february.

what? the last day of february is tomorrow? and i haven't posted at all in february? woah.

february was a whirlwind. it was peppered with celebration, disappointment, fasting and illness. these things combined to make an already short month fly by. so, here it is in pictures:

february started out, as it does every year, with my birthday. i turned 25, and celebrated with my husband, chipotle and an ice cream cake. it was lovely.

week two of february i was having a rough time, so i decided to fast from food and media for the week. during the week i studied lamentations and first john, and read practicing the presence of God by brother lawrence and sensing God by roger ferlo. i'm not really sure what i was hoping to achieve. prior to the week i had been feeling quite jumbled, agitated and distracted. i wanted to gain focus and so i tried to reach this goal by removing all barriers that i place between me and God. by the end of the week i was just tired and hungry. while i was able to focus more on praying, i had not been able to focus on listening. i was frustrated. so on sunday morning luke and i took a retreat of silence. during which i had an incredible moment of clarity, in which i realized that while i am unsure of where i am or what God has in store for me, i realized that He is doing something. the result of which was this collage (click to make bigger):

i think i realized that even though luke and i are wanting to go abroad at some point, right now God has us here. and while we are here, we need to be living. we need to be here, proclaiming hope, justice and love. so that is what we decided to do. we decided to move into an intentional community in SE DC, get more involved in our church, and i decided to get involved in the intervarsity project here called dc urban plunge. God also brought into my life a wonderful university of maryland student who i'm going to start meeting with once a week for discipleship.

week three of february was my mom's birthday, and so i traveled to north carolina to surprise her for her weekend celebration. on the way down to durham, megabus stops in richmond, so i hopped out with buke and took some pictures of downtown richmond, which (in my opinion) is great for photographing.

the surprise was a success! my mom had no idea i was coming (especially since i called her from the bus to throw her off) and we had a good weekend. except i got sick. which, while it made the weekend a little bit pitiful, did not ruin it completely, but rather (i thought) helped us slow down and just enjoy each others' company. and i was still able to accompany my mom and sisters on my mom's birthday shopping trip. while i was in nc celebrating my mom's birthday, luke flew to louisville and picked up a car from luke's grandma. she was nice enough to give us her car, since she is no longer using it. luke swung by nc and picked me up, and now we have a car for the first time in over a year. and, while we know we don't need it and don't plan on using it as much as we used otto, it sure is nice to go to the grocery store without lugging all our groceries on the bus!

while in nc i got a new jacket with an old navy gift certificate from my sisters! for which this week has provided the perfect weather.

this weekend, luke--aka my little blind mole (face pictured directly below)--got lasik eye surgery.

(blind baby mole face)

(during the surgery)

(successful surgery!)

(and now for the next two weeks he has to wear these weird goggle eye-protector things while he sleeps, but he's no longer a blind baby mole)

this weekend we also found out that the house we were planning on moving into is being sold. while we will still be joining the group of people who live there, it will be in a different house, and the time is now uncertain. i've also had a couple of other upsets this week, which have all left me feeling very unsettled and frustrated. because i feel like luke and i have really been seeking to follow God--but we're just uncertain now. i'm really learning how to hold plans lightly, allow God to work and follow Him into uncertainty. today i spent a long time debating with God, telling Him my frustrations, fears and just complaining to Him. while i know that this season can only last for a short while, i've always found it helpful to give myself at least a morning to hash it all out with God--positive or negative. today's session produced this collage:


which is completely different than my collage at the beginning of the month. this one is not as positive, and poses a question to me: do i really believe that better is one day in the courts of my Lord than a thousand elsewhere? herein lies the question that i am seeking to answer right now. and until i answer this question affirmatively, i think i will be stuck in uncertainty. but i do know that when i finally have the courage to face this question and truthfully answer that yes, i do believe that, things will fall in place in my heart (even if they literally stay the same as they are now).

this afternoon luke and i (and my adventure pants!) explored rock creek park a little bit more:

we climbed.

we balanced.

and jumped.

we adventured.

we smiled.

and i practiced taking artsy pictures.

speaking of, here is a technique of the week. shutter speed and water:
changing the shutter speed when taking pictures of water can give the water more of a flowing feeling. here is what it looks like at a normal shutter speed:

(shutter speed 1/80--meaning the shutter is open for 1/80th of a second, and f/7.1)

here is the same pictures with a slower shutter speed:
(shutter speed .8--meaning shutter stays open for .8 seconds, and f/29)

this is a different spot, but my favorite picture:
(shutter speed .6, f/29)

pretty cool, huh?

we also used our new found car freedom to venture into maryland to a bojangles. YUM!

i'm really lucky (lukey?) to have luke. i know i say this a lot, but it's because it's so true. he knows me really well, and i like that we can adventure together while having serious discussions about struggling with God, and what life is supposed to look like. he can speak to me with great wisdom and insight on a level that shows me that he understands and cares what's going on. God really blessed me with him. He knew what i would need, and He gave me luke to be a fellow adventurer, listener and partner (in crime and otherwise).

so there you have it. february in one past with a little bit of everything--pictures, God stuff, and technique of the week. and here's a little bit of onion humor to wrap it up:

Pants Attempt To Convey What Owner Can't

happy (almost) march everyone!

o, christmas tree (and also a technique of the week)

i think i do a post like this every year. only this year, i'm not going to show you any other decorations than the tree. mainly because my computer is having trouble downloading pictures from my camera, so i have to download them onto luke's computer and then save them on a jump drive and then transfer them onto my computer. and that's just a hassle. so, since we already had the christmas pics on my computer, we'll stick to those. so, here is our cute little christmas tree.

we decided to get one that we could chop down ourselves while we were visiting the teaters in the mountains. luke wanted a tall one and i wanted a fat one. this was the one that we found.

unfortunately, it would not fit in our rental car. so luke and dad t. handily strapped it on top.

it kind of hung over the back of the car...

when we finally got it inside we realized that it was just a bit too tall.

but it was nothing that our saw couldn't handle!

we had to cut off a lot of the lower branches to get it to fit in the tree stand. so it's not so plump anymore...

getting ready to put the lights up, i realized that this would be a pretty awesome time to test out what changing the shutter speed can do...so, here is the technique of the week.

shutter speed. this would also be the "Tv" setting on a camera (my camera at least. and probably a lot of cameras). Tv stands for "Time value" and it controls how long the shutter stays open, and how much light gets in. in daylight or using a flash, in order to get perfect exposure, the setting will be incredibly fast--like 1/250--which means that the shutter is open for 1/250th of a second. when the setting is more dimly lit or darker, the shutter speed will be slower, like 1/2, which means the shutter stays open for a half a second (the "night" setting is on point-and-shoot cameras slows the shutter speed, fyi). this allows more light to get in, but it also means that if the subject you are photographing moves, or if your hand moves, the picture will turn out blurry (unless you have a tripod). the "Tv" mode of a dslr camera will manually set all the settings (iso, aperture, etc) except for shutter speed. it will then adjust the other settings as you adjust the shutter speed in order to achieve perfect exposure. so, here are the examples:

the first picture used the flash, so the shutter speed was faster at 1/60. you can see that the lights in luke's hand are still.

so then i turned off the flash, and set my shutter speed much slower--to 1/25. the result was kind of cool, but you could still see most of the lights going across the picture in kind of a jerky movement, i think this is because the shutter wasn't open long enough to get the lights going around in a full circle.

so then i slowed it to 1/4 and received almost the desired effect (plus luke moved around a little bit too much in the background, so the background appears blurry as well).

so, i finally slowed the speed down to 1/2 and this was the outcome:

then i slowed it down to stay open for a full second. the difference wasn't that huge:

so we went back to 1/2, and both held the lights on each end and swung them around the room, which i thought ended up pretty awesome:


but, we had a job to do. and luke was anxious to finish the task at hand. so he started putting my toy on the tree.

and he was ever so patient with me while i continued to snap pictures (i think i say this in a lot of my picture posts, but i mean it all the time: he is a good man).

All the lights are finished!

time for angela to grace us with her presence, yet again (only this year with new wings...hopefully these ones will actually stay on...). angela is the angel i made for our tree our first christmas, when we weren't even sure we would be able to afford a tree. i think, for me, she is a gentle reminder of humility, simplicity and contentedness. of how it was, how we aim to be, and what (at least the simplicity, but hopefully the humility and contentedness, too) we will return to in the upcoming years. if i have anything to say about it, angela will grace our tree every year that we have a tree.

luke sometimes (okay, well more than sometimes...) gets goofy with the camera. but i kind of liked this goofy picture:

and then we finished decorating the rest of the tree (i like this little pine cone angel):

all finished!

happy beginning of the christmas season, everyone! may you encounter the incarnate Jesus in His fullness, and recognize the grace and hope of the salvation He offers this Advent.

Technique of the Week: Manual Focus (at Cupcake Camp!)

Today was Cupcake Camp! Where lots of bakers and cupcake lovers get together and it's a match made in heaven. Bakers baking, lovers eating, it was a beautiful thing. And Rachel and I fully participated in the beauty from 3:00 to 5:00. Delicious.




Earlier in the week some of the bakers canceled and so more bakers were needed, so I decided to try my hand at baking some cupcakes for the masses (plus, I got a free t-shirt!).




Because of my love of fall and everything pumpkin, I decided to make pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. They turned out deliciously well.

At Cupcake Camp there were all sorts of delicious cupcakes there. Ones that were strawberry and carrot and chocolate and...well, pretty much you name it.




















There were tiny vegan and tiny shiny cupcakes and cupcakes with animal faces and sprinkles and even cupcakes socks and cupcake shirts.














































Everyone loves cupcakes (that baby really wanted that cupcake!).
































Cupcakes were everywhere...





















































And we ate a lot...

















Hooray for cupcakes!
(And sorry for the long and incredibly awkward post. It was hard to choose which photos I liked the best and I'm not that good at html...if you want to see any pictures larger, you can click on them and they'll get bigger...)