Captured

My love of photography is only growing stronger, I have been investing tons of time, energy and of course MONEY into this obsession, which is only making it grow. Im so thankful that I grew the courage to finally start putting my work out there and thankfully have gotten a pretty good response back :)

I have had a love for photography for many years, I scarfed up rolls and rolls of film on vacations and shooting in the woods behind my parents before the digital boom. Now I have the pleasure of shooting till my hearts content and not worrying about the hefty price tag film and developing brings along with it. The huge advantage for me on shooting digital is I can play, experiment and shoot shoot shoot til I dont want to shoot anymore!

This past weekend was a kiddo/family session, it was probably one of the hardest conditions I have shot due to the time and conditions, typically the earlier or later in the day is the best condisionts, due to schedules we had to shoot this session at noon, and to make matters even better there wasnt a cloud in the sky! We still had a great time and I got some great shots from this great looking group of people.

Heres a few shots from that session: Meet The Holodys (Jonathan, Emily, Josie & Mae) and The Hampshires (Jonny, Lindsay & Jackson)
FYI if you can't tell, Emily and Jonny are siblings! So all these little cuties are cousins and are Oh, so sweet!

Photos coming soon :)

What are you thankful for?

Thankful for Friends:

This weekend was the start of many over indulging meals my hubby & I will be partaking in in the next few weeks! And a great time to be with a group I am thankful to call friends.
Saturday marked our annual "friendsgiving" in Hinckley. The girls (per usual) whipped up the grub for a gathering of 16. I started off the weekend, Friday night, by baking up a storm. Trying a few new recipes I had never made before and a few old favorites too. I contributed sweet potato casserole, Pillsbury pinwheels, a pecan & a pumpkin pie. (2 recipes below):

Ruth Chris's Sweet Potato Casserole
    
Pillsbury Bacon-Cheddar Pinwheels

My mom and I had canned up some peppers in the late summer so as a special treat for the ladies, I wrapped a piece of fabric around the top and added a little note that said, "We are thankful for great friends. Love Sara & Matt." Because we definitely are!

After a night of over eating, gab and gossip sessions over wine, mixed drinks and shots, it was all in all a great night with great friends. This is a tradtion I love, and when it has so much yummy food involoved who wouldnt!? But it sure was a tiring event, as you can tell by the food coma the majority of the people went into shortly after dinner :) 

I am truly thankful for the friends I have!

 Thankful for Family:

 Oh as if over indulging one day on the weekend isn't enough, we had round 2 (cue elastic pants) the NEXT day! I guess this was our prep for Thanksgiving where the hubby and I have TWO thanksgiving meals in one day, BACK TO BACK!...but hey we never really complain too much, maybe just a growl or two. This celebration was for Grandma Candles 80th Birthday! It was nice to see all the cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews and eat another amazing meal this time with family, and what a BIG family it is! (The picture below is just the grand kids and great grand kids! & I still think a few are MIA) Grandma Candle has a reputation for making who evers birthday it is open that many gifts (usually only on big ones like 40th, 50th etc) So we all got her back! Yep she had to muster through 80 gifts all wrapped with love. She cheated and had a few kiddos help but I cant imagine opening that many things! phew.
From here we headed off to church for the contemporary service, where Matt, his parents, sister and a few others sing for us. This is just a small portion of our extended family! I cant wait to see them again for thanksgiving and to see my family for thanksgiving too! I am thankful for all the family we have!

Thankful for God:

So after a full belly we made our way to church, to thank the man of the hour, every hour, the big man, God. I am not a preacher, but don't deny that I am a believer. I feel actions speak louder then words and though I may not make it to church every Sunday, I go when I can and I know I don't need to make any excuses to anyone for that. The service this Sunday was especially hard for me to get through. Last week someone very close to my heart passed away. He was my "Uncle Tom" though not my uncle, more of a surrogate grandparent, that is what he was called ever since I can remember. He was the
husband to our baby sitter who babysat us from pretty much birth til we could fend for our selves. They were our other set of parents, we gave them hell, we loved them and I will always have a special place in my heart for both of them. After many years of battling diabetes and its many complications he passed away November 9th. It was somberly in the back of my mind the past few days, we went to visit him a few times the week before, and were confronted with how bad he had progressively gotten. To me it was a realization, in a way, for some odd reason I felt like my youth was slowly dying. I was realizing ever more then normal that I was an adult and we were all getting older. I try so hard to not make this realization because I don't do well with death, and this came to fruition even more when in our contemporary service Sunday evening the pastors sermon started off saying "out with the old, in with the new." I didn't want to get rid of the old, I liked the old, the old was comforting and familiar to me. But after listening and brushing back tears, I realized its selfish of me to want to keep him here, especially when it was to remind ME of the good times, the times of innocence, youth and freedom. He was in pain and I needed to realize that this was his chance to become "new" again. I tried to go into Mondays memorial service with this same thinking, it was tough at first and i cried long and hard the whole time, but seeing all those who loved him and telling stories and how he affected our lives, it was comforting. The pastor at his memorial service even said "Tom is now whole again, he has his legs now and is dancing in Heaven!" It brought a smile to the room, Uncle Tom had lost his legs over the past 10 years to the Diabetes so this thought of him being better and "whole" again was a great thought to all of us.

I know he will be looking down on me, smiling to everyone he loved and I need to remember to stop looking down and crying but to look up to him and smile.

I am thankful God is in control of my life.

(The first one was the sky, oh so beautiful, after I heard the news of his passing. To me it was him who made the sky beautiful that day and the seond pic is of us at a wedding many moons ago, back in my Marilyn Monroe days :P )

Pinteresting. Very, Very Pinteresting.

Day one and I can see there's no chance of stopping any time soon.

I love to look at pretty things, really anything at all. I love to draw inspiration from all the pretty things that flutter around on the web, and with all that data you can imagine the size of the folders on my desktop. Im constantly pulling things off the web and putting them in folders, putting those folders in folders and making every attempt to try to organize these pretty little inspirations. As you know if you read my previous post organization and I don't always get a long. And whether it be organizing physical things or organizing data, it can be a challenge at times.

A few months back an unnamed photography pro facebook friend of mine posted about her love of pinterest and went on and on about it. I immediately went over to pinterest.com to check it out and went through the steps to signing up and waiting for the invitation to join. Well the luster wore off in the mean time and I forgot about the whole thing, until another friend of mine posted on her facebook : "Hello, my name is Mallory R. and I'm addicted to Pinterest." ....Wait! I remember that! So I went to my inbox, scrolled back a few months and found the online invite sitting in my inbox since February. [Disclaimer: I promise I usually don't take that long to respond back to emails, but when its signing up for things, promotions or ads I tend to filter onto the important stuff from actual people.]


Well today was the day, I signed up and have been on a mean streamline to uploaded the folders of inspiration, photos, diy things to do, and some just pretty things that make me smile that are in folders upon folders on my desktop :) I highly recommend pinterest to anyone who loves to look and be inspired, but wants to remember and catalog those things for future inspiration as well. I love the thought of being able to sign on any where and locate my inspiration boards, which has been a big problem for me since I access so may different computers in my day to day life. 


So if you are unknown to the pinterest world, go check it out (pinterest.com) and dont forget to check your email to actually join! And for those of you who already are pinning away I cant wait to check out all your visual goodies!

Heres a preview into my pinterest:

Cheers
SPC

Today is the Day

I have been meaning to get to the blogging world for quite some time, I created a blog several years ago when I started up my jewelry venture (Dogwood design) but never got around to the actual blogging since the jewelry part was craving more of my attention. I don't promise to blog once a day, week, month or on any set schedule. I hope to use this tool to catalog ideas, share things that inspire me so they may inspire something in you and as a peak into "A Day in the Life" of me, SPC.

I am no grammar whiz or professional writer, I translate thoughts better in doodles, sketches and photos better then I could ever explain in words. My life can be a bit hectic at times, but its always focusing in on the simple things that make it more calm. I am unorganized and I sort my life out one step at a time.

I envy organized people, but its not my process (I've tried). I get so enthralled in things I throw myself head first into them til it has consumed everything around me. I eventually take a break to step back, take a breath, realign (reorganize) and then jump back in. My husband lovely terms my creative process as "art bombs."  He has a gift of looking past the rubble these art bombs leave behind. I cherish him for this and for his patience and understanding, it takes a special person to love (put up with) my ways.

I hope to be a muse and that you find some inspiration in my upcoming posts.
So..."Just tune in, turn off, drop out, drop in, switch off, switch on and explode...
A splendid time is guaranteed for all!"

Cheers - SPC