Where has all the time gone....

Time like the moving finger has written this as another year and now is almost gone.  Here it is almost Christmas and the weather is chilly and it's time to count our blessings and we have truly been blessed.  We want to thank all of you who valued our photography for saving your cherished memory of your family in 2010. 
Limestone Lake Photography is still being chosen by families who first came to us when we opened in 1992 and many  have become friends and like family members.  We want to wish all  a Very Merry Christmas and hope your New Year will be even better.  Thanks!

Limestone Lake is a very special place to Sheryl and I.  It is even more special with the loving memory of two friends who helped build and create this place to be what it is.  Bobby Lewis came here not long after I moved here in 1992 and a friendship developed or I might say he adopted me like a younger brother.  If I needed anything done, or help, or where I could get something I needed or wanted(like our old Chevy truck) he knew everybody and just where to go to get what was wanted!  I was proud to call him a friend and we enjoyed many mornings going to eat breakfast together swapping stories.  Along with being someone who knew how to build or make anything he also had a love of photography.  I'm going to miss him and his special knock on the door and his death has affected me deeply.

                                                    Bobby Lewis 1937-2010

Limestone Lake lost another special special person four years ago who had an impact and helped get many of the projects off the ground here.  That was Dewayne Studevyn, I met him even before I moved in.  He had helped Mrs. Pat Grider a previous owner who had this stone house built and he  felt a closeness with this place before I bought it, he seemed pleased to know me and my plans for the lake. Dewayne became responsible for all of the building projects which happened here at the lake; he found the building we moved here for our back studio(used mainly for window light and high key children photography), helped and oversaw our second story living quarters addition, moved/built/renovated just about all our shooting prop areas, as well as moving and building our cabin across the lake with its storage facilities, and the list goes on!  I can't look anywhere outside or inside that hasn't been touched by the hand of Dewayne.  My grief at the loss of my two friends is touched by the the visual memories of all they did here at the lake that they both were so proud of....their accomplishments are now monuments in memory of what they accomplished here.  I was blessed to have had both as friends who not only adopted me but came here and made the Limestone Lake what it is today.

Our New Decade!

We hope you had a Merry Christmas and are off to a Super New Year! 

This is the first time I have taken to keep you up to date what's been going on here since I wrote about my greenhouse experience, which by the way has seemed to help protect most of the plants we put into it.  I run an electric heater when the tempature drops below freezing and has been effective in keeping most of the plants from freezing.  The tempature got down to 7 degrees and with two heaters going the plants were hovering together for warmth and the hardy survived!  Yeah! 

When it's sunny I enjoy walking in and amongst the greenery on the reclaimed brick floor, it makes me appreciate now having a place to winter them till they can return to their favored places!
I truly value  Limestone Lake and  my priviledge to live and be part of it.  I have owned homes before in different places and seen lots of our country, but nothing compares.  I have no desire to go away and visit exotic or places of beauty, here I feel a connection and truly see four seasons with each one as beautiful as the other.  As a photographer, when I saw Limestone Lake I fell in love with the uniqness and opportunity to photograph people in a natural environment.
Sheryl and I see the same vision of making Limestone Lake as a magical place...a place where families are together and part of Limestone Lake for now and for years to come through their pictures.  We feel the families who come here are our friends and  become like family to us.  We have gone to photograph on locations but in a sense we feel like we are having friends over when we do their pictures here.

We feel honored and blessed to be here and to share Limestone Lake with you.

Thanks!

A Bigger project than I realized! The Greenhouse a learning experience...

Sheryl and I love flowers for pictures and feel there is a connection with beauty when we have flowers in our photos.  I'm not much of a "green thumb" but do alot of planting flowers when Sheryl says "dig a hole right there" and I'm pretty good with a water hose after planting the flowers.  The prennials we don't worry so much about, we try to mulch them over the winter; but the annuals we had tried keeping them in the more lighted part of our basement to see if they would winter there and what is amazing, some of them do!  Talk always drifted to "What if we had a greenhouse?"  So when I had a chance I surprised surprise Sheryl with the gift of a green house ....that's when it became something more than I imagined.  It was a kit in a great big box with a 100 page booklet of instructions.....when I read in the beginning part of the instructions where it said "with 3 assistants" which I didn't have, I placed the whole box near where we had put down its foundation filled with crushed stone and put off the project for over a year.  With the "constant urging" of Sheryl, I thought I would give it a go especially when I had one volunteer to help me by the name of "Lucky"!

To make a long story short it was a little shorter than the nightmare it became as the numbers on many of the numerous pieces had disappeared due to  weathering.  It took much longer as we had to figure it out as if it were a jigsaw puzzle, but we prevailed.  After erecting it Sheryl went on line and found a site which gave step by step instructions....and as they say hindsight is easier to see than foresight!!! 

I now have gotten electricity in it so we can pump water out of the lake, work at night, and use electrical appliances when needed.  All in all it is "pretty cool" and worth the effort it took to do and keep doing the things we need to do to winter our plants.  Next I'm building the tables so Sheryl can pot plants and hang her flowering baskets.....I'm finding it to be a neat place to hang out and dream up new projects while continuing to keep hammering this to completion!
Maybe some pictures to follow, one picture is worth a 1000 words!

Welcome to our world at Limestone Lake...

Breakfast at Bob Evans Saturday morning was delicious...John found a new love with the cinnamon french toast topped with carmel sauce.  Our next stop was the flea market.  We were looking for items to use in the greenhouse that we are building.  Then it was off to Lowe's for the electrical needs and back to the lake to work.  We will post pictures and provide updates later.  Let's just say that a building a Greenhouse from a kit has been a challenge!  At dusk we took a paddle boat ride around the Lake...it won't be long before the trees provide us with the autumn glory.  On Sunday I did time on the computer while John continued his expertise on the greenhouse then we starting cleaning out our storage garage that had flooded from the last big rain.  Our stomachs reminded us that we had skipped lunch so around 6pm and very tired and hungry we gave it up for the day.   We have some families to photograph this week that we haven't seen in awhile.  We are looking forward to renewing those friendships.