a co-ed indoor soccer team (courtesy of Damon). However, this month marked the temporary hiatus of our Friday team as not enough girls signed up! After nearly two whole years of playing every single Friday night I really was at a total loss as to what to do with myself come 6pm last Friday...what was I supposed to do with the rest of my evening!? Thankfully I still play on Wednesdays (we won our game last night 3-1!) and will not be completely out of shape by the time the next Friday season starts in 6 weeks. Plus this Friday I’ve been invited to my first ever DnD game so I am super excited to go to that!
In summary
OCTOBER BOOK(S): Re-reading one of my absolute favorites: Percy Jackson & the Olympians by Rick Riordan
FAVORITE PART OF OCTOBER: Halloween. Duh!
BIGGEST BUSINESS ACHIEVEMENT: New website launch! *dances*
MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO NEXT MONTH: Our second Mastermind meeting!
How was your October? Did it fly by like mine? I’m sad October is over but that means there’s only one more month between us and Christmas..!! (If that news just hit you like a brick and you just realized you were wanting to get Family Christmas Photos done, fear not! You can sign up for my Holiday Mini Sessions here!)
