Hi peeps – we are back from vacation – tired, sunburned, bug-bitten – I think that means we had a successful vacation! I have a bunch of woodsy photographs to show you later in the week … but first I want to share my newest obsession. My photography wish list is growing longer and longer – and this is the newest addition! The Fuji Instax Camera. Swoon.
It’s a little instant camera (think polaroid) that produces itty-bitty business card sized images straight from the camera. Take a look below to see some amazing images taken with this camera … click the photo names below to be taken to the source. I love the dreamy, slightly soft images that come from film – and the fact that you see instant results satisfies my impatient side! (And the fact that the film is a little easier to come by than polaroid film makes me happy too). I don’t think the iconic polaroid can be topped … but this is a close second!
1. glow, 2. breakfast, 3. Ferguson’s Motel, 4. Sheep, in a field next to a tree with light streaming through the trees branches on Instax Mini, 5. Colosseum Roofline, 6. Fuji Instax Mini Macro Test, 7. Whitby on Instax Mini, 8. to the sky, 9. pasture
PS – Danni at oh, hello friend is giving away one of these fun cameras along with a gift certificate to anthropologie for her two-year blogoversary! You don’t want to miss out – today is the last day to enter! She is such a sweetie to offer such an exciting gift for one of her loyal fans!
We are on vacation this week, traipsing through the woods in McCall and Warm Lake Idaho … while we are away, enjoy this series of travel-inspired finds!
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In honor of our camping adventures this week, I found some awesome, stylin’ camping supplies on Etsy. Check out these fabulous items before you hit the trails next time! (and I made an entire Etsy treasury with these and other camping finds – check it out here!)
Mosquito Smackdown all natural bug-repellant
Mini White Compass Ring
The Hampton – cotton canvas bag
The Explorer – binoculars charm necklace
yellow vintage enamel mugs
We are on vacation this week, traipsing through the woods in McCall and Warm Lake Idaho … while we are away, enjoy this series of travel-inspired finds!
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To start off our week of travel inspiration, here are a few ideas for when you plan your next nature adventure. Not a roughing-it kind of person? Here are some luxury camping ideas that you might enjoy:
1. Glamping at The Resort at Paws Up, Montana
The Resort at Paws Up is a Montana ranch getaway with a lodge, ranch house, luxury cabins – and best of all – luxury tents. In Tent City, you can stay in a luxurious 270 square foot tent with wood floors. You’ll have electricity, heat, a cooling fan, a king-sized feather bed and your own camping butler. Paws up calls this glamping – glamorous camping – and I’d have to agree! Sounds much more glamorous than what we’ll be doing this week!
2. Rent an Airstream and stay in Bar Harbor, Maine
The Bar Harbor KOA campground is right on the Atlantic Coast – at the entrance to Acadia National Park. You can enjoy coastal views and mountain adventures, and then sleep in your queen sized bed in your classic Airstream trailer at night. Sounds like heaven to me!
3. Sleep in a cave at Kokopelli’s Cave Bed & Breakfast
Kokopelli’s Cave is a 1650 square foot home carved into the sandstone near Farmington, New Mexico. Enjoy views of the four corners from the top of the cliffs, then climb into the cave to enjoy a queen-sized bed, waterfall shower, and flagstone hot tub!
4. Stay in a tree house at Vertical Horizons Tree House Paradise
At Vertical Horizons Bed and Breakfast, you can sleep literally in the trees! Your own bed, bathroom, running water, heat and electricity, all in a tree house in beautiful Southern Oregon. I totally want to try this someday! How fun!
5. Last, but certainly not least – a lovely, luxurious lodge in my beautiful home state – stay at Shore Lodge in McCall, Idaho!
Shore Lodge is a gorgeous mountain lodge, right on Payette Lake in McCall. You can enjoy a beautiful lakeview suite – a wonderful, relaxing spot to come back to after a day of hiking and swimming in the woods and lake.
Hope you’ve enjoyed this virtual tour of luxury nature vacations … someday I would like to try them all! This week we’ll settle for tents and rustic cabins, no butlers or laundry service … but I will be coming back with a ton of pictures! Have a great week, peeps!
Looking for a place to store and display those family portraits and snapshots? Take a look at these amazing albums from super-cool Etsy sellers. Click the photos to be taken to Etsy to buy!
Did you guys know that you can create your own business listing on Google Maps? Pretty cool, huh? Those Google guys are pretty darn awesome. This is a great way to make it easier for your customers to find you on the internet. If someone were to Google “photography studio, Kuna ID” for example – they would see me as a dot on the map, with a link to my website – just like the screen shot above. So, if your business is one that people might Google, looking for a local business – you should create your listing, and soon!
Here’s how you can add your business listing to Google — it’s easy and free!
1. Create a Google account, if you don’t already have one.
2. After you’ve created your account, go here to add info for your business.
3. You should see an Add New Business button – click that, and you will get a page like this, where you can enter your information (notice you can enter several business categories, as well as all your info):
4. When you click on the “Next” button, you can specify more details – do you want your exact address displayed in the listing? Do you want to display operating hours? What geographic area do you serve? You can even add photos and video if you’d like.
5. After you are finished adding all of the information, you will submit your listing. After that, Google will verify your identity by either sending you a text message or a post card (your choice). Piece of cake! And, if you need more help, Google Places Help will answer every question you can possibly think of!
It took a day or two after I confirmed my identity to show up in search results … and another week after that before I was in the top 3 results showing at the top of the page.
For our 2nd weekly date night, I tricked Brian into doing something creative by calling it “date night”. (Just kidding, he had fun. He’ll do most anything as long as there is beer involved, so he’s not that hard to trick).
We did something called light painting – and we will totally be doing this again with the kids. So fun.
So, here’s how it works. Get some flashlights (or some other light source. Sparklers, off-camera flash, little LED lights, etc.) Maybe some colored cellophane for variety. Then you need your camera and tripod. You have to be able to hold your shutter open for a long time – so break out your camera manual and figure out how to set your shutter speed to bulb mode (which means it stays open until you tell it to close). You also need to have a remote shutter release, or you need to know how to set the timer on your camera.
You need to wait until dark, and then find an area where you can move around a bit. We did some outside, and some inside our living room. The process is pretty simple. When it is completely dark, set your camera up on the tripod, and then use your timer or remote shutter release to open your camera shutter. Use a flashlight to “paint” words, patterns, etc. in the dark. When you are done, close the shutter on your camera and see what you came up with!
In the top image we wrote the word “love”, of course, with the flashlight against the wall. Below you can see my red “J” – I just covered the end of the flashlight with some red cellophane. And below that is our amazingly artistic smiley face in purple.
I think next time we do this, we won’t do it inside. We will go outside and stand in the middle of the yard or something so that you don’t see the texture of the walls behind our “artwork” … And I think a couple of different sizes of flashlights would be fun to try. Also: this is a great technique to use with sparklers during your 4th of July or New Year’s party. Also (again): There are much better, more explanatory, and less lazy-like tutorials out on the web for light painting. Like this one or this one. And go look at the fancy-schmancy light painting examples here!
You can see all of our date-night ideas by going to the 52 Date Nights category. And don’t forget to head over to Simply Modern Mom for tons more creative date-night ideas from other participants.
A little side-note for anyone keeping track – I’m behind in posting our date nights (of course, what else would you expect from me?). We did this one a few weeks ago – and we’ve had some other, less blog-worthy date nights in there too. We actually remembered our anniversary, and got rid of the kids for a night and went out for drinks … but since we didn’t do anything extremely creative or out-of-the ordinary, I won’t bore you with those details. More creative date night posts to come in the future!
A few weeks ago I signed up for this really fun idea by Piper at One Sydney Road. An alphabet walk – a bunch of different bloggers going on a walk around their neighborhoods, taking pictures inspired by a letter of the alphabet.
My letter is J (of course) and today was my day … but I’m a loser. It’s been a rough day, and I’ve tried to walk as little as possible. So, one lonely J-inspired photograph to share … and then go visit the many other non-loser bloggers who accomplished much more with this super-fun idea.
July
On another note – I am totally going to be one of those organized bloggers who schedules her posts ahead of time … so I don’t have these loser moments when I can’t get it together. So, goal for the week: Schedule next week’s blog posts.
