goodness & graciousness

it has been quite a relaxing visit home. a new idea for us. relaxing? on a vacation? wha??

movies, dinners, ice fishing, a sleigh ride and more, what else would you expect for a midwestern holiday season?

i sincerely hope that you feel the blessings from the past year, and look joyfully towards the next. He is good to us, if we just took a second to remember that.

happy new year!

to you and yours, and everyone else :)

Santa Stalker

i stalked Santa pretty hard the other night

you see, there is this thing about me.
i get star struck with just about anyone.
with the anchor woman at our local news station, at the glimpse of winne the pooh at a theme park... at the mailman. anyone. really.

so you can imagine my "pee your pants" excitement when i saw santa the other night.
the only thing is, he wasn't as stoked.

so ladies and gentleman, here you have it, the grumpiest pictures of santa you will ever see.
sorry they are a bit fuzzy, but i was frantic.

( i'm on cloud nine, santa is not)

(santa running away from me, typical...)

community

i'm going to be honest. when i was first coming to portland, i had absolutely no idea what i was getting into. the questions were in my mind, but i hid them silently and embarked on an unknown journey. well.. that makes it sound more epic than it really was. in reality, i moved to a new place where the people i knew consisted of one, my husband, but we were both game for it.

and i think the Lord knew what we needed. he introduced us to a community of people that uplift us, encourage us, play with us, laugh at us, and worship with as well.
i am truly thankful for them and i wonder what life would have been like had i decided to stay where i was, or to let my fears outweigh my heart.

regardless i'm honest when i say that i love my home community.
this shot was taken after several attempts at a nicey nice pose.
i guess we all need to blow off steam once in a while.

hope you cherish those around you. even the buggers :)

Emmet Otter

First off, let me preface by saying that I am indeed a huge geek. we all are in our little ways. but i love this christmas movie. the movie poster itself takes me up to a nostalgia level of about 110,000. I mean who doesn't love jug bands, christmas, and otters?

if you haven't seen it, I don't blame you. But if you don't rent it sometime this holiday season, i will take that as a personal offense :)

happy ottering!

To all of my lovely blog readers, clients, and people I love.
I'm going to take a much needed break from design related goodness until late January.
The hubs and I talked about it, and its what is best for my sanity, and life :)

I will still post here and there on the blog, so please still come and visit!
And if you have a design request, I'd still love to take them, I just won't be able to complete it right away.

xo, and I hope that this Season is the merriest and brightest of all for you.

bragging

i don't care. i'm just going to say it. i live in an awesome place.
and i don't feel bad one bit for gloating.
because last weekend was all about this:

crafting, relaxing, and pigging out with a good friend at the beach. all the while soaking in the view. what a life :)

Christmas Elf

what have i been doing lately? mostly, trying to make our sanctuary at church a winter wonderland, alongside an amazing team of talented people.
there were countless hours or rolling paper, gluing paper, cutting paper, wearing paper, and swearing at paper. But we did it!

Our theme for Advent is the Incarnation, and word became flesh. The elements that we put up are all made out of book pages, well minus the tree. Those are made up of green and pricklies.

The picture doesn't do it justice. you'll need to go and take a look for yourself, and receive the glory and wonder of Christ in this sweet, sweet season...