Project 52: Self Portraits: Past & Present

It’s kind of hard to believe I’m only nine weeks into my self portrait 52 weeks project. I’m happy that I’ve been able to keep this up without skipping a week and it gives me confidence I’ll be able to complete this project in full! At the same time, I don’t feel like I’ve changed much, or even at all, in the past nine weeks.

This week’s theme is a nice temporary cure: Past and Present.

I went through my old self portraits on Flickr trying to find something I could recreate and I settled on a couple of shots with my husband.

The Past

This picture was taken in 2005. Mark and I had been married a little over two years and were still living a mostly care-free life. We spent our spare time eating out (can yout tell?), going to the movies and spending every last dime of our disposable income on gizmos and gadgets galore.

This photo was taken in the very first moments of 2007. I’d decided I was going to start a project 365 for self-portraits, but I didn’t even get a month into it before I abandoned it. This photograph also captures Mark and I only a few days before we conceived Mr. Serious. By this point, we spent our spare time at home doing homely things and saved most of our spare cash for the future.

The Present

I took this at the playground last night. It’s totally not the shot I wanted to get, but at least we were facing the sunset so we’re nicely lit. Watching two wild and crazy kids made it more than difficult to carve out a few seconds for both of us to get a photo together.

I took two shots and in the other one Mark’s hair looks so much better. I’m sure he’d prefer me to post that one. But we were RIGHT in front of the swing set. With this one, I moved us a little and I still didn’t get the background I was looking for, but at least you can see both of our kids. Somewhat.

Now our free time is devoted to entertaining a toddler and preschooler. We don’t spend our money like crazy, but we also don’t make enough of it to save any.

Ultimately, I prefer the pre-kid us. We were financially stable and I was at my thinnest in my adult life. However, we also didn’t have these wonderful cute little bundles of love in our life so if I had to choose, I’d definitely go for the present day us.

By the way, in this photo my husband is cigarette free for nearly 10 days! In both of the previous two photos, he was nearly a pack a day smoker. That is one huge change that I’m immensely happy about and couldn’t be more proud!

What About You?

Do you prefer your past self or your present self? Do you have any past and present self-portraits you’d like to share? Please link up! Pepper and I are working toward completing 52 self-portraits this year and we’d love for you to join us, if only for a week!

We’ve had an optional theme up to this point, but we’re going to try for no themes in the month of April.