this precious life.

I'm excited to participate in One Day Without Shoes again this year! April 10th! Mark your calendars! Even if you stay home that day, it's a great reminder to pray for those who are less fortunate and don't even have one pair of shoes!!

5 or 6 years ago the girls in our family started having a Valentines Tea every year on February 14th. Most years it's just been us, but this year we decided to invite a few friends. {Scroll through to read about my special guest!} We always make as many heart shaped treats as possible {some varying from year to year... others are must haves}, make Passion tea {hot & iced} & enjoy celebrating a day set aside for showing love. Love poured on us by Jesus and overflowed onto others.  Have a peek at our 2012 Valentine Tea<3  {I know this is a lot of pictures but it's not even half of them!!}  Elisabeth thought up a bunch of fun games for all the girls to play!  I met Libby* through one of the moms we serve at  Heart Change  {a beautiful ministry I get to help with}. She is a very quite & shy 14 yr old who loves pink, purple & ...

hi people!! umm... no biggy but... I'm leaving for Uganda in 11 {ELEVEN} days!!! ahhhhh!!! p.s. need a laugh? this is genius. via Pinterest {click on the link to view it larger} p.p.s. that little pencil drawn guy sitting at the bottom of that list of photos looks *nothin'* like me! I am supah happy- NOT sitting glumly at my laptop -if you couldn't tell!! ahaha!!

I'm sure when you checked my blog or followed a link here you were expecting something much more spectacular than pictures of my face! But all photographers need a date with the mirror & their camera every now & then right?! It's been really long since I've done mirror pictures but I stumbled upon an amazing combination {dirty mirror + various light sources = fabulous "fake" bokeh & grain} and just couldn't resist snapping a few {okay. snapping a lot!}:) Using one subject and tweaking lighting and/or composition to come up with a whole bunch of different images is so much fun! And who knew dirty mirrors could come in handy?! I stuck in a few cliche "photographer/mirror" images -- just had to, you know! Laugh all you want at the images of me making faces at myself in the mirror:D They make me laugh a whole bunch too!!  rockin' the dirty mirror bokeh!  oh yeah!!  "the portrait."     "shoot from the hip....