As a photographer, I am afraid of not being photographed myself. Does that make sense? I know a lot of photographers feel awkward or nervous in front of the camera, because you lose the control, but I think Im the opposite. As a photographer, I know the power and importance of having pictures of the people you love, the things you love, and also some of yourself. Not in a vain way, but Im afraid that one day Im going to be 50 years old, and my kids will be grown. I am a photographer at heart, and so they will have thousands of pictures of them, with their dad, with their friends, being silly… and none with me or of me. Rational fear? Maybe not. But, either way, its something I think about often. Im afraid that one day, I will want to see the beauty of my youth. The beauty of being a mother, and a woman. The beauty of being healthy and happy and that I will be left wanting because I never let or asked anyone to photograph me. Because I was too afraid.
At the cemetery the other day, we made it to the lookout of the river. I started taking some pictures of Jared and his parents playing around, and I had these thoughts. So, I handed the camera to Jared and I asked him to take a couple of me.
Those pesky bangs.
This kind of post makes me feel very vulnerable. Showing you a piece of our home…just seems a little crazy! When Jared and I first bought this house and moved in, we literally had nothing. I’m not exaggerating to make this sound like a better story. We had a mattress on the floor in one of the upstairs bedrooms, and a futon in the living room. That. was. it. Slowly our parents and their friends started donating things to us. We went quite a few kitchen tables and living room seating. And even more slowly, we started to buy furniture to fill our new home. We have been in the house 3 years and I am finally starting to feel like this is the year that our home will really feel like ours. We have only painted two rooms in the whole house, the living room and my office, and we still have paper blinds in almost every room that the house was sold to us with. We have a little bit of spare money this year to put into investing in furniture we really love, small decor items, and curtains!! Who knew curtains could be so transformational?!
As things come together, I will be showing you. So, without further adieu… here is our entryway:
We recently bought this shoe cabinet from IKEA. Jared had built a shelving system in the basement entry (the door to the right) but it slowly filled up and it was time for my shoes to move. We are actually kind of lucky because I had planned to put this guys somewhere else and it didnt fit! Yep, I went to IKEA and bought something without measuring!! Scandalous!
I think I have boring shoes… they are all the same!! So, thats it. This is what you see when you first walk in the door. Its warm and welcoming I think. I really like clean and tidy spaces with bits of color. No clutter. Please excuse the slowly dying tulips. I tried the old penny trick…no help in this case!
Jared and I like to do most things ourselves. We are happy to build shelves, paint walls, landscape our yard, etc… We enjoy it. Well, lately I have had the itch to pay OTHER PEOPLE to paint our trim (in the entire house) and clean our house amongst other things.
We are about to start a small kitchen redo, mainly because the people who renovated our house cut corners in the reno, and we have been living with a jigsaw puzzle of a tile floor for the past 3 years. So many of our poor unsuspecting friends have innocently dared to step onto our kitchen floor only to break several ceramic tiles in the process. Basically the cats are the only “people” in our house that have not contributed to the mutilation of our kitchen tile. Truly there is not one tile on our kitchen floor that isn’t either cracked, or completely broken. So we are finally fixing it. Thanks IRS!! Well, if youve ever had a floor removed and replaced in your house, or really just done any type of construction indoors, you know there is dust and debris. A lot of it. And so when this lovely Living Social deal showed up in my inbox yesterday, I thought Fate was speaking to me.
I mean… right?! I shared it with Jared, and he was a little hesitant. Should we go for it? Has anyone ever even heard of Cottage Care before? Should I hold out and hire one of my friends cleaning people? What do you think dear blog readers? I need your help.
Oh, and I will share Before and After Pictures of the kitchen, dont you worry!! 
This is a little story about my new wallet, that I love. It starts a couple years ago when we realized that whenever we left ANYTHING on the floor too long, our cats would, um, relieve themselves on said thing. One year I lost 3 purses to this kind of gorilla warfare our cats had taken a liking to. I also lost a wallet. I was so fed up, that I ended up buy a really cheap ($6.00) business/gift card holder from Target and that has been my wallet of sorts for a couple years now. Yes, we could have kept everything off the floor, but I mean…really? Sometimes you just forget, and you leave your poor, unassuming, gloriously new purse laying on the floor while your demon cats lie in wait under the side chair in the living room.
So, I found the wallet I wanted. Actually, a few of my friends found it first and I am just a big fat copycat. But, it was $100.00. I knew it was quality and that it would last me for-ev-er, but it still was too much for me. My girl Nikki told me about Rue La La, and that they have them on there every couple months for half off. She sent me an invite, and I waited. And waited, and waited, and waited. Finally last week, they went on sale. I opened up every tab of the wallets I thought I might like, and bought one within about 86.2 seconds. Those babies go fast! Half were sold out when I had finished my order. Want to see it?
Its yellow. Who’s surprised? No one.
I just started using it today, and we are getting along prett-y well if I do say so. Also, dont be alarmed…not all cats behave as mine do.
I explained it to you the best way I knew how. I told you that I have bad reactions to extremely hot beverages. You raised your eyebrows in disbelief. I explained further that I have been known to throw up if I burn my tongue on hot coffee. Its like my body is doing whatever it can to repel what just sent a zing of pain racing through my nerves. You raised your eyebrows again, but this time in shock. And so, you tasted my coffee for me to make sure it was the right temperature. Even though I like my coffee milky and sweet, you tasted it, made a face that me told it was perfect, much to your dark, semi sweet coffee loving self.
For the past 5 years you have been temperature testing my coffee for me. Telling me when to wait a few more minutes, and when it was just right. Making sour faces because its too sweet for you. Figuring out ways to make it just the right temperature as soon as you pour it. Cold creamer is the key.
And, while all of that is one of my favorite things about you, the best part, the very best part, is that I know you will be tasting my coffee for all the years to come.
We made it back to the US!! After our dramatic day in Freeport, I was ready to be an American again. Just goes to show how spoiled I am. I was singing Lee Greenwood’s Im Proud To Be An American in my head all day. I’ve never really been anywhere before, and I really missed the comforts of home.
To be frank: WE LOVED KEY WEST! We did a bike tour around the island and it was so beautiful. Lush, colorful vegetation was everywhere. There were 8 people on the bike tour and we rode in the very middle of the street and guess what? Not a single person honked at us! Not one!! They waited so patiently for us to either move over or turn onto another street. People were truly on island time.
We stuffed our faces at Clementine’s on Duvall street, saw Ernest Hemingway’s house and his cute cats, saw the Little White House and learned a bit about the Bay of Pigs, saw the “Southernmost” point (apparently there is debate about this), had Chocolate Dipped Key Lime Pie on a Stick, and walked a lot. None of us wanted to get back on the boat. Definitely on the list of places to return to for another vacation!
That evening we returned to the boat, and our next day was sailing back up the East Coast towards Charleston. We got off on Friday morning and had a yummy southern style breakfast at Hominy Grill, thanks to multiple recommendations. Then, we drove home to a rainy and cold Richmond! It was a really great trip, and I think we would do another cruise in a few years. They definitely aren’t a relaxing type of vacation, but I think it would be a great way to see Alaska! One day maybe!
We will back to our regularly scheduled blog posts tomorrow! Hope you enjoyed seeing some of our trip!
Friends, Freeport was a bust. Funny to think about now, but in some of those moments I was truly afraid.
I will tell you two stories. First, our cab ride. You have to take a cab to get anywhere in Freeport, because it is all very industrial. Everyone was telling us we needed to go to Port Lacaya for the shopping. So, we found a cab driver and piled into the car after we told her where we would like to go. She proceded to tell us about another beach that we should go to instead, a little further away, but it had live music, good food and the beach was free. We insisted that we really wanted to go to Port Lacaya. She started to get a little…touchy. A little edge in her voice as she continued to try to convince us to go to the other beach, because it was further away, that meant a bit more $$$ for her. Finally she conceded and took us where we wanted to go. She asked us when we wanted to leave, but there was no in you know what that we were riding back with this woman. It was a cab ride that you start to get a little nervous wondering if you will never make it to your destination and you’ve just been kidnapped kind of thing. No way were we riding back with her. We blew her off, headed to the shopping and the beach. When we were ready to leave we found a much nicer man to take us back to the boat. The shopping was all touristy stuff, and the beach left a lot to be desired. As we are walking to the nice man’s cab, crazy woman starts chasing after us saying, “Didn’t I bring you here? Excuse me, I brought them here. Hey! Do you need a ride back? Hey! Hey!! I brought them!!” I am not kidding. She was chasing us. The nice man quickly told us to hurry into his van. Crazy. We made it safely back to the boat.
2nd story. Much shorter. There was a small walk to the beach. We passed some men selling t-shirts. As you know, my husband and most of our guy friends are covered in tattoos. That means something in third world countries. It means you’ve been to jail, or are a bad type of person. Guy selling t-shirts extends his hand to Jared. Jared takes it, and the guy pulls him in and whispers in his ear, “Ive got the blow, Ive got the smoke, What can I put you down for?” Yep. We were offered cocaine. No. Big. Deal. Jared laughed a little and said no, thanks.
Freeport was a bust. I literally took one photo the entire day…when we were safely back on the boat returning to the sweet, sweet shores of the United States.
Our first port of call was Nassau. And, you might remember that we were supposed to go power snorkeling. Well, you might also remember that there was bad weather the first day on the boat. The storm made the water rough and murky, aka bad conditions for snorkeling. So, we had the whole day to walk around and explore Nassau. We asked one of our new wait staff friends about where to go and he told us to take a ten minute walk to Junkanoo Beach. We heeded his advice and it was awesome. The guys met some of the local boys and spent the next few hours getting to know them and jumping off a pier even though it was illegal. The boys assured us that they would never arrest an American (ahem.)
We ate at Senor Frogs, a Caribbean chain restaurant, and had some Conch salad. One of the best things I ate the entire trip. Senor Frogs was wild. Like, every one is drunk and doing the conga line while bad karaoke was sung in the background. It was perfect. We got to sit on a porch that was overtop the water and my friends yelled at me when I threw food to the poor starving pigeons.
We also were able to walk out of the touristy area just a bit to still feel like you weren’t going to be kidnapped, but far enough away to feel like you were doing something cool, and hang out in a mini park. It was really pretty and relaxing.
I have two more ports to share with you! One was the worst of the whole trip, and the other was the best! Stay tuned!
We boarded on Saturday and spent a couple hours just exploring the ship. Not that many people were on yet, and it was fun walking around finding everything. We spent the next day cruising down the east coast towards the Bahamas. (There was a channel on TV that you could watch the boat on a map. I am happy to admit it was one of my favorite things to keep tabs on.) It was freezing on Sunday! We were all wearing sweat shirts and cuddling up with our towels while out on the decks. We went to the casino, danced at the club a little, and started eating all the food available to us…mostly soft serve ice cream. We also may have modeled at all the ah-mazing backdrops provided while taking ridiculous pictures.
I have to say that the cleanliness of the ship and the happy attitudes of all the staff was so impressive. We did not meet one grumpy person and that boat was CLEAN. It was awesome. Our room was cleaned and tidied twice a day, and our wait staff became our friends for the week. I was genuinely sad the last night at dinner!
Other things we did on the boat: sun bathed, saw a hilarious comedian (Im not kidding!), rode water slides, got massages, made friends with a bunch of fun people, got in the hot tub, drank a lot of coffee, and worked out once. Success.
Ill be back tomorrow to share a bit about our first port, Nassau!
THE CRUISE!! We had such an amazing time!! I took about 400 images throughout the week, but they were with my point and shoot so I wont be sharing that many here on the blog. They will all be on Facebook soon though. Im picking some of my favs to share here with y’all!
Our cruise ship left from Charleston, SC and since we have heard nothing but amazing things about that city we all thought it would be fun to drive down the day before and spend an afternoon and night there! Luckily, we have a friend that lives there, Daniel, and he was able to show us around. He told us all kinds of history about Fort Sumter, the architecture, and later that night took us to dinner at Leaf, and a few bars. It was such a beautiful city even though it was rainy and cold that day. I think we could have spent our entire vacation there! We also were able to grab some breakfast and coffee when we got off the boat a week later at Hominy Grill. It was delicious. One of my top 10 favorite places I’ve ever eaten, easy. It also didn’t hurt that it was super cute.
Jared and I looking out at Fort Sumter and a really pretty house!
