Summer Reading List

For me summer has always meant books upon books. When I was young, my mom and I used to bring our red, radio flyer wagon to the library and fill it up with books. It always felt so magical to me; a place full of books where I could get as many as I wanted for free and a season that felt like an endless amount of time to read them all. Most summers my family would travel to Lake Tahoe and to the Sierra Nevadas to go backpacking or camping, this is where the majority of my summer reading was done. Either on the dock by the beautiful and big Lake Tahoe, or in the tent in some amazing mountains filled with peaks and meadows. Summer has always been for books and mountains, and even though now I have the freedom to read all year long (perks of graduating from college!), the summer is still the most inspiring time to delve into the pages of a book. Here is a list on what I plan on reading this summer:

Fiction

(Left) Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. This is my favorite book of all time. I read this book every summer and it always changes me. Summer is not summer without Jem, Scout, Boo Radley, and Atticus. (Right) Paula Coelho's The Alchemist. I am a little late on reading this book, I believe it was very popular in the 90's. I am currently reading this right now and it is helping me find direction during a season of having no clue what my "Personal Legend" is. 

 (Left) Jack Kerouac's On the Road. This has been on my list for a while and I hope to finally get around to reading it this summer (Right) Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being. My mom recommended this book to me. It is a story of two women connected from Japan and the San Juan Islands here in Washington. I am always a sucker for books set in the Pacific Northwest. 

 (Left) Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette. Once again, I am a sucker for books set in the Pacific Northwest, specifically Seattle. (Right) The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. I just finished this book. It is about a old man who walks across England, it was so beautiful!

 (Left) Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins. I don't know much about this book except that everyone seems to love it. So I guess I better read it. (Right) Anita Diamant's The Red Tent. A fictional take on the life of women during biblical times. I have always been curious what it must have been like to be "unclean" for 12 weeks out of the year, and what the red tent was really like.

Non-Fiction

(Left) Alys Fowler's Garden Anywhere. I picked up this book from the library last week and I am learning all about container gardening, how to make your own compost, and thrifty foraging. We plan on starting our own little garden this summer. (Right) Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. Ah! A book on how to write from one of my favorite writers! 

 (Left) Poems by Wendell Berry. I have never read Wendell Berry before but I have heard wonderful things. I need more poetry in my life. (Right) Sheldon Vanauken's A Severe Mercy. I read this book about three years ago and it taught me so much about love, loss, and Christ. I first read this book when Mike and I started dating and it was so beautiful. Please ditch the cheesy dating books and read this. I will never forget the quote "Love is like a glass of water in the middle of the night." I want to reread this one before our wedding this summer. 

 (Left) Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. I am currently trying to understand what art means to me in my life. I have always felt that I had some sort of "artist" heart in me, but not in any sort of traditional way. I guess I believe life is a blank canvas and how we live is our art. Plus Madeleine L'Engle knows her stuff. (Right) Lauren Winner's Girl Meets God. I read her book Still two summer ago and it shaped my faith in many ways. I am excited to read more of her work. 

Well there you go, I better get to reading!

Hurricanes and Other Various Forms of Human Madness

In 6 months, I will walking down the aisle. I will become a wife to a wonderful man. Its all beautiful, it truly is. Yet, I find myself crying at night, and not tears of happiness, but tears of fear. I fear that I am not strong enough to give him the love he deserves, that I am not organized enough, not thin enough, not this and not that enough. I feel as if I haven't met the criteria of being a wife, and that if I don't, my marriage will fail. 

I know women who are strong, who are selfless, who are beautiful, who are organized, who are sane, who look great in bikinis, and who are so kind and selfless it's nauseating. These are the women that should be getting married. Not me. Not this “frizzy haired, can’t seem to keep her car clean, emotional mess" of a person. I am not wife material. I hate sewing, I hate DIY projects, I hate beauty products, and I refuse to wax hair off my body in places that seem absolutely ridiculous. I am strong-willed, feisty, selfish, and can be the biggest brat at times. I am insecure, body conscious, and really bad at forgiving.  I don’t pray and meditate on scripture everyday, I haven’t read a single book on marriage, and I have never done a Joyce Meyer bible study. I am currently making negative four dollars an hour and I have no clue what my future career will look like. I am unbalanced and confused and nowhere close to meeting my perceived criteria of being a wife. 

I am so far from perfection. I am so broken and messy and pretty much a disaster. 

But, I met a man two years ago in the middle of a hurricane, a season that was strong, bitter, and destructive. Since then the hurricane has passed, but he held on through the entire storm, even when I almost pulled his limbs off and let the floods run from our eyes until we were drowning. You see, he was in a hurricane as well, so we understood the feeling of ripping each other’s arms off and through it all we found the sweet relief of grace. The sweet relief of open arms despite one another’s imperfection and wrongdoings, we found Grace among the countless amounts of broken promises and hurtful words. The foundation of our relationship was built on Grace and perhaps that is why I am so far from perfection. This man, whom I love so deeply that it hurts, didn’t fall in love with perfection, but with grace. We fell in love while we falling down and it grew deeper every time we got back up again. We learned to love each other in the messiest parts of ourselves.

He fell in love with my inability to stay calm while he drives and with my tendency to make a mess of his room every time I come over. He has fallen in love with my crabbiness, with my tears, and with my inability to listen to anything he has to say when we are watching a movie.  And I too have fallen in love with his madness, with his impatience, with the way he would rather have plain peanut butter cookies than ones with chocolate chips. I have fallen in love with the way he will stop mid sentence to point out a car on the freeway and with his inability to remember a lot of things.

The thing is, I don’t need to be perfect before I get married. I don't need to be perfect, ever. And neither do you. In fact I would highly encourage imperfection before your wedding, because in reality, you will have plenty of imperfection for the rest of your life. As marriage reflects Christ love for us, remember that while we were imperfect little hurricanes, Christ loved us fully and gave up his life for us. That is my hope for us, that on our wedding day we will vow to love one another despite being unorganized and not waxing our awkward body hair; that we will encourage one another despite our crazy driving and crabbiness; and that we will hold one another despite the onset of hurricanes and other various forms of human madness; that the Love we know will weave us together and be our fountain of Grace, never running dry and always flowing over. 

Wedding: The Dress

Here it is, the post on THE dress! Now, this is kind of anticlimactic and very un-"say yes to the dress" like. I didn't go wedding dress shopping with the intention of finding a ridiculously overpriced gown that I would never wear again, instead I went and tried on dresses to find out what looked good on me and then, I did what I always do, I decided to create a cheaper version of what I wanted. The cheaper version of my so-called "dream dress" is not only a thriftier option, but also a sentimental one.

I decided to wear my mom's wedding dress, which two of her sisters also wore when they got married. My aunt found the dress in an antique shop in the 70's, so it was already vintage 40 years ago. The original dress has long sleeves, a high collar, and lots of unique stitching and lace.  I decided to redesign the dress for two reasons. One, I wanted to create a unique dress and well, lets be honest, I don't pull off the high collar look very well. Two, I think it will mean so much to my mom and my aunts to see me walk down the aisle in their dress and why spend thousands of dollars on a new dress when there is so much beauty in the old. (Oh did I mention that the redesign is only going to costs $300, hallelujah!).

Here is the $2,000 dream dress that I tried on (Claire Pettibone's Queen Anne's Lace). It was gorgeous and I felt like Elizabeth Bennett from Pride & Prejudice, but lets get real, I am way more excited to redesign a dress that will be completely unique and not as heavy on the budget.

Here are some examples of the original dress. I don't have a picture of the actual dress because Mike doesn't want to see any glimpse of it, redesigned or not (even though I could honestly care less...). 

Pulling inspiration from the dream dress and from other dresses I have seen, I've decided to go with the low-back, lace-sleeves cut and have the front be a sweetheart/curved neckline. I think this design is best  for my body type and bone structure. Though some may disagree and be nervous to surrender their dress to someone else, for me it felt really good to hand it over to an expert. 

Here are some photos that inspired my redesign

Sources: 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // 7 //

8.15.2014

Our Save the Dates have finally arrived! I found our sweet little design from the awesome website that is Minted. They have a lot of cute wedding invites and save the dates for a good price, plus each design is made by an independent artist. Addressing has been really fun so far, its amazing to see how all over the map our wedding guest are. From Chicago, to Boston, to California, to Kansas, and more. I think that more than half of our guests are from all over the country, I am hoping they make a trip out of our wedding and explore the great state of Washington.

Engagement Photos

Over a month ago, Mike and I spent the day with some lovely friends who took our engagement photos. Sam and Matt miraculously captured some beautiful shots of Mike and I (I say miraculous because we are very awkward and we are not the most camera-comfortable people). We took a ferry to Bainbridge, drank coffee, and laughed a lot, it was wonderful!
All credit to Samantha Knorr Photography