Jill ~ Portraits of a Friend

I love how life simply works in mysterious and awesome ways. I met Jill when I was a “little” first year grad student when we lived in Virginia Beach. Even though Jill was already in her third year, we quickly became friends and have become even closer throughout the years. I owe most of my educational sanity to this girl and appreciate her advice and friendship more than I can describe. She was one of the first people I told about my career ventures into photography, and Jill was always a source of strength and encouragement. It’s not every day one decides to change their “life path” – and she continues to not only believe in my dreams, but gets excited about them as if they were her own. As life would have it, we both ended up 30 minutes away from each other in the Carolina’s. Not only do I have my sister’s living close by (YaY!), but I’ve been also blessed with great friends that have moved around these parts as well (seriously how lucky is that!) Jill has always had a passion for the arts (and photography) and wants to begin learning how to shoot in Manual mode! (I LOVE teaching!) Since the weather here has been all things Spring and pretty, we went on some adventures around the area shooting just for the love of photography. I’ve had the Canon 5D Mark iii for awhile now, but never played with the double exposure feature. So you will see a few of those that we had fun trying out! Below are just a few of the MANY beautiful portraits I captured of my lovely friend. Cheers to friendship, all things Spring time, and happiness. Love you Jill xox!

She did an AMAZING job when the camera got turned on ME!;-)

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Kasey Loftin - Love these! Great work.

Catherine Marciniak - Love these girl ! So beautiful and fun !

Allison Kuhn - These are so pretty!! You’re amazing!

Date Night Thursday

Whoa it’s Thursday already? It’s crazy how fast the months/weeks have been whizzing past! This week has been all about finding a balance between productivity in working and solid “for me” time. Not only did I get a YMCA membership this week, but Eric and I have been finding time to relax and “just be” together. We took a hike this weekend with Henry (our puppy), and we’ve made sure to snuggle up and watch our favorite show as a couple together. I don’t put him through the torture of making him watch Pretty Little Liars or Grey’s Anatomy – but we DO watch New Girl together. The characters are perfect and it’s such a funny/witty show. It’s nice having a few shows that we can BOTH enjoy together. Just as much as I’m enjoying writing this piece each week, I very much enjoyed READING all the responses! Thank you all for participating! I have a list of movies now that I must watch – saw Life of Pi last night! (highly recommend!)

For this weeks “Date Night Thursday” I want to talk about something near and dear to my heart. The Italian heritage is strong within my family. With that background also comes the love for ALL things food and cooking (and I especially enjoy baking!) Even now when my family gets together, it’s almost funny how our schedules revolve around the meals of the day. And no, I’m not joking. Looking back I don’t remember nights where we weren’t all together at the dinner table – because it’s just what you do as a family. In our own marriage, dinners together are still very much an important part of the day. It’s our time to thank God for our many blessings, to enjoy a meal together without any “social media” distractions (turn those phones to silent for at least an hour!), and of course connect and hear about how our day was. Eric and I FIRST started dating around Valentine’s Day (6 years ago!) At the time I was freaking out about what do you get someone after only dating a few weeks? I called up his Mom and asked what Eric’s favorite recipe was – I surprised him with a candle lit dinner featuring his favorite dish (and a collage of recent pictures we had taken together, which still sits at his desk!) Every time I make his favorite chicken and bowties (sometimes for special occasions, other times “just because” – it’s SO good), I think back to our very beginnings with a smile and my heart flutters with thankfulness for our relationship and the gift that a good meal (and beautiful company) can bring to your life.

So I challenge you all to make sure to sit down and be present at dinner with the one who makes your heart flutter. Better yet, make dinner together and connect during the process. Try not to talk about all the stressors of the day – but instead focus on the positive blessings in your life. Sometimes it’s really fun to reflect on the past and where you currently are today! The journey isn’t always an easy one, but I wouldn’t have traded it for the world. As I sign off for today, I will leave you with some Italian words of wisdom that I fondly recall my grandmother speaking at the dinner table, “Mangia Mangia!” (eat eat!)

 Oh and the *WINNER* of the movie date night package (by random number generator) is Megan Gielow! YaY! More contests in the near future!

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Date Night Thursday

Awhile back I started a weekly blog post called Date Night Thursdays. Having come from a background of focusing my career on marriage therapy, I thought it would be fun to tie in the important knowledge that I learned in graduate school with photography! So often it feels like we are on a treadmill of life, and it’s hard to get off and prioritize our marriage and relationships, as we should. I am currently participating in a weekly bible study and we are reading “What’s It Like to be Married to Me” – I will write more about this in a later post (maybe even this weekly series). Right now we are reflecting on being deliberate in making goals to be better spouses/people for the health/strength of the marriage. I’ve had a burning desire in my heart to start this blog sequence back up but was afraid and embarrassed of what people might think since I let it go to the backburner so many months ago. I sat down and reflected on what happened (especially since it was so important to me). At the time I had asked couples to send me a date night they had recently enjoyed.  Couples would write and say they didn’t think their date nights were exciting enough for a blog post. Being that I was looking to highlight real life couples on a weekly basis, it became hard to find couples to submit every week. I had been getting really beautiful feedback from couples saying they looked forward to reading the weekly post and they were making conscious efforts in their marriage to go on date nights and be more attuned to making TIME and their relationship an important priority (YaY!)

I decided to start this weekly post back up because I truly believe in the importance of being active and deliberate for the health of our relationships. I realized that I myself have the educational background and date night experience (in my own marriage) to share and people have been excited to read about them. So I’m dusting myself off, pushing away the fears of failure and embarrassment for having stopped this so many months ago, and starting over. I would still love to publish real life couples (so please send in a date night you’ve recently shared), but that won’t be the FOCUS of the weekly posts. So lets cheers and make promises to making our relationships a priority again. Don’t waste time as if you have a million years to spend. Lets forget about the chaos of life for at least ONE day a week and be deliberate in reconnecting. I’m excited to share in this journey with all of you again.

As I mentioned, date nights don’t have to be grand excursions. Sometimes all you need is a comfortable couch, a bag of popcorn (which I like to dump white cheddar on top of), and a movie you can both agree on (or take turns!) Getting lost in a movie can be the perfect escape from the chaos of life. Make some time to snuggle and relax with your loved one soon.

And to kick OFF this weekly series again, I’m giving away a fun movie night package.Comment below on a good movie you’ve recently watched to enter! 

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amanda - We recently watched Life in a Day – footage from over 100 countries, all in the course of a day. It was so beautiful and inspiring.

Love this idea and can’t wait to follow along! xoxo

Emily - This is such a beautiful, refreshing idea! I love it.
We saw Silver Linings Playbook together recently and LOVED it. It rings true in so many ways for both of us, and the experience + the discussions we had afterward really brought us closer.

Megan Gielow - Django was actually REALLY good! Love that you’re bringing this back!

Andria - We are going through our oldest favorites that have meaning to us…a few weeks ago it was Aladdin, last week it was Princess Bride, and this week it will be Sound of Music :)

Kelly - Alicia, this is such a sweet idea – I love it and am looking forward to reading your posts :) we actually are in the midst of our own date night, watching one of our favorite shows!

We’ve been watching all the Oscar movies lately – ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’, ‘Argo’, ‘Django Unchained’ — the last one being our absolute favorite!

Catherine Marciniak - I missed seeing these post ! So happy your bringing them back :D We watched Playing for Keeps last weekend ! It was sooo cute ! We loved it funny and a great chick flick too but not too girly

Amanda Hedgepeth - I’m probably too late, but OH we went to see This Is 40 at Cinema Cafe and we were crying laughing the entire time! I had a couple older people say we wouldn’t understand it, and apparently, at 26 and 28 we DO understand it already hahaha!!!!!! It was so nice to get out to dinner and a movie together, we flirted like we just met and then of course, went to buy Cammy stuff at Target after out of guilt LOLOL!

Valerie - I love that you’re doing these again! <3
I liked reading them!

And, a good movie I've watched recently…
hm, I think they're all kids movies.
Hotel Transylvania was actually pretty funny though.
(I found myself watching it after the kids went to bed… ha ha)

Brandy Lee - It took me a while to think about this. When Jacob and I take long car trips we listen to books on tape to pass the time. When The Hunger Games originally came out on book we listened to that one as we drove to the beach. Then the movie came out and we were so stoked. It wasn’t as good as the book, but we both agreed that it was still good. Recently poor Jacob hurt his ankle. To surprise him last Friday night I redboxed The Hunger Games and ordered pizza. He didn’t even realize it was out! It lifted his spirits and reminded us of our fun car trips listening to the book even though we were stuck on the couch. :)

Sarah Goodwin - The Bourne Legacy :)

Amy Webber - We just watched Here Comes the Boom with Kevin James and it was hysterical. I’m such a sucker for Kevin James movies haha.

Love this series! :)

Jessica Lago - Love it, girl! You are awesome! There is a photog named Anna Posciaz(idk how to spell it exactly) out of Birmingham maybe who writes a lot of marriage and encouraging solid marriages.

Although we haven’t seen a movie in forever, we ARE clipping through Lost on Netflix! We started after Mia was born and I think we are on episode 92! Amazing show…

Brittany Coleman - Taylor and I just watched Perks of Being a Wallflower. It was a heavy movie for a date night, but still really wonderfully done. Nothing beats date nights at home on the couch :) (P.s. glad these are back! I’ll be sending you some!) xoxo

Kathleen Hood - Cute idea! Silver linings playbook! Both Dan and I loved it…Dan just finished the book and loved it even more :)