onward!
I’ve seen many blog posts that start with “oh boy, has it been that long?” or “wow, time flies!” Heck, I’m guilty of both of those!! I really do love writing and am starting to hope more and more that maybe one day I can do something with all of this. But I’m learning that hours 10 and 11 in front of a computer are less desirable than they seem like they will be when I’m at the beginning of hour 1. When I get home at the end of my day all I want to do is play with the girls, relax with a glass of wine, pump up some tunes and wander somewhat aimlessly from room to room ‘organizing’ which Murray called ‘getting things really, really lost.’
I certainly have been staying busy the last few months, which is amazing!
+ I’ve played with a handful of pups and kitties, each one totally fantastic in their own way.
+ I’m working obsessively to finish my first quilt! It’s comin. And to give you an idea how much time I’ve spent on it, I have now listened to 5 books, countless episodes of This American Life, watched almost all of House of Cards and plan to probably start in on a bit of a Harry Potter marathon. For the record, serious quilters are amazing. This is an INCREDIBLE amount of work!
+ And because I caught the quilting bug, I have also started on #2 and #3. I can’t wait to see those really take shape!!
+ I turned 27.
+ I used my brand new Le Creuset pot for an amazing meal I want to make once again … Thank you Barefoot Contessa. You’ve done it once again.
+ I got through another wave of birthdays and holidays I didn’t really want to face. And while I ‘faced’ them in the respect that I woke up each morning and went to bed each night, I didn’t really do traditional holiday things. And I’m ok with that. One day that will all work out again.
And now? Well, I have so many things up my sleeve for 2013 that I am almost busting at the seams. One thing that is really important to me again this year is to keeping writing all this stuff down. I am hoping to post more and more but if my girls demand some attention, I think they are going to win. I want to live in the ‘now’ and embrace and love everything around me.
If you aren’t already a fan of my facebook page I would really recommend it! I post a lot more on there than here these days so you’re guaranteed to get peeks at the latest, greatest 4 legged kiddo before they grace these pages. Seriously – go like it now! 
But to catch you up, here are some of my favorite images from the last several months
phew! well maybe ill find that getting the first post in a long time completed is the hardest step?
Murtemberfest
noun (mur-tem-ber-fest)
A festival thrown in honor of a great dude named Murray, celebrated not in his chosen month of October (which would have been called Murtoberfest) but in September, the month (and day) on which he was to be married.
cue Edward Sharpe’s song ‘Home’ …
if you actually have that on whatever device you are reading this from, you should probably hit play now.
… it went off without a hitch. Really, it was an incredible event that I am so incredibly proud to slap my name all over. I worked hard for this. Really hard. I have been crafting up ideas for the last year and 1/2 to make this wedding/celebration exactly as I had always dreamed it could be.
Dad and I arrived in Iowa on Wednesday evening to open arms and a delicious dinner. On Thursday we figured out where this party was going to happen and what needed to be cleaned, swept and power washed. We accomplished that and rounded out the night with some of my lingering crafty projects. On Friday I went to Omaha to get a great friend from the airport, had lunch with family, bought some last minute goodies and headed back to keep on working. There was much to be done but more specifically, I needed to keep my mind from wandering to what I ‘should’ be doing at that very moment. From what the rehearsal would have looked like. From what last minute projects I would have felt were necessary that Murray would have deemed LONG ago to be over the top and unnecessary. Perhaps those handmade napkins??
Then it was Saturday.
Shortly after getting up and downing a trusty cup-o-joe, I headed out to the site of the festivities to get crackin. The tables were going to arrive before too long and once those got there I could plow ahead to make this an unforgettable party… And drag along anyone who was willing to help, which to my delight was EVERYONE!
We unpacked candles, paper lanterns and bamboo forks. We discussed the placement of the never-ending supply of Christmas lights. We hemmed and hawed over the weight of string and if the string in hand would be heavy enough to hold all those lanterns we had just unpacked. We got the mason jars with their ‘necklaces’ in position and labeled all of the home brewed beer.
At about 3:30 I finally felt like I could breathe … just about everything was in place. The space was absolutely stunning. And the remainder of my best friends in the whole wide world were starting to trickle in. That was my cue to wash the several days of moving, sweeping, packing, unpacking, crafting, thinking and crying off of me.
The rest is a bit of a happy/sad blur … There was an amazing crowd, great music, a beautiful sunset and most importantly, lots of hugs, smiles, laughter and memories. In light of everything over the past year, I really honestly couldn’t have asked for a better day. And that’s part of what made everything so hard, I think. I knew going into this, one year ago, that Murray would never let this day be anything but flawless. I knew he would give us the most amazing weather he could. He would get as many people there as he could. He would get everything to come together with as little frustration or tears as possible. And he sure did! At some point during the evening I stopped in my tracks and gazed up at the beautiful moonless sky and my friend beside me said ‘this is just perfect’ and I wholeheartedly agreed. It was.
I’m so proud. Not only of the beauty but for how all of us embraced everything and plowed forward. We took the lemons of a day that was supposed to be amazing for so many other reasons and made lemonade.
Besides talking about the festivities and sharing some photos, I also wanted to extend a HUGE thank you to everyone that helped make this happen!!! If you were there and helped serve pies, hang lanterns and lights, make signs, drink beer, eat that pie or hug us, THANK YOU! If you could not make it but sent thoughts and messages either through text, email, facebook or writing in the clouds, THANK YOU! And while I’ve gotten pretty good at taking self portraits (if I do say so myself), I certainly can not claim the ones above as mine. A big chunk of these lovely photos are credited to my amazing friend, Emily, who is 1/2 of why this date was picked in the first place. I made a point to leave my camera in the house during the party because Mur had joked (at least I think it was a joke?) that he would hide my camera on the morning of the wedding. So that’s what I did – I hid it.
While I hate to stop writing here since it makes the reality that all the hoopla is over that much more real, I believe the photos and words paint an amazing picture of not only the celebration, but of how truly loved and missed Mur is. And that is my goal.
I’ll conclude with a BIG thank you to my amazing clients who have had incredible patience for the last month (well, year). It has helped more than you may realize! And now, I’m on my way to a shoot a lovely pittie who, rumor has it, loves people AND treats – my kind of gal.
Read MoreOne Year Ago
One year ago today my life forever changed. In the months since I’ve often thought about how I would use words or photos to communicate my feelings of this impending day. Do I post something here? Do I just scrawl thoughts on paper? I settled on a mixture of both. While this is most often filled with expressive cats, super cute pups and my girls, I still feel it makes sense to share a bit about my life so people know who I am besides the blonde gal with amazing dog treats.
My journal from the last year is littered with crazy thoughts, unanswerable questions and impossible wishes. While I have gone through some of my lowest lows these last 12 months, I am so incredibly proud to say that I have smiled and I have laughed. I have started to envision new dreams and when I think of him I have started to smile more often than I cry. I smile because I know that I would never ever trade those 7 years for anything else. I am a better person for having known, loved, been loved by, traveled with, shared a life with and planned a future with this man.
It took me quite a bit of time to decide what to do on this day and I felt a lot of pressure to make the right decision. Pressure from only myself, but pressure nonetheless. I had wanted to do something that not only my family supported but that I know without a doubt in my mind, he would support. And he would without a doubt support this adventure …
… If you are reading this today, the 1st of Sept, I am hiking a mountain in Yellowstone. And when I get to the top I plan to have a Surly beer, cry a lot, smile a lot, take tons of pictures and breathe in a new year. That’s what he would want me to do.
Please send me all the hugs you can today because rest assured, I need them. And don’t just send them to me, but to all of my family and friends who have had their world turned upside down and slapped into perspective by last Sept 1st. Lots of love, lots of hugs and lots of besos.
a lot of fantastic in one spot :: minneapolis pet photographer
Hmm – I don’t think I’ve blog-talked about my amazing and bestest friend Tay, which is a bit surprising. Part of that is probably because we see each other just once or twice a year, if we’re lucky. She is one of those people that despite how long it has been since we’ve talked to each other we can pick up right where we left off. And no matter what we do together, it’s an amazing time. She lives in North Carolina on what sounds like an amazing piece of land with lots of animals and expansive gardens, and I am hoping to get out there to see it all before too long.
I was over the moon when a few months back she told me she was coming home and surprising her entire family. And what was even better for me was that she said she had a lot of free time! I joined the fam for homemade pizza and after great food and great conversation I convinced Tay and Matthew that they should let me take some photos of them and their beautiful dog, Cole. They are all so lovely (including Cole) that I can’t wait to do photos on their land when I’m out there. I have all sorts of ideas a-brewin! But for now, I hope you enjoy these …
She definitely works for treats
It was one of the HOTTEST days we have had all summer so I’m pretty impressed Cole put up with my antics for as long as we had light. Thanks friends!!! Lots of love and I can’t wait to eat and cook with all the deliciousness at your farm. Until then BIG hugs
mexico!
as I posted on here almost too many times to tag, I went to Mexico at the end of February (the very end! my passport is actually stamped February 29th!!!) and came back some time in March. It was lovely!! I’m not going to lie, it wasn’t as ‘magical’ as last year, but who could have expected that? But it was fantastic for it’s own reasons – I spent 10days with Perdues+ and feel like I went home without them being completely annoyed of me, so I consider that a success!!
below are a selection of photos from the trip …
let’s start with some good old fashioned beach frolicking … who can go wrong there!
This was a random photo shoot that we decided upon because Mur’s mom gave me some dresses to take to Mexico to fight over with Margee … Pretty sure we had a pretty huge audience for this!!! They all loved drinking their beer and watching the blond girls run around the beach
ha!
but the trip wasn’t all frolicking on the beach…
there was food…
there was beautiful rug weaving (more on that later) …
there were succulents …
and mules.
It was a really lovely trip! A lot of bitter with my sweet, but I made it and made it home
Probably more to come from this trip in coming weeks… but for now, I’ll leave you craving a beach
Besos!
Read Morethe weather …
It’s no secret that I live in Minnesota. And here, the weather is a constant topic of conversation…
“Can I go shovel the walk? You betcha, hun!”
“It’s not so much the heat, it’s the humidity.”
“Did you see those storm clouds move in last night, Sven? What a soaking we had! Boy, it sure is nice out today!”
And in true Minnesotan form, as much as I’d like to pretend I’m not guilty of it … I am. But seriously, have you SEEN this weather?? This week has been beautiful!!! Pretty much all week! So this, in combination with a lot of catch up from being gone in the depths of Mexico, a bunch of new and fantastic opportunities for Chocolate Moose, a heck of a lot of emotions as I take this week to really look at ‘me’ and what that means now and of course, oodles of time with the girls are all contributing factors to why my blog has been silent since I got back.
We’ve been doing a lot of this {see images below} around our house … time on the square and time with the shrimp. Oh boy, the shrimp. There has to be a post about that in the future. Anyone who has been to my house since the holidays knows that this little one here is obsessed {almost to the point of drooling} when I take out a shrimp. She fetches them like it’s what she was meant to do. And maybe that’s just it … Tarrazu was born to fetch shrimp. Ha Glad she found her calling in life!
**side note … I’m pretty sure that in the past I’ve defined a few terms for my blog readers that I throw out there all willy nilly, but just in case we have some new folks in town, here is another quick run down.
the square: an incredibly tiny patch of deck real estate that is outside our apartment’s back door. it is large enough to hold 2 cats, myself, a tomato plant and just a few herb plants. want to join me out here? then we should probably move the tomato plant inside.
the girls: my amazing kitties that have filled the last 2 years of my life with excitement, laughter, love, a little insanity and meat muffins. I don’t think I’m a crazy cat lady yet {proof? when they talk to me I’m still not sure what they say} but it’s possible that may be in my future. names of said kitties are Digi and Tarrazu (Tarra)
Just recently someone said “oh fun! what girls are you hanging out with and where is this square?? I want to come!!” So to help paint pictures in your minds that doesn’t involve lots of my girlfriends, martinis and some fancy restaurant patio somewhere {although that does sound AMAZING}, above are the definitions of what the hey I’m talking about.
Well, I’m super excited about everything that is ahead but it’s also quite bittersweet because of that big hole that remains in my heart. But today I’m going to focus on the good things … enjoying the sunshine, getting the girls as much out door time as possible, drinking some fancy new beer I just picked up and making something crafty. Have a great Saturday!
Read Moreright now
… I am enjoying one of these … here.
… and then I’m going to go play in this
well, that actually looks rather intense. I think I’ll find a more calmer section of water to wade around in. Take care, Minnesota!
Read Morea glimpse of winter?
… why not. I mean why not have threats for the only snow storm MPLS has had all year the day I’m supposed to leave for a trip to Mexico? I have my fingers crossed real hard there are not glitches in my travels!!! Hopefully things don’t turn out like this …
… this was just one of the 20some” blizzards we had last year. In fact, this was the day after we got back from Mexico.
Well as I’m getting ready for my trip, packing the last of my goodies, clearing the last of my memory cards and cuddling with my kitties before they go to Hotel-de-Dad, I’m reminiscing on last year’s trip. It was really great. Really really great! One of those trips that you want to do over again and again. I am really looking forward to this one but also know if won’t be the same – not even close – and while that’s making today hard, I know that we will make new memories and have as good of a ‘full-on-pina-colada-mode’ time as we possibly can have.
… and now don’t you want to be there too??
Read More