Megan’s Gettin’ Married!
Meet my best friend Megan:
She and I go way way back. We’ve been friends for over a decade.
She was even my Maid of Honor.
We met when I was 16 and she was 13 at the Bountiful Bubble (local swimming pool) where I worked as a lifeguard and a diving coach. She was one of my students. A few years later as I exited high school and she entered, we met again when she starting hanging out with my same group of friends. Since then, she and I have always been like sisters… even living oddly parallel lives. We’ve got so many similarities. We dated the same high-school boy. We both took Gymnastics at the same hole-in-the-wall gym as kids. We’ve had many many odd similar things happen in our lives at the same age… more than I can mention here. Not to mention, we’ve always been told we look like sisters, too. (Any time people tell me that, it makes me feel great. She’s just adorable!) In a nutshell, I just love her. She’s fabulous.
She’s kissed her share of frogs, though. (Haven’t we all?) Countless times she had to kick a guy to the curb who simply put, wasn’t nearly good enough for such a cool chick. But then she met Trent. Trent has been the man she’s been waiting for. They’re so cute together, he treats her like a queen, and he’s super nice, to boot. On top of it all? He loves her kids.
That’s her two boys there, on the right. (The little tot in her lap is my niece, Colette.)
Last year, he finally popped the question, and presented her with a gorgeous oval diamond ring. My favorite part of the proposal? When she called her youngest boy to tell him, she said, “Kyler? I’m marrying Trent!” and he said, “You’re burying Trent? Okay.” He’s 6 years old, and hilarious.
Her wedding is three weeks from Saturday. I’ll be on a jet plane returning from Cancun that day, barely scrambling to make it to her wedding on time. I’ve seen her dress, and she’s going to just stun him when he sees her walking down the aisle!
Last Saturday I threw her a Bachelorette Party / Lingerie Shower at my house. We kicked Steve out of the house, Lindsay made candy sushi, we bought plenty of booze, and had about 20 girls over. The party went into the wee hours of the morning and we had an amazing time! Want to see photos? Check out the slideshow below!
Photography Lunch ~ Woodland Hills Park
I brought my camera to work with me today. Camera, flash, all the lenses… the whole getup. I really only needed one lens, to take a simple generic photo for work, but you never know when you’ll want to walk around taking photos in the sunshine, so I brought the whole 100-pound bag of photo gear. (100 pounds is an exaggeration. Slightly.)
When lunchtime came along, Steve asked me, “What do you want to do for lunch?”
“Take pictures,” I said. Like I often do.
“Um, well don’t you want to eat?” he asked.
“Okay, if we have time, lets do that too.”
After grabbing a bite to eat at Yoshi’s Japanese Restaurant (where the sushi was a huge disappointment, and where I also spilled scalding miso soup on my hand) we went searching for a little neighborhood park that I had stumbled upon three years earlier, when scouting parks for wedding locations. I knew it was in the area, and I vaguely remembered it having a boardwalk of trails through tall grasses and trees. We went hunting with the help of mobile Google Maps (thanks Google!), and eventually found it tucked away in an old part of Murray. Woodland Hills Park is it’s name, and it’s a small unique little patch of land.
But Woodland Hills Park had a real treasure for me today: dead dried thistles. The sun was hitting them just right, and there was a whole meadow full of them.
Don’t those first two look straight out of a Tim Burton movie? I can totally see Jack Skellington handing one to Sally to put into her hair. I was in love with those thistles.
I wandered along the path a bit more to get a wider shot of the thistle meadow. I squatted down (I know, attractive) and as I was shooting, I noticed an unpleasant odor. I said to Steve, “Ew… I smell poo.”
He said, “Um, that’s because Dog poo is everywhere! Oh my God. Don’t move. You’re literally centimeters from sitting in poo.”
I looked down, and sure enough, I had squatted down right above a huge pile of dog poo. Inches from my foot, centimeters from my bum. GROSS. Luckily I managed to snap this shot before jumping up and bolting away from the thistle field of poo.
As we wandered further down the boardwalk path, I began to hear birds scurrying everywhere. In the underbrush, bushes and overhead in the trees. BIRDS! That means Spring is a stone-throw away, people! They were pretty timid, hiding deep in the thicket of sticks. I did manage to capture one, though… and because it seemed to fit his personality, I gave his photo this cool texture treatment.
As I was looking in the trees for birds, I noticed one tree was clinging to some gorgeous red berries… ones that had clearly been there since last Autumn. I snapped a quick photo, which turned out to be my favorite photo of the day. Something about aquamarine with that shade of red just gets me going.
By this time, our lunch our was long over. As we wandered back to the car, I tried snapping some photos of Steve. He’s learned the tricks of my telephoto lens, though, and he knows that to avoid getting his photo taken all he has to do is quickly get close to me… too close for the telephoto to capture him. He zipped right up to me, all smug and giggly. So I put my lens cap on, and put my camera around his neck. “Here, then. You can just take it.” So he did. And as we walked back along the path, he turned the tables and snapped a sunlit photo of me. And since I was feeling very textured today, I gave my own photo the birds texture treatment, too.
It’s really great what an extra 10 minutes on your lunch break in a park on a sunny day can do. I am so looking forward to this Summer!
I am a Sucker for…
My sister Lindsay did this, and called me out to do my own list as well! I think it’s a splendid idea, so here, for you, is my list of things that I’m an absolute sucker for. Ever want to bring me joy or cheer me up? These things will do the trick.
1. Letterpress Items
Weather it’s invitations, business cards, product tags… if it’s letterpress I’m doomed to love it.
2. Banjo or Fiddle Reels
Played in a happy bluegrass reel, either one of these instruments bring me to another level of happy.
3. Campfires Under The Stars
There really isn’t any other place where I feel so at peace with the world. The smell, the sound, every single thing about being by a campfire warms me inside and out.
4. Musical Theatre
Both the spontaneous dancing and the fabulous musical numbers… going to a musical will leave me feeling on cloud 9 every single time! Spamalot was a particular favorite… which included another thing that I’m a sucker for… Monty Python.
5. Songs with Pedal/Vamp/Drone
Okay, this one takes a bit of explaining. Years ago I started compiling a playlist of all the songs that made my skin tingle the most. I called it my “Life Soundtrack.” You know the types of songs… the ones that give you that feeling like you’re floating, your arms become covered in goosebumps. That musical ecstasy feeling. My list of songs is an odd mix of artists, but each song made me feel that same tingling feeling.
One day Steve was perusing my list and told me that every single song had one thing in common: Pedal Tones. The term comes from classical music, when an organ player would hold one note on the foot pedal throughout the entire song. In modern music, it’s sometimes done as a one-note drone, but the same effect can also be achieved with a Vamp. Basically it’s an underlying repeating phrase or drone in the music that lies beneath the melody, and doesn’t change, even as the chords change around it. (Think bagpipes, which I also love.) It can be quite prevalent or very subtle. It gives songs such an etherial magical feel. It’s easier to hear it than describe it, so here are some of the songs on my list that are good examples of Pedal Tones:
6. Anything Apple or Nikon
This is where the geek in my comes in full force. New Apple products? I’ll want ‘em. Nikon cameras and even more… Nikon LENSES? Drooool….
7. Fondue
Melted cheese? Melted chocolate? I mean, COME ON. If I could only eat one thing for the rest of my life it would be Fondue. Oh, with Wine, of course.
8. Faces on Inanimate Objects
You’re sure to get a gleeful giggle out of me if you put eyes onto a stapler. Or washing machine. Or pop can. Or tissue box. Or scissors. Or [insert any object here].
Perfect example of this:
9. Chick Flicks
What? This shouldn’t surprise you. I want a love story, some comedy, and a happy ending. Is that too much to ask?
10. Gymnastics
It’s a sport that consumed hours and hours my life from age 5 to age 16. Still to this day, I yearn to be in the gym, to swing around the bars, flip across the floor, throw myself at the vault, and curse at the balance beam. It’s something I’ll miss forever, and I’ll watch live or on TV every single chance I get!
So how about you? What are you a total sucker for? Make your own list, and post a link!
