pretty ladies

While in Austin I took a lot of outfit photos for other gals, and they helped me with a few of my own as well.  It's so much easier to do one another's outfit photos, especially since we all know each other and how we like our photos to look.  Plus, no one feels bad for asking for a detail shot, or a few of the shoes, or maybe a couple more just a little further away, or let's try a different background.  I always love being solely behind the camera, so it was fun to shoot other girls' outfit photos instead of just my own.  I grabbed shots of Julie, Moorea, Chelsea, and Tieka over the course of the weekend and here are a few of my favorites from the outfits photos I shot for them!


 


 

 

bottom photo taken by Tieka

this guy

On Sunday I was walking home from watching Ten Tiny Dances and ran across this handsome dude and the cutest bebe corg going for a stroll.  As I was driving home from Gresham I realized that it was two years ago last Thursday that he proposed to me.  I had just finished working as a high school mentor at summer camp, and he came up so we could do a sunrise photoshoot down on the beach.  We had very few photos of us together, since I was usually the one behind the camera.  I hadn't gotten to hang out with him much all summer, except for a bit on the weekends in between camp sessions.  I secretly hoped he would propose.  He had asked about what gemstones I liked, and we had talked about marriage, so it certainly wasn't completely out of the blue.  I think the proposal was perhaps even more special to me than our wedding.  It was just him and I, watching the sun rise, and making a promise to one another to commit our lives to each other.  It was intimate in a way our wedding simply couldn't be.  It was special to be able to share our wedding with all our friends and family, but that August morning on the beach when we chose one another to go through life with remains one of my most precious moments.



When I met this red headed 18 year old boy back in 2005, something was different.  It wasn't like meeting other people.  I wouldn't fall in love with him until later in our freshman year, but I still remember meeting him on a meet-new-people binge with a friend.  He was sitting on his bed with a bunch of other people in the room, playing his purple acoustic guitar.  I finished a diary entry in my Xanga in February of 2006, "We'll just have to see how God plays this all out."  If current me traveled back in time to 2006 me and told her how things actually played out, she'd probably kick me in the vagina, claim I was playing a cruel joke on her, and shove me back into 2013, because honestly I couldn't have even wished for anything better than this.  I would never have dared to dream that this man could love me as wholly and romantically and hilariously and deeply as he does.  It's easy to fall into the doldrums of every day life and forget how incredible it is to be loved so wholly.  I'm so grateful for the life we're building together, and to have such a steadfast partner to build beside.

here + there

Yesterday Dusty and I took an impromptu road trip to Gresham to visit my dad, brothers, and family friends.  My brothers were coming back from Alaska to head back to college, and my dad was helping them move in to their new places, and since none of them had met Dusty yet, they begged me to come down and bring her.  It was great getting to see everyone, if only briefly.  Dusty met our family friends' Jack Russell and Italian Greyhound and had entirely too much fun prodding them until they acquiesced into playing with her.  She's a wonderful car dog, which is nice to know.  Dan and I would really love to go on some camping trips with her, so I'm happy she gets along well in the car.  
Last week I got to do a fun photo shoot with Moorea for her collaboration with Madewell, which was really awesome.  I love getting to be behind the lens, instead of being behind and in front simultaneously.  It's nice to have more control over the images I create.  Plus, it's just great to get to work with someone awesome like Moorea.  Head over to her blog to check out all her outfit posts in collaboration with Madewell!

I won a ticket to MLK Ballet's Ten Tiny Dances, so on Sunday I walked up to Jazzbones and got to see some incredible dance performances!  I had remembered hearing about Ten Tiny Dances last year, but wasn't able to attend.  I danced a bit in college and I love it.  I'd like to get back into dance somehow, even though I'm not technically trained or anything.  Something about dance is just so genuine and authentic, I love moving my body and experiencing life through movement and rhythm.
There were so many talented performers, some breathtakingly gorgeous, some hilarious, some emotional, some fun.  It was a great night and I'm glad I brought my camera.  I wasn't planning on taking photos, but once the show started I couldn't not take photos.

Gratuitous pictures of Dusty, because obviously.  Also, this photo, which cracks me up:

chard feta + roasted beet salad

We've been getting beets and chard in our CSA regularly.  Usually I just sauté the chard or put it in a quiche, but I was interested in trying it raw in a salad.  At first I used just chard, but I prefer the chard mixed with some other greens like arugula, spinach, and romaine.  Roasted beets have been one of my new favorite things.  I've had beets that were pickled and beets that have been marinated, and I think the roasted ones are my favorite way I've had them prepared so far.   Now that we've been getting our CSA for a few months I'm going to be doing a post about that more in depth, but I just had to say how wonderful it is meeting face to face with the people who grow your food.  It's something I never experienced before.  We do have local farms in the Matanuska Valley up in Alaska, though the growing season is shorter due to the harsh winters, but my family always just shopped at grocery stores.  I didn't know what it meant to eat seasonally (when I started hearing about how everyone was excited for spring because it was Asparagus season, I was so confused!).  Almost all of the produce in Alaska is imported from down south, especially in the winter, so the concept of a certain food having a harvest season never entered my mind.  Other than the obvious exception of like, say, pumpkins for fall.  We always ate wild Alaskan fish, and I understood the concept that fish had seasons, especially after commercial fishing for a couple summers, but for some reason the connection to seasonal plants wasn't made.  My family had a little garden for a couple summers that I remember quite enjoying, but it wasn't a lifestyle we had.  Now that we've been getting a CSA and growing our own food in our little garden, it's a new and interesting idea to eat seasonally!



Ingredients   Chard (plus other mixed greens such as Arugula and Romaine lettuce if you prefer) Feta cheese 2 small/med roasted beets (for two servings, add more if you are making a family sized amount) Sliced almonds 1/2 tomato, diced
Instructions
1. Prepare the beets by wrapping them in foil with a bit of canola or olive oil and roasting in a 350º oven for appx 1 hour, or until a fork easily slides into the beets. Once cooked, cool completely in the fridge.

2. While your beet is preparing you can get all your other fixin's ready.  Chop the greens, dice the tomatoes and I think that this salad would also taste great with a red onion diced, and some radishes, either sliced raw, or roasted like the beets.  
3.  Once your beet is cooled, peel it and chop it up. Now you can mix everything together and enjoy!  I drizzled some raspberry vinaigrette on top and paired it with a nice Sofia Rosé wine, mostly because I loved the color pairing of the beets and the Rosé color, but they actually went nicely together taste-wise as well!

industrial

On Friday Moorea drove down from Seattle to do a little photo shoot for a collaboration with Madewell Denim, so we went downtown to some of my favorite industrial Tacoma spots to take photos.  She offered to snap a few photos of my outfit while we were shooting and I happily agreed.  It's always fun to have a human being behind the camera for a change.  I absolutely love shooting in the downtown Tacoma industrial areas.  Downtown isn't too far away from where I live, but for some reason I just don't get down there very frequently.   One of the wardrobe items I've been on the lookout for, for over a year, is high waisted black jeans.  I have two pairs of my regular highwaisted blue jeans, but I love black denim even more.  I tried a pair about a year ago, but they didn't fit and I returned them, so when I saw these ones I was excited to give them a shot.  Well, they fit perfectly and I'm tempted to get a second pair of these ones as well.  This fall/winter I'm pretty sure they're gonna be on my body at least 75% of the time.  


 

top/courtesy of wolf mama vintage :: lace jacket (similar)/courtesy of lulu's jeans/courtesy of modcloth :: necklace/courtesy of one ten zero seven  shoes (similar)/payless :: bag/courtesy of hearts :: photos taken by moorea

I haven't worn this lace jacket in over a year, and was about to add it to my shop, but I had a moment where I felt like I wasn't quite ready to let it go.  I figured if I wasn't going to let it go, then I'd better start wearing it.  So far I've worn it twice since then, so I'm glad to give it some wear!  I love rediscovering things in my own closet.  I'm a pretty big pack rat, but I've been trying my best to not hold on to things that I haven't worn in a long time.  Some things, though, I just can't bear to give up.  I'm getting better at figuring out which things I probably won't want to wear again, and which things are just having a "down-time" and I'll get excited about again later.