Belated!

Stuff has been going down! Like Christmas, it was four days ago! Crazy!

Speaking of which I forgot to wish everyone a Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukkah/other holidays people are celebrating and a Happy New Year. But New Year's hasn't happened yet so I'm not late on that front.

What has everyone been thinking about lately? Resolutions or otherwise, I'm curious.

I have lots of options for my resolution. Can you have more than one? I'm pretty sure there's not a limit for resolutions... Anyway, we'll see which ones make the cut.

As for you guys, if there is anyone, let me know what you're thinking about, feeling, how was your Christmas? I'd love to hear from you!

Snow Days

It has been snowing like crazy around here...for like one day. But there's still at least a foot of snow on the ground. Lots of fun.

And then today I found these!




Oh Calvin! <3

Happy Snow Day!

Hmmm..

That's my thinking noise, pretty intelligent sounding I know.

So I've been wondering if I should start a Flickr account. At the moment I've just been uploading my pictures from my computer, but what if my computer gets depressed and kills itself? I'm pretty sure my pictures would be gone, unless it was nice enough to spit them onto an external hard drive before it offed itself.

I should get into the business of diagnosing computer depression, it's probably an untapped market.

Anyway, my dilemma is that when I post new pictures I have to post them in like 47 different spots, and by 47 I mean more like 3... Which is a lot for me! So Flickr would just be one more spot, but my computer might kick the bucket any day now...

I'll probably just do it.

What?

I know two posts in one day! Craziness! I'll try and stop blowing your mind later, but right now. I want to share this with you.

I was sitting here freezing, cursing the winter with it's cold white stuff that I've heard people call snow and severe lack of sunlight, stumbling (it's not always a bad thing) and found that.

And I have to say, after seeing that, I dislike winter a lot less. I could even say, when I can feel my toes, that I love it.

So Very, Very Jealous

Of all those lucky people who get to live in New York.



And of Ms. Peony who is planning a trip there as I type.

I can't complain to much because I did get to visit for a day the other weekend to see a show and it snowed. So I guess I'm pretty lucky in my own little way.

In love.

<3.

I was gonna post cool present ideas, but this is so much better. And it would be mean of me to make the presents you guys already bought feel inferior. Not very Christmas-like at all.

More beautifuls here.

I love, I love, I love

Martin.Engelbrecht.Love.Here.



His pictures make me all tingly.



Not quite sure how to navigate his site, but I found him and bunches of other photographers here.Love.



I know, I haven't been around alot, busy.... that's what I'm calling it, but most people know it as lazy. I'll have pictures up soon.

I'm getting ahead of myself, again

So we're definitely going to have a couch at our kitchen table.

Yea, I know pretty fantastic.

And maybe a pool in our bedroom...


Cause that's how we roll.

First picture is from Little Green Notebook, I've been drooling over that site all day today. The second is from the internets, if anyone knows exactly were it's from that would be great.

Oh Em Gee

Where has I been? Around. Taking pictures. Going to interviews. Meeting people. Hanging out. Lots of stuff. But that's besides the point cause I have pictures to show you! Lots of pictures. And I totally realize that this wedding blog, if you could even call it that, is evolving into a photo blog and I'm completely ok with that. It's really dumb for me to force myself to write and blog about stuff that isn't consuming my day. Will I still write about my wedding probably, but when there's more to say, but for right now, my days are consumed with pictures and I love that and want to share that with everyone.










Just some pictures of my sister and the water on an incredibly warm day in November.

Detour!

So I was gonna write about the random stuff we did this weekend, boring normal stuff like movies and the Renaissance Festival (I'll still show you pictures), but then I found this over at What Possessed Me. And suddenly all of my ideas were totally lame... who cares about the Renaissance Festival, no one! It's fall assholes!*

So funny! Go read it, laugh yourself into tears and then share it with someone else!

*You guys aren't really assholes. <3 You know that!

I like this!

The Photographic Dictionary, a collection of words, photos and what they mean. Very pretty. I would like to take some pictures for them.

Wednesday Love

I love when I empty the dryer it looks like it's throwing up into my laundry basket!

I love Mondays!

You know why? I bet you know why! You guys are totally sweet like that and are probably just as excited about Monday as I am! Yep! House!!!

In fact I think the only thing I dislike about Monday's is when House ends and I realize that I am in fact not House's assistant whose job it is to follow the plot around and quietly watch it as it unfolds, and therefore do not live in whatever amazing universe that contains House...

So I cry myself to sleep after it's over and manage my way through the week until next Monday comes around and it happens all over again!! Yay Monday!!!

So yea...

This is an awesome semi-late night post. But I have a good excuse! I've been watching this all day.

Music Painting by JUL & MAT from JUL & MAT on Vimeo.

For like the last four hours or something like that...


*I found it through Stumble, go figure.

Do you ever have one of those days?

Where you're just happy and you're not sure why.

Kinda like a gnome riding a turtle.


Maybe I'll get back to writing actual stuff soon. I'm just all "poop on writing, I'm gonna post happy pictures of things I like" right now! <3

This is How I Feel Today

Hazy, and dreamy.

It doesn't help that my head feels like it's full of fluff and my nose is drooling. Super attractive!

I'll try and have some stories for you tomorrow after I get all this fluff out of my head, hope everyone's weekend was wonderful.

~Again, I don't know where this picture came from, but it's not mine. I do know that.

Where has the time gone?

It's already Thursday and it still feels like Tuesday! Sorry for the lack of posts during the week, I've been job hunting, doing interviews, and finishing commissions fun stuff like that! But the week hasn't been all work.

Our dog Bella was being the cutest thing the other evening.


And whilst waiting for my interview at Anthropologie, I made this purchase!



The most amazing measuring spoons! I love them!



I'm going to make Butternut Squash ravioli tonight with them, very excited. Maybe I'll take pictures... cooking is always a mess with me, so who knows.

I also bought soap wrapped in wool and felt, so it's like a washcloth and soap! And it looks really pretty and smells even prettier. Unfortunately that's all I could get without deciding to buy the entire store.

So my week has not been as quiet as I've made it seem, there's been lots of conversation and cooking, decisions and driving, nothing wedding related except for the discovering of a cornucopia of terracotta pots for cheaps! woo! I promise to try and be around more! <3

So...yea, remember?

Remember, that wedding thing that I'm stumbling my way through planning? Yea, more of that happened this weekend, but in a very good way!! There was a lot of driving, and much adventuring to places unknown, and even more beautiful locations in which to have a wedding.

Saturday: Avalon Cliffs

Ok to be honest I fell in love with the name, which is mainly why I picked it to visit. But it ended up being really beautiful too!



It's also located on preserved habitat. And the man who showed us around was so nice and funny, it made me want to sign the contract before we were halfway through the tour, but that would have been reckless, so I resisted.


But our guest list which was already pushing the limits for this pretty wedding location, is now far and away what this place can hold.


So we waved good-bye to Mr. Awesome-spiffy-home-owner-man (I think that was his official title) and left, sad, but excited for tomorrow.

Sunday: Engedi Estates and Shade Trees and Evergreens

Our first stop was at the very tip top of Maryland so close to Pennsylvania you would think just by looking around we had already made it there. Our destination a place called Engedi Estates situated in the most amazingly remote farmland.



And this was by far my most favorite location! A big open field, lots of trees and river down an embankment, a beautiful blank canvas to work with. Our one concern is of course rain, if I can help it I don't want tents, but I also don't want our guests eating in the rain if it happens...



And just like Avalon, it's privately owned Mrs. Super-nice-incredibly-helpful-woman. Both of her daughters had gotten married on the property already, so she had more advice and general know-how than I knew what to do with.



Before long it was time to go, so we waved good-bye and drove a surprisingly short distance to our final stop of the weekend!

Shade Trees and Evergreens is a working nursery and landscaping company and I guess wedding location company as well. The woman we worked with was so great, she managed to keep up with my sporadic phones calls claiming we were going to be thirty minutes late and didn't bat an eye when we showed up fifteen minutes early.



This is the place that Hylinn decided he liked best, the best of both worlds a tent (which is actually and old green house roof) and it's outside.



And look at the pretty pond! This place is so pretty and it manages to be both indoors and out! It's also half of our budget... do we try and make it work or just let it go? Did I mention it comes with tables and chairs? So we've managed to go from no options to too many all in one day. Oh woe is us! Though who can turn down a view like this from your dance floor?



Although you'd be focusing more on the pond than that white support beam, not that the support beam isn't beautiful! Or that carrot shaped tree right behind it! I like them both.

I got something pretty.

I was gonna post about this yesterday when it came in the mail, but I was too busy playing with it all day.

I know! Isn't it pretty? Needless to say I am very excited about my first big girl camera. I spent all yesterday fiddling, turning knobs and pressing buttons, it was fantastic! And normally all that knob turning and button pressing would have resulted in some pretty pictures for me to share with you, except the SD card I ordered wasn't with it... -sad face- But the great Hylinn had a spare one in his car for me to use until the other one gets here, so I did get some pretty nighttime shots.



Though I did realize halfway through that I'm really going to need a tripod.


But I think they turned out pretty well for my first pictures with my fancy new camera.


*Not sure if blogger compresses the photos it gets, so you might be able to click on them and see a bigger view, cause these were really big on my computer.

{Edit}- The SD card that didn't come with the package yesterday, showed at my door 10 minutes after I posted this. Newegg has such great customer service.

If I was a boy...

...I would be this cool.

I also added another wonderful blog to my little list over there -->
A New Simple Something, found through What Possessed Me!

And Happy first day of Octember!!! or October whichever.

*picture above from Karen Kurycki, you can follow the link to her portfolio at the bottom of her page.

I cheated!

I did, I know! I'm awful, but I'm addicted, I can't help it! I tried really really hard, I promise I did, but they called me back! And I listened!

I hate you blogs.

No that's a lie, I love blogs...in a very unhealthy way. Ever since my self imposed blog hiatus (what a stupid idea), I've been sneaking glances at them, not really reading, just looking. Looking at all the pretty pictures, it doesn't count if I just look right? So phooey to my blog hiatus! It was a dumb idea anyway.

Oh and I added all the blogs that I really like on the side of my page, more for me to keep up with them (it's nice having all the links in one place), but also for you.

Corn mazes and cupcakes

Corn mazes are amazing, I took some pictures, but they're on film so it'll be awhile.

No cupcake pictures either. I didn't even bother trying to take any. I don't know how others take pictures of the process of making food and they come out so beautifully. It makes cooking look...relaxing. Not to saw that cupcake making was a fiasco, just about everything came out great or at least it tasted delicious. But it was not pretty before, during or after, maybe before, but only maybe. It was only a test run though so hopefully, they'll come out better the day before the wedding. Though, the whole experience has made me rethink making our own cupcakes. We'll have a lot more people helping, but I'm not sure it'll make it less stressful. Has anyone made they're own cupcakes for they're wedding? Did you plan to but had an f* it moment at the end? We'll look into it, how about that for middle of the road!

Either way cupcakes are delicious!

Pictures

So I got a film camera awhile ago, which was pretty exciting simply because I've never used one before. I mean I had heard about them, but only thought they were a myth... and it was definitely an experience using one. And since I've never even seen a dark room in real life, much less know how to use one, I had to send them away to get processed, then wait and wait. And then they came! The negatives, I mean, which was really cool to look at, and for some weird reason six frames were blank... -sad face- But a bunch turned out really cool, I won't say great cause I'm not really sure what the standard is.

Here are a couple:


Just a few, I don't want to damage your eyes in case they're that bad. I like them though.

Blog Hiatus...

No, I won't be taking a hiatus from this blog, I don't think I could abandon my tiny little blog. I am taking a hiatus from reading others blogs...which kills me. I love others blogs they're so fantastic.clever.inspiring, but that's exactly why I need to take a break from reading them. I spend all of my time reading their blogs, looking at their beautiful pictures, pouring over their clever ideas and end up feeling uninspired and frankly pretty lame in comparison. So I'll be concentrating on this little blog, posting more regularly hopefully, building my creative portfolio and planning a wedding. And sooner rather than later I'll be back to reading all the blogs I love feeling completely inspired.

Ohh! Dresses!

Yep, I went wedding dress "scoping out" this weekend and it was lots of fun. My sister and a couple friends came along for the ride.snuck pictures(cause your not allowed to take pictures unless you're buying).commented.and made the experience incredibly enjoyable. I don't plan on buying a dress anytime soon simply because it'll take all I have to dance around the house in it everyday singing "pretty dress, pretty dress."

It's what happens when I get new clothes...

I do have to say it's nice to have the assistant person there to pin the dresses for you so they know how they're really going to look, but I don't really enjoy the hovering they do. It's nerve racking enough being in a place that's so foreign(I'm not much for dressing up), and then there's additional pressure of their presence. It's like a big elephant in the room that compels you to say nice things about the dresses.

All the dresses were gorgeous of course, not necessarily on me, but still gorgeous. I'll definitely be doing some more scoping in the future, but for now I know what I like and that more than I thought I'd ever figure out.

Wallflower

I'm a generally shy person, both on and off the internets, but in person people can see my like.love.dislike of something. When I'm sitting at my computer, hundreds or thousands, or maybe only a few miles from the person whose work or life I'm enjoying they don't know. I stumble upon some beautiful art or an amazing blog and I sit.stare.smile.giggle.cry.or otherwise express my emotion to my computer screen, but it never gets translated any farther than that. Some part of me feels that it would be pointless to leave a comment or send an email because they've already heard it. The 37 other comments have expressed what I wanted to say, many time more eloquently than I could ever put it, so I leave my thoughts unsaid. That ends today! I'm making it a point to express myself more so bear with if my comments and thoughts seem repetitive or bland, I'm only just getting my footing.

Again, this picture has come from the seemingly endless folder that is pictures I've found on the internet and I don't know where I got it.

Going nowhere

So since wedding planning is going nowhere and nowhere is boring to talk about, I figured I'd post some pretty un-wedding related stuff.


Amazing photos from Cole Rise, I stumbled upon him the other day. I have a love/hate relationship with StumbleUpon... If you know what it is I feel for you, if not relish in that fact!

Conclusions

Woooah, new font!! I know, pretty exciting! Yea...anyway, I sat down last night after my post, to sort myself out. I get all mushed up and confused very frequently, so this is nothing new. I've realized that I'm not so much stressed (because honestly it's hard to be stressed this far out), my brain needs something wedding related to do. We've worked out most of the little stuff already, but now we're in this holding pattern of trying to find an actual place to put all the stuff we've figured out. My brain is finding things for me to think about and stress over, talk about a traitor..

Hmmmpf

So I'm having a dilemma, one that is leading to mini panic attacks now and then. And it's about favors...I know! I know! Favors, a minor detail one that many people just omit anyway, so why am I freaking out over it. I'll start from the beginning.

From the outset of the wedding planning thing that we're doing Hylinn and I wanted to make it green. Being conscious of our impact on the environment is something that's super important to both of us, so we wanted to make that a major deciding factor in all of our decisions. So being me I started with the details, naturally. Centerpieces to be more specific, I knew I wanted flowers, and I figured I could satisfy my flowery self and my green self all in one go by having potted flowers. I even found this awesome post at The Bride's Café. Woo! It was all coming together...until I had this conversation with myself:

Self: Potted plants=nifty idea
Other self: So true
Self: I can't wait to pick them out, I wonder how many we'll need?
Other self: Oh man, we're gonna have a lot of potted plants...
Self: Yea...I don't know if I can care for that many living things at once.
Other self: If only we could give them..to...FAVORS!
Self: FAVORS!
Other self: Potted plants as centerpieces and as favors=super nifty!

Ok so here's my thing about favors...I like them, and I love them and I hate them. How's that for confusing! My detail loving mind likes them, it likes to stick things in adorably small boxes the color of the ocean and wrap them with ribbons and sequins the color of sea foam and then give them to people. My normal mind {we'll call it that for now} loves the idea of giving all of our guests, family and friends a small -meaningful- token of our wedding. My experienced mind hates them. I've only been a part of one wedding so far, my best friends'. It was very small and very inexpensive, but one thing they did have was favors, because she felt she was required to give favors, which I don't like the idea of.

Anyway here was an idea that I liked and loved, but then my reasoning mind had to butt in a mess everything up. What about all the people who flew in? You can't take plants on an airplane, can you? So what, they can't take the plants home. But what if people want a favor? What if some people really like the plants and want to take them home, but can't? -sad face- So now I'm stuck. I really love this idea, but I don't want to disappoint people by providing favors, but not allowing everyone to get one. Ack!

First!

Woo! Pepper and I went to visit our first venue option! It was surprisingly exciting, I figured the full impact of what we were doing wouldn't hit me until sometime later, then I was nervous that I wouldn't be able to picture it and therefore wouldn't like it. I think I just psyched myself out. Anyway the place was adorable, it's a vineyard in northern Virginia, nothing too big. We really don't know anything about wine so it was slightly awkward when Hylinn did the wine tasting.

Rose: Here's our {insert wine here}.

I sniff it: It smells like wine.

Hylinn: Mmm, it's good.

Repeat.

But I really like the way vineyards look so hopefully my knowledge of wines will increase after May and we'll be able to go back and I can taste them too!

Speaking of...

I can't tell you enough how much I love love love this idea from Peonies and Polaroids. It makes me all shivery just looking at it, it's so intimate. I want to do this for our wedding.

I have to say it's the small things like this, the things most people would probably never notice that get me. In fact I saw some of her gorgeous wedding pictures and never noticed her ring bracelet until I read her post about it... Nevertheless, I think it's those things that really make the wedding feel real to me. Not to say that the details are the most important thing (they aren't) or that you should spend all your time obsessing about the details (you shouldn't, that's something I need to remember to do), but that picking a few that matter to you and put your heart into them.

That's something I've been stressing over for the last couple weeks. I have this obsession with sewing things all of the sudden... I've never sewn in my life. So maybe I need to step back and re-evaluate exactly what projects I want to put my heart into and which we want to leave to the wedding elves!


This though is definitely something I want to do!!

And I can't remember where I found the above picture, though I'm 90% percent certain it's from either A Practical Wedding or Peonies and Polaroids, though I could be wrong so just let me know!

Updates from the Wedding Front

So we still haven't picked a wedding venue, but I'm not feeling the pressure...yet. All I really want is a field, but I of little connections know no one with one, so that is that for now. Speaking of venues I've seen so many beautiful, inexpensive places being featured on all these great blogs, which has led me to discover that I'm living in the wrong bay area! I'm on the east coast bay area(the Baltimore/Annapolis bay area in case there's more than one), not the west coast where I feel all the cool stuff is! Not that there aren't cool things here, there are, I'm just missing them I guess.

There's other details we've picked out and decided on, ones that I'm definitely more excited about working on, but those will have to wait until the big stuff has been sorted out. So I'm stuck being all excited about our wedding, but having nowhere to go.

Oh and I just realized that my first post has a different font size which surprised me. Maybe I'll keep doing that.

A Practical Wedding

One of the first blogs I found at the beginning of my wedding planning search (which feels as if it started like three days ago) was A Practical Wedding. Meg has some super human ability to sense when people are feeling bad about planning a wedding on a budget and writes some amazing, inspiring post on why we shouldn't... at least it feels that way to me. So if for some unknown reason you've found my blog before hers go read it.
When I stumbled upon her blog she was at the tail end of her wedding planning and preparing for the big day, so I decided to go back and see where she started. Reading through her archives, I'm not finished yet, is really exciting and I love the the idea of having an archive all your thoughts and feelings through one of those big milestones in your life. And that is the reason I started this blog, partially to discuss wedding minutia with what seems like a incredibly supportive group of people, but mainly something I can look back on after the wedding is over. Even years after we've been married, heck I could even show my blog to my kids... that sounds weird. Anyway thank you Meg for inspiring me to write and to create an outlet for myself.

I love this!

I just want to say how much I love this inspiration board, from Snippet and Ink, my latest wedding addiction. I just want to mush it up into a ball and rub it all over my wedding... if you could do that.

I love the idea of different color pearls, long strands and short strands and slate colored and cream sooo pretty!

I could stare at this all day...

I have a problem...

So I've only just begun to plan my wedding which is years (quite literally) away, and I already can't sleep... I just lay in bed fantasizing about all the little details, colors, ribbon... random stuff like that. I'm starting to scare myself. I'm afraid I'll just get to the point where I'm up all night, pasting and sewing save-the-dates, invitations, centerpieces, and whatever else I can get my little hands on. I haven't even picked out a place to have our wedding and I can't wait to send out our invitations, I have a problem. Please, please tell me it gets better.

First and foremost!

Welcome to my very first devastatingly public foray, my first blog post on my first blog: exciting!! I have to say it's weird writing to no one (or at least at the time of this writing it is no one), but hopefully that will come to change. This will be a place for me to share my experiences in planning my wedding, in photography, in a lot of things I probably couldn't even begin to list here now and maybe some insight, which I will hopefully gain along the way.