Fun with the Camera- Part II

A few weeks ago my friends Sheena and Kelly got married. They trusted me to take pictures for the wedding and while I still have a ton to learn (like not being in the way--photographers should be stealthy!) In the year that I've gotten my camera, I've definitely learned how to be comfortable with it (learning photo editing helps!) but I still haven't gone manual, which is a goal of mine. 

Anyway, I think the pictures turned out great! I decided to share a few of my favorites with you today. 

Saved the best for last! This is my favorite picture. Ever. 

Thanks for taking the time to check out my pictures! Come back Friday for a new End of the Week Roundup post, the first in three months!

Mom's Surprise Party

On Saturday, my family and I threw a surprise 50th party for my mom. My aunt, sister and I agreed that the party should have a hot pink and gold theme, since hot pink is my mom's favorite color and gold is normally associated with 50. We then created a secret board (no longer secret! haha) on Pinterest for ideas.

For the centerpiece we really liked these two pins: 

                                      Pin 1                                                                                     Pin 2

So we decided to mix the two and created these mason jar ombre glitter center pieces. I'm normally not a fan of glitter but I fell in love with these and even took one home to put on my desk at work. 

For the guest book, we really liked this pin: 

So we recreated it, Dave cut a hole in the top of a shadow box for guests to put the heart in and I created the sign on picmonkey and used Snapfish to print the sign. My aunt painted the 5 and 0 in gold paint and glued it to the frame. 

We really liked the simplicity of the cake in this pin: 

so we decide to stay with that same general idea but make the frosting ombre and my aunt purchased a very simple but elegant cake topper for the cake:

There were a few extra touches like gold and pink plates, napkins, silverware, cups and straws. 

I think the biggest surprise of the night for my mom was the quilt that I made for her with the help of family and friends. I asked several family and friends to give me a shirt that would be symbolic of their relationship to my mom or would represent themselves so I could make a t-shirt quilt for her. I was so excited to give her the quilt, it was hard for me not to drag her over the the gift table the moment she walked in the door. 

My mom is normally the huge party planner (check out her work from my grad party here) so it was tough carrying out a party at this level without her but the hard work definitely paid off. My mom was very surprised and she definitely deserved a party of this caliber. Happy birthday ma!

Chicago

This past weekend Dave and I took a short, quick weekend trip to Chicago. With this trip, we were able to knock off another state from our "Visit 50 States" bucket list, leaving us with 11 states down and 39 to go!

This post might be a bit long, because I figured one post on my trip is enough for you. We got into Chicago on Friday afternoon. By the time we got to the hotel and we figured out public transportation, it was nearly time for dinner, which was at Wildfire.  The food was so good, I tried the baked goat cheese, which tasted like a fancy version of a mozzarella stick. After dinner, Dave and I watched a show at Second City. It was absolutely hilarious. The best part of the night was when they brought up a German tourist on stage for an improv skit. They asked the guy if he had anything on his mind he'd like to share and the guy said "nope". They tried to prod him a bit further (you can't really go off of nope) and finally had to say "hypothetically speaking if you HAD to give an answer what would you say?" It was so funny. After the show we stopped by Portillo's and grabbed a cake shake, which was absolutely delicious. 

Saturday we walked. A LOT. We walked down to Millennium Park and checked out Cloud Gate and then walked the Lake Front to the Navy Pier. We rode the Ferris Wheel at the pier (which Dave figured out mid-ride that the Divergent series was based out of Chicago and that the Ferris Wheel was the scene for the capture the flag game). It was ridiculously overpriced for the ride ($7 for one go around on the wheel) but when in Rome...

After the pier, we went over to The Purple Pig (highly recommended by Steph!) and grabbed lunch. The food was so delicious, I tried a fried deviled egg and it was not what I expected (in a good way). I don't think there is one bad thing on this menu. After lunch, we tried to head over to Willis Tower to try the Sky Deck but unfortunately they had a 2 hour wait and we didn't have that long between dinner and the show so we didn't get a chance to check it out. That is my only regret from this trip. We had about an hour and a half before we wanted to head out for dinner so we decided to head back to the hotel to rest. We had done so much walking and had very little sleep, we definitely needed a break. For dinner we stopped at Giordano's for a deep dish pizza and then went to the Blue Man Group show, which was awesome. My opinion on the deep dish? It was good (the sauce was the best I've ever tasted) but it was way too cheesy for my taste. 

Sunday morning we headed home, exhausted, but happy for the trip. 

Here's a map of where we've been so far:

 Have you ever been to Chicago? 

To Christmas Card or Not Christmas Card...That is the Question.

Source

Christmas cards always seemed, to me at least, like something families with children did--not a married couple with two cats. When Dave and I got married three years ago, I was 26 and still felt too young to send out Christmas cards. I thought, who cares about the two of us besides family? 

I personally am not a fan of the greeting card type of Christmas cards. Don't get me wrong, I love to get them, but I hate to send them. They seem too impersonal for me to send. And sending out a personalized picture card seemed too weird to send if it was just Dave, the cats and me. 

But this year I'm starting to feel differently. I want to send out personalized cards, even if it's just us and our fur babies. I flip flopped on the idea for a few days and decided that this year we would send them out. It feels a little weird still. I mean, we've been married three years and we're just now sending out the cards, with no kids? But I feel like I'm hitting that "age" where Christmas cards are okay to send.

So we attempted to stage some nice pictures in front of the camera, but they didn't look right. Then I thought back on the past year. All the ups and downs, highs and lows, and decided to just share a few pictures from our year, to sum it up nicely for family and friends while wishing them well for the holiday season. 

What are your thoughts? Do you send Christmas cards even if it is just you and your significant other? 

Be in the Moment

Before I got sick last week, I was having a rough day. I had about an hour and a half to spare before I had to go to work. I was far enough away from home that driving home and hanging out wasn't going to happen so I decided to drive around and "get lost". 

 
As I was driving I found myself focusing more about things that happened in the past that bothered me, or things that I needed to get done. Past and future, that's what kept flip flopping around in my mind. I noticed that by doing this, not only was I stressing myself out more, but I really wasn't enjoying my drive. 

I took major issue with this. It was a beautiful day and I never get to just drive around with no intended end point, and I was wasting it by being upset about things that I couldn't change or worrying about things that I couldn't control. I started thinking about all the times I was in a great moment and I didn't get to appreciate that moment because I was thinking about past and future. 

So I decided to start thinking "be in the moment" and when I found my thoughts wandering to other things other than what was going right then and there, I would think "be in the moment" again. Eventually I ended up here:

It was like I was being rewarded for enjoying that free time a little bit more, and it felt so good. And a bad day ended up being a great day. 

Had any recent epiphanies lately?

OBX

I mentioned Monday that Dave and I want to visit all 50 states at some point together in our lifetime. This past week, we were able to cross off two more states rounding out total states visited to 10! Whoo hoo! Only 40 more to go! Haha! 

Outer Banks was gorgeous. Since it was off season it wasn't crowded at all, but the weather was still warm enough for us to hang out on the beach and get in the water. A friend of ours rented a home down there and invited us and a few others to come along. It's funny, Dave and I have always been on opposite sides of the "group vacation debate". He feels that group vacations are funner, whereas I prefer one on one vacations. However, after this vacation, I will concede that with the right group and the right location, group vacations are far better, I couldn't imagine having as good of a time as I did in NC if it hadn't been with such great friends. 

Driving on the beach is so much fun!

We look like we're photoshopped into this pic, because of the light from the sun setting and the flash of the camera. 

Here's the states we've visited so far in map form:

Map created using defocus blog's map

Kiptopeke State Park

Dave and I headed to OBX at the end of last week for a quick vacation with friends. He and I have a bucket list goal to visit every 50 states at some point in our life. Since I knew we were going to pass through Virginia I went to Roadtrippers to map out our trip and try to find some attractions along the way, so we could knock off VA off the list. The site suggested Kiptopeke State Park which was literally on the same road that we would need to be on to head to North Carolina. 

Kiptopeke was supposed to have these huge beach chairs with L-O-V-E written across them, which was what really got me interested in the place. Sadly, when we arrived we found out that the chairs were no longer there, but we had already paid at that point and decided to walk around and check the place out. There is so much more to the park than what we did. There are hiking trails, fishing, hawk habitats, camping grounds and a good bit more. I took some pics and then we went on our way. Hope you enjoy the pics from the park!

So no fishing dead fish then?

The waterfront had a row of old ships sitting in a line. At first I didn't see much with my regular lens on my camera, but when I grabbed the zoom lens I was able to zoom in and see a bunch of cranes sitting all on the ships.