dream life

I, along with pretty much the entire internet world, have sold my soul to Pinterest. I mean, at this point I have no idea what I would do without it. And I am amazed and fascinated by the fact that so many people use it in so many different ways. For example, people are always talking about how they spend hours wasting time on Pinterest. Just... looking around, one would presume. I don't really know because that is not how I consume Pinterest. I am not a browser, rarely a searcher, but always an obsessive collector and a little bit of a stalker. I read blogs. Lots of them. And most of the things I pin come directly from those blogs that I read. I also follow people. Mostly people I actually know, followed by people I feel like I know (authors of blogs I read), and the occasional famous person or company or what have you. I check Pinterest multiple times a day, to see any new pins from people I follow, and that's it. I'm done. So huge internet time waster it is not, facilitator to my addictions it most certainly is.

All of that to lead into showing you a few pictures from a new board I titled "Dream Life." If I fell asleep today and woke up in one of these pictures, let's just say I wouldn't be too upset about it.

Not following me on Pinterest? Want to? Find me here.

Photo A Day

day #15 happiness

day #16 morning

day #17 water

day #18 something I bought

day #19 sweet

day #20 someone I love

 day #21 reflection

I have been having a little bit of a hard time keeping up with the photo a day, and not always getting them in quite on time, but I'm not giving up! I am determined to see this thing through! I am currently caught up, so let's see if I can keep it going for the remainder of the month.

it's beginning to look a lot like...

 

New garland I made from pages of an old encyclopedia (they do have a use after all!). Gingerbread shakes, gingerbread lattes, cranberry bliss bars, oh my. Decorating the tree, undecorating the tree, bowl full of balls. The nutcracker gang. Foggy winter mornings. Sugar cookies in my beloved KitchenAid.

It's beginning to look a little bit like Christmas around here. Now if only I could put presents under the tree without the puppy eating them all.

photodump!

Halloween decorations. Mini-pumpkins, big ones yet to come. Movie night with the hubs. Home-made cream cheese stuffed french toast. Food is always better (at least visually speaking) on checkered paper. My first cuckoo clock (yes, I said first with intent to buy more). My beautiful Rifle Paper Co recipe box! (Thanks so much siblings for the wonderful wedding gift!) Kitty having a lazy day off with me. The inexplicable Beatlerama.

Wedding Recap Part 3: instant gratification

Being that we're smack in the middle of Roid Week I thought it was an appropriate time to finally get around to posting the polaroids that my little sister took during the wedding! They are so cute and I'm so happy we have such a range of keepsakes and photos and they are all so special to me.

 

 

 

Thanks, Heather!

mini me

Doing a little bit of the obligatory pre-wedding kid photo collecting (who doesn't do this?) and my mom sent some real gems over!

You see that sly, mysterious little look? It reminds me a little bit of this. I've always been a bit of a face-maker it seems.

cherry blossoms

This weekend we went up to DC to see the cherry blossoms, even though they weren't quite in full bloom (they will peak Mon-Wed this week, so we had to choose between not quite fully bloomed this weekend and wilting next weekend) and it was unseasonably chilly (not terrible really, except for the wind and my freezing ears). But I am glad we went. I obviously went all Hipstamatic on the cherry blossoms, making an effort to keep switching up the lenses and film to get a variety of photos. I've started to try imagining what a shot would look like in different settings, to get the look I want. I start seeing distorted colors everywhere I look. And it makes me tire of the Hipstamatic a bit and want to take real photos. Nice photos. Not that I didn't get some gorgeous shots (if I do say so myself), but with some of them I like the composition so much and I just wish they had more detail. So I may give it a rest. We shall see.

Oh, and you can see more of my photos over here. I managed to narrow it down to 48 of my favorite, and that wasn't easy! ;)

pinterest

I have finally started my Pinterest boards! If you don't read 500 blogs like I do and you have not been introduced to Pinterest yet, let me tell you about it. It's a place to save and organize your inspiration from around the web. It's similar to Image Spark, which I have mentioned on this blog before, but oh so much better. Sure sure, I have gotten a lot of use out of Image Spark, and I can appreciate its ease of use. All I had to do was right click an image and click save to Image Spark. It automatically stored where I found the image, and then I could tag the photo if I wanted. Moodboard possibilities were there, but limited. It worked for me. Until... Here's the thing. They don't really care what kind of images are stored there. As long as it can be considered artistic and inspirational, you can save it there. And it can show up when you search the site. As any half aware person who has been on the internet can guess, that means it was taken over by nudity pretty quickly. Kind of annoying.

Then one day I started hearing people talking about something called Pinterest. It happened pretty quickly, actually, and I was seeing it all over the place. And I put off looking into it because once I've settled into something and accepted its faults, it's pretty easy to just stick with it. It's within my comfort zone. It works, for the most part. And it doesn't take up any of my time. But finally last week (I'm not even sure what spurred it on) I put myself on the waiting list to get a Pinterest account. 

At first inspection, it seemed to be pretty redundant. Lots of multiples show up because several people re-pin the same image. Fine. Then I found out that the main means of pinning images is through a button on my menu bar, and I was a little bit baffled. I like the right click option. I'm used to the right click option. It makes sense to me. I don't know if I'm going to like this. I wasn't even sure how it was going to work, how it would save the correct image if there were several images on the screen when I clicked the button? Well wouldn't you know it, they thought of that. It's actually a clean, simple user interface and it works quite well. And suddenly I have found myself in an easy to navigate world of folders and tags and more easily accessible inspiration. And it incorporates a little social networking so you can see what your friends are loving on the internet. 

Great. 

Sounds good.

I am sold.

Now I have the daunting task of moving my images from Image Spark over to Pinterest. Organizing them. Tagging them. But being a little bit more careful about what I'm saving over there, so as to not give away any wedding surprises.

So I guess it would be a little bit silly to write this whole post about saving pictures and not post any, right? Here's some great detail shots I found while coming up with ideas and a shot list for my wedding photographer.

back yard

photo by the mister

VA State Fair

I do realize I told you all that we would be going to the state fair last weekend, but due to unbearable traffic we had a slight change of plans and went today instead (yes, that means we missed Crafty Bastards but all things considered I think this was the better choice.) We looked like silly tourists stopping to get photos of food stands and inflatable toys, we ate way too much crappy food, watched a very entertaining family circus the youngest member was 7 years old and very impressive!), enjoyed the local arts and crafts, smelled some animals, and so much more.

Be warned: this post contains a lot of photos. Because I just didn't know how to limit myself. There is so much to share! And I apologize if you're getting hit with this multiple times, through flickr, facebook, and the blog, but really who can complain when there's so much fun to be had.

Hope you're having an inspiring weekend and enjoying October!