Say What You Wanna Say

First, I want to tell you about the photos in this post. Then I want to ramble about my life a bit.

My talented amiga Lydia of Photography Hill snapped these shots last weekend at Newport Beach. I love love love the colors/light in these photos. She's good at that kind of thing.

If you're a friend in AZ, tune in for this paragraph: Lydia offers this awesome one-year membership deal. Basically, you can subscribe to her photography services for a certain amount of hours, which you can spread out over the year however you please. Her goal is to help you capture those little life moments -- graduation, head shots, playing at the park, a reunion at the airport, birthday parties, your home being built, etc. Basically, all those times you wish you had someone following you around with a camera to capture memories. Sign up for a subscription with Lydia, let her know about your event/moment a week in advance, and she'll be there. And then you'll get lovely photos like the ones below. Cool idea, right? Right.

Camille said I looked like Sara Bareilles in the outfit I was wearing (and demanded that I sing snippets from that "Brave" song all day) (not mad about it) (love me some Sara B).

And now some rambly stuff about my life. 

Life is really good. I'm just really happy and calm. What's funny is that, in the past, I'd go through "happy" phases that mostly depended on my personal life, and work was mostly a thing I *had* to do. But lately, it's the 8-9 hours I spend at work every day that is feeding a large part of my happiness. So even when the inevitable little hiccups occur in my non-work hours, it feels good not to dread getting up in the morning and going to the office. So when work is already good AND I have a good day/evening/weekend of other stuff? It's like a bonus on an already good thing. It's working wonders on my overall calm and happy zen. The weather is warm, my days are good, and my soul is at rest. So much at rest that it makes my eyes leak a little now and again, for no good reason at all.

I have good things on the horizon.

I have Iceland in 12 days (!!!!!), and my best friend's wedding a week after I get back. I'm officially in the "mental packing" zone for Iceland, where I glance at sweaters and things in my closet and think, "I'll take that to Iceland!" The countdown is officially ON.

I would give you a juicy update on my dating life but there isn't much to say, other than that....my heart feels more open than I expected it to feel right now. I had a weird winter (and OK, generally a weird couple years in that department) that gave me a crusty heart, to some degree. That's unlike me, so I didn't take well to the phase. I kept waiting for some bitterness and a sour attitude to hit me after my last go-round with matters-o'-love, but it never did. My heart just......handled it. I credit half of that to my stalwart little ticker, and the other half to some divine intervention, probably. I feel like I've been sorting some things out with God these last few months, and I still have a lot left to sort, but I love the moments when I can feel sure of things. And I do feel sure that there is someone watching out for me upstairs. And that maybe matters more to me right now, after a year of ups and downs and sideways and whatever, than all the other details I need to work out.

It's good to be in somebody's hands. (And very capable, heavenly, knows-me-better-than-I-know-myself hands, at that.)

Big Sur & Highway 1 Dreamin'

A couple days ago, I went on a little overnight jaunt to Monterey for work.

There are worse places to go for work, let's be honest. Monterey is beautiful, coastal, Californian, quaint, and...all things good. A bit south of Monterey is a place called Big Sur, which I've heard referred to as the most beautiful/breathtaking spot in all of California. Naturally, I took myself there on a sunset drive. Breathtaking, indeed.

And because I love you all, here's a bonus of how I killed time in the hotel room all by myself. Things get awfully quiet on a solo trip when you have a bed that is 8x the size of you and a Law & Order marathon breaking the silence on the TV. I call it, Cirque de Hotel.

On the way back from the trip, I pulled off to the side of the road to take another photo. Because as undeniably amazing as Big Sur is, there's an area just to the north of Monterey that makes my heart want to explode out of my chest in bursts of warm dirt-scented sunshine. The stretch of CA-1 with the ocean on one side and sprawling farms on the other with berry and avocado stands and that one red barn with its funny California Lorax trees all in a row and a tractor hiding in the back might be one of my most favorite places on earth. Immediately to my right, there's the sand dunes and the ocean going on forever. To my left, the farmland where I could wear overalls and raise my babies in a simple little life with a bearded, flanneled husband. Heart explosions, indeed.

"Why don't you go on west to California? There's work there, and it never gets cold. Why, you can reach out anywhere and pick an orange. Why, there's always some kind of crop to work in. Why don't you go there?" -John Steinbeck

Sunrise in Santa Cruz

Few things will make me excited for a 5am alarm, but...

A sunrise trip to Santa Cruz to tag along with actual photographer friends definitely fit the bill. I blissfully iPhone-pictured my way through the lovely (cold) morning while they did their legit photography shenanigans.

The last photo is my most favorite. I stood on part of a fence to make it happen. I really like the photos I got last time I went to Santa Cruz, too. I think that place might be magic. (Actually, I know it is because they sell Pineapple Dole Whip on the boardwalk. So, win.)

Friday night detours

Rather than sit in traffic on the freeway the other night, I impulsively exited in Milpitas, drove up by an old rock quarry, turned up the Jimmy Eat World and watched the sunset light the hills on fire. And it was lovely.

An old man in a truck eventually told me he needed to lock the quarry gate so I had to head out. Good thing, because he told me, "It's spooky up here at night."

Life tip: take more detours.

Bridesmaid Round 12: The Photos

Remember when I ran off to Utah for a wedding last month?

The festivities were for my dear friend and former roommate, Larsy. Otherwise/legally known as Lauralee, but that's not important. I will always be grateful that fate/destiny/etc landed us in the same crappy apartment sharing a room my senior year of college. We awkwardly small-talked for the first month and then finally bonded over a shared craving for Little Caesar's cheesy bread and the rest is one long ridiculous history of deep late-night chats, nutty adventures and random hilarity. And something about scooter rides and a road trip to California and lemons stuffed in a suitcase.

Good grief I love this girl.

Photo cred to Conor Barry Photography for all the above images, and another thank you to Camille for lending me her red dress after my failed attempt to find one myself, even if I covered it up with that gray blazer because hey Utah is still freakishly cold in early March. 

I couldn't be more tickled to be part of this lovely wedding!

Now I'm all teary eyed so please excuse me.

How to Make Blog Photos Respond to Column Width

It's always been a pet peeve of mine when my blog photos spill over into my sidebars.

You know when you size a photo perfectly to fit the width of your blog space, but later you do some redesigning and suddenly your beautifully large photos are sticking way out to one side and covering the info in your sidebar? Make. It. Stop.

Luckily, I happen to work with a bunch of coders.

So when I recently expressed my angst about this issue, it wasn't a big surprise when one of them emailed me a simple code later that solved all my problems. (Thanks, Kyle!)

Here it is broken down into a few (seriously) simple steps. Now you can redesign your blog and adjust column widths as you please with no consequences! Plus, it takes less than a minute total to make this happen. Score.

Note: Don't worry about it resizing smaller photos to be larger or anything crazy. The only thing it does is make photos that are too big just small enough to fit inside the column :)

1. Click on Template in the back end of your blog.

2. Click on Customize.

3.  Click on Advanced.

4. Scroll down and click on Add CSS.

5.  Copy the code below and paste it into the box.

Here's the code: .post.hentry img {width: auto;height: auto;max-width: 100%;vertical-align: middle;border: 0;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;}

6. Click Apply to Blog. Then post a ridiculously large photo of Chuck Norris and don't worry about it spilling over into the sidebars because that's how this magic works.

[via]

Let me know if you have any questions! Happy blogging!

And feel free to repin this blog using my original pin so you can share this knowledge with your people!