Summer in photographs.

As I feel like I have been spewing out words upon words lately. Here is a little break for some summer reflection through the eyes of a camera lens. Enjoy.

First big summer rain.

Danced at Crane Wives shows.

Learned how to fish.

Attended a Native American Pow-Wow
Made homemade sangria.
Visited the Windy City (aka Chicago) *Twice actually!

Had a few wonderful porch nights. Good food and friends.

Cleaned off and started using my old kayak again. I missed it.

Learned how to photograph fireworks.

Made peach cobbler.
(Unfortunately one of the only things I've baked all summer. I think only a few bites were eaten of this bad boy)

Obviously there have been many more good times that went un-documented. Always fun to look back at those that did though!

wedding love.

so this post is a bit delayed and as i get into the swing of school again. i promise i will start posting more art and design goodies because i'm sure i will be glued to my computer even more then ever this year!

if anyone knows much about me at all they know i am absolutely in love with weddings. last night i got the chance to see all of the photos from an awesome wedding i attended the day i came home from ireland. my two friends marie and jeremy got married and their photos are as wonderful as they are! such a fun couple that is just so in love and their photographer did some amazing work.
(check out his blog here)

congrats you two!

love.

summer fun

this is how i spent my sunday afternoon :)

slip n' sliding with the awesome people i work with complete with a plethora of good food and a few strawberry blonde ales. it was the perfect summer day and even though i'll miss this season when its over, i'm excited for the fall.

now im spending the rest of the evening with a new cookie recipe and movies with some of my favorite boys. (here's the recipe, i'll post pictures tomorrow if they turn out!)

friendship.

tonight, i fell even more in love with the 20+ kids in my aha group studying here in ireland.

this being our last full weekend here we've certainly been making it count. lots of late nights out in bray, dun laoghaire, and dublin. tonight we promised one of our best friends mike we'd go to the gay club with him, which he's been waiting for this entire trip. so tonight, over 20 of us, including 8 heterosexual guys, did everything in our power to get ourselves into any gay bar he wanted. despite being rejected once we all ended up finding a place that accepted all of us. guys, girls, gay, straight, single, taken, whatever. the truth is is that i couldn't have been more proud of everyone. it's shown how much we all care about eachother and the amazing times we're having here. all of us together.

here's a few nightlife pics from the past few weeks.

the graduate. first week here!the biggest and best game of kings cup ever.club 92. after the horseraces.

guinness factory!absolut ice bar in london. amazing!

i can't believe were all leaving eachother in less that a week. but as aaron keeps saying "we'll always have ireland"

ps. this post was also pertaining to the idea of sexuality and how it should never be a divider amongst friends. check out mike's blog and his most recent post about the shirts we bought this week for a good cause.

food feasts and 21sts

sunday i had the day off, so i spent it stealing my roommate chris's wonderful DSLR camera and taking tons and tons of photos of all of my prints and drawings that i have been neglecting for the past 2 years (expect posts up about them soon :)) and then creating quite the food feast with my roommates and friends for the premiere of Next Food Network Star.

then yesterday was my friend evan's 21st birthday! yay for birthdays! a group of us went to dinner at a resturant i've never tried before called The Winchester in downtown Grand Rapids which i would highly recommend to anyone. next time i think i would order just a ton of appetizers to share though, as the menu was not super extensive. then back to his house for cake and ice cream- both homemade might i add, cake by me, ice cream by ev, and both delicious.

i hope you had a wonderful day love!

for the cake i actually used Ina Garden, from Barefoot Contessa, and the Hershey's Chocolate Cake recipes and sort of combined/edited them. i did add however a milk chocolate, vanilla, cream cheese-y filling in between the two cakes for a break up of the rich dark chocolate. not my prettiest of cakes, but certainly one of the better tasting!

photo fun

ok so just as my previous post promised, i wanted to include a little bit about whats been going on this week. yesterday my friend evan and i took a small trip to visit our friend jessie in marshal, mi (the cutest little town ever for those who have never been). we ate some awesome food at her parent's deli, pastrami joes, did a few photo experiments, and ended the day with ice cream. all in all a wonderful trip.

jessie is a photography major here at GVSU and always takes such wonderful pictures. she had wanted to test out this technique known as "bokeh" in which you can actually cause the light in the background of your photos to change shapes depending on what you chose to cut out of a small cap that goes on your lens. (you can read more about it via the link^) so, armed with her beautiful DSLR, my Canon manual film, and a small pinhole camera that evan made (yes everyone, he is an artistic genius) we had some fun adventures. the pictures posted here are all credited to jessie :) im so glad i got to visit!

pjs!

lots of hearts!
then evan and i took "engagement photos" :)triangles!camoflauge

love!

ps. major dillema occured with my camera after winding and attempting to remove this particular role of film on the way home. a post about this to come, and hopefully a few pictures that turned out. cross your fingers!

best wishes

this post is dedicated to my roommate and best friend Pat. he leaves today for Japan for 2 months or so. even though i cried when i had to say goodbye last night i am so excited for him, he deserves an awesome break from michigan and some ridiculous adventures. he is one of the smartest, funniest, most caring people i know and i know he will be wonderful over there. in fact you too can follow his very witty travel blog the whole time! http://closet0home.blogspot.com/ we will all miss you so much. xo