I'm Michelle! I'm so glad you've come to visit me at my blog. This is the place to find out everything you ever wanted to know about Michelle Sidles Photography... and probably even more than you wanted to know about me. I live in Spokane, Washington with my family.
I have a passion for capturing the spirit of my family in images and I also apply that same passion when photographing other families. I love to tell a story with my images, to capture the raw emotion of a moment and those little details that mark a specific time in a person's life. It may start off calm and respectable but by the end of the session I can't guarantee that people won't be thrown in the air, chased by their siblings or covered in dirt! If that's the kind of photography you're interested in then let's get together. This is not your mother's photo session!!
And last but certainly not least... comments are always appreciated! :)
Thanks Annie Henson from Washington State!! I know Annie IRL (in real life) and she goaded me into wearing my tiara at church the other week. Yes, I got some looks. And no, I STILL don’t enjoy wearing it in public. 
But I do LOVE that my friends from all around the country have joined me in bringing water to third world countries. Changing the world, Baby!!
Please visit my charity: water page if you want to make a donation!! 
Why stop at just dating my husband? Why not throw in a date with one of the kids, too. So Natalie and I headed out for a great ride on Sunday afternoon. The weather has been amazing… sunny and warm. So we had to take advantage of it. We kept the ride short since it was her first ride of the season and we rode to a local coffee stand that has great outdoor seating. We shared a granola bar and chatted about the world and then headed back home. It was really great.
I love my life.
- You are awesome. Stuff like that is what kids will remember forever. You are such a great mom making awesome memories with your kids. :) but the shorts part kinda makes me a little bit envious. ;)
We had such a fabulous date night on Friday.
We headed out for a 20 mile ride that turned out to be an hour and 25 minutes because I was feeling a little chatty. And slow. I was just wore out from the very start on this ride. Basically we are training for Bloomsday (12k: running race) the first week of May at the same time we’re training for Race the River (sprint triathlon) in July. So this week has been alternating running with cycling (or spinning) everyday. And by yesterday my legs were just jello.
So our ride took longer than usual but it was cool. Why? Because we were alone for the first time in a long time. And when we are alone for an extended period of time a workout transforms into something much more beautiful: a date! So we rode along the Spokane River on the Cenntenial trail in the dappled evening sun. For locals: Friday afternoons are really quiet on the trail. And based on a previous ride this week Sundays are insanity on the trail.
After our ride we came home and showered. Then we headed out again to dinner. Where, you ask? Only the most happening Fish Feed in the Valley. The St. Mary’s Catholic Church weekly (during Lent) fish dinner. Oh yes, like good Catholics we headed over there to eat fish with all the lent observing, fish eating, early bird, white haired folks. What? Oh that’s right, we’re not actually Catholic… but it’s cool, we know people. And we brought money, as the dinner is a donations based affair. We sat at the long cafeteria table and ate off our paper plates in the old gym. It was quite the dinner out.
The thing is… it WAS quite a dinner out. Ken and I have the ability to enjoy being together wherever we’re at. Whether it’s a gourmet restaurant or a catholic church’s gym. We are great friends. And often times it’s not the amount of money spent on a date that brings any meaning to us. It’s the “memorability” of our time together. And I have to say of all the dates we’ve been on in recent memory this one had me smiling the whole time… and still has me smiling.
So what about you? What kind of things do you love doing with your mate? What are the most memorable “dates” you’ve had?
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- okay, first, that photo is so awesome. second, i love how you guys are best friends and do so much together. third, you totally inspire me in my marriage.
- Sometimes we get wild and go to church. That's crazy for us, if you knew my husband's story. :) We also like to play tourist in our town.
I’ve been consistenly taking pictures everyday and have now completed two months of my twelve month challenge. I have to say that I can’t wait for the weather to change as I need a change of scenery. I’ve been shooting in my house so much that it’s ridiculous. Visty asked me to put some of my February 365 images on the blog and I aim to please so without further ado:
I hope they are big enough on here to see. I don’t want to put 29 big pics on here but if there are any specific ones you’d like to see bigger let me know and I’ll pop them on here as individuals!
On another note, I just have to make note of a little something that happened here this week. Aaron is 10. He is a super smart boy but for some reason he just doesn’t enjoy writing. It is the subject in school he struggles with the most and honestly I find it to be impossibly frustrating trying to help him with it at home. Why? Because he and I think about writing completely differently. And all my really “GREAT” prompts & advice don’t seem to help him at all.
Anyway, a few months ago he had a writing assignment for school. They were working on an essay for Veteran’s Day. He and I ended up in the most frustrating mother/son homework battle ever. He was nearly in tears. I was ready to snap.
Finally, we just let the assignment go. He took it to school and turned it in. And last week… he won THIRD place in his class AND FIVE BUCKS for his essay from the Veteran’s group who judged it!
{{{selah}}}
He was so proud. And I was on the verge of tears. I remember the day we locked horns about this assignment. And it was not a good day. After a few minutes of quiet contemplation he opened up and shared his true feelings. He said that he thought it was cool that he thought he wasn’t a good writer but it turned out that he won third place in a writing contest over all the “good” writers in his class.
He put the Certificate he recieved under the clear plastic desk mat on his desk. He is so proud of himself. And he is feeling much more confident in his writing now.
I’m so glad that my moments of “failure” as a mom seem to fade with time and new experiences and that our kids can change how they define themselves. He may just grow up believing that he “IS” a good writer afterall. Thank God.
- I am so thankful for "fading" too. So glad that my kids' memories of certain things will slowly disappear from their brains.
- That is such a great story, Michelle. I love that you share your rel life stories with us. :)
- Sweet story - can you come help my oldest?
- I was where you are. Garrett is 12 now, and finally, FINALLY, we are no longer battling over writing. He liked making up stories----but only with his mouth. The writing, ugh, it was brutal. Every time he came home with an assignment, my stomach would knot up. But. I let go. I realized that the standards for organization and coherence for his grade were much lower than what I was imagining them to be. Obviously. Duh. I homeschooled them for Pete's sake and I still fell into the trap two years later. Once I let him do what he felt the assignment needed, whether it be many paragraphs or one, two things happened: he started writing these things on his own without the aid of my torture devices, and he started enjoying it. Just recently, in 6th grade, he wrote a freaking STORY. Not a 5 paragraph essay, but a really long story. He has never in his life written something that had an ending. He always fizzled out after the first big event. I was so proud. I asked him if we can print them up and give them out as Christmas gifts. I tell you, this is monumental. I hope we can get together next time I am in Spokavegas!
- Wow. What a great story about Aaron. God is good. :)
Hi awesome friends & clients!
Many of you know that I sell my digital files with most sessions. I offer an ordering gallery for your convenience however I happily encourage you to print wherever you’d like. One place I love to refer people to is Mpix.com. They print really high quality images on great papers.
They are currently having a 50% off sale on prints. But the sale ends tomorrow. So rush right over there and print up some images to display around the house, to give as gifts, or to scrapbook!
USE PROMO CODE: 8×10sale
I posted a couple weeks ago about a dare that was laid out for me by my 365 group on Flickr. They loved my tiara. They loved me wearing it. But they wanted me wearing it out in public. And they offered my favorite charity money if I would do it.
**I am an introvert. That may surprise some people but drawing attention to myself and being ridiculous in public does NOT come naturally.
But it is my favorite charity. So I did it.
At Petco.
And Target.
I hope they let me back in in the future.
Here are my foolish images:
And here’s the latest giving update at charity: water!!
I’m challenging people to donate and represent their states!
I’ve got Stacy Tarlow from New York (who is a fabulous photographer).
I’ve got Wendy Schultz from Arizona (who is my genius photography teacher).
I’ve got Annie Henson from Washington (who goaded me into putting my tiara on at church)!
Who’s next? Will it be YOU? Come on. Let’s meet the goal and build wells in countrys that don’t have clean water. Thanks readers!!
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- Thanks for stopping by, Michelle. I LOVE your tiara!!! I may have to post some pictures of me wearing mine... kindred spirits abound lol
- OH. MY. GOSH. You so cute!! We will give $20 if you where that to church and let one of us take a pic. It's on like Donkey Kong!
Hey Meatless Monday friends! I’m back. And I’ve got a confession. We’ve sort of been all over the board with our Meatless Mondays. Like forgetting it was Monday and eating chicken. Or deciding to do meatless on Wednesday because that day was more conducive to meatless because of our schedules, etc. Anyway, we are trying to get back on track and just keep our Monday’s meatless. Normally we cook from scratch and don’t use prepared or boxed foods in our cooking. However, we were at Costco the other day and I spied some black bean chipotle burgers in the freezer case. They were made by Morningside Farms and they intrigued me. So I bought them. And we made them last night for dinner. And holy buckets! They were GOOD!
If you are looking for an easy Meatless Monday meal for those days when you are ill prepared these are a great little item to keep in your freezer. Delish.
And another little change we’re making to our weekly meal plan is…. {drumroll}…. Fish Fridays.
I didn’t grow up eating fish. Well, wait a second… I did grow up eating fish sticks but that was it. And still to this day I have fish issues. But as I’m in my 30’s and want to eat a little healthier and not raise my kids to have the same “fish issues” as I do we’ve decided that once a week (minimum) we will prepare fish. We started out with some Tilapia the other day. Ken prepared it according to Julia Child’s white fish preparation method and it was DIVINE. We had fish tacos and they were phenomonal.
That’s what’s going on here in Food World at the Sidles House.
What about you guys? Are you all doing anything at your houses food related? I always love to hear what people are doing!
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- those look good. I'm totally curious about them. so happy you are posting about this again! we end up doing at least 2 (often 3) meatless meals a week now. it's been great for us.
- Sometimes we have falafels from Costco. They are in the freezer section, and are the frozen little balls that you heat up and stuff into a pita with tomatoes and lettuce and tzatziki sauce. (However you spell that!) One little food change to report in our house: I've finally ended my dinner strike! Seriously, sometime last year I went on strike and stopped cooking "real" dinners because the kids only wanted chicken nuggets. So I quit trying. I'm happy to report that for the last 6 weeks, I'm back to cooking and actually writing out menus and the kids are trying new things. Yay!
I completed my January 365 Photo A Day Challenge. I’m now working on February. I thought you might like to see what I’ve been up to.
Here’s January’s images:
- Hey you! So good to meet you & get to hang today too! I'm loving your work!! awesome. So, I'll keep ya posted about visiting in the summer....gotta tend to the house and all possibly :) What cool photos...& adore your bw self photo w/ glasses..fun.
- This is awesome. I tried making one too but I'm a dork and couldn't get it to work properly. ;)
- Love that ankle biter and the lavender ladies. I took some shots at Katie's school concert last night, and it is always such a challenge to work with the lighting at things like that... so I have high respect for your lavender ladies photo!
So it’s been slow going on the bathroom remodel. What can I say. We were waiting on a custom shower something or other to get here. But it arrived. And the plumber came out for a consult. And now we are back in motion. We had to cut out that moldy portion of subfloor plus some extra floor for the plumber to switch the toilet and the shower plumbing. Don’t ask me what builders are thinking when they build spec houses. I have a laundry list of design flaws for the builder of our current house. Like CARPET in the eating space for instance. Who puts cream colored carpet in an eating space… in a house that is most likely going to house young children? Hmmm? Or NO pantry in the kitchen? Or NO main floor storage at all? Hmmm? So as we go about putting things back together we try to correct for these sort of “oversights.” Hopefully whoever buys our house will appreciate the extra thought put into things. Anyway, here are some pictures for those of you who love home renos.
I’ll start with the before shot:
And the current state of affairs:
Actually… MOST of the subfloor has been removed at this point. So I have to really be careful if I get up at night to remember to use the kid’s bathroom and not ours. Because it is currently a “step down” bathroom with the “floor” being the kitchen ceiling. One false move and I’ll be downstairs the fast way. Stay tuned for more progress. The plumber comes tomorrow!
We took the kids to Schweitzer Mountain (Sandpoint, Idaho) on Saturday. They learned how to ski last year and this year Aaron really wanted to learn to snowboard. We decided to put them in lessons (since I am a skier and know nothing about boarding). Natalie went along with Aaron even though she was not really thrilled about having to start over from scratch learning to board when she *could have* just popped on her skis and taken off.
But I’m so glad she decided to try boarding. I told her I regretted that I never learned to board and that she’d be happy she learned in case some friends invited her boarding one day. Isn’t she adorable?
And Aaron. I love the sign behind him. “Snow Board: Beginner.” He was SO happy!!
And the weather was SPECTACULAR as you can see. Sunny, warm, no wind and fresh snow. The kids took off their jackets all morning and were in sweatshirts.
And the view from the “Bunny Hill.” Seriously, isn’t that SPECTACULAR. That’s Lake Pend Orielle below. Our family grew up on that lake with a cabin and I spent so much of my childhood either skiing in the winter or boating in the summer in Sandpoint.
We told the kids we’d take a snowboard lesson next year. They totally want us to. Are we too old? Will we kill ourselves? You should’ve seen how sore they both were the next day. It was sad. They had rice bags out and were moaning like old people. Truth be told: I’m scared. HA!
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- Dude. Your camera just rocks. I can tell by how crisp the photos are. Whew!
- Matthew's been talking about learning how to board since watching the X-Games and the pre-Olympic events. Maybe we ought to get them all together next year! Great pics BTW -- as usual!!
- Looks like FUN! You guys are awesome parents! I really want to try snowboarding but I'm kinda chicken as well.
- Awesome...now Max will finally have someone to snowboard with :-)
by Michelle
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