My Love

Today is a celebration of your birth, your life, your contribution to both humanity and to this planet. This marks another year that has passed and the beginning of another set of 365 days for you to dream and achieve and grow.

Your love is larger than I ever imagined and it envelops me every morning that I wake up next to you and every night that I fall asleep by your side.

Having spent these years with you has changed me in so many ways. It has changed me in the best of ways. I have become more loving and more tender. More kind and more forgiving. Because of you.

I appreciate your patience and humor, your athleticism and your creativity. Your ability to be silly will never cease to amaze me and I can always count on you to be straight with your feelings. There is this wonderful mixture of simpleness and complexity with you.

I am the luckiest girl in the world that you chose me to be the one to make a life with.

Happy birthday my love.

I'm so looking forward to a nice gluten-free dinner with you tonight!!!

xoxoxooxoxox
mE

Kendall & Brandon

I was contacted a while back by a fellow designer. A woman, Danielle, who is a graphic designer in the wedding community. She said that she had some fabulous photographs from her daughters wedding and was interested in having me design their album.

I was so thrilled to be a part of this project. Being asked to design something by another designer is such a treat! It's also a bit of pressure too. ;-) Pressure aside, I was up for the task and LOVE how the album turned out.

She wanted something classic and beautiful to match the style of the wedding. The colors were black and white so we chose a black Japanese book cloth for the cover of the album with the text stamped in silver. I'm so pleased with Leather Craftsmen and the amazing quality of their albums and equally in love with this cloth cover. It gives the book such a wonderful feel.

The bride and groom are just beautiful and Danielle, well, she's one stunning mother of the bride. Danielle, it was such a pleasure to work with you. I wish lifetimes of happiness to Kendall and Brandon and to you and your family!

GetMarried.com

Advertising my business has been both exciting and challenging. Exciting because of the local and national press I've received over this past year in some fabulous magazines. Bride and Bloom, Brides and Inside Weddings. Challenging because when I've placed an ad on a wedding website, it's been difficult to categorize my business.

Most of the time websites don't have a category that suits my business. Album design isn't necessarily new, but marketing the business to brides as a different option to the traditional album provided by your photographer is. Most of the time I'm placed in the category of "photography". This winds up being so difficult because I'm lost in a sea of wedding photographers and the likelihood that a bride will see my business, let alone understand that I'm an album designer, is slim to none.

GetMarried.com has changed that. I'm finally in a category that make sense! "Unique Wedding Vendors". I'm so excited about this that I just had to share. I not only have a wonderful page with a description of the business and photo's of some albums but I'm a spotlight vendor as well. This means that at the top of the page there are small square ads for different vendors and FMN Design is the square labeled "Wedding Albums".

I'm thrilled to be a part of this site. Check it out:

Warriors

About a week or so ago, Mason told me that he wanted to be in charge of a project. He wanted to be the leader for the family on some "thing". He wasn't sure what and was open to suggestions but was very clear that he wanted to be IN CHARGE. The other thing he was clear about is that he wanted to execute this project on May 1st. Why May 1st??? I have NO idea.

So Saturday came and I did my best to make his wish happen. We sat down as a family and brainstormed ideas. The idea that he came up with and loved best, was to be in charge of the project of making me a Mother's Day gift. Unfortunately this wasn't going to happen on Saturday, May 1st. This was a huge deal to overcome but, once we worked through it, we scheduled Sunday, the 2nd as "the day".

On Sunday morning I went to church alone so the boys could stay home and do "the project". When church was over I called home because I was thinking of stopping at a store to pick a couple of things up. Well, before I could finish my sentence Matt chimed in with a resounding NO. No, just come home. Now. Thanks.

I had NO idea what I was walking into. The funny thing is, this isn't the first time I've left them home alone with Matt and this isn't the first time I've come home to this.

I think this is in fact the THIRD time that this has happened.

I have boys. There's no mistaking it. Emotional boys, but boys to the core.

They are warriors. It's their favorite thing to pretend to be. I've promised them that this summer I will paint them like true warriors. With body paint and NOT markers. There's still traces of this last paint job all over their bodies. Matt has promised to make sure that they use washable markers next time.

Isn't it amazing what 2 boys can do in 5 minutes of unsupervised time?!

Life And Death

We've been referred to as the "Sandwich Generation". Being squeezed between taking care of our parents and taking care of our children. Both physically and financially. Although it's not this way for some, it is this way for many. It's a strange place to be in life. I feel like I'm right smack dab in the middle of it. Middle aged, for lack of a better term. I half smile, half sneer at the implications of that phrase. Middle Aged. Hmmmm...

The other part of being where I am right now in life is getting used to having life and death on either side of me. There are babies being born and people getting sick and dying all around. It feels heavy some times. I completely understand that this is just life. It's normal and learning to be with it, to accept it seems to make it not as heavy.

When I first started designing albums, I loved how happy I felt when making a book. The images were typically of a wedding or celebration. The people in the photographs were happy and therefore I couldn't help but smile as I placed them on a page. After having photographed and designed Zejah's album, that happiness was replaced by sadness. It was so touching to work with those images. It was heavy, but knowing that healing was the end result of the book being put together pulled me through the difficulty.

Now, I've been asked to build a book for a couple who were recently married. They became pregnant on their honeymoon and soon after found out that she had cancer. (There it is again. That word that I've become too familiar with.) Her husband reached out to have their album made as soon as possible. She just delivered their baby a couple of weeks ago and is about to begin her chemotherapy treatments. He wants to place this album from their wedding in front of her to bring happy memories of love and celebration into her spirit.

As I place these photographs on the pages of their book, I'm reminded of life and how fragile it can be. How quickly things can change and how important it is to celebrate each moment. How important it is to let the things that bother and worry you slip past as quickly as possible. I am reminded not to hold onto those negative feelings and thoughts and to tightly grip the things that make me happy and bring joy to my life.

Sigh.

Life can be beautiful and happy and devastating and sad all at once. It's all in how you look at it I guess. I am grateful that I feel God within my heart and soul. That I'm not gripped by fear the way that I used to be. That through my finding a connection to God, I've found a connection to life and death. A connection that has allowed me to be with the cycle in a new way. One of acceptance more than anger.

Leaving you with a few photos from a blessing way I recently went to seems appropriate. New life. Happiness. Celebration.

Garden Fresh

I've been away. Away with the ocean as my backdoor. It was a nice break from our normal day to day routine. It was wonderful to fall asleep with the slider open, listening to the sound of waves crashing on the shore.

Matt and the boys and I flew to Seaside, Florida to spend a little over a week with his entire immediate family. I say "entire" because there are so many people. 23 to be exact. 12 adults and 11 children, oh, and I can't forget, one on the way.

There is so much to share about this trip and SO many photo's. It may take a little time to sort through, edit and prep the images. Once they're ready, I'll share some of the highlights.

In the midst of all of the beauty and enjoyment I did find myself struggling a bit with one thing. Food. I mistakenly watched Food Inc. right before going on this vacation. Oh my goodness this movie is a MUST see for everyone, although I do have to warn you that it's a bit tough to watch. I know that so many people don't care, don't want to know what lies in the background of our food industry. It's so much easier NOT to know. BUT, and I don't mean to crawl up on a soapbox here, don't you WANT to know what it is that you're eating??? We literally are what we eat and it's mind boggling to me that people would rather just turn the other cheek.

I definitely don't want people to think that I'm faulting them for not caring or for eating food that isn't good for you. I think we live an existence where we've been desensitized to certain things like the impact that certain foods or "non" foods have on our bodies. We've also been pulled in the direction of convenience. There are so many options now for "fast" food, but who's looking at what is in the food? Where is it coming from? Is it healthy for our bodies?!!

Watching Food Inc. was an eye opener for sure. It made me appreciate where I live so much. I have access to fresh food. Access to grass fed, farm raised meat and poultry. Dairy products that aren't treated with hormones and pesticides. Locally grown produce. I am so grateful for this. In fact, this Saturday is the first day for a local farmers market that is walking distance from our house. WALKING DISTANCE! I feel blessed.

A couple of weeks before we left, Matt and I planted a small garden. We utilized the open sections of our yard to plant lettuce, broccoli, potatoes, garlic, onions, cilantro, parsley, tomatoes and mint. When we came home, our lettuce was in full bloom so we made the best steak salad I've had. It was so satisfying to just pick what we needed from our garden. The boys loved it too.

I have to say, I'm looking forward to warm summer days, buying locally grown, farm fresh food and cooking with my boys.

Summer, I'm ready for you!

Friday Inspiration - Mark Ryden

Here's a detail from the painting:

I've posted about my love of this artist before. He's one of my all time favorites. Mark Ryden. His strange fascination with meat and Abraham Lincoln. His attention to detail. His color pallet. But, I think what I love most is how his work makes me feel. When I look at his paintings, I get lost. Lost in a far away place that takes me across the line of reality into a world of fantasy and all things bizarre.

He has a new gallery show opening April 29th at the Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York, NY. It's running through June 5th 2010 and I would love to be able to go! At this show, you're able to watch a video of Mark painting "Incarnation", one of the pieces for this new show. Fortunately, the video is on Youtube and I'm happy to link to it HERE. It's 4 minutes and 27 seconds long.

The video shows how the foundation for the painting is created on the canvas. I wish, just a little that I had been able to see the entire process, but then maybe some of the mystery would be taken away. I do love the mystery of his work. How the figures seem so ethereal and how everything seems so real in its surreal state. One day, I hope to own one of his paintings. That would just tip me over the edge.

Happy Friday!