Maternity Style // Week 26

Welp, as of today, I'm 30 weeks pregnant.  Only 10 more weeks to go, and I'm almost caught up on posting these maternity outfits!  It's crazy to think I only have 10 more outfits left!  I might end up photographing more than one per week as the end approaches, just because it's almost a bummer only having 10 more bump outfits to rock!  Of course, in my final weeks we'll be in the throes of winter up here, so maybe I'll rethink that idea when it's below freezing and snowing outside...

Cardigan : c/o Modcloth | Top : c/o Asianicandy | Dress (similar) : Thrifted (Wet Seal)
Glasses : c/o Bonlook | Boots : c/o Minnetonka | Necklace : Free People
Photos by Dan

3 simple ways to invest in your creative self

Investing in your own creative self can be hard to focus on, especially if you're also running your own business, wrangling kids, working full time, or just getting through life in general.  Doing anything that fosters your own creative life can feel like a luxury that you just can't afford, but there are some simple little things that can help infuse that creativity into your life and help grow that aspect of yourself.  A lot of us spend too much time looking at other creative people and thinking about how green the grass of their creative lives looks, wishing ours was as lush, while we neglect watering our own creative grass.  It can feel daunting to even start watering when we look at the crunchy, ugly, brown grass we're sporting, so here are three easy, simple ways to begin caring for your creativity.

1. Journal every day

This one can be hard to stick to, but I find that it's much easier if I get into a routine with it.  I find that I like to end my day with a journal sesh, so I can decompress and hash through everything that happened that day, but I also know that starting your day with writing a few pages in your journal can be great too.  Having a blank slate mentally, without all the crap from your day cluttering your mind, can be really good for getting into your true thoughts.  I used to be a crazy good at journaling in high school and college, I have notebooks full of entries for years, but once I started blogging I pretty much stopped altogether.  I've been trying to instill this habit again because, honestly, blogging publicly is no replacement for having a personal, private journal where you can be 110% uncensored and really just get it all out there.  It's therapeutic and, even if you don't express yourself creatively through writing, journaling can really help a creative mind feel more fresh and inspired.  Maybe it's the process of just getting all the stuff out that's clogging our brains creatively.  Clearing the headspace and making room for creative thoughts to flourish.

If you have a hard time with figuring out what to write, or blank out when your pencil hits the page, having some prompts can really help get your brain flowing.  Googling "journal prompts" is a great way to find, literally, thousands of prompts to give you direction, and you can even search for more specific directions like, "journal prompts on creativity."  Sometimes it just takes a while for your brain to be able to open the floodgates, so you have to prime it a little bit and get the juices flowing.

2. Find your play

Creativity is inherently playful.  When you think about kids, they're SO creative, and SO good at playing.  They don't care about what something is supposed to look like or supposed to be.  There is no right or wrong way to play.  As adults we've un-learned this and become really good at feeling like we're doing things wrong.  A lot of us have to re-train our brains to be able to even accept playing, especially playing with no goal or purpose, as something acceptable to do.  I am incredibly guilty of this.  I feel like everything I do has to have a goal or serve a purpose and if it doesn't, then I'm wasting time that should be spent working one something.  It's hard to convince my brain to release that and to just do something purely for play.  But play and creativity are intertwined and squelching one can only squelch the other, so investing in things that are purely play for you will infuse your creative self with new life

3. Commit to actually making

With stuff like pinterest and instagram and infinite scrolling, it's easy to do a lot of "becoming inspired" and consuming of inspiring ideas... but never actually doing anything.  We want to do stuff because we're so damn inspired all the time, but it's easier to scroll through pinterest one more time than actually get off our butts and actually make.  Being inspired can certainly be great for creativity, but when the ratio of getting inspired time versus actually making stuff tilts so heavily in the direction of getting inspired, you don't actually do anything with all that inspiration.  I fall into this trap all the time, because being inspired kind of feels like making.  But nothing can take the place of actually making stuff when it comes to cultivating your creativity.  And while getting inspired by others' work can be nice, there's nothing that can replace making your own work for growing as an artist and honing your own personal style, regardless of what kind of medium you prefer working in!

Maternity Style // Week 25

Oof, you guys.  The day after shooting a wedding I feel like laying around and doing absolutely nothing.  Like, someone just come make me food and give me foot massages and complete my to-do list, K?  Luckily I only have two more weddings to shoot this year before I'm on "maternity leave."  Thankfully things worked out so my due date was smack dab in the middle of the off-season for weddings!  I'm going to be taking on lots more portrait and boudoir sessions this next year, just because it'll be nice to have shorter sessions than a full wedding day, which can be 12+ hours.  I've also been really drawn towards the more intimate day-to-day moments that can be captured with lifestyle portrait sessions, so it's cool that my creative leanings are lending themselves towards those kinds of sessions too.

My outfit photo sessions have been doubling as re-acquainting myself with local photo locations! It's fun going back to old spots that I used to shoot at and finding new spots that are awesome where I could take clients!  This spot is actually just in my front yard, and I used to take outfit photos here way back in the day, but further into the woods.  Since I've been away, though, there was a house built on the vacant lot that was there, so no more traipsing through the woods next door for me any more!

Dress : Thrifted | Shoes (similar) : Kenzie Girl | Necklace : Navajo artisan in Arizona
Ring : c/o Moorea Seal | Purse : c/o Minnetonka

Are we there yet?

I'm tired of being pregnant.  Not necessarily physically, though it would be nice to be able to wear my old clothes again, but more mentally.  I'm not good at waiting.  If I have an idea, I like to do it right then.  I start businesses on a whim, buy new domain names and make websites for ideas that burn in my brain late at night.  When I decide to do a thing, I want to start doing that thing immediately.  I'll start painting a room at 10:30 pm.  Start an RV remodel 10 days before I'm supposed to leave on a road trip.  So this waiting thing?  This incubation period?  I don't really get it.  I'm not a preparer, really.  I don't research or read books about things before I decide to do them.  I sort of jump in with both feet and figure it out as I fall.  So I want this kid to just come so I can get to the part where I start figuring it out instead of sitting her wondering how the hell life is going to change, what motherhood will look like for me, what loving a baby even means.  It feels like my whole life is on pause waiting for December.  I know it'll probably be here before I know it, but in the quiet moments where I'm alone at home with a mysterious creature kicking me from the inside, I just want the wait to be over.  

I hear a lot of pregnant women say stuff like, "I can't wait to meet him/her!" and I don't have that and that's not why I want the wait to be over.  Perhaps it's a more selfish perspective, or just one from someone who is not a baby person and has never had the desire to "meet" a baby.  Our culture feels so focused on the baby.  Like motherhood is an afterthought.  Like it's no big whoop when a woman becomes a mother.  Like it happens every day.  And it does, but not to me.  I only become a mother once in my entire life, and our culture doesn't have a lot of ritual, celebration, or ceremony surrounding that.  Even the celebration you have during pregnancy, a Baby Shower, is focused on the baby.  What the baby needs, celebrating his/her new life, getting a metric ton of diapers and baby onesies.  And I get that.  New life is exciting!  We should celebrate it.  But I also see mothers get lost in the fray.  I see motherhood get lost, the sacred and momentous time that happens once in a lifetime.  And then we immediately transition to our society's actual culture surrounding motherhood, which is: DO AND BE ALL THE THINGS.  Be a super mom, run a successful business, take the kids to soccer practice, breastfeed for at least a year, do yoga, be fit and sexy and fun, have a beautifully decorated Pinterest house.  And really, I like doing all the things, and I'm really good at feeling bad when I don't feel successful (which is almost all the time), so I have a feeling that's going to go over really well.   

These posts tend to get really ramble-y and lose focus (perhaps a symptom of pregnancy brain? I hear that's a thing?), so I'll stop before I start talking about something totally and completely unrelated to what I started writing about when I opened this draft.  Being pregnant is, overall, a good experience.  I don't want it to be over because I've had crazy sickness, or because my body feels horrible, or for any of the bajillion horrible pregnancy side effects my pregnancy app tells me are supposed to be happening to me.  No, I just want to not feel like I'm trying to peer into a black hole when I look at what life will be like come December.  I just want to buy the damn domain and start building this motherhood website (if we're mixing metaphors.  I'm not actually building a motherhood website).  

Maternity Style // Week 24

Almost all caught up to my current week (28)!  I spent almost all of the 2nd trimester feeling not really pregnant, more like I-just-ate-too-many-tacos, but by the end of it I was definitely sporting a legit bump.  This is one of the few actual maternity tops that I picked up, mostly because it doesn't scream maternity.  One of my favorite thrifted tops that I had years ago I realized was a maternity top after finally looking at the tag after having worn it many a time!  So there are some maternity specific clothing that most definitely can transition to post-pregnancy style.  I plan on belting this up as a tunic after the bump is gone!

The other day I bought my first article of clothing that one could define as "goal" clothes.  As in, I don't fit in it now, but I plan on being able to later (post baby, and probably post-working-out-for-a-while).  I've never been one to buy something I don't fit into with the goal of being able to eventually wear it after losing weight/getting fit.  But, I made an exception because I'd had my eyes on these pants for, literally, years and they were on final sale so I snagged them, even though I won't be able to wear them until sometime next year.  I think it's kind of fun to have a new article of clothing that I can look forward to wearing, and it'll be nice motivation for getting to the gym. 

Top : Motherhood Maternity | Cardigan + Leggings (similar) : c/o Modcloth | Hat : The North Face
Boots (similar) : Kensie Girl | Photos by Dan