December 21, 2012
One of the skills I’m so thankful I got from my mom is my ability to wrap gifts well. When I was a little girl our home looked like a page from Southern Living at Christmas (and the rest of the year, for that matter)…. there was NEVER red or green anything, though. When I was in Elementary school, hour living areas were all pale yellow and cream…. so of course, our tree was too. As I got older, Mom redecorated and everything changed to pale pink and cream… and our tree did too. Along with no red & green decor, meant no “traditional” wrapping either. One year she I think she bought stock in mylar… because all our gifts were wrapped in gold mylar paper…. (that is the hardest stuff to wrap with, it doesn’t crease!!). The older I’ve gotten, the more and more I appreciate this… and have tried to adopt it in our home. Now, of course the no red & green doesn’t fly with my husband, but I’ve tried to marry Mom’s gift wrap talent, with the hubs need for traditional red & green. I think when I was about 5 or 6 my mom went into a shop in Durham (Morgan Imports) where she had seen or heard they wrap beautiful gifts, she had the sales girl teach her to make bows…. and from then on, our presents were the most beautiful you’d ever seen. I’m a firm believer that beautiful presentations are well worth the effort. This year, I spotted some red on red polka dot at TJ Maxx and some red & gold stripe…. wrapping paper, check! Now… ribbon… you cannot and will not find traditional gift ribbon on our gifts… only real, fabric ribbon. It’s a must. So for this tutorial…. you better have the real stuff, or it won’t work. I tend to avoid Michaels when it comes to nearly anything because it’s normally over priced…. but I went in knowing it was a good spot to locate nice ribbon (side note: if I’d had time, and thought about it, I would have ordered from Ribbon Retreat…. that’s where all our ribbon for the business comes from)…. there it was… sparkly, leopard ribbon! I grabbed one roll of it, a roll of hunter green & one roll of skinny gold….. all the holiday ribbon was (and still is!) 70% off! (I went back yesterday and loaded up again!). So here’s our fancy-schmancy wrapping tutorial…. prepare to amaze your loved ones. 1. Wrap your gift. This means USE A BOX. No bags, no exceptions. 2. Tie a piece of ribbon around your box. 2. Cut 2 pieces of ribbon equal length. These were about 18″ each. The longer your ribbon the more loops, or bigger loops you’ll have. So if you need a big bow, go longer length… or if your making a small bow with skinnier ribbon, go shorter. 3. Loop your ribbon. My mom would always loop around something (I showed below with my external drive)… but she often would make “templates” out of pieces of cardboard. The length of your loop, will be the size of your bow…. so if you need a big bow, make a bigger loop…. have I lost you yet? 3. This is THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP. This will make your bow stay, and not flop over. Cut 2 small slits on each side of your loops, going through all the layers. Be careful not to cut too far in. …. see 2 slits , one on each side. 4. Now, repeat and do that again. You need 2 loops, slits in both. 5. Now, go back to your box that you wrapped ribbon around, and put one of your loops over the tied spot, and pull the loose ends of the ribbon that goes around the box, though the slits in your first loop. Tie a loose knot. It should pinch your loop. And yes, I realized after the fact that this would be easier to see if I had used a coordinating ribbon on the box. Sorry! 6. Layer your 2nd loop over the first and knot. 7. Pull all your loops apart, twisting as you go. Those little slits will get caught against each other and hold your bow up. TADA! You’re done! It takes practice to get the loop count, length, size of loop right, but you’ll get the hang of it! The leopard ribbon is wired ribbon, but it does not have to be. However, if you need to make a really big bow, you’ll need wired ribbon…. otherwise all the loops get too heavy and won’t stay up. Now go impress people with your new skill! Happy Holidays!
December 20, 2012
We probably never thought this was a trip we would make. Jeremy doesn’t like to fly, and it would eat up vacation days really fast to go all the way out to Hawaii. Then we thought…. why not go the week between Christmas and New Years? We’ll be off work already! Nah… that time of year is crazy and we hear is very popular for vacationing. Then it hit me one day while at work. I had to travel to Boise, Idaho for my day job and the following week would be Thanksgiving….. the wheels started to turn. Before we knew it, we had plane tickets and a hotel booked! We are truly grateful that through all the craziness of building a vacation home, we actually saved too much money for the down payment (and we aren’t really sure how that happened seeing how I had to pay a crazy tax bill in April for this photo biz, and totaled my car in June and bought a new one… thus depleting our savings quickly). With the few extra dollars we had, we knew that if we didn’t take this trip now, we would likely be “retired” before the chance came again. Off we went, not looking back. As you know, I stopped in Waco, Texas on my way to Boise. Then flew to Boise where Jeremy met me towards the end of my week there. On Sunday afternoon we hopped a plane to Portland, Oregon and then on to Honolulu, Hawaii. I was really nervous about this flight. Of the 9 different flights I would take in those 2.5 weeks, this one was the longest at 6 hours. We were on Alaska Air for that flight, and I have to say it was the most positive flying experience I have ever had!!! We boarded to find an itinerary in our seat, there would be 3 services, with the final one serving free Mai Tai’s! Those 6 hours flew by as we watched The Blind Side, Horton Hears a Who, and Jurassic Park 🙂 Before we knew it, we were on the ground in paradise. (The only 3 photos I took in Boise with the Bronica…. the state Capitol, The Boise State Bronco’s blue field, and a mural painted in downtown). I actually really liked Boise, it was clean, people were friendly and their downtown was full of cool shops and restaurants! It reminded me a lot of Asheville. Here are my Boise instagrams 🙂 On to Hawaii….. Monday we visited Pearl Harbor…. a place I think everyone should see. …. and then spent the afternoon driving around the eastern part of the island. Below is Makapu’u Beach park. There was a fee to get down on the sand, so we admired from above. Tuesday we visited the Dole Plantation and the North Shore. Wednesday we went out to the beach at Waikiki, which I think was pretty disappointing. The sand is really hard. So, we cleaned up and headed to find the Lanikai Shrimp Truck…. with no luck. But we did discover Kailua Bay… so beautiful!! We even came back to Kailua the next day (on Thanksgiving) to soak up a little sun. The photo above of us is at Kailua on Wednesday, we were really sad that it’s the only photo of us together that whole trip and it’s blurry 🙁 I guess that means we’ll just have to go back! A huge thank-you to Ashley Goodwin who, at the last moment, invited us to spend Thanksgiving with her, her hubby and some of her friends. Alyssa Turner graciously welcomed us into their beautiful home where we all chatted like old friends over a huge spread of food. We were so thankful for some home-cookin’ after eating out every single meal for 2 weeks. Hawaii Instagrams: We boarded our overnight flight from Hawaii to San Diego on Friday night. Orignially, the plan was to come home on Friday and have some time to relax and catch up before going to work on Monday…. when we booked our flights, the only flight home on Friday was a non-stop flight to New York and the New York to Charlotte…. NO THANK YOU. No way you were going to convense us that HI to NY was a good idea. So we thought…. why not stop in California for the weekend, and help break up the flight home. As luck would have it, there was a San Diego Chargers home game on Sunday… perfect! We arrived in San Diego about 7AM on Saturday morning, extremely tired but excited to see California. We picked up our rental car and spent the next 6 hours driving around seeing what their was to see (the hills, Coranado, etc.)….. and sitting in Starbucks to re-charge our phones. Travel Tip…. BRING A CAR CHARGER!! By the time we landed our iPhones were almost dead, so we camped out at a Starbucks for nearly an hour while we recharged so we could find our way around. We decided on tacos for lunch, and found Taco’s El Gordo is listed as a great one. It was awesome!! Total hole-in-the-wall…. with fresh tacos, quesadillas…. etc. And so cheap, I think we both ate for about $12! After eating, we decided we might be able to go ahead and check in our hotel (which we randomly booked on Friday afternoon before leaving Hawaii!), the Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina….. we got in, and discovered our balcony looked out on to the view below…. forget being tired, the pool was calling our name. We spent about an hour by the pool and decided that having not slept in about 36 hours had caught up to us and it was nap time. About 4 hours later we googled for a local dinner spot and found The Tractor Room. This was by far some of the best food we ate the whole time we were gone, SO YUM! We slept like rocks and woke up the next day ready to visit Qualcomm Stadium to see the Chargers play the Ravens. San Diego Instagrams: Our 36ish hours in San Diego was so great, and we really want to go back. We left the game to turn in our rental car and head back to the airport to head home…. one more overnight flight to Charlotte.
December 13, 2012
Just over a month ago I boarded a flight from Charlotte to Dallas to see & photograph Karen & Paul in Waco. I wanted to shoot film while we I was there…. so here ya go! Waco.
