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My first blog giveaway winner is Kim McNaron!!! This is ironic seeing as I am photographing her son’s wedding tomorrow (can’t wait for Alan and Lauren’s big day!) so I am actually going to be able to give her this fun book tomorrow! I have never done a blog giveaway before and didn’t know how to randomly pick a winner except by cutting up pieces of paper and drawing a name from the scraps. I think there are really modern 21st century ways of doing this but that’s all I came up with and I picked Kim. Fun times:) But I do have to say Caroline Norris’ quote about no one ever dying from awkwardness really made me laugh. I think my next blog giveaway people will have to name their favorite book so I can get good ideas of what to read this summer. And since every post needs some pictures, here is a shot I just took of my friend Elisha’s little girl, Amelia. I love this for so many reasons and will have to share more pictures from this but her face and missing teeth are just priceless. Love love.

I stumbled upon this book at Hobby Lobby a few months ago and liked the cover of it. I do tend to judge actual books by their cover, and this book cover really appealed to me for good reason. The book has DIY wedding ideas, but the reason I like it so much (seeing as I’m married and not planning a wedding) is that it divides up the different decor into 6 styles. The writers of the book are the owners of Hello!Lucky (an awesome print shop) and wrote the book so that people could more easily pull together their “creative potential” to design their wedding (or home in my case). The book is divided into six style categories: retro homespun, girly romantic, happy graphic, organic minimal, modern classic, and found.  For each style the writers provide inspiration to give you ideas that fit into that overall aesthetic, resources such as free downloads for fonts and other printables, and online stores where awesome craft supplies can be bought to make the projects they give in the chapter. I love this. As you go through the book you definitely see which styles you resonate more with and I think I’m definitely a mixture of two of them. The reason this isn’t just for weddings is because it helps you define your overall style, aesthetic, feel that you like. I know when I first got married I didn’t know where to start in decorating my house. I would see other people’s homes that looked and felt put together and think I just needed to do exactly what they did. It has taken me awhile to figure out what actually is most appealing to me and how to make it a reality on a budget and living within reason. And another aspect to all this is being married and wanting to be sensitive to what husband likes (or thinks looks crazy on a wall or feels too girly!). So this part is a little funny, but I actually went out to coffee with husband and we sat down and looked through this book together (he is so good to me… he listened to me talk about it knowing it was a good step for our marriage:) But really it helped him understand why I always like to paint furniture blue, and why I make a mess at midnight making stuff for the walls that may or may not look great (that was a lot of ‘m’s- late night alliteration!). Anyway, this all may seem like very non-essential stuff (figuring out your style) and certainly it’s a sign of a pretty rich culture in a world where people don’t care about decor but about if they can feed their children the next day. That is all true. But it is helpful in determining how you want to arrange your home and make it a place that you love being in. I am such a space person- when trying to decide where I am going to edit pictures I have to arrange everything to make it a more inviting place.  I find that my home can be a place I love being when it’s arranged in a way that appeals to me and strangely that helps me be a better wife and mom. I know that sounds crazy and it is in no way an excuse to be a selfish mom (I can’t love these children unless I have the perfect furniture or art on my wall!!!- that would be NOT good) but I do find that decorating my home in line with the style I like can make it a more refreshing place to be. We’ve all been in places where we felt lighter or better because of the atmosphere, so it’s a neat project for me to try and create that kind of atmosphere for us in our home. Back to original thought about the book. This book has AWESOME ideas for unique wedding details and is so fun to look at. It has great resources and if you are a crafty person (getting married or not!) you would love this. I’ve never done a giveaway on my blog but I love it when other people do so I thought I’d give it a try. Just leave a comment on this post with one of your favorite quotes (I’m a quote junkie) and I’ll randomly pick someone to win this fun book! I’ll draw a name and post the winner a week from today, so leave me a great quote anytime before then!!!

This past weekend I got to visit my dear friend Carrie Jo Pinckard and shoot a wedding with her. Having a husband and 2 small children means that I have a lot of responsibility at home and usually I’m not spending the night with friends or even just hanging out that much, so to stay up late in CJ’s house to talk about nothing and everything was really so refreshing for me. One thing I like to do way too much is take photos on my iPhone, but I realized that I never do anything with them in terms of sharing or printing them. Which, side note, is the modern day dilemma with digital photography, i.e. that we all have millions of photos on computers that never make it to actual prints. At any rate, I decided I needed to blog about my trip and post some of the shots. I have a bunch of thoughts I could blog about but the one that keeps coming to mind is about oranges. After looking through the photos on my phone I realized how colorful the world is, how interesting people are, how many sights and sounds and tastes are constantly presented to us, many of which are beautiful. It’s one of those realizations that happens when you put a bunch of images together because you don’t necessarily see the beauty of things when looked at individually. I thought about Carrie Jo’s house that she lives in with 3 other friends, how much personality it has with meaningful artwork, salvaged furniture that looks better than what you could buy, notes written to each other in hopes of encouraging the other person as they brush their teeth. It occurred to me that life seems to be like an orange waiting to be squeezed to get all the juice out of it that you can..or really all the life out of it that you can. But it also seems like sometimes you’re the orange, and you feel like others are squeezing all the life out of you! Its a weird picture, but somehow I get this vision of either being the orange or seeing my world around me as the orange. On Sunday in Knoxville we walked around the downtown area, a market square type place. I got to spend time with Carrie Jo’s good friend and photographer assistant Jess and the three of us had fun walking around and having a good meal together. I had my iPhone out taking pictures of much randomness, but I did think about how it made us look for things to photograph. We noticed the lady in the Scottish outfit who might be doing a Braveheart re-enactment, the mom walking around with two little boys dressed up as superheros, or my favorite (as seen in the top row of pictures) the guy wearing the “no perfect people allowed” shirt (amen). I liked seeing how green the avocados were in the salad Jess ate and later on noticing how the light hit Carrie Jo’s dining room table at just the right angle to create an awesome glow in the room. I write all this now being back in Athens, back at home with my loving husband and 6 month old Andy and 4 year old Ethan. I am tempted to go back into the “I am the orange” mode instead of the “life is the orange” mindset. But its funny how actually today in the midst of difficulty I feel like God is showing me how to squeeze more out of everything around me. Jared came home today with some not so great news about how we owe about $2,000 more in taxes than we thought (ouch), and I was struggling not to just cave in and feel hopeless about finances. I went about my normal business of changing diapers and helping Ethan wash his toy cars and thought I was doing okay. I went to pick up our pizza for dinner (every Tuesday we have pizza night- a big smile night in our house!!!) and get milk at the grocery store with Andy. While at the grocery store I reached across someone’s cart to get some bananas, and the woman let me know that she thought I was pretty rude for doing that. So all the sudden I started to just rage in my heart (not on the outside- although I really wanted to) thinking, “do you know how hard today has been? do you always talk to people like this? we weren’t even bumping into each other or in the other person’s way!” I was pretty ticked and walked around Publix like I was going to report her to the kindness committee. But interestingly enough I picked up the pizza afterwards and the lady who worked there was incredibly kind. Then a man opened the door to help me out noticing I was carrying way too much in my hands. I thought about the lady at Publix who I had serious anger at in my heart, and then the really helpful and kind people that followed in my next few interactions. It made me think about squeezing life out of my day- seeing signs of God’s good grace towards me in random people and random experiences and not to be so myopic in rehearsing and replaying only the grumpy lady who thought I was a rude banana snatcher. If I saw myself as the orange, I wouldn’t be able to see the others around me trying to help me or make my day better by using words that bring life and encouragement. My children are helping me see life as an orange in the details of life that Ethan is starting to notice or the precious smile Andy gives me when I get him out of his crib. Certainly there are things like crazy tax bills and mean people everywhere and even everyday (many times in your home!), but that doesn’t mean those other things cease to exist. I just find that I miss so much of the beauty in life when I fixate only on what is not working out well or different than imagined. I know this is a great deal of words to describe my thoughts on iPhone pictures, but it really has served to open my eyes and squeeze more life out of the world around me. I love pictures because they can function as a tool to help you appreciate life and be more grateful to God. I’m all about having tools to do that.  I imagine in heaven that we somehow will finally see without clouded eyes and clouded minds the real beauty of everything created and ultimately of our creator.  C.S. Lewis wrote so much about how the beauty of our lives and this world are but shadows of ultimate beauty that is to come.  Whether we find the beauty in books, music or landscape, they are not the thing itself, they are only reminders of the thing for which we are longing. Lewis writes in his essay, The Weight of Glory:

These things – the beauty, the memory of our own past – are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.  On earth we have only the scent, the echo, the news…In heaven we will finally find that flower, we will recognize the tune immediately and we will not only visit the distant country but remain there for all of eternity.

And yes, I just used a block quote when blogging (although I didn’t cite it right).  My AP English teacher would be proud.  All this to say that the life around me is like an orange, but my ultimate orange is in heaven.  I just love C.S. Lewis and wish I could drink tea with him (or maybe just Starbucks lattes).  I think he had this amazing vision of heaven and God that was so colorful and rich, and could see traces of it in the world around him, even though he didn’t have an iPhone.  His writing to me is another tool of helping me see more clearly like pictures so often do.  I have to include just one more quote.  Lewis said, “Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.”  Yes.  Part of why I love to write it because it enriches my life and waters dry areas of my world.  So the marriage of well chosen images and words deepens my life and brings joy to the mundane.  That was a long post about iPhone photos, but I wrote it mostly for me so it was worth it.  Off to do laundry and maybe even enjoying it.  Oh, and one last picture of the friends who injected my world with more color this past weekend… that color being most appropriately (since it was Knoxville) orange.

okay- one last thing that is kinda crazy and ironic- i had this image of life as an orange not trying to be cheesy because Knoxville is the home of UT and ORANGE everywhere- but realized that after I had the image in my head.  Then I saw the picture (in the last row above) I had taken of the big “larger than life” size orange food booth where they sold fresh orange juice (and I think corn dogs, jess).  So my orange theme is showing up everywhere! just had to share

March 11, 2008 was the day I first met Ethan and Ethan first met the world.  He was born at Athens Regional Hospital 3 weeks before my due date and weighed 7 pounds, 6 ounces.  I never knew how much love I would have for this kid or the intensity of emotions that he would bring into my life.  And this past weekend we celebrated his 4th birthday by having a little bug party at Memorial Park.  He had told me months ago that he would like a bug party, and that he wanted to dress up as a spider.  This is how I know he is my child… he loves to dress up! So Ethan had in his mind that he would be a spider and other kids could come dressed up like bugs, too.  The bug party included spider oreos and a spider cake (that my mom made- she wondered whether it looked more like a crab and her thoughts were confirmed when Ethan said, “hey! that’s not a spider but a crab!”).  He did tell her that it smelled really good, though.  Each kid got a magnifying glass and got little bugs to mush around in a bag of bug juice (a project idea I got from pinterest).  The bug juice was just hair gel mixed with food coloring in a plastic bag.  We had a spider web the kids had to crawl through and some other little bug capsules that were supposed to grow when you put them in water but didn’t actually work because I didn’t realize the water needed to be hot.  One of my favorite parts of the party was when the kids all went exploring in the green field next to the pavilion.  They took their magnifying glass and went bug hunting, and then just ran around like wild animals.  It was so precious to see and such a beautiful picture of childhood.  Ethan had so much fun and wanted to know if we could have another party the next day.  When we got home that evening he took out all his presents and looked at them, and then walked over to me and hugged me.  He said quietly, “I love you, mommy.”  I could have melted.  I laid in my bed that night with a really peaceful feeling.  I’ve had this specific feeling at least 2 other times I can remember: after a wedding shower and a baby shower.  I remember feeling really loved and a strange sense that at that moment, all was right in my little world.  I’ve had a lot of not so great feelings as a mom, including feeling like I’m going crazy when Ethan hit me with a sword while I was peacefully eating my dinner or driving cars over my face at 7am while I’m dreaming of sleeping in.  But this was one of those days I’ll always remember as a time when I could tell that this little family of mine was building memories that we would all cherish.  I was really tired that night (actually that day by 3pm!!!), but it was the kind of tired of a day well spent, a good tired.  I have sloth tired days (you know, days where you never feel like you actually woke up even after 2-3 cups of coffee…) but this was a ‘use your energy for the joy of others’ tired kind of day.  I am so thankful that Ethan came into our world 4 years ago and am grateful for the opportunity to celebrate his life with costumes, sugar, and magnifying glasses.  I’m learning more and more how true it is that children are a blessing from the Lord.

Ethan’s newest cousin baby Charlie came to celebrate, too… we love this little guy!