Brooks Saddles Reinvented

These saddles are awesome. Word on the street are that Brooks saddles are some of the most comfortable on the market. They're made out of leather that eventually molds to the shape of your body with the feature of tightening the leather as it stretches over time. My hubby {yeah I get to call him that!} got one from his excited-to-finally-have-a-son father in-law for his birthday, and they quickly slapped it on his vintage steel bike. He loves it, and I have to admit it looks good. Really good. Now I have a reason to love them too. Once I get a vintage cruiser of my own I'm going to be having happy dreams of these saddles, only the ones customized by artist Kara Ginther.

Thanks to DesignSponge for sharing!

A Sister Foxboro Bride: Discovery Street

Meet Andy and Ruthy, a super cute couple who fell in love after two weeks of dating and started looking at rings on week four. Now after just a few months of finding each other they're planning a February wedding... at no place other than the Foxboro Lodge! How awesome it that?!

Ruthy emailed me in the beginning process of looking at venues and I was so excited to share my input about the lodge. She's also another bride who's trying to plan her wedding with a sane budget and recently started up a blog of her own over at Discovery Street. I was tickled when she told me that they took my DIY idea and did they're own engagement photos, which also ended up being the day he proposed. How great to have it documented!

I can't wait to see how her wedding turns out in a place that was so absolutely perfect for Evan and I. If we were in the same place she and I would be friends, and therefore our {current and future} husbands would be friends. And no, that's not because they have a VW bus. That's only part of it.

Happy planning Ruthy!

Paintings on Pages

If you've been noticing the subtle changes of my blog over the past month, please bear with me. I've come to realize I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Not when it comes to organizing my home, working out, or the dinners I occasionally cook, but the things I create. So as I exhaust all resources to make my blog as pretty and as unbloggy as possible, please stop me if I start going overboard and get crazy with it.

On a more entertaining note, there's a super talented girlie over at Etsy who's work I think I've fallen in love with. Or just want to try and copy. She offers the print or original masterpiece, mounted and ready to frame. Check it out here at Carambatack Design. How cool for us booklovers!

One Love Words

via {onelovephoto}

Topography

after we flew across the country we

got in bed, laid our bodies

delicately together, like maps laid

face to face, east to west, my

san franciso against your new york, your

fire island against my sonoma, my

new orleans deep in your texas, your idaho

bright on my great lakes, my kansas

burning against your kansas, your kansas

burning against my kansas, your eastern

standard time pressing into my

pacific time, my mountain time

beating against your central time, your

sun rising swiftly from the right my

sun rising swiftly from the left your

moon rising slowly from the left my

moon rising slowly from the right until

all four bodies of the sky

burn above us, sealing us together,

all our cities twin cities,

all our  states united, one

nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

-sharon olds

Off the Wall Designs by Dan Funderburgh

Need a fun idea to brighten up your living room, office, or even act as a photobooth background for your wedding? Meet designer Dan Funderburgh, who specializes in creating unique wallpaper art. His designs bring unexpected objects to the mainstream traditional wallpaper. His creations are available at Flavor Paper, another great site filled with fun wallpaper to drool over as you get busy planning your new decorating scheme. Have fun, get crazy with crab scissors, tea pots, and flower power bicycles!

 

 

 

 

all images via {danfunderburgh}

Our Wedding Featured on The Bride's Cafe

I'm very excited to announce that our wedding was featured today on the wonderful blog The Bride's Cafe. Thanks so much to Janie and all the wonderful readers of TBC! It's an honor to be featured on such a great site.

You can check it out here!

{TBC}

Rebbeca's Bridal Session

This gorgeous bridal session was shot by Juliet Elizabeth Photography based out of Charleston, South Carolina. The bride wanted a vintage "notebook movie" feel, which I think most of us would agree she definitely succeeded at getting. This session turned out amazing, I crave to have pictures like the first one. And that boat, in front of a cozy cabin with a dock over the lake. That would be the perfect home.

images via {jeblog}

Photographer: Portland based Evrim Icoz

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! To start the week off we have a wonderful photographer from the Northwest who's work you may notice from previous publications in the blogging world. I was thrilled to find photographer Evrim Icoz's gorgeous sunlit images, particularly those of his Oregon weddings. Based out of Portland and a recent transplant from Turkey, he's won many awards including 2009 Oregon Bride Magazine Best Wedding Vendors and 2006 Wedding Photojournalist Association, Photographer of the Year USA!

What makes this guy so special? The way he captures light and the editing of his images. Check him out here.

all images via {Evrim Icoz}

Eat Wild: Supporting yourself and the Little Man.

Evan and I have both been wanting to make the commitment to eat organically and sustainably. You could look in our fridge now and see free range eggs, antibiotic/hormone free milk, locally baked bread, and organic veggies from the health food store. But, at the same time you might also see name brand cheese, safeway beef, and a fast food bag crumpled up in our trash can. A popular topic for our culture, widely discussed, verbally supported, but less put into action. All for the ease of supermarket convenience and the cheaper cost.

Going against the grain of the mainstream world is difficult, often purposely made so. It's easy to forget what doesn't directly effect us- we don't experience the treatment of cattle before they become the hamburgers served at our backyard barbeques, or see the amount of antibiotics and hormones a warehouse full of chickens are pumped full of before they produce eggs served to our children in the morning as a "healthy breakfast". We get sick of hearing about the well-known facts of slaughter houses, transportation care, and living conditions of livestock, but still don't change a thing about our eating habits. I haven't even touched the topic of genetically modified fish and produce, or the chemicals we eat through the soil and spray treatments of our crops.

This isn't about Animal rights {although there's no doubt there desperately needs to be changes made in that area}, I'm talking about our health, yours and mine. Our husbands, our families, our future or current children's. We eat these products and our health suffers, our bodies react in all different ways, some minor ones being allergy symptoms, lethargy, hormone imbalances, to reoccurring headaches. Over the years these begin to build into conditions more serious. Our well trusted Doctors are trained to treat symptoms and not the causes. Food intolerances, inflammation, and unbalanced hormones caused by what's in our food... they either don't exist in the medical world or are treated by medication, anti-depressants being one of the most prescribed ones. I've have years and years of office visits and health issues, only coming to know two medical professionals who choose to understand this world out of their medical textbooks and journals. It's incredibly frustrating.

My hope is that we can find the balance. The fine line between living in this current world and creating a life where we can live sustainably, feeding our bodies pure, clean food so they can thrive and be strong. Supporting the local farmers that don't spray their crops with pesticides and chemicals. Eating meat {if you chose to do so} from animals that have lived a humane, peaceful life on open pasture.

It's pretty simple how you start. Make the effort. Search in your community. Linked below are two good places to start, you choose what to do from there.

 

*{I'm not in any way claiming to know all the facts, please feel free to do your own research before you form your own opinion.}

cow image source {here}

Real Wedding: Grand Canyon

Katrina + Andrew at Sedona Bride captured this simple September wedding on the edge of the Grand Canyon. A place that E and I had to think about while deciding where we wanted our ceremony to be, but were limited by the number of guests we wanted with us. This lovely wedding of Katrina and Zach took place at Grandeur Point with the dinner reception at El Tovar Lodge. Simple, lovely, and connected with nature.
 

{sedonabride}

U2 360˚

Glendale Arena, October 20, 2009

It's true. Oh it's true. See where Bono is in this video? We were pretty much right below him. Last night. For half price tickets bought the day of. Inner ring of their crazzzzy space ship stage that's worth over $40 million. With John and Cindy McCain, Muhammad Ali, and 50,000 other people. Black Eyed Peas beats and worlds #1 band of bad asses. Last minute decision, 8 hours of standing, 6 hours driving, 4 hours of sleep, beautiful music still resonating in my head.

{flickr}