{ some wonderful winter things }

some wonderful winter things to look forward to.
mike & i's nightly tea time.
endless pup snugs.
olivia's 6month birthday!
secret hopes for snow.
holiday portraits.
nsync's christmas album (still my favourite!)
our little artificial tree.
no worries about the pup trying to eat the tree (hopefully).
kitty morning kisses.
warm & tangled blankets.
holiday shopping being (almost) stress free this year.
holiday portraits.
amazing coupons and bargains for shopping.
homemade apple butter for an easy stocking stuffer.
eggnog.
reconnecting with old friends to send out holiday cards.
shopping trips to north carolina. with my mom.
bristol motor speedway in lights.
making norwegian flatbread with my dad.
and of course buying presents for the mister.

{ well, elly may carries herself proud... with her shoulders thrown back. }

when my sister heather suggested we go see ellie may clampett and lulu from hee haw at a local (tiny) farmhouse restaurant in tennessee, there was no way i could resist. i mean, ellie may practically made farm animals look cool and those were some killer pigtails. anyone who can pull that off, i always want to see.

{ thanksgiving 2011 }

oh sure, the best part of the holidays are reconnecting and spending time with those you love, but when you come to my mom's house, you gotta give some admiration to the glorious amounts of FOOD!




love love, your still eating leftovers blogger, heather.

big hopes & little wishes.

to be honest, i have been in the process of a quarter life crises this entire autumn. i find myself daydreaming about my own studio every morning. waking up and getting the paper, drinking coffee, checking my email & starting the day with a clear and creative mind. choosing the clients i want to have and enjoying my time with them, fully capturing their sweet & silly family moments is the least i could do. the feeling of a day well spent, my heart softened and thankful, these are the things i dream of when i wake up in the moonlight, waiting to start my day.

someday, i tell myself, some sweet day.

these past few weeks, though stressful and dreary have given me the wonderful opportunity to look inward and find what i really want in my life and the main thing i want is to feel accomplishment. i have had the opportunity to dream, and be forced to settle down the noise in my mind, the distractions, the buzz and figure out exactly how i want to run my life and therefore my business.

i have decided to start my own studio, gradually. baby step upon baby step, i hope to gradually be able to separate myself from the weekly work schedule & make my own. i want to create how i want to create, without a time clock and without the pressure.

it begins with a dream they say. little wishes & big hopes, let's begin.

grateful part one.

we are officially on our way to begin the thanksgiving holiday. olivia is nestled in the back seat snoring happily as mike drives us to my parent's home for the evening. tomorrow we have an early lunch with my side of the family, then we will be on the road to mike's parents and brother's family dinner. needless to say we are going to be totally stuffed and loaded with gladware.


here are some not so little things i am grateful for.

leftovers. families that live close by. and far away. my mom's never failing early christmas decorations. fenced in dog parks. oatmeal. pit bulls. mail (the good kind!) a warm home. kitty blobs. yankee candles i had forgotten about. owl mittens. good friends. pumpkin spice coffee.

The Drifter.

3:27am late night insomnia used to be a thing of the past but is making a vengeful comeback as I lay in tangled sheets and a tangled mind to match. For a while I was content, but when my mind ceases to rest and the only thing willing to offer its reprieve is the spilling of words into text, I have no choice bur to oblige.

"At least I am doing what I love in some way," I tell myself as I snap the shutter two hundred times for two hundred of the same photo with a different face attached to its focal point. The familiar crack and fizzle I felt when a camera was placed in my hand has sweltered into a sense of duty. A role/purpose relationship. So much so, that when I have a subject in front of me, mine for the taking as my mind twists as twirls around visions of beauty and manipulations, I am left dumbfounded and stricken with utter confusion. To think artistically has been drawn out of me like venom being drawn from a wound, slowly and with the ever most care. I feel as if I can no longer think for myself when a camera is placed in my hand. I am strictly a device, a tool to push buttons to make the shutter come alive. I am the messenger from subject to camera, with as little content in between as possible.

Some of the best people I know don't know what to do with their lives.

And I hate to blame our parents, but when you grow up being told you can be anything you want to be, you are left without a sense of direction and a perpetual taste for wanderlust. To be "anything" then slowly turns into "something" and we are left at a loss when we always end up disappointed in ourselves.

What do I want to be when I "grow up?" I still do not know. I still do not know what will make me happiest, or hell even something I can live with for the rest of my life therefore leaving me nowhere with no options.

I do not know what to dedicate myself solely to when I want to dedicate myself to everything. I want a million lives to do a million things, be a million different people, yet sadly I only have this one chance and the concept of choosing a definitive scares the bejeesus out of me.

Not even counting the lack of funds to make a change but also the sheer lack of motivation, the acceptance of my own defeat leaving a bitter taste in my mouth daily.

I cannot hold still & yet I cannot move forward either. I feel as if my destiny will always be just to be a wanderer, with no definite purpose, no exact role in society, but a drifter, a mere tourist of this world taking in the sights but leaving no memorable traces of myself behind. There will be no great monuments built in my name nor will many even know my life and that is such a hard thing to grasp a hold of when you grow up hearing otherwise believing you are special and different and unique.

So here is a cheers to my generation, the patron saints of lost causes. The college degrees turned into waitresses, the Juliard's ending up in their parent's basements. Maybe one day we will find our places in this world.

"I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.” — Sylvia Plath

the cheese shop, stuarts draft, va.

though i do not always have time to enjoy all of the travels my job takes me fully, i still try and make it a point to try the local cuisine.

small towns that act like veins in the appalachians, tucked away and nestled in their own comforts, it is wonderful to step inside their world for awhile.

i went to stuarts draft today for retakes & i always make sure to stop by the cheese shop's sandwich shop located right by the schools i work in.


offering the simplest of sandwiches on freshly baked bread this place was exactly what i needed after a trying day. the staff and interior easily makes you feel at home. though located in a mini mall i find myself breathing a sigh of relief when i walk in the door.

i plan to visit the actual cheese shop which carries organic and bulk foods when i return to this little town but for now i am leaving with a happy belly and a warm cup of coffee for my drive home on this chilly november day.

lights & buzz

as winter quickly approaches and the rain drops start to crystallize, things in our little home are settling too. coats are bundled a little tighter, snow boots are dug out from behind closet doors and bed time cuddles with the fur babies become more frequent.

winter used to be something i despised, feeling like autumn (my favourite) was turning it's back on me every year to it's cold and frightful cousin. however since our little family has come along i now look forward to cold nights. i look forward to starting our fireplace, the kitties terrified at first, then slowly curling up in the warmth.

soon my hours at work will dwindle and i will be starting a new adventure in photography portraiture. nights will be longer and days shorter, with even more coffee necessary but regardless i feel the buzz of something new coursing through me.

hello winter, it will be nice to see you again.

{halloween.}

halloween is pretty much a favourite holiday for everyone in my family. the niece and nephews pretty much start planning their costumes in the summer and spend the next few months changing their minds several times over, finally driving their mother crazy in trying to scramble with last minute costume adjustments.

after pumpkin carving with the kids and with mike too, needless to say i had lots of yummy roasted pumpkin seeds for roasting. i am going to try (fingers crossed) to grow my own next year, but knowing our silly puppy, they may end up getting eaten before they even see daylight.

and as always i used the kids as an excuse to dress up and go trick or treating with them (no i didn't get candy, except for what hannah shared with me later on) and enjoyed the sights of wasena drive, as every year.

aaron, of course being the freshman he is was too cool to be seen trick or treating with his younger siblings, but rode dutifully in the car with his dad and snuck candy from his sister's bag when the opportunity arose.

mike's mask was a $6 target find and my makeup took a total of a half hour to do, but hey on the sly i think we did pretty well. even if i did look like a clown and mike scared a few toddlers.