Girl Confessions: Link-Up

 

These are cleansing for me.

1. My dad leant me his vintage Asahi Pentax camera (actually all Asahi Pentax cameras might be vintage now…not sure about that). Super excited to learn how to shoot properly with film. It’s been years since I’ve used 36 mm. Film is more expensive to develop now so I’ll have to be more sparing with my photography but I’m excited to try a new kind of medium.

2.I am straight-up addicted to Caribou Coffee. I can’t explain it except that after about half a cup of this roast and I get insanely happy and energetic. Call it a crutch. Call it crack cocaine. #soworthit

3. I am finally doing the deep cleaning I have been longing for. That means de-cluttering the closets, completely re-doing the file cabinet, and re-imagining the office space/guest room. Pictures to come!

4. I love cooking but I seriously hate doing the dishes. And this makes me not want to cook. How sad is that?

5. My friend and neighbor Melissa moved to South Carolina last week and every time I walk downstairs and don’t see her car parked next to mine or her twinkle lights in the window, I get sad all over again. Bah.

6. I’ve pretty much had to put a moratorium on watching or reading the news. I grew up in Aurora, Colorado and I’ve had a permanent stomachache since Friday morning when we first heard about the shooting. I can’t fathom it. And I don’t want to go to the movies for a long, long time. I just don’t feel like it.

7. The Cupcake Project is one of my favorite places on the internet. And soon…these Jasmine Cupcakes with Raspberry and Honey will be mine. Oh, yes. I even found the much sought after raspberry vinegar the recipe calls for. Boom.

Feel like sharing your confessions? Link up below! No rules…just share your list. The link up will be open until July 30th.

 

 

love, elizabeth

Periphery: the colorado massacre

“Elizabeth, I’m really sorry to wake you up but I think you need to see this,” Kyle’s hand was on my arm and I shot up in bed and stared at the clock. 6 AM.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, my heart already in my throat. I texted my brother in a blind panic: “Ben, please tell me you didn’t go to the Dark Knight premiere.”

“I didn’t. But I know about the shooting.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too, sis.”

I don’t like to be one of those people that jumps on a tragedy bandwagon.This horrible thing is not about me. It didn’t happen to me. It didn’t even happen near me. Physically. And it’s like my dad says, there is no safer place than the arms of God.

And yet I find myself somehow in the periphery of the mass shooting in Colorado today since it happened about five minutes from my parents’ home, the home I grew up in, at the movie theater I visited almost weekly in junior high and high school. I am so thankful that the people I know who live and work near that theater are safe. I am thankful for the law enforcement and emergency crew who responded to the scene. I am thankful that they have the shooter in custody.  I am thankful for God’s mercy.

But I am shaken. I spent so much time in that particular theater. I took my brother to a midnight showing of the first Batman movie there a number of years ago. I had my first real date there. I held hands with a boy for the first time in that movie theater. Even now, I can see the inside of that building in my head. I know the layout, the feeling of that carpet under my feet, even which games are in the corner arcade. I was there just two weeks ago.

The pain of this for people who were there, who had loved ones there…that has to be unbearable. For me, it’s just on the edges of my mind where I can’t really see it in focus. Watching the coverage on the television and seeing that Century 16 sign, I just can’t even process it. I can’t read any more about it. I don’t want to see pictures. I don’t want to hear the 9-1-1 calls or look at the mug shot of James Holmes who is my age and a PhD student and I don’t want to see it or know it.

I guess I’m just sad. It’s staggering how far away “hitting close to home” can actually be.

love, elizabeth

Scrapbook

So here it is. The LAST post of pictures from Colorado.



1. Cold Stone ice cream with Sarah. 2. Graffiti in Leadville. 3. Me and Mom after she picked me up from the airport.



4. The twins together, Auntie Jo teaching Mom to play Angry Birds. 5. Sophie in the flowers. 6. Number at Mcalister’s Deli.


7. Coffee with mom. 8. Delicious salad. 9. Original seats inside the Tabor Opera House.



10. Wall décor inside the Silver Dollar Saloon in Leadville. 11. Bumper sticker. 12. Antique china.


13. Old books. 14. Antique bottles in a Leadville shop window. 15. Me. That’s a picture of me.

love, elizabeth

John Denver Was Right

I think these kind of speak for themselves but OMG, you guys, I miss the Rockies already.

love, elizabeth

Breakfast in Leadville

My mom is much more of a breakfast person than I am. But if breakfast was exactly like this every morning…I’d never miss it.

That’s veggie eggs benedict, by the way. And it tasted like heaven.

What’s your favorite way to spend breakfast?

love, elizabeth

Mountain Girl

 

Mom and I drove up to Leadville for a weekend. We had so much fun. I’m not a mountain girl by birth but I married a mountain boy and I think that kind of love for thin air and a big, bright Colorado sun rubs off on a person.

We stayed in a peaceful little motel right on the main street, wildflowers in our window.

I took a lot of pictures of the storefronts. They have such an old, lost look about them, like the old gold and silver mine entrances and overgrown railroad tracks just outside of town. The Tabor Opera House is one of the last remaining opera houses from this part of the country and one of the last Tabor buildings standing. It’s even more beautiful inside but the light in there wasn’t the greatest and the curators aren’t so crazy about flash photography.

That’s 10, 200 feet above sea level. I always forget how it feels to be that high up. A little like floating.

I could spend weeks that high in the clouds. Are you a mountain person?

love, elizabeth

Roadtrippin’

I am FINALLY back from my trip to Colorado and catching up with blogging. If you have been reading, following, commenting, sponsoring, etc., know that I am getting ready to get in touch with you! I seriously took almost 1,000 pictures over the last two weeks and I can’t wait to share (some) with you! Originally, I planned to be all orderly and chronological about it but you know what? I’m not feeling it. So here is the first in a series of random posts in whatever order occurs to me at the moment.

Dad and I took two and a half days to drive from Colorado to Ohio to get me home. I credit my parents with my extreme love of the road trip. I have been on hundreds of long car trips with my family and at this point in my life, I think we just about have it down to a science.

 

I’m also really fortunate to have parents that not only like road trips, but really GET them. Besides the awesome snacks and the car jams and the GPS, my dad also let me pull off the highway any time I spotted a point of interest. Needless to say, we’ve made a lot of stops in the last couple days. More on that next post…

What’s your favorite thing about road trips?

love, elizabeth