Dramatic California!

Andy and I have officially been living in California for 3 whole months now! Whoo, yeah! It was 3 months and about 6 days ago that we were packing our moving truck in the back of our Virginia house. It had just snowed lightly and some of our friends had come over to help us pack the truck. I ran out to grab some doughnuts and hot coffee to help us through the loading process. It was a chilly morning spent with good friends. Us girls huddled around our coffees nibbling on doughnuts, while the guys steadily worked on loading our life belongings into the moving truck. Now that I think about it, it seems so far away. Alas, it was only 3 months ago... Since then, we have been loving California! We miss our friends and family dearly, but the gorgeous scenery and abundant adventures have been keeping us busy. Here are some of the more dramatic photos that I have taken of our adventures over the last 3 months.

Prints of these photos are available in my Society6 store.

One Day in Rio: Jardim Botânico

We had one full day in Rio (Wednesday) and it was... (surprise!) grey. So we lay on the beach for 20 minutes with the wind blustering about and the wild waves hurling flecks of saltwater our way and decided to make our way to the Botanical Gardens. Which, it turns out, are pretty cool. See below.








Thursday dawned bright and sunny, but unfortunately we had a lunch to make and then a

Stylish Scandinavian Blogs

A few weeks ago I discovered a number of Scandinavian blogs through NIB, I truly fell in love with the design style of these bloggers. I have always felt Denmark and Sweden have been ahead of most, for their contemporary home ware and furnishing designs and there is no doubt in my mind that the same goes for their bloggers. Scandinavian bloggers are fantastic stylists and photographers, clearly seen by the wonderful images I discovered.

Today I want to share some beautiful images from a few of the blogs I visited. I could have continued blog hopping all day long, knowing that each blog would be as beautiful as the other, but had to stop somewhere, so although I may have visited your blog, if you don't see any images of yours here, it's merely because I limited myself to 6 blogs and 6 images, they were all equally as wonderful and I know there are far more out there just as deserving. So when you have finished looking through these images, I encourage you to take some time to visit these stylish blogs, English translation buttons should be found at the top of their pages. Links to the blogs can be found at the end of this post.

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1.NIB
2.Sven Garden
3. Fabelaktig
4. Anette Shus
5. Draumesidene
6. Shine Design

 We hope you've enjoyed these wonderful images and having a truly wonderful day, wherever you are in the world.

Travel Diaries: Paraty

As you may or may not have heard, we spent two days in Paraty and the first of those sitting in the hostel looking wistfully out at the rain, fingers crossed for a rainless tomorrow. To our great delight, tomorrow was mostly rainless, if one of the wettest (yet paradoxically dryest - the whole town awoke to find itself without running water (!) apparently due to rain (?)) rainless days

Art Inspiration: Gabriele Galimberti

Gabriele Galimbert comprised this photo project called Toy Story, showing children from all over the wold with their prized possessions. He shot the project over 18 months and found it interesting to see what children had chosen. He found a lot of similarities in their choices despite the differences in countries and economics. You can read more about it and see more photos here. I find these photos so interesting, and even shocking! What a cool project though.

Alessia – Castiglion Fiorentino, Italy

Cun Zi Yi – Chongqing, China

Pavel – Kiev, Ukraine

Chiwa – Mchinji, Malawi

Stella – Montecchio, Italy

Art Inspiration: Murad Osmann

A few days ago Andy introduced me to Murad Osmann's instagram series called 'Follow Me To...'. I am always on the lookout for inspiring art, so I was immediately captivated! I read up on him and it turns out that he is a Russian artist, photographer, and film maker. He started the series 'Follow Me To...' by accident. While traveling with his girlfriend he wouldn't put his camera down. He took pictures of everything and it began to frustrate his girlfriend. While holding hands one day, Osmann started taking pictures, his girlfriend got upset and tried to pull away. Osmann caught the action in a photograph and decided to turn it into a series. I love it! It reminds me of a series that I would do and has got me thinking and inspired about all sorts of ideas. Hopefully you will get as much enjoyment out of Osmann's series as I do. You can find these photos and more on his instagram: muradosmann.

 Here is a photograph of Osmann taking the picture.

All White & Sunlight

I'm really excited about today's photos, and I think they may mark a partial shift in the blog's content towards fashion photography and not just fashion (but there will still be fashion!). Boyf was sick over the weekend with some sort of stomach bug, and so I didn't want to make him take a long and miserable walk to take my photos so we just headed into the living room... and these are the

Robert and Maggie

 

I had the privilege a couple of weeks ago to take engagement photos for my cousin, Robert, and his fiancé, Maggie. They are such a gorgeous couple which sure does make taking photos easy. They were up visiting in New Hampshire during the same time we were so it made it perfect for a wintery themed shoot, although it sure was COLD! =) Because Lola is not feeling well and on my lap while I am trying to write this I am going to give up trying to type anything more and just share with you some of the photos:

Congratulations, Robert and Maggie. We love you so much!

Jamie and Josh's Maternity Photo Shoot

Seeing how I have now shown you all of the photos from Jamie's baby shower I thought I would share some of the photos I took of her and Josh a few weeks ago after a fresh snow! And based on the purple color scheme of the shower I think we gave away the fact that she is expecting a girl. She is due to arrive in less than two months and we all cannot wait to meet her. 

 

In the background right above Jamie's head you can see the church steeple where Jamie and Josh (and Jon and I and my parents as well) got married and over to the right you can see the town hall where our receptions were held.

 

 

I don't know if you can tell in the pictures above or not but it was FREEZING. It was about 17 degrees and WINDY! You can see in the picture below a little better just how windy it was! 

We had a good laugh as we were looking through all the pictures once we transferred them onto my computer and saw this one with Josh yawning in the background. I think he'd had enough of picture taking at this point!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! (It's almost the weekend, right?)