raising heller

You heard me. You can pay your tithing online. Since we’ve started paying our tithing online, it’s made the process so much easier. It’s literally the first thing I do after I get paid (well, since I’m self-employed, I pay myself but it’s the same idea. To clarify you need to have online bill pay through your bank, but if you have that, you should be good to go. I’ve explained to many people how to do it, but I figured I’d just do a blog post on it this once and then direct everyone here.

It’s pretty simple. First download the following documents:

Bill Pay Description

Authorization Form

The Bill Pay Description form will give you the exact instructions of what you need to do. I searched long and hard through church forums before I found out just exactly how to do this. We’ve been doing it for over a year now and it’s been awesome. And for those of you thinking about saying that the physical act of handing in the check is part of the sacrifice, you can save it. 10% is 10%.

I should also note, that you can pay fast offerings and just about anything else church related with this same method as well.

words

Here’s a short film that I recently finished for a church film festival. I did the bulk of the editing in 2 days and only finished rendering the movie about a half an hour before I had to go to the event. There’s a lot of things that I’d like to fix, but instead I think I’d rather just re-write and re-shoot it. Anway, here you go.

videos

Two posts in one day… This is definitely a record.

Recently, our friend Carrie Stroud (an amazing photographer) shot some pictures of our family recently and we wanted to share them with you. Here you go!

photos

Brad Singley and I competed in the Renton Film Frenzy again this year, though this time we were able to add his mega-talented wife, Meg. This proved to be a wise choice on our part as she was instrumental in helping to create this latest masterpiece, Shakespeare in the Parking Lot. If you’re curious, we won first place in the competition. Yay! There was also a best picture prize (which is technically the real first place). That went to a film called The Disconnect, which was AWESOME. We didn’t feel one little bit bad losing to those guys.

At the start of the competition, teams are given “curve balls” (items that they must include in their film). This year the three curve balls were:

1. Line of Dialogue: incorporate a line of dialogue about aerospace in Renton.

2. Location: include a scene filmed at the Renton Harvest Festival or Chamber Business Expo.

3. Object: Incorporate a piece of public art in Renton.

This version is the “director’s cut” in which we removed the scene at the harvest festival. We filmed that bit of dialogue in Brad’s garage as well and it just fit better, so we decided to re-cut it and show everyone that version. Anyway, enjoy!

videos

So, a few days ago, Jack and Lily came to me and told me that they wanted to learn to ride their bikes without training wheels. I quickly realized that the only thing harder than learning to ride a bike without training wheels, is teaching someone to ride a bike without training wheels. Turns out though, kids are pretty smart and can mostly figure this stuff out on their own. The next day, they were riding around like pros without any of my help (they did have some kind help from grandpa, however). Eager to document these things, I threw together a short film of their new-found skills. While it was filmed here in the cold northwest, I wanted it to feel as if we were back in SoCal filming an O.P. commercial.

words

So, I FINALLY got around to editing the video of Violet’s birth. The quadrilogy is complete. On a side note, in a boneheaded move, I accidentally shot this in 1080p at 20fps (frames per second). For the uninitiated, pretty much all video or film is shot at either 24fps or 30fps (unless you’re doing slow-mo in which case you would speed that up). Why the Canon T1i shoots 1080p at 20fps I have no clue. 20fps make the video choppy and really annoying (to me at least) to watch. Let’s just call it an artistic decision on my part. Here’s to hoping I can get around to getting that Canon 7D.

words

so, our friend carrie stroud came by our house a week or so ago and shot a bunch of pictures of the newly minted violet mae. we’re REALLY stoked about how they turned out and we hope you enjoy them too.

words

so, i kind of cheated this week. time ran out on me so i recorded a cover song. this is by one of my favorite bands, pedro the lion (as recorded lo-fi on the iPhone). i don’t think i do it any justice but it was in my head so i thought i lay it down so that at least i did something for week 3. fair warning: this song is about as bummed out as it gets. fair warning #2: it in no way is a declaration on the status of my relationship with my wife.

[audio:Week 3- Options-Pedro the Lion cover.mp3]
steven heller – options (pedro the lion cover)

steven's side project

so, here’s the song for week two. i’m not normally one to explain a song ahead of time, but for the sake of simplicity i’m going to do it here. our protagonist finds himself high on a mountain excursion with his significant other. in the course of the relationship he hasn’t been as good to her as he should have and he knows this. an accident on the mountain leaves them in a position where he chooses to sacrifice his life in order to save hers, and all he hopes is that in the end she’ll remember this last act of sacrifice rather than his harsh words. enjoy. or not.

p.s. – as with the last song, it was recorded entirely on my iPhone (which will most likely be the case with all of these songs) so i make no apologies for the quality.

steven heller – it’s hard to breathe at this altitude

steven's side project, words

a lot has happened since i posted last. we had a baby, so… there’s that… (there will be some separate posts on that, so i won’t go into too much detail here). yeah, it’s been eventful. one of the undertakings that i’ve recently… undertaken, is a 90 day goals group. there 15 or so of us that have all set personal goals in 5 different categories. physical, mental, financial, spiritual, and personal. we have a partner that we check in with twice a day and talk to about our progress. it’s been really rad and i’ve already seen some killer things come out of it in the 2 weeks that we’ve been doing it. my personal goal is to write one new song per week. i’m not that consistent with picking up my guitar an actually trying to write stuff, so i figure that this will force me into being creative. if they don’t suck too bad, i’ll post the songs here for your listening (dis)pleasure. i’ve finished 2 songs so far. the first one is posted below. word of warning: it was recorded on my iphone so the quality is about what you’d expect. well, to be fair, i think the sound quality is actually pretty good for a phone. i haven’t recorded the 2nd song yet as i want to properly record it with some real gear, so hopefully i’ll have that one up in a few days. anyway, here’s the song for week #1.

steven heller – café bleu

steven's side project, words