Kaoru Marie

Does anyone else have this secret desire to create pet costumes? I admit that it's so freaking ridiculous. My husband cringes every time I subtly suggest dressing up our cat. However, my dreams came true when my sister-in-law asked me if I could create dragon wings for her cats. My brother and her are planning a Game of Thrones themed Halloween costume and wanted to include their cats. Of course I jumped at the opportunity! I finally had the perfect excuse to dive into the realms of pet garments (or rather, costumes.) I won't go into the details here just yet because there is so much I want to write about, but I don't want to spend all the time just yet describing the "creative process" (ha!). Plus, I don't have both wings completed yet. But, I do have one photo to provide a teaser. Watch out for dragon kitty!!!! Everything seemed to look ok during the test run! I wasn't sure how the cape/jacket would fit on the cat so I only pinned the collar and ...

It has been a terribly long time since I posted photos of Bailey! A quick look at my Flickr account will reveal my obsession of taking photos of him. My husband doesn't seem to enjoy getting his photo taken by me, but Bailey doesn't seem to mind :) Here are some favorites of mine, most of which are already uploaded to Flickr, but a couple new ones too. One evening I decided to try and capture Bailey with his pupils ballooned to be as large as his eyes. I assume most cats get like this when they are bursting with energy or ready to pounce on prey. When Bailey gets like this, ohhhhhh, WATCH OUT! I don't remember why he paused in the middle of our living room like this. He's pretty good at staying still for a couple seconds when he sees me with my camera (unless I'm on the ground, then he usually immediately walks towards me). I can't get over how focused he looks! My goodness, Bailey....chill out! In the photo below he was enamored with the ironing board...

My brother has two cats that are brother and sister. I took some photos of them when they were itty bitty rambunctious kitties . I saw these two cats recently and boy have they grown in the past year! The multi-colored cat is so shy now, while her brother is still very energetic (and quite the chatty cat!). My heart definitely started to melt when I saw them grooming each other: I'm not gonna lie and say getting this shot was easy-peasy. I definitely ran into difficulty getting the lighting right and the cats in focus (damn those cats for moving!). When I see my brother's cats being this affectionate with each other I get a little sad for Bailey that he's in a one-cat household. When we adopted Bailey the shelter told us his sister was adopted the previous day. I wonder where she is and if she's as crazy (bipolar?) as Bailey. Earlier in the day we had some fun walking the black cat around the backyard. I'm really anxious to try this with Bailey because I h...

I hadn't taken a photo all day. I was cleaning up some sewing stuff, preparing to head off to bed soon after. I was about to take another iPhone photo when I somehow convinced myself to dust off my dslr camera and external flash. Sweet Bailey was lounging in his chair and I couldn't resist taking a photo of my darling sleeping cat. Sleeping Bailey I only took four shots (one with the incorrect light setting) and it took hardly any time. Note to self: Use your real camera more often. The iPhone is perfect for capturing in the moment happenings, like this one* Gimme my damn beer! but it can't beat a dslr camera in picture quality, especially indoors in crappy lighting. *Before all the animal abuse groups start contacting me about being a terrible cat guardian, no alcohol was actually consumed by Bailey. He was just licking the top of the bottle.

I'm not the biggest fan of April Fools' Jokes. However, this year I thought there were some good jokes done by big companies. A friend alerted me to Sony's Animalia Line , which includes Kitty Headphones and Dog TVs. Then later in the day a different friend shared REI's April Fools' Joke on Facebook: [caption id="attachment_321" align="aligncenter" width="500"] REI April Fools Joke 2013[/caption] AWWMIGOD! COULD THIS BE ANY CUTER?!!?!? I about died from cuteness overload. Here are a couple more items for your adventurous kitty: My Bailey could really use a tiny little machete! I had to take screenshots of the website just in case it gets taken down in the future, especially since the "deal" is only valid on 4/1/2013. Here's the official announcement from the REI Facebook page : I can't stop cracking up when I look at that sweet little kitty in the ad. Oh man, how I wish it was possible to take my c...

I think from this point on I'll only be blogging about the "365 Photos*" that I am most "proud" of or like the best or are actually worth blogging about....you get the idea. Part of the change up in documenting my progress is two-fold: (1) it is time consuming (also read: I'm lazy) to blog about each and every photo, especially when I'm getting accustomed to writing descriptions when I post the photo to Flickr, and (2) I don't think it's really necessary for me to blog about a photo of my dinner or other totally random photo from an exceptionally boring day. With that said there are two photos from this past week that I really like and I think are worth sharing with everyone who happens upon my blog. Day 61/365: March 2, 2013 I'm not sure how much the rest of the country (and world) paid attention to the Endeavour Space Shuttle making its journey to its final resting spot, but LA was abuzz with excitement because it was a pretty big dea...

I can't believe so many days have passed by between posts about my progress on the 365 photos project. Here is a mosaic of photos I took recently. Descriptions of each photo are on Flickr if you are so inclined to know what is going on in each photo. 1. Day 47/365 , 2. Day 48/365 , 3. Day 49/365 , 4. Day 50/365 , 5. Day 51/365 , 6. Day 52/365 , 7. Day 53/365 , 8. Day 54/365 , 9. Day 55/365 I have given up on the "Purple Theme" for the month of February. Seriously, if I had kept up with it, you'd probably see 20 shitty photos of ugly purple flowers. Since I truly enjoy taking photos of my cat, I have reverted to taking a lot more photos of my sweet Bailey. In order to not bore my small readership, my goal from this point forward is to take photos of him in different positions and situations. Only two of the photos in the above mosaic were taken with my dlsr and one of them actually didn't come out that well despite using an external flash. My kitchen defi...

Day 24: January 24, 2013 Most of my coworkers don't drive to work because we have to pay for parking, the cheapest is $6/day (actually, people who drive everyday get the monthly deal, which is $80-90/month). We're actually pretty lucky because if our office was on the other side of the freeway, and in the DTLA core, then parking can easily reach $200/month. Since most of us don't drive to work our lunch options are limited to what we can reasonably walk to. In the off chance that someone does drive in, our lunch options expand mightily! One of our favorite lunch spots is Papa Cristos , a fantastic Greek place (seriously, look at their Yelp Page ) that has been around for decades (if you're a fan of The Shield , then you'll appreciate (or be terrified?) that it is located directly in Byz-Lat territory). I never fail to order the gyro sandwich, but am always tempted by the dessert counter. This time, however, temptation got the best of me and I added two "ho...

Day 21: January 21, 2013 Nothing spectacular for Day 21. Just Bailey playing with a shopping bag. Cats can be so smart, yet so simple. Day 22: January 22, 2013 Last week I took a photo of Bailey's mouse toy and Schnookie, of IPB Living , noted its fairly pristine condition. This time I took a photo of one of his most played-with cat toys. Bailey has beat the crap out of this toy. We have bought several different feather teaser cat toys from Petco and the Feline Flyer is by far the best one available in-store. The feathers are really stiff and flutter through the air very nicely. I wonder if the cat thinks it looks like a bird... The major downside to all teaser toys is the feather part is attached to the string by a ball and chain type connection and it ALWAYS breaks. I have bought at least 5 teaser toys from Petco in the past 6 months and they have all broken in the same manner, except for one where the rod actually broke. When I feel like mustering up another $7...

Days 10-13....these were some chilly days in LA! Laugh all you want non-SoCal people, but it was cold here and I did not want to go outside. Day 10: January 10, 2013 Mad Housewife ....she seemed like a good idea at the time. So, I started a food blog {finally} and will eventually review this el cheapo wine. Spoiler Alert: I do not recommend it. Day 11: January 11, 2013 Another cat photo...what can I say. I love taking photos of my sweet, psychotic Bailey: Day 12: January 12, 2013 This is a T-Rex tea infuser!!! :) I bought this little trinket as a stocking stuffer for my husband. I found it at Sur La Table and thought he would get a kick out of it. It's fun to use and have sitting in your mug, but it is a pain in the behind to clean! The holes are a bit big so some of the smaller tea leaves float into your tea, but since they usually settle to the bottom it isn't that big of an issue. Day 13: January 13, 2013 Bailey's feeding station: A ...

Day 7: January 7, 2013 I had grand plans to take an outdoor photo for Day 7, but unfortunately that didn't happen. Instead, I took this photo: Look at all that Bob's Red Mill !!!!! WHAT?!?!?! I stopped by Ralphs (aka, Kroger, the big chain grocery store in my area) and only walked down the baking aisle to get to the back of the store. I just happened to glance to my left and I think my jaw dropped when I saw bags upon bags upon bags of different Bob's Red Mill baking products! WHEN DID THIS GET HERE!?!? I was in Ralphs on Christmas Even to get baking flour and I DO NOT remember seeing this. In the past I have only been able to find Unsweeted Shredded Coconut and possibly one or two other items. I usually have to go to Fresh & Easy to buy Gluten-Free Baking Flour (because it's way cheaper than at Whole Foods) and then hop on over to Whole Foods to get the crazy stuff like Flaxseed Meal (I still don't know why I bought this) and Xantham Gum. I can't r...

6 continuous days of photos. I'm almost at a week. If I take a photo tomorrow, then I'll consider it a streak. First up is January 5, 2013 and, yes, it is a cat photo. I love trying to get  close-up photos of my cat, especially when his eyes are super big. Only his eyes are in focus because I had to shoot wide open (and at 1600 ISO) in order to get an appropriate shutter speed and exposure and I set the focus on his eyes. My external flash can't arrive soon enough... Today's photo, January 6, 2013 , is of a zipper pouch I made a couple months ago. One day I had an urge to actually make something as opposed to just reading about everyone else's wonderful sewing projects in my Google Reader. I decided to make a zipper pouch since it looked somewhat easy and I had enough scraps to make one. I used Ayumi's zipper pouch tutorial and scraps of Tula Pink's Prince Charming collection . By the way, Ayumi has the most amazing tutorials on her blog, Pink Peng...

I've always wanted to take one photo a day no matter how crappy or irrelevant that photo might be. Not exactly sure why I want to. Maybe to be consistent with something. Or to see how my photographs (or editing skillz) develop. Just to make sure I take more pictures so I can document (read: remember) what the heck I did over the course of a year. Or, let's be honest, to see my lovely kitten grow! He's actually already grown so much since we got him in June 2012 and I'll have to write a post in the future about him because he's so awesome! Anyway, I figured January 1, 2013 would be a good day to start this project. I probably won't get around to actually posting a photo per day, but my goal (resolution?) is to post all 365 photos in 2013 on this blog. Here are days 1-4: January 1, 2013 My first attempt at baking kale chips. Did. Not. Like. I'm going to start a separate food blog, because the world NEEDS more food blogs, and will write about my adven...

It's been awhile since I've posted anything. Since my last post I have traveled for work multiple times, baked a cake for the first time, traveled to New Orleans for a wedding, finished a quilt that I never blogged about, and, most importantly, my LA Kings won the Stanley Cup, a feat I NEVER thought would EVER happen in my lifetime. But, this post is all about some cuteness overload. My brother and his wife were out of town recently and asked me to watch their tiny new additions to make sure they were well-fed and had clean litter boxes. My brother actually wrote an email that his kittens were "tiny and adorable. Tidorable." And he wasn't joking. I was super excited to (a) play with tiny kittens, and (b) practice photographing pets. I love, love, love looking at the pet photos that Li of Fat Orange Cat Studio takes and couldn't wait to take some awesome adorable pet photos myself. But lo and behold, tiny kittens have so much freaking energy and don't s...