Meet Remy - The Spinone Italiano Pup

I'd like to introduce you to Remy. The newest and cutest member of the family - sure give us lots of inspiration and keep us very busy with our cameras.

Remy is our 9 week old Spinone Italiano puppy. We got him at just under 8 weeks and he has been quite the handful and totally entertaining. 

Spinone Italianos are an AKC recognized breed. Bred for hunting and retrieving, the Spinone is a versatile and gentle breed often known for their human like eyes. You can learn more by visiting the Spinone Club of America.

Our top three questions when we take Remy out and about:

1. What kind of dog is that? 
Spinone Italianos are a fairly rare breed. We happened to meet this breed and some breeders last summer by chance. After a lot of research we decided this was the breed for us for is gentle nature and ability to a be great jogging and hiking companion. 

2. Will he stay that size?
Remy will be a big boy. His parents were 71 and 73 pounds and are quite tall.

3. Is he a lot of work?
Yes! All puppies are a lot of work. They take patience and lots of time to train. If you are interested in adopting a puppy from a breeder or local shelter please take the time to do your research! Puppies are a 10-15 year investment in your lives - they are not meant to be discarded or abandoned.

ALWAYS neuter and spay your pets!!!! 6 - 8 million cats and dogs enter shelters in the US each year (learn more at The Humane Society of The United States).

Autumnal Insta-Roundup

 I, like most people these days, have an unwavering love/obsession/sickness for Instagram. It's fricken genius - don't try to deny it (even if you did try to deny it and it were right on any sort of level I would still strongly disagree with you because that's just how obsessed I am with it).

That paired with an intense passion for Halloween-esque happy times I find myself

1. gathering/making/surrounding myself with all things cutesy-fall 
2.  proceeding to take pictures of it

Enjoy!

Freebie Wallpaper for New Years Fun

Better late than never, but I wanted to give all of my friends a chance to download the wallpaper version of the calendar collaboration of mine and Kyle Phillips for the month of January. We are making a new yearly tradition of combining mostly Kyle's and some of my Holga camera film shots, with a fun and simple design aesthetic. We are into year two of our calendar tradition and we hope to keep the momentum going into 2013.

A small handful of friends and family received the calendars as printed pieces, but as always, we can't supply an endless amount of calendars (although we wish we could). By giving away this free desktop wallpaper we are hoping the our creative endeavor of film meets illustration/design  can be enjoyed by many more.

If you are interested in purchasing a printed calendar please email me at jennie@jennie-jacobs.com and I will be happy to custom print a new one for you for total of $15 including shipping to anywhere in the U.S.! Weeeee!

To download the free wallpaper (or this peony wallpaper) simply click on the image below to open in a new window. Then right click to save to your computer and add as your wallpaper.

That Time of Year

It's that time of year. The holidays have crept up yet again, announcing their arrival with signs of seasonal twinkling lights, red and green decorations and fluffy trees strapped to the rooftops of cars. Typically, I am a sucker for holiday festiveness, and while I don't celebrate the colder season with hideous knitted sweaters of dancing polar bears, I do find pleasure in a few things.  

1. The creation of our new holiday tradition; Calendars. Last year we started this gift giving trend showcasing a collection of film images captured with our Holgas. This year we plan to do the same! It's in the works and will be a surprise, but friends and fam should be on the lookout for one very soon. 

2. Sugar Cookies in full decorated happiness. It happens every year; 200,000,000 sugar cookies are baked by my sister Joanne and myself. We probably eat a majority of them, but the ritual is the same: We start the cookie baking process, I get bored. Joanne has to bake a million on her own. Cookies cool off. I have visions of grandeur and create 10 frosting colors, with two types of royal icing (one for borders, one for flooding). We pipe and smear and sprinkle with edible glittering bits. Then we get tired. It gets late. Our backs hurt from huddling over our sugary prison. About 2 dozen cookies get the short end of the stick and get smeared and squirted on in haste. The end. 

I blame the obsession on Martha Stewart and her cookie baking empire:

3. Holiday doodles. In an unstoppable fashion I tend to create super fun Christmasy doodles every 

year. Sometimes they are in watercolor, sometimes in Photoshop. And this usually isn't just limited to the winter holiday season. Some may call it a problem, but I think it's less of a problem then, say, decorating my house in a plethora of creepy Santa faces or hideous Jesus chatskis. Although I would put this up just for the fun of it. 

Thanks.

 I am never ceased to be amazed by the wonders that this life, and this world, and this place I live in, give me on a daily basis. I am not sure what my purpose is in this great wide wonderful place or where things will end up, but the one thing I am certain of is that life is good and there is no reason why I should not embrace it. As such I would like to say a big THANKS to the things that make my life so wonderful:

Cute kitties in sinks.

 Traveling here. 

My love for this man.

 Amazing friends.

 Delicious food. 

 Family.

This guy.

Girlfriends you can't live without.

A glass of wine.

 Exploring new places.

Good beer.

Yummy things and cooking them. 

Wonderful family.

I am thankful for my health, running, music, living in a beautiful place, having so many fabulous people in my life. I am grateful for laughing and Spin Pins, San Pellegrino and all of my pillows. I am thankful for breakfast cereal, summer and the art of cooking. I am thankful for art and creativity, for lovely dreams and warm embraces. I am thankful for this life I have been given. And so much more. 

You are what you eat.

Just a friendly reminder to myself and anyone out there who cares to listen.

Copyright Jennie Jacobs 2010

Photo credit Lilt Pepeyan 

Us.

J & D

Some really great friends of ours (ours, meaning me and my loverly boy toy) got married last month and we wanted to do something special for them (aka: we didn't want to just get them a blender). Putting our noggins together we decided to have fun with sparklers, our amateur photog skills and the dark of night. So, I know that this idea has been done before, but we had a blast. Kyle manned the camera while I whisked probably a total of 20 sparklers in the air (in total) like a crack head on the fourth of July. Each image was printed separately and then framed together in a triptych style.

Funny side note: after we gave J & D the present, they informed us that the night of their wedding they forgot to bust out the huge box of sparklers they had bought for guests to play with. I guess they have some presents to make. ;)

Congats John and Danielle!!

Dreams on Film

Palise de Papes, Avignon
Hotel de Ville, Aix en Provence
Barcelona, Spain
Beautiful colors. Barcelona, Spain.
Sagrada Familia Church by Gaudi. So interesting! Barcelona, Spain.
3 Ducks Hostel, Paris.

3 Ducks Hostel, courtyard. Paris, France.
Paris.
Paris (obvi!)
Paris.

I took an excursion to Europe recently and brought along a Holga and some film. Thought I would share some of the moments from Paris, Provence and Barcelona. I brought 4 rolls of film with me and the majority of the pictures turned out ok, which is amazing. (Apparently, no one travels with film these days and it was hard to ask the airport employees to hand inspect your film (instead of x-ray) when you don't speak the language. )

So the above photos are a few of my favorites from my amazing adventure. Please enjoy.
xoxo.