the photography logo!

i absolutely LOVE it!!!! i can't wait to put it on everything!!!

my craving at the moment.

i miss this city. so much. i can't wait to take lauryn there over the christmas season. i know she'll love it just as much as i do.

spring loves at anthropologie

i fell in love with these fun things at anthropolgie. and the bedding, well it just might find it's way into lauryns room. i love spring. i love anthropologie. :)

hootie!

as you know, my love affair with owls has turned into an obsession. i found these cute little guys on etsy. they were a bronze color, but i felt they were too cute to not be painted a happier color...so, here they are in their fancy new hues. just as cute as can be!

our visit to the truman library

my friend kelly and i took the kids to the truman presidential library yesterday near kansas city, missouri. we weren't able to get very many pictures inside the library, because no flash photography is allowed, and the museum is soooo dark. but, we had a great time. the kids didn't learn as much as i had hoped, due to the fact that this library wasn't as "child-friendly" as some of the others, but the kids still had a good time, and i was able to find a book for kids on truman that was filled with facts, so at least they'll learn more about him at home, and will be able to relate better him, than if they hadn't been to the library and seen pictures, belongings and such. the kids didn't mind the non-kid-friendly atmosphere much though. they were so happy to be together and play around. all in all, it was a fun, semi-educational day (although kelly and i learned alot). ;)
kelly and me


me & my two monkeys



haylee & lauryn




our brew...





one of my favorite quotes from the library

the view from where i live...

for those of you who know just how far we're living outside of town, and feel so sorry for us that we have to make the long drive in, i thought i'd show you what we get to see every night and every morning...it should help you see that living in nowhereville isn't as bad as it seems. this is our lake. i love it here.

okay, so i'm salivating over this...

see the pink poufs??? yeah, i'm gonna have to get me one of 'em. they're so pretty. and...pink. my husband will no doubt look at it, stare, if you will, get a questionable look on his face and ask "what is that, and why do we need it?" but i already have an answer. "it's a pink pouf (i really like saying that), and every girl *needs* a pink pouf in her craft room." to which he'll roll his eyes, shake his head and say "alright, whatever. girls are weird." ha! he knows to pick his battles. ;) but it IS super cute, isn't it?!

lovely pictures on a dreary day...

ohmygosh. i so want these. i would wear them all the time.

her pictures just make me happy.

and this, well, this is my newest endeavor...i can't wait!

my list of to-do's for today!

*order myself one of the above...it'll make my coffee even sweeter!http://polkadotrobot.com/

*shoot some of my favorite things...with my camera of course!

*finish the first painting of my "posh jet setter" series

*finish my embroidery project

*watch all of season 3 of the gilmore girls

*help lauryn use her sewing machine to make her hankie...

*bake brownies

*drink some pomegranite sweet tea

*play around on listography.com...just got my book and i'm super excited!

*start my home color inspiration book

i think that's enough to keep me busy...have a super sweet saturday!

eye candy.

i have nothing to say on this post. only that i love this picture, and i wanted to share. total eye candy. love it. toodles!

dirty clothes never looked so sweet!

these made me want to go to the laundromat. i love these cute little hamper bags, so much so, that i'm getting one for lauryns room, so her dirty laundry can sit out and look super cute! love these!!! oh, and if you want one for yourself, go here: indiarose.com

double take...

while perusing around one of my favorite blogs, i came across this picture. now, i have no idea who this is, or where the picture was taken, but what i found so fascinating about it was it is an almost spitting image of one of my closest and dearest friends, buffy. even the *feel* of the picture is so her. she's one of those people, flowy, effortless, warm, with a *hint* of grassy girl to her. the outfit is one i would expect to see her in, and the shop is one you would find her shopping in...now, maybe it's the liberal dose of nyquil that i took last night, but i think i'm pretty much dead on with this one. either way, this is how i see buffy.

cold hands no more!

i've always dealt with my freezing hands. but this year, it's really been getting to me. they are always cold, even when the house is a cozy 70 degrees. i'll put gloves on, but then have to stop whatever craft i'm doing at the time. i've been looking for fingerless gloves all autumn/winter season without any luck. the closest i came to finding a pair was at the gap. they were bright orange, (but at that point they could have been a terribly nasty colored puce and i would've bought them) but the store clerk and i could only find one half of the pair...and so my search continued.

well, today, i found them!!! i love them!!! i BOUGHT them!!! and they're going to be mine... all mine! my hands are sooo excited at the thought that they can be warm AND creatively productive at the same time!

my most recent purchase for the new house!

i've finally started buying some of the most gorgeous artwork! i've had my eyes on these for a couple years now, but never bought any because our new house wasn't built. now that the house is in the near future, i decided to go ahead and buy a few at a time, so that when we move in, i'll have a start to my collection. my plan is to do a wall collage of these porcelelian pillows. they are just amazing and make for a very dramatic wall. the colors are calming, but a group of them is amazing!

the past few days...

so the past few days have been crazy busy, but super duper fun! here's some pictures of the two shoots i've done the past few days. robert and jodi's engagement session went really well. they are so funny and comfortable in front of the camera, which made it quite easy to get a ginormous amount of great pictures! josiah is the cutie patootie 10 month old below. he's a HAM~ i love his expressions.
this weekend i'm traveling an hour or so for another engagement shoot. this time with shane and april, an adorably fun couple. i'm excited to see what we come up with!
toodles!
p.s. don't mind the temporary header...it's under construction...:)

flat charlie & flat sally

another one of our school projects is something called "flat charlie" and "flat sally". it's based of the book "flat stanley" and it's about a boy who is flattened while he sleeps, and because he's no wider than a piece of paper, his parents slip him in an envelope and send him out to california to visit. he's also able to catch an art thief by hanging like a picture in a museum.

sooo, the kids made their own versions of "flat stanley" and they are being shipped off as i type to california to visit our family there. once they get there, they will have their pictures taken with various members of our family at different locations in so. cal. (the beach, disneyland, etc). after they get back from the trip to cali, they'll be on their way to n. carolina to visit my brother and his family. once again, pictures will be taken, and they will be sent back to us, so that we can log on the map where all they've been, put pictures in the albums we've made for them, and send them off to south dakota. from there it's new york, oregon, washington, australlia, etc. everywhere we have friends and family, they will be sent, and we'll chart their travels on the map and chronicle the trips with the pictures taken. the kids are so excited, and it's a great geography lesson in the process. above are some pics of the "flats" before their first trip...

warm fuzzy fortunes...

okay, so one of our school projects was to make warm fuzzy fortunes and randomly hide them around town for strangers to find. the "fortunes" were simple. the kids colored pictures on one side, then wrote little messages on the inside like "you are beautiful" or "God loves you" or "you are lovely" we hid them at shopping centers and stores around town. so fun, and the kids had a blast! as we were leaving one of the shopping centers, lauryn spotted a woman who had found one of her fortunes. the girl was very pregnant, and we were close enough to see that she had picked up one that said "you are prettier than a rainbow". the smile that spread across the girls face was priceless. she gave it to her co-worker, who read it and then passed it around the salon where they worked. we got to see their faces as they read it, and then gave it back to the girl that found it. she took it and left in her car. seeing the smile on her face, and hearing her tell her coworkers how it made her day to find the fortune, made lauryns day.

the kids got so into it, and wanted to make it an everyday thing. i hated to squash that idea, but we agreed that every few months or so, we'd distribute them. he's some pics from that day...

i've missed you.

wow. seems like an eternity since i've done this. living without internet has been one of the hardest things i've ever had to do. and just in case your blissfully unaware as to whats been going on with us, i'll give you the readers digest version of the past 4 months. j and i decide to put the house on the market, thinking that it won't sell for quite a while, and that we'll be almost done building the house before we meet the new owners. well, two days after we listed it, it was under contract. and we had to be out...in less than two weeks.

needless to say, the new house wasn't near finished...or started. we didn't want to rent a house and waste money, so we decided to move down to the lake house until the shop/barn was completed on the land. then we would move into that while we built the actual house. our plan had us at the lake house (which mind you is a hour away from town and an hour and a half away from church) for no more than 2 1/2 months. we are now into our 4th month, and look to be here another 2 months or so. between the weather, scheduling troubles and such, it's taken longer than expected. at first i thought i would just deal with the fact that we didn't have internet, and i was sure that i would find somewhere close to here that had a wi-fi i could use. i was wrong. so after a month of sitting in a parking lot at the local motel, i started calling different internet companies, none of which were capable of getting us internet access in the middle of nowhere. so, back to the hotel i went.

FINALLY. we found a company that could do it, and not charge us an arm and a leg. to make a long story even longer, i am now online and AT HOME!!!! what a concept! now that i'm home, and online, life at the lake isn't as bad as it was in the beginning.

sooo, here we go~ catching up on all that i've missed out blogging on these past few months.