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!

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!

Twitterpated by Tim’s Sally

Some fun things from around the web that I enjoyed this week:

1.  I am currently taking Kelly Rae Robert’s ecourse – and loving it!  If she offers another one someday, and you are the creative type, I highly recommend it!  One of my favorite things about this course, besides the content of the course itself, is being introduced to all sorts of new, creative people.  One of my new favorites is Mindy Lacefield, the artist behind Tim’s Sally.  She makes the cutest mixed-media art (that is one of her’s above).  I love it!  And even more fun – a lot of her work is inspired by 80’s toys (like Strawberry Shortcake!  LOVE!)

2.  I totally want to make this rainbow cake for Rachel’s birthday. (via wee wonderfuls)

3.  I also want to make these decorative flower balls out of crepe paper … maybe for her bedroom, maybe for birthday party celebration … not sure yet (Rachel’s 2nd birthday is in November.  You can totally count on the fact that I will forget all this by then and be making a plain cake from a box the night before). (via How About Orange)

4.  How cute is this ruffle pillow?  I want to make a bunch of those, too …

5.  This post from Cori Dantini is from a month or so ago, but I still love it.  I love the idea of just painting over and over and over whatever you don’t like … and keeping the parts you do like.  Kind of a good metaphor for life, no?  Just keep redoing the bad stuff and leave the good stuff …

6.  I joined One Sydney Road’s Alphabet Blog Hop, happening next month!  Go check it out and sign up – it’s going to be a lot of fun!

TGIF, friends!

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Don’t forget the giveaway for Boise, Meridian, Eagle, Nampa, Kuna area peeps!  Less than a week to go!

So, last week it became pretty apparent that Brian and I needed some couple-time.  Um, yeah.  It’s getting pretty bad around here people.  I posted this little story for everyone to make fun of last week on facebook:

We haven’t had the time (or taken the time, really) to talk to each other about anything more meaningful than who guest-starred on Sesame Street today and how much it sucks that people schedule 8 am meetings on Monday mornings.  We haven’t had a meal that didn’t involve bits of food being tossed at us from across the table, or fights about who is cooler– Tony Hawk or Michael Jordan?!?

So, I came across an idea that apparently all the cool bloggin’ mommies are doing out there … 52 date nights.  (I think it was started by Simply Modern Mom, but I found it on a local Idaho blog – Doin’ it All, Idaho Style)  I think it originated as a new year’s resolution kinda thing, but since we all know I don’t like to rush right in to anything without procrastinating carefully weighing my options, we are just starting now.  Mid-June.  (actually, I didn’t discover this idea til last week, so technically I didn’t procrastinate.  I’m not late this time … ANYWAYS. I digress.)  So, the gist of it is this:  52 weeks in a year, the goal is to have a little mini-date with your spouse once per week.  The idea is that they are free (or really, really cheap), usually at home after the kids are in bed, and very simple.  But, you have to actually plan something and make it a little bit special (I’m thinking me falling asleep on the couch in front of the tv at 9:00 pm while Brian is forced to scrunch into the corner of the couch because I’m hogging it all is not gonna work for “date night”).

Cell phone pic we took on our date night

When I shared the idea with Brian, he was excited to try it out, so we planned our first date night for this weekend. We have a little fireplace thingy on the back patio, so we had a little campfire and drank a few glasses of wine.  I can’t say the subject of Sesame Street never came up at all, but mostly we talked about grown-up topics.  It was simple, easy, and so nice to just spend some quality time with my husband.  I kinda like that guy.  It’s too easy to get all caught up in day-to-day life and forget how much I like him – as more than just a dinner-cooker and diaper-changer.

Want to join in the fun?  You can find some romantic ideas here at Simply Modern Mom, and at this cool blog Love, Actually which has tons of romantic ideas.

Edited to add:  You can see all of our date-night ideas by going to the 52 Date Nights category.