*Add to my bucket list to someday shoot a wedding in France. This looks amazing!

*Start everything with gratitude. I spent a few hours in the neurologist office waiting room this week. First of all, you encounter the loveliest people with the best attitudes about life. And secondly, you realize how lucky you are for what your body does for you without even being asked.

*Read more inspiring stories. If you don’t already, bookmark and read NieNie. She is amazing and her faith and outlook on life are inspiring. She defines beauty.

I am so thankful to have the opportunity to be part of this moment in their lives: when it is the end of summer and she is five.

I’ve been to a lot of tea rooms, but never one quite like this. You won’t find suffocating chintz or fake flowers or thick table cloths. It’s peaceful and clean and simple. Go once and when you return, you’ll be treated like Norm walking into Cheers. I can highly recommend Lisa’s Latte {made with gold tea, frothy soy milk, local honey} and a cucumber and cream cheese sandwich, or a strawberry scone or a dark chocolate brownie.

I’ve heard a lot of people go to Starbucks for the experience. I’m telling you once you go to Cuppa, you’ll want to return for both the flavors AND the experience. It’s like being with good friends. Did I mention they have coffee, too? And you can pick your tea cup to use while you are there?

More images to come.

In Charleston, you paint your porch ceiling and door blue to keep away the haints and remind you of the sky. I wanted the floor, a concrete slab covered in oil stains, to look like sand. This, is what I want, I told him. He totally got it. I put up the most nautical looking light/fan combo from Lowes that I could find.

I found the bench with giant final sale red stickers on it at Home Goods and a little white resin table at the new store, Sage Antiques & Uniques on Winchester Road here in Lexington, KY. Check out her shop. She’s awesome!

The walls inside used to be tan and brown. Not anymore.

For years I’ve written To-Do and Grocery lists on this chalkboard. But recently I remembered how Cate Capshaw’s character in The Love Letter wrote quotes on a little chalkboard in her seaside bookshop and I decided, why not?  Now, we take turns leaving quotes there for the other to find.  I found the little lamp at Home Goods. The sweet grass basket was a wedding gift.

My friend and mentor Beth gave me this beautiful tea set for my new porch. It is perfect in color and shape. Best of all, the cups are microwave/dishwasher safe. I have new business cards from Tiny Prints.

Also in the studio, the cake topper from my parents’ wedding. We used it for our wedding cake, too.  Good chi for a wedding photography studio.

My little lomo camera I picked up on that great trip to New York back in February. There’s film in it now that I can’t wait to develop!

There are comfy places to sit in the studio, too.  The paintings in the background are by Faye Christian Phillips.

The crystals are from our trip to Sligo where my husband was studying Yeats and where we met dear friends. Some seashells from Seaside, a seaglass bowl from Worlds Apart Home here in Lexington.

The Heywood-Wakefield I found at Scout Antiques for a song when I was looking for furniture from the ’50s. My house was built in 1950 and furniture from the same period fits so much better in the cottage.  The minute I noticed that the glass was broken, the shop owner was sort of apologizing and telling me how to replace it, but all I could think of was that it was perfect without the glass in it for my iMac.  My favorite headphones from Urban Outfitters. Notebooks with all of those Paper Boat contracts and forms.

More to come when the prints arrive for the wall.  Come on over for realies sometime! We’ll have tea.

-NPR posted a Tiny Desk Concert with Ana Tijoux of Chile. I watched the first song and my daughter drifted in from the other room, stared at the screen and said, “I love it so much,” and tried to sing along. It reminds me of when Bebel Gilberto came out with her album Tanto Tempo which is mostly in Portuguese. I didn’t understand a word, but I loved every song.

-Dr. Wayne Dyer and Byron Katie on Making Your Thoughts Work For You.

-Sage Antiques & Uniques on Winchester Road where I found these lovelies:

These tiny glass bottles with a hint of sea foam green were .50 cents a piece. The toast holder was 2.50. The resin table $30. Sea foam plates .50.  Jackpot. The owner is lovely. She’s from DC and has amazing, eclectic taste. Love her choices.

-This wedding shoot by Scott Clark Photography featured on 100 Layer Cake blew me away. But this image I love 1,000 times. I can’t figure out what it is, but there’s just something about the curlers and the kerchief that I love love love. It is a painting. Beautiful work Scott!

Her words “bad for your business” made me feel so sad. Can you imagine feeling like a photograph of you on your wedding day might harm someone’s business? It wasn’t until that conversation that I thought about the kind of discrimination she must feel all of the time. She was there for me at my wedding. She came to see me when I was pregnant. We celebrate good news together. Why wouldn’t I be there for her in any other way but 100% at her wedding? Is her love any less important? Does it mean less because she loves a woman? I can’t imagine.

I keep a lot of opinions to myself on this blog. The off-limits blogging list is pretty long. There are about 70 hours of my week that I don’t blog about. Ever. And I’m careful about touching the political third rails here as I know I have readers {and I’m thankful for each of them} who are of various faiths, political parties and citizenship.

But as an attorney/wedding photographer, I am in a good position to comment on the right to marry. I understand constitutional law, I’ve worked in the domestic court and I spend a good bit of time in the wedding industry. I am perplexed that the gay marriage debate is still a debate at all. The legalities of marriage have little to do with what works or doesn’t work in marriage, what needs protecting and what can never be protected in marriage.

There is nothing sacred about marriage that emanates from the license. In fact, the legalities and divisions and rights from the license are often where things creep in that are far from sacred. It’s the commitment that means something and that is most challenging.

My greatest challenge in life is to love people as Christ would. That’s easier to do with your children. With people who loved you as a child. With people you don’t spend all of your time with. But to love, unconditionally, someone you spend your life with, shoulder to shoulder, is a giant undertaking.

It’s a challenge to love unconditionally, the way that God would, when you’ve been moving all day in the Georgia heat and it’s 2:00 a.m., and the trailer comes off the hitch and rolls toward the car; it’s a challenge to be patient and kind when you haven’t slept in months; when you are broke; when someone is vomiting; when the basement is flooding; when the heater breaks in the middle of the night; when it’s hard.

And life can be really, really hard.

I feel grateful that God loves me in those moments, when it’s hard to love myself, and I try to think about how to love this person I’ve signed up with in the way that God would. And it’s hard. God asks us to take care of each other. If someone decides to try to rise to the task and accept the challenge of caring for someone unconditionally, for as long as they can, there is no legal or biblical challenge that justifies doing anything other than saying all the best of luck. You’re going to need it. We all do.

All spiritual and legal issues aside, in an effort to appeal to the disinterested, I should add that there are endless financial benefits to leveling the playing field. The potential wedding market is big business, sure. But what about after the wedding, as we all age. There are more long term care facilities in this country than McDonalds. Think about that. And yet, the aging population is going to surpass availability. If there’s someone who can care for another, share benefits to do so, there is less burden on the community. And I could go on and on.

Supporting people who are willing to try to make a commitment, however risky, to try to love each other is always good, regardless of business.

{minute 1:38 is when this gets good if you want to forward}

And speaking of photographers, Herman Leonard died this week. I thoroughly enjoyed the advice he gave to Ohio University graduates here. Inspiring.

Duke Ellington Paris 1960 – Herman Leonard

I think tomorrow, when we dive into the yellow cake with chocolate icing, we’ll have to listen to some jazz and celebrate the first day of Kindergarten and the first day of his new number.  And of course, I’ll have to take a photograph or two.

*I’ve always wanted to host one of these outdoor movie parties. It has been a bit of an obsession. This Fall, it will have to happen!

*My daughter begins kindergarten this week.

Sigh.

I managed to get in several hours of editing before she woke up today so that we can spend the day just having fun.  I love her because she is my daughter, but I really love any time I get to spend with her because of the person she is and how she sees the world. Her teachers gave her a Kind Friend Award last year. I can’t think of anything more appropriate.  She told me right before she fell asleep last night, “I think I must be the luckiest girl in the town.”

I know that I am.

Happy Weekend everyone!