wedding dress shopping & august day in the life

i really dreaded going wedding dress shopping but it turned out great. and i found a dress! read more about that at i scream for sunshine.

2013 -- week 31 -- a super wedding weekend and july day in the life

 

read all about our week 31 on the new website: iscreamforsunshine.com.

2013 -- week 26 -- a fun weekend in the sun & june day in the life

finally a weekend we aren't travelling! don't get me wrong, i love to travel; i love exploring new, and familiar, places. i love checking out a new place and seeing all of the cool things it has to offer, to see the things that others love about it, and to experience it all for my self. but i also enjoy seeing the same place over and over again, each time a little differently, noticing things you've never seen before, and appreciating the familiarity of it all. so in that vein, we decided to stay home this weekend and explore mt. lemmon once again, but this time in a whole new way. 

 

the first time rcg and i went to mt. lemmon we hiked up the aspen trail. it was a medium size loop and i think we hiked for three hours or so. this past weekend we went back to the aspen trail, but this trip was so different! instead of taking our time and hiking the whole trail, we stopped at the top of the trail, where a couple of different trails converge, and we went climbing instead. we went with a bunch of climbers rcg's met and become friends with at the bloc so we had a nice group of people with us. and there was a climbing instructor with us as well, so the next time we want to go climbing we know all sorts of fun routes, or problems, to climb! it was a true sunday funday -- fun climbing, fun people, and sunshine.

the rest of the day was spent lounging about, listening to the wind, the monsoon (our first of the season!), and music at armory park's porch fest, a new event in our neighborhood with food trucks and local musicians jamming out on porches. it was kind of really cool.  

what did you do on the last day of june? anything fun?

2013 -- week 22 -- a half birthday, the beginning of hot weather, and may day in the life

oh man guys. it's official; i'm 28 and a half. i think it's safe to say that i'm now solidly in my late 20s. gross. on the upside, i'm doing pretty good. i just went on a pretty rad road trip. i'm engaged to my best friend. we have two amazing furry friends/demon children. we go to lots of really cool places and eat some awesome food. and our friends are great. all in all, not too shabby. here's to the next 6 months!

it's officially hot in arizona right now. like 100 degree days, regularly. which i'm loving, because hot weather is infinitely better than cold weather. i mean, cardigans are cute and all, but ugh, so boring. give me a tank top any day, please. since it's all sunshine all the time, i basically have two modes -- hibernate inside or soak up the sun, in equal measure. now comes the hard work of staying hydrated and sun burn free. 

for my may day in the life i decided that instead of taking tons of pictures of me sitting in front of the computer, it might be fun to document the kittenz' day. i figured it would be a million pictures of them sleeping, and they did do a lot of sleeping, but i was pleasantly surprised to find out they do get up and do things during the day. it's nothing especially noteworthy, just eating and some idle exploring, but they weren't total logs. i wonder though, if i wasn't home, would they still get up and walk around, or do they just crash out as soon as we leave for work in the morning and wake up 30 seconds before we get home. ah, to have a nanny cam on the kittenz, my dream.

is it hot where you live? how are you surviving it?

2013 -- week 18 -- the importance of documenting the everyday and april day in the life

i feel like i'm busy busy, but for some reason, my photos aren't really portraying that. either i'm not as busy as i think i am, i've been really bad about taking photographs, or i'm so busy that i don't even have time to take photos. regardless of the excuse, it's a shame i haven't been more diligent about taking pictures because i really enjoy it. and i think photographs are a great way to document our lives -- i much prefer it to writing in a journal -- but that only works if you are actually taking pictures of the day to day. because although it's awesome to document the extraordinary it's also really important to document the ordinary. because the ordinary is real life; it's what happens between the vacations, the nights out, and the big events. it's the little things that make our world keep spinning, why not document them, remember them, share them with others, and most of all, cherish them?

it's with this in ming that each month i participate in ali edwards' day in the life. it is an exercise in seeing the beauty in the ordinary, the monotony, and the little things. and since each month's day in the life pictures threatens to be the same as the previous month, i try to do my pictures or my photo layout a little differently. in january i didn't take a lot of pictures (i forgot), but i did write a lot. in february rcg took pictures and documented his day. and in march we were lucky enough to be on vacation to flagstaff so we had fun documenting our day together. but april was a weekday, like january  and february; i had to work and rcg was too busy to document his day again. so i decided to try something a little different this month; rather than taking pictures of what i was looking at, the traditional way one takes a photo, i decided to take pictures of the places i stood throughout the day. because so often we are wrapped up in what we're doing, that we forget all of the places we've been and the things our feet have seen.

do you have any suggestions for ways to spice up next month's day in the life?

2013 -- week 13 -- exploring northern arizona & march day in the life

we finally did it -- we finally made it north of phoenix! 

it's so easy to be content to just explore your own little corner of the world that sometimes you forget to move outside of your zip code. i feel like we've done a pretty good job of checking out all of the cool things in and around tucson, but it's really hard to plan trips to see the rest of the state. and arizona is a big state, with lots of crazy amazing things to see.  but there was a concert we wanted to see in flagstaff this weekend, so it was the perfect excuse to take a trip up there. and it was beautiful.

 it's spectacular the difference a couple thousand feet in elevation can make -- there are pine trees, grass, and rivers! plus, sedona has these amazing red rock formations. (it reminds me of monument valley, sans the desert.) hopefully in the near future we will get even further north and check out the grand canyon.

we had another first this weekend too: bouldering outside in the real world (not in the gym). it was so much fun. we didn't have a crash pad, which you are definitely supposed to have, but we found this awesome bouldering playground, priest draw in the coconino national forest, and we just couldn't help ourselves. even if you're not a climber, priest draw could be an easy and gorgeous hike. 

we had a blast doing this month's day in the life because this time we got to do it together -- we got to take pictures together, plan our day together, and hang out with one another. and, even more fun, we were able to do it on a day that was half new and unique (flagstaff, sedona, and montezuma's castle) and half regular and boring (grocery shopping, dishes, making dinner). which is kind of how i like to live my life -- exciting but simple. 

did you do anything fun this week?

2013 -- week 9 -- some kittenz, a taste of mexico, rcg's day in the life, and a #30lists sneak peek

it's funny how the week before you go on a trip seems so busy, but really you're doing nothing of importance. you're prepping -- getting yourself and your house ready -- and therefore, you are, in fact, very busy, but as a result, you're doing nothing extraordinary. so this week, while we were prepping and stressing, i decided to spend as much time with the kittenz as possible, because sometimes snuggling a furry belly is all we need to help us clear our head.

i have so much to say about our latest trip to mexico, but i will wait -- be sure to check back on the blog over the next week for pictures and stories of places we saw, things we did, and some recommendations for traveling to mexico in march.

since january 31st and february 28th both landed on a thursday, i thought it would be fun to get a peek into what rcg's day looked like, rather than having two identical months for me. he was more than happy to oblige.

(don't you just love the contrast in our methods? he's a man of few words, but lots of pictures, while my day in the life is much heavier on the minute details of everything i do. i love it.)

i found another list project, 30 days of lists. this is just a sneak peek of my lists -- check back in a couple of days and i will write more about it!

2013 -- week 5 -- pretty lilies, girl scout cookies, and my january day in the life.

i tried something new this week -- ali edward's day in the life. i learned about this last year, shortly after i started project life, but was too overwhelmed to participate. i decided to give it a shot this year.

the idea is to document our everyday activities through photography and journalism, because even though we do the same things day in and day out it's important to remember that all of our moments are important. i wasn't great about photographing all of my moments, but i did try and journal throughout the day.