sunday funday

Today was... getting up at 8:30 and making coffee in a quiet, sleeping house. Going out for breakfast with my Aunt and Uncle at Town Fryer and taking a walk around the good old 'Loft while I waited for them. Adventuring to Lake Geneva with my mom for a) coffee and a Target run, and b) to check out the old site of the Lake Geneva Raceway where my dad used to race waaaaaaaaay back in the day. (Sorry to anyone reading this who may feel old right now. ;)) He had gone there in 2012 and taken photos of the old speedway—or what was left of it anyway. Now there's a church and an assisted living facility where the parking lot used to be and a subdivision right down the middle of pit road and the track. All that's left of the actual speedway itself is the rusty old fence blocking entry into the woodsy, overgrown remnants of what used to be there. My mom and I went to Bubba's Brickyard after for a drink. It was my first time in there since my mom's next door neighbor's son had bought it and fixed it up a little. We walked over to the next door neighbor's house after we came home and Karen usually cooks a big meal on Sunday and has her family over but everyone cancelled on her this week so she invited me and my mom and Bruce over for dinner. Steak and sweet corn, fresh green beans, cheesy potatoes, and strawberry shortcake for dessert. Definitely did not disappoint.

And now, I have a leftover piece of Napoli's pizza, and a s'mores sundae from Adrian's calling my name!

summer skies

93* and sunny

This weekend has been a doozy. Extreme heat and sweltering temperatures on Friday left you literally regretting setting foot outside (and I had to go to the grocery store), coupled with dangerous winds and thunderstorms plus a flash flood and tornado warnings on Saturday left us without power for most of yesterday, a couple tree branches down in the front yard, and my favorite crooked evergreen tree in the backyard was sacrificed in the storm. The power came back on around 7 last night. We finally got internet and phone service back this afternoon. I need to take a shower and tackle everything that's accumulated in my inbox since Friday afternoon. Hoping for no more sketchy weather anytime soon.

currently, july edition

celebrating summer with fruit salad and strawberry lemonade all day long

working on a fun family session from last week

dancing in the woods with my camera like a perfectly sane person

wearing my NMDI shirt from mei ratz all the time

watching lupin the third with Justin and getting caught up on jane the virgin by myself

stocking up on bubbles before summer runs out

planning sunflower mini sessions for my trip to burlington

craving a s'mores sundae from Adrian's

coloring with gel pens in my favorite snarky coloring books

shooting something super fun with Abby next week

thinking of my dad for his birthday tmrw. he would have been 61.

wishing y'all a happy monday!

bits and pieces

Tara Whitney once said, "I know that, perhaps, no one would enlarge a photo of their daughter's hair resting on a plastic chair, or a photo of them hazy behind a window screen. My hope is that they see the beauty in those small simple details because I did, and can be a tiny bit surprised about what I paid attention to."

That kinda sums it up pretty perfectly. Details will always have my heart. They always encompass that quiet magic that I am constantly trying to document. You forget how small your kiddo's hands are until one day, they're the same size as yours. You forget how little you baby's toes are when they're still fresh, one week new. You forget how much joy a simple bouquet of flowers and summer sunlight can bring to your life. You forget that these moments won't last forever, and it's my job to capture them for you so that they have a fighting chance to never be forgotten.

That's the magic at work. You have to fall in love with the every day to notice it. Fall in love with your life at every turn, through the good, the bad, and the ugly. Romanticizing the little things in life is what has always gotten me through suffering, without fail. It's my favorite form of magic and the best pick me up to realize that you have the power to turn your life around. You just have to fall in love with everything in your life and never stop changing until you do.

hooray hooray, i'm your silver lining

I started a new medication on Friday. An antidepressant. A tiny little white 10mg pill that's supposed to make my brain not want to attack itself. The weekend was rough, to say the least, as my body adjusted to having serotonin again. I felt like a zombie, napping and being so zonked during the day and tossing and turning, unable to sleep at night. I spent the majority of the weekend Googling symptoms and side effects and the best way to handle them when they bombard you all at once. We're on day four now and I think I have my routine down with it, as long as I take it with food, which works out to be at the same time as I take my Itraconazole (my blastomycosis med).

I spent a lot of the weekend planning out sunflower mini sessions for my next trip to Burlington at the end of the month while I couldn't sleep. As much as I proclaim to hate math, I sort of love crunching numbers and figuring out prices and hours and fees. I made a poll on Facebook between two weekends and then whichever weekend won the poll was chosen. 8 people voted in the poll. I made a graphic that said, "Info on SUNFLOWER MINIS dropping on Tuesday! Get excited." and that was that.

Today was the day that I opened up info on sunflower mini sessions to the public. On Saturday, I messaged everyone who voted for the winning weekend to see if they wanted first dibs. Two out of three took me up on my offer. I got an email from a girl I went to high school with this afternoon inquiring about the last Saturday opening, and now I have three open slots left on Sunday. I've already gotten a couple of DMs about it and all I can do is cross my fingers and hope for the best.

Nothing fills my heart with more joy than when people I know ask me to document their memories for them. Every single person that has inquired so far is either a repeat client or someone I went to high school with. All of those people have watched this hobby turned passion turned business of mine being built from the ground up and are willing to take a chance on me when there was a time in not-so-distant-past when I thought nobody ever would.

Progress and growth is quiet and slow.

happy summer!

Happy July! I'm trying to break out of my only posting here once a month rut I've been in all spring so keep your fingers crossed I can keep up two blogs haha. I'm trying to remind myself that I can use this space as a diary and I can literally post anything I want. Which is kind of freeing to realize after being hyper-focused on my photo blog for the majority of this year. So here's a list, to get me back in the groove of writing and sharing just for me.

Summer is for...

• no makeup days
• always stop for flowers
• ice cream for dinner some nights
• strawberry lemonade + sprite
• graphic tees + jean shorts
• breaking out the birkenstocks
• hot coffee in the morning
• iced coffee in the afternoon
• grilling out once a week (at least)
• more sunshine
• afternoon naps
• watermelon for lunch
• celebrating the little things