I’ve been drinking my coffee from this small little cup, which I have had since the time my bedroom walls were The 100 Acre Woods. It is the perfect amount for me, and I can usually finish it before it gets cold.

“The finest clothing made is a person’s skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.” – Mark Twain

1. The movie Sabrina. It’s one of my favorites, both the original with Audrey Hepburn, and the remake with Harrison Ford. Very romantic.

Linus: [while slow dancing with his brother's girlfriend] How do you say in French my sister has a yellow pencil?
Sabrina: Ma soeur a un crayon jaune.
Linus: How do you say my brother has a lovely girl?
Sabrina: Mon frère a une gentille petite amie.
Linus: And how do you say I wish I were my brother?

“A woman happy in love, she burns the soufflé; a woman unhappy in love, she forgets to turn on the oven”

2. French Berets. They are really cute and fun to wear, especially paired with a scarf during the winter.

3. The Madeline books. They are stories about a little French orphan girl who often gets herself into trouble. I picked a few of them up at a yard sale about a year ago and I think the illustrations are very sweet. “In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines. In two straight lines they broke their bread and brushed their teeth and went to bed. They smiled at the good and frowned at the bad, and sometimes they were very sad. They left the house at half past nine in two straight lines in rain or shine. The smallest one was Madeline.”

4. French toast, french fries, and french bread. All very tasty reasons to press on and learn how I might order them in a restaurant in France, if I should ever travel there.

5. The music of Feist, Corinne Bailey Rae, and the“Paris” album by Putumayo. All of their albums feature songs with some French lyrics, and I’d like to know what I am saying when I sing along. That would be good.

There, now I already feel more inspired. La vie en rose!

This month, in an effort to realize a style for myself that doesn’t involve spending much money, I’m focusing on wardrobe staples. I’m learning more and more that if you love fashion and style in this economic age, you have to learn to be a really thrifty shopper with an ingenious eye for seeing the potential in a single item of clothing. If it can’t be re-mixed in a handful of different ways, why bother?

So here is my little list of things that I think are wardrobe staples for me:

• Oversized denim men’s shirt with black skinny pants
• Denim jumper-esque dress
• Basic striped boatneck tee
• All purpose cardigan
• Tweed shorts
• Plaid button down
• Navy pencil skirt
• Gray skirt (with or without tights)
• Bonus: Sailor-inspired coordinates
• Easy canvas pull ons
• Vintage-inspired oxford pumps (so trendy right now but still such a classic look)
• Simple oxford flat

My staple items all have a definite menswear vibe in a neutral palette which I really love as a base for layering on girly, pretty things in bright colors or patterns. Each one of these pieces could be worn any number of different ways using various seasonal accessories. To me, their silhouettes have a timeless appeal that I won’t have to worry about going out of style in 6 months.

So there’s my first attempt at a style board. I used a mix of Polyvore and Photoshop to create it.

This is a jar of fireflies, or lightning bugs, as I often call them. To make the actual flies, I doubled a sheet of white tissue paper and cut five small rectangles out. Then I twisted the center of each and wrapped brown wire around the middle, so as to create a mid-section. The tissue paper wings I trimmed into their final shape and hung them by clear string. At this point, I had painted a one-part mason jar lid and poked five holes in it to pull the string through the top so I could glue them in place. The lid was then an eye-sore of strings and glue. This I solved by taking the center piece of a two-part lid and hot-glueing it on top of the other. You know what the best part is? The fireflies light up in the dark because I painted their wings with glow-in-the-dark paint.

This is a bouquet of flowers. These are not just any flowers, though. These are paper flowers, which means they won’t ever wilt. Okay, okay. Maybe they aren’t as beautiful as the real deal, but they’re brown, or in brown’s same shady family. Sadly, brown flowers don’t actually exist and my friend has always wanted them to. So, I faked it using green floral wire, scrap-book paper cut into different sized hearts, and beads from an old necklace of mine that broke. (It didn’t really break, I had to cut it up because it was hopelessly tangled). For a vase, I used a smaller mason jar with a painted brown lid.

Happily, the present was a success.

I bought my first DSLR almost 7 months ago, back in July ‘09. I felt like I needed to have an upgrade from a point-and-shoot camera to go along with my graphic/interior design work and thought it would be a good time to purchase one before our big summer trip. I was beyond excited for the UPS guy to deliver my camera that Friday in July. Every time I heard a loud truck go by I’d peek out the window in hopes that it had arrived. Immediately upon using my new camera I realized that what I had was gold! Gold, I tell you!! I couldn’t believe how different it was from my little Casio p+s camera. Taking pictures just got a whole lot more fun and interesting! I really had no idea just how interesting the whole photography thing was as I pretty much remained clueless for about a month and a half while I tried to figure out how to use my camera. Or rather, tried to figure out how to make it do what I wanted. (It’s very easy to use a DSLR exactly like a p+s camera, but why would you want to?) I bought the Dummies version manual for my camera which was a really good tool for helping me to navigate through all those foreign camera terms like aperture and ISO and metering. Let’s just be honest here. I had absolutely no clue about any of those things before I got my camera. Not. A. Single. Clue. But I studied and I fiddled and I studied and I fiddled until little by little it started to make perfect sense to me. Most of this studying and learning occurred while I was on vacation out west in New Mexico, Utah and Arizona. I took in plenty of scenery on all the long drives but I must confess that I used my Google phone to the max, pouring over articles from Digital Photography School. Yes, I actually had reception at the Grand Canyon. And yes I sat on the big leather couch in the Grand Canyon Lodge overlooking the north rim reading about the difference between prime lenses and zoom lenses. What can I say? I was thriving on all of this new information, soaking it all up like a sponge and eager to know everything I could possibly cram into my brain.

One night while we were hooked up to one of those rare RV sites that had internet access, I discovered the in-depth world of photography blogs via my favorite website of the moment, again, Digital Photography School. It was as if someone was violently shaking me by the shoulders saying “Hellllooooooooo?!?!” Somehow in my crazy little brain I had a crazy little thought that began to grow exponentially with every new hit on every new blog I’d visit. Photography. Weddings. People. Beauty. Women. Young women. Women like me. With their own businesses. Over and over again. Laying in my little bed in the RV while I browsed the beautiful work of Jasmine Star and Stephanie Fay (both photographers I discovered ON that trip) I came to the realization that I was at a turning point not only with my interest in photography but with the direction of my entire life. I am so not being dramatic right now! It’s true! It was a total paradigm shift. I am sure my husband is still partially blinded by all of the lightbulbs that were going off in my head during that time. This is not even to mention the state of breathtaking awe we found ourselves in at the sight of God’s magnificent creation all around us. Bryce Canyon. If you haven’t been, let me warn you, you will probably cry at the sight of it. I did. Sure, the Grand Canyon IS truly grand and amazing and all that but Bryce Canyon is just so freakily incredible, it’s like God is in every spooky spire yelling “love me, fear me because I created this craziness and I am awesome”! (If you want to love God more, sometimes you just need to be reminded of His awesomeness.) Anyway, whether it was our amazement at being able to take a TWO week vacation or the fact that we were probably just high on the elevation, we were getting pretty excited about all the possibilities of this whole “photography thing”. By the time we’d settled into our one night stay in Sedona, AZ, I had already typed up an email to send Carissa (my one friend I knew who was interested in photography) saying “Hey, would you ever consider going into the photography business……..”.

I crossed my fingers, eagerly awaiting her reply to my email. Days and days passed and I soon discovered that Carissa doesn’t reply to email so I waited until she could hear my breathless speech of excitement in person. She warmed to the idea quicker than I expected and before I knew it, we were starting a business together. Say what now?!?! That’s how it went down. Just like that. Plans seemed to almost materialize out of thin air and everything began to click into place. We realized that we were a match made in heaven and we found we both inspired the other in ways we never imagined possible. We immediately set up our website and began telling everyone we knew about our new “business.” Pretty soon we were scheduling session after session and, five months later, found ourselves still busy right up until a few days before Christmas. We took some time off after that to rest but reconvened in the new year to talk about plans and ideas for expanding our business to wedding photography. I don’t quite know how I got from my inspirational vacation out west to having strategizing meetings with Carissa for marketing and booking weddings, but here we are.

A little more insight:
For me, the world of photography felt like reuniting with a long lost sibling. (Ok, that’s a bit dramatic.) I just felt that with my interest in design and creativity, photography was a completely natural avenue. It began to feel like something I could truly excel at and settle down with, even way beyond what I’ve done in the past with graphic and web design. I’m not saying that I am in favor of abandoning everything you know once you find a new passion but there was a very real sense for me that I had finally found an occupational direction for my life. After 25 years no less. As much as I appreciate all the graphic and web design work I’ve been given over the years, I have never once considered myself a graphic designer. In fact, I really only pursued graphic/web design because people wanted me to do some work for them. It started a cycle that I could never break or felt that I ought not break, because after all, I can’t very well turn down a job can I? I spent 1.5 years trying to start an interior design consulting business that kept getting waylaid month after month because I was doing work for others. It was extremely frustrating for me. Paid work is a lovely thing but you know something has to change when you can’t find the time to work on important things in your own life. Now I am learning that I simply cannot keep every plate spinning anymore. I cannot excel in any one area when I am dabbled in too many things at once. That’s why I told myself half-way through 2009 that I would no longer build websites, even if I got a job offer. In 2010 I am telling myself that I will not take on any new graphic design clients, even if it means, again, turning down business. Incredibly, it seems that something similar is happening for my piano teaching business. I’m perplexed that I have as few students as I did when I began my business 12 years ago yet I prayed that it would become clear to me if teaching was something I needed to lay down. No students, no provision, no teaching? It might be clearer than I’m willing to admit.

Needless to say, letting go of things I never thought I’d see the end of is both on-the-edge-of-my-seat exciting and jump-into-the-pitch-black-abyss freaky. Fortunately, there is an unmistakable sense that God is the one who came up with this crazy, hair-brained scheme before we ever did. Yes, it IS crazy. I never would have considered or even imagined doing this. But He knew all along and that makes this journey all the more legit. (Did you know that it was more cool to say the word legit than the word legitimate? I didn’t know that either.)

[Shoot, I think I just wrote a dang novel. Blessings to you if you made it this far.]