When a Selfie Won’t Do

On Friday, I received an email from my publisher asking for a short bio and photo. There was only one problem. You see, I didn’t have any current pictures. Well, at least not any that weren’t selfies taken with Instagram. And let’s face it, as fun as those are, I wasn’t sure I wanted any of them handed over to the sales team with my book title.

No problem, though. You see, I didn’t just marry me an editor and web designer, but an all-around Renaissance man who’s pretty good with a camera. So Ted and I decided to pull out that wonderful Nikon D40 of ours and have our very own photo shoot on Saturday.

This meant that instead of sporting this look …

I had to transform to this …

Yep, I spent more time on my hair that day then I have in years. Although that’s not saying too much. Perhaps if I devoted a bit more attention to my long locks on a daily basis, that trademark pony tail of mine would make an appearance less often. Okay, who am I kidding? With four kids under 10, the pony tail’s here to stay for a few more years.

There was one epic fail of my transformation. It came with the box of teeth whitening strips I rescued from under the bathroom sink. Sure, they left my teeth brighter — but they didn’t stop there. They also dyed the tips of my gums white. Yikes! Fortunately, this didn’t show up in the final pictures. If it had though, I would have relayed on that master of Photoshop I married to work some of his magic.

When all was said and done, we ended up with more pictures than I know what to do with. My resident photographer decided to post his own portfolio of “Ashleigh photos” on his Facebook page. Here are a few of his favorites with Ted “captions” included.