...so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God. - Colossians 1:10 

Howdy. Let's start this blog post with a scripture that doesn't make sense. Why doesn't it make sense? Because it's a fragment without being read in addition to the other verses that surround it. So if you read that verse and you're like "oh okay please God.. that's nice".... "oh okay grow in knowledge.." and are just like "cool. that leaves me feeling warm and fuzzy but also slightly challenged." then that is totally DANDY but here's what the verse is talking about. Paul is speaking to the people of Colossai and basically saying "hi. me and timothy are praying these things for you." which is honestly really cool because it's like what we do nowadays for people via text message.

 

I really like to be able to look back and think about how the Lord has stretched me, made me grow. (have you caught on to the fact that this post is about growth while you are also viewing pictures of plants? super cheese, I know. :) ) 

That is something that I love about college. Everything is defined by semesters and that makes it easy to look back and remember key things about a particular season (semester) in your life. How jolly! It never ceases to amaze me when I feel like a semester is a low point of stinky attitudes on my part, I can still see little ways that God is growing me. He is sweet to us. 

 But let's also remember our scripture. Paul was praying for these things... aka we should pray for them. I know that so often I forget so many prayers I should be praying daily so I've compiled this dandy little list!

 Things to Pray for Daily: 

That the Lord would grow and mature you in your faith 

For wisdom and insight while you read scripture 

For opportunities to share your faith with others 

... I'm keeping it short and sweet.

Let's recap the vague not really point-ish kind of point of this whole thing.. it's cool how we grow. Wow. I must be lacking inspiration today. I don't know. It's just what was on my mind.

Speaking of growth.... I used to be the kind of girl that cried at the sight of dirt (really, ask my Kindergarten teacher.) and here I am frolicking in the creek with no shoes on. Wearing a baseball sweatshirt. Embracing nature. Now if that's not growth I don't know that is.

my first little tutorial.

Hello.
Today i was feeling minimally crafty. Here's the thing. I love to craft. But I hate messes even more than I love to craft. So as I'm crafting I get a little stressed knowing that I'm making a mess. I need to figure something out to fix that. First step, organizing my craft box into a more accessible organization system. Stay tuned on that one. :)

I decided to make...

BUNTING CARDS!!

Materials: a piece of scrapbook paper (mine is from a book of half sized papers purchased at good old Hobby Lobby), note cards of some kind (again, from Hobby Lobby), scissors, a paper clip, hot glue gun or some other kind of strong glue, some cute and THIN string (mine was from Anthropologie's collection of Christmas gift wrap).

NOTE: PLEASE DON'T JUDGE MY RHINESTONE STAPLER. HIGH SCHOOL = INTERESTING STYLE CHOICES.

Find these little babies near all of the greeting cards at your local Hob-Lob!

I have a mild obsession with this string. It was really fun to find yet another use for it! 

First, take a paper clip and use the end to poke a little hole in one side of your note card. Ideally, I would own an extremely miniature hole punch. But I don't know if those even exist. So this is what we're working with here. :) After poking your first hole, fold the card back together and punch through it again to make a hole in the same spot on the other side.

Thread some of your string through...

Tie a knot at one end, figure our how low you want your mini- bunting to hang, and tie your second knot on the other side of the card.

Cut your little baby bunting diamonds, then fold them all over into triangles!

And with a little bit of hot glue, tucking those flags over the string...

 TA-DA!!

A little time consuming for daily use, but kind of fun I thought. If I could go back, I would have written in the card before threading the string through. It's fine though. You can learn from my little mistake. :) 

I think that sending words of encouragement to people is an extremely important part of life. Challenge yourself to write to someone this week! :) 

ALSO, check out this dandy little way to comment on my blog posts via facebook! I would LOVE to hear your thoughts and feedback.. even if it's like "your little flags look janky!" :)

just a look....

.. at my week with a few instagrams. 

This week was filled with: some really sweet time journaling to Jesus, wonderful friends, happy shopping, babies, enjoying creation, a Phillips, Craig, & Dean concert, rest, reading, brainstorming, Bethany Dillion's new ep (SO good. get it!), & answered prayers. Next week, it will be another new season, the finishing bit of my last Spring semester in College Station.

Morning oatmeal; of course I'm finding more ways to use mugs. I'm a non-coffee or tea drinker who loves mugs, okay?

 The Lord has been good to me this week, He is teaching me through His word.

 Just a little Garden Center Adventure!

 Sweet Baby Wyatt, a few days before I got all up in his personal space snapping pics of his cuteness for approximately three hours. 

 Wednesday was a fun day! I purchased an Ipad and my new blog design launched! I was so happy! 

 Last Sunday night meant roasting hot dogs on the creek, so perfect!

 I was pretty ecstatic about Wyatt's shoot, I had to muster up some courage for that one! 

By far my favorite picture of the week.

In other news, I am going to try all sorts of new lovely things in order to make the last six weeks of the semester fun... basically do a bunch of crafts and show them all to you lovely people here! As well as a few other fun things to be viewed/read about. Basically there is lots of bloggy fun headed your way. 

By the way, if you're reading this.. THANK YOU. Blogging has always been something silly that I've loved and it's already been so fun sharing a little bit of my heart with the world. I hope to inspire you creatively and push you towards the Lord. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email at any time! I love people getting in touch! xoxoxoxoxox

i have a lot to be thankful for.

over christmas break i recieved an anthropologie catalog in the mail. of course.

this page of the catalog really caught my eye:

(this image can be found here on page 32 of the online catalog)

After that, the rest is history. I wanted to do a silly shoot like this. Ours is not as cool because:
a) We are not on a beach
b) We don't have perfect lighting
c) We aren't wearing perfectly coordinated outfits with lots of layering
d) We didn't have our own personal professional photographer

But it makes me so happy. It was really hard to choose just nine images. We had so many.
I think that these two collages with extremely different editing styles look kind of weird so close together. oopsies.

So in case you were wondering, that's what i did on my spring break Thursday afternoon.
On our way back from the creek, a little something took us by surprise.

don't mind how squinty i am! the little turtle captured our attention for awhile before we moved it safely off the road. Matilda wasn't too pleased about all of our attention being on another creature.

As soon as we told her we were headed home though, she got a big smile on her doggie face! 

I'm so thankful for adventures like this. And that's what's on my heart today!
I'm linking up with sweet Casey Wiegand today. I'm so excited about her announced conference. Maybe that will be a step that I take in the bloggy world. Eek!
Last year I won a giveaway of one of her paintings, and Casey was so wonderfully sweet about getting it to me, and personalized it for me. I love it! Picture soon, maybe? :)

Wyatt Ray.

yesterday i had the privelidge of taking pictures of the sweetest baby boy i've ever known!
wyatt ray's momma is my sweet room mate from last year, paige nicole. (apparently i like middle names for this post, hehe!)

this shoot was a big deal for a few reasons. first, it was the first time i've intentionally met with someone for photography purposes- eek! after taking these pictures, i feel so encouraged to chase my dreams and be brave and try my hand at photography! second, i am just so thankful for how the Lord has worked in Paige's life by bringing baby Wyatt to us. i've prayed for this little life since the day i found out he was coming, so taking his six month pictures was a breath of fresh air.

i love you momma paigey, and hope you love all of these pictures!
(more to be found on my personal facebook)

these images may not be perfect, but i love them. they are such a symbol of hope for me in so many different ways. also, the world needs to know that this six month old baby let us manipulate him for photography purposes for almost three hours and i saw him frown like twice and cry zero times. he was full of giggles the whole time and i thought that was just the sweetest.