I want to grow old with you.

 

So, my sister and best friend got married this Saturday. 
And she looked amazing.  And she didn't stop grinning all day.  She grinned through her vows, through her pictures, through the cake cutting, the dancing, and all the general festivities. I'm so glad she's married to a guy who makes her smile so widely.

I'll post a more detailed post soon of the hand-painted invitations, the cute cake toppers, and all those lovely details that make a special day more special.  However, the most important thing is the new, happy couple.

So here's a few pics of just how radiant my friend and her new husband looked, surrounded by the lushness of Glen Helen in summer.

That rock they're standing on, that's where he proposed to her last July. They're hopeless romantics like that.

yup. hopelessly romantic.

Queen Anne's Lace, and the Queen of Anns

I love the way this arrangement turned out, so I had to share it with you.

Did you know you could use Queen Anne's Lace, that ubiquitous weed, in flower arrangements?  I sure didn't!
It's so pretty and lace-y, that as a child, I couldn't resist picking it and bringing it to my mother, who put it in a vase. where it died. in an hour.

It turns out, the trick to picking Queen Anne's lace is to pick it early in the morning and immediately put it in hot water.  I was too chicken to put in really hot water, so I used the hottest water that would come out of my tap.  I left it in the hot water until it cooled, in about 2 hours.  Then I used it like normal in an arrangement.  You know what? It lasted better than my zinnias, which are known for being great cut flowers!

This is particularly exciting because my best friend's name is Ann, and she's getting married!  She loves Queen Anne's lace the way I'm sure I'd love a flower if it was called "Empress Joanna Flower."  So, we'll be able to harvest it from neighboring fields and bedeck her wedding with it.  I'm super excited.
She's also keen on ferns, so we just planted 33 fern plants to harvest for the flower arrangements.  We bought them as bare-root plants, so they looked remarkably unpromising when we unpacked them.  Bare root plants are literally dirty pieces of root in baggies.  I open up a box from the growers and, every time, there's a moment when I think "I paid money for this?"  However, we have high hopes.  Gardening, for me, is frequently an exercise in hope for the future.

As a bonus, that yellow flower in the arrangement isn't a form of goldenrod as I had previously thought.  It's actually a vintage garden flower that has escaped from someone's garden and was growing wild next to a post in my neighborhood.
The name? "Sweet Annie"

Free printable quote: Serve God, Love Me and Mend

It's been some time since I've posted.
My camera has been acting up and needs to go to the camera doctor.  So I haven't taken any photos I'm really proud of for a while, and got out of the habit of posting regularly.

However, I've been doing a personal graphic design project, and thought I would share the first fruits with you. 
I've been taking quotes I like, the ones that are deep enough to want to think about for some time, and setting them in type.  This allows me to meditate on the quote while deciding what aesthetic decisions most suite it, and hones my graphic design skills at the same time.

I love this quote.  It's from Much Ado About Nothing.  Benedict and Beatrice are being witty at each other and negotiating their way into a stable courtship.  Beatrice is in distress because her cousin and best friend is having a truly horrible time.  And then Benedict says this to her.  How can you not love a man who can comfort you in six words or less? Bliss.

The resolution is large enough to be easily printable as a 5 x 7 or 8 x 10. Enjoy

PS. When I was six I wanted to either marry Tony Curtis or Benedict from Much Ado.  True story.

The Tune Without the Words

 

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

 

- Emily Dickenson

 

I've been planting seeds.  There's something particularly hopeful about planting seeds.  Flower seeds in particular are a sort of frivolity, a belief that needless beauty is worth effort. They also tend to perform, adding whimsy and delight. Vegetable seeds are another story.  They are an interesting exercise in faith, because experience has taught me that if a useful plant can find a way to develop a disease, wilt, be attacked by squirrels, or otherwise spoil its fruit and/or die, it will.  Or, just for variety, it will produce tons of wonderful vegetables. 

I keep trying to connive strategies where my plants will produce, and I will therefore, as a gardener, win.  I've tried multiple styles of pot or planting location, variety specific fertilizers, various watering strategies, etc.  I stop short of pesticides and herbicides, as putting poison on my plants worries me. However, in the end, it's totally beyond my control.  I have to sit back and recieve what my plants and the Good Lord see fit to give me.

About the pictures:

I took these pictures a couple of days before Christmas.  I knew I'd post them eventually, but I've been remarkably lazy about posting recently.  So I let them sit in a file on my computer and looked at them occasionally.  Gradually, they became associated in my head with the above poem by Emily Dickenson. The beginning of this year has been grey, and hard for me.  Both the pictures and the poem have done me good.

I hope they do you good as well.

 

Snow storm zen

 
Sometimes the most magical place to be is not a place, but a moment in time.
Like about 1 AM, Sunday night.

The freak march snowstorm had settled in for the long haul and was quietly heaping white on every bit of branch before it could melt off.  Flakes were sleeting past the streetlight, which was providing enough light to turn a wide swath of snow-covered street softly golden.  The low level of light provided an almost perfect level of low contrast between snow, sky, and branches.

So I unearthed my tripod and set it up in the safety of the porch.  I then proceeded to make a series of long exposures.  The length of exposures added to the silence of the neighborhood made for a rather meditative experience.
It feels weird to take a long exposure with a camera, because pictures are normally so instantaneous.  My shutter is capable of opening and closing far faster than my eye can blink, and yet here I was quietly able to have a conversation with myself while waiting for my camera to finish exposing a single image that may or may not have been ruined 10 seconds ago by an inadvertent jiggle while I pressed the button.

Enough talk. Here's the pictures:

Holiday Spirit

It's hard for me to prepare for Christmas before December, even though I know how long it takes to make, well, just about anything.
I love fall so much. I want to revel in it, until the last leaf falls until late November and the trees have become dormant skeletons against the winter-pale sky. Only then am I ready to dive into Christmas prep.

So, this creates a problem, because I love Christmas handicrafts and handmade gifts. So, I end up going project-crazy in December, and then only get half of the projects done. This year, I hope it will be different.  I sat down and wrote out a time budget for my handicrafts, deciding which ones to do, and which ones were too time-consuming and insane.
However, I keep seeing cute pins on Pinterest that tempt me to make just one more thing. God give me strength to resist!

A couple of weeks back, I spent some time in Wilmington, taking some Christmas portraits and having dinner with a wonderful lady (pics soon). After dinner, we bundled up as warm as we could and watched Wilmington's annual light-up float parade.  It was a lovely way to start off the pre-Christmas season.  It reminded me that this whole season is about hope, about light in dark time, new life in the depths of winter, and joy when you least expect it.
I hope these pictures will help you get in the Holiday mood.

tons more delicious pictures after the break.

Quote for November: A Woodland in Full Color

I've been pushing myself to become a better graphic designer.
So, I've set myself an assignment:
to merge a quote and a graphic or graphics, so that both the text and and the picture become an illustration of the meaning of the quote.

We'll see how it goes.  I'm pretty happy with Novembers', even though it can be a bit hard to read.

In other news, I'm now on Pinterest.  I've resisted getting on pinterest in the past because I knew it would soak up time.  However, it's been a great source for tutorials, graphic design inspiration, exposure to new artists, and even a wonderful way to figure out what friends would like for Christmas by snooping through their boards.  So, I'm enjoying my head off on it.  If you want to follow me, I'll have a button on the blog sometime this week.

Happy almost Turkey Day!

Wayside Sacraments

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting - a wayside sacrament.Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I cannot possibly improve upon Emerson. 
The trees themselves, though... they surpass words, even Emerson's.
Happy Fall!

 

blue eyed smiles

Catherine is growing, at least in spirit.
I should stop commenting on her size, but she's such a pint-sized thing for a six-month old.  It makes it extra cute when she does, well, just about anything.

This photo shoot started out as documentation of dresses I made for Catherine and Grace.  However, the sun was shining, and Cate was on her A-game as far as cuteness goes.  So she quickly stole the show. 

You can tell these were shot a couple of weeks ago, back when short sleeves were comfortable.  While I was shooting these, my other niece was hanging out behind me, making faces at her sister so she'd laugh, and refusing to be in frame.  It's okay.  I'll get her next time.

  

PS. didn't those dresses turn out cute!  

For links to the lovely patterns, click here .