Archive for April, 2015

April 28th, 2015

Project 52, part 4

Spring is here and with it comes some great weather. It also comes with a lot of rain. I was going to say it’s unfortunate, but really, Texas usually needs the rain. And of course, it picks the weekends to rain on, which are the days I’d like to go out and take photos!

The plus side of being stuck indoors is that it forces me to practice with my speedlite flash. The first photo is an outdoors one, but the rest are indoors and use an external flash for the light source.

#14 – Bluebonnets
Bluebonnets are the state flower of Texas, and when spring comes around, they pop up everywhere. And I really do mean everywhere. They’re most commonly seen all over the grass strips next to roads and highways. There was a large patch of them next to the feeder road near my house, so I walked over to take some photos. More are in this gallery!

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April 16th, 2015

Home Decor – entryway

We had a messy entryway for a while because we had wooden boards and flattened cardboard boxes leaned against the wall. A few months ago, we cleaned those out, and while it looked better, it still looked very plain.

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I wanted to do something about it! At the very least, I wanted something for guests to sit down at while they put on their shoes. I had a few things in mind:

  1. A console table and two chairs – one on each side of the table
  2. A bench and a coat rack
  3. A bench and wall hooks

I ended up going with idea #2. I liked the idea of using a bench because it could fit more people, and it doubles as a shoe rack. I’ve also always liked the look of coat racks. They can look nice when empty and are also functional to hang things on.

So we bought them!

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April 5th, 2015

Wedding Memories

One of my closest friends is getting married later this year, and I’ve been trying to help as much as I can by answering questions and giving advice. The more I talk about it with her, the more I’m reminded of my own wedding. There were some facts about our wedding that not many people know about, and except for the first one, some of the guests probably didn’t realize either 🙂

1. We did a rose ceremony.
We weren’t sure if wanted a ceremony ritual, and if we did do one, we weren’t sure if we wanted the common sand or candle ones. Fortunately, our officiant told us about the rose ceremony, which we had never seen before. The bride and groom exchange roses during the ceremony, and then as they walk out, they each hand the rose to their new mother-in-law. The tradition is then carried on by the couple by giving each other a rose every year on their wedding anniversary.

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I loved the idea of handing off the rose to our mothers, and we still follow the tradition! Every year on our anniversary, my husband and I buy roses for each other, which is a nice reminder of our ceremony.

2. We used a metal song for our first dance.
It was really hard choosing a song for our first dance. My husband and I love alternative, rock, and metal, and those genres don’t fit into the typical “first dance” songs. After looking at several lists for recommendations, I gave up and decided that we shouldn’t stray from what we like.

Fortunately, there are many instrumental Metallica covers, and they are usually beautiful. We chose the Apocalyptica version of Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters for our first dance. Only a few people caught on that it was based off of a Metallica song 🙂

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