what happened is that a little house finch (most likely) had made a nest in the wreath i had on my front door and the wind knocked it out.  it had two little teeny eggs in it and in the fall, one of them broke.

well i can tell you that this just about broken my heart.  because as the resident momma bird and chief nest-minder, i know how much time and energy it takes to not only build a nest, but also to take care of it and it’s inhabitants. and to have it knocked down like this is such a defeating feeling.  i’ve been there.

one of my IG friends happened to comment on it, and suggested that i might put it up in a nearby tree.  that maybe they would come back to it.  but i didn’t really have a tree branch that i could reach that looked safe so i just placed it in some bushes out front up as high as i could.

a little later that day, still feeling upset, i posted this photo to my 365 project on flickr and basically echoed the same sentiments.  because in my head, i know that things like this happen… it’s natures way, but still…

well then a little later, i got a comment from one of my fellow oklahoma nature flickr contacts who said this, “Nature seems harsh sometimes. Looks like it might have been a House Finch nest. They will soon rebuild and attempt another brood. Probably nearby.”

and something about that just spoke to me.  and i thought yes…resilience.  because that’s what living things do.  they live.  they keep on. they start where they are at and move on from there.  almost as if there is no choice.  because that’s their sole (soul??) purpose.  to live. 

well fast forward a week here we are…tornado alley once again lives up to its name.  my state suffered devastating losses from several tornadoes monday and tuesday with moore, ok being the worst hit.  and i can tell you that just about everyone in this state is heartbroken.

it seems like after the initial shock and horror of the situation subsides a bit and everyone has had a chance to sort of process what’s happened, it’s then that the monumental  task of figuring out where/how do you start over comes into play.

i saw in an interview where the mayor of moore said that after the recovery and the immediate needs of the injured and displaced are taken care of, the very first thing the city will do is put up street signs.  and i thought that was so interesting.  but it makes sense i guess.  if you think about, the tornado basically leveled everything in it’s wake – including signs.  and it’s hard to know where you are when all the landmarks are gone.  so yeah, i can see that. 

but i think that putting up street signs also speaks to the resilience of human spirit.  this idea that even in the face of hardship and difficulty, we refuse to give up.  we are determined to live..even in the face of adversity.  it’s stating that even in the face of a complete loss, “this is my home and i will rebuild.  probably close by.”  because that’s all we can do. there is no other choice.

my friends, okies are nothing if not resilient.  and i think it can be attribute to two things: 1) our sense of community and 2) our strong faith in God.  and in times like these i am so proud to say i am an okie.

peace, kelly

p.s.

there are many ways to help the victims of the oklahoma tornado outbreak.  you can check this link for many different options. 

well so as you might have gathered from this post, last weekend i had a booth at ‘vintage market days’ here in tulsa.   in case you’re not familiar with it:

Vintage Market Days is an upscale vintage-inspired indoor/outdoor market featuring original art, antiques, clothing, jewelry, handmade treasures, home décor, outdoor furnishings, consumable yummies, seasonal plantings and a little more.

i blame my mother (not really)…because for months i’ve been hearing things like, ‘sis, you really need to do something with your photography.’  so after a little research and some encouragement from my friends, i decided to apply (it’s a juried show).  i didn’t hear anything for a couple of months…then wow…a few weeks or so later i got an email that they accepted me. 

{insert panic attack here}

for the past month or so, i have been working on putting together my stuff.  researching printing options.  coming up with a booth design.  trying to keep my cat from eating the bows off my packages. 

just a quick sidenote here to say this is why i have been a terrible blog, facebook, flickr, and real-life friend lately.

oh and i should also mention that if you need cute craft booth ideas…i just have one word for you…

PINTEREST!

i was especially proud of this cute, pinterest-inspired photo banner i made.

anyway, i have to say…vintage market days was really fun.  especially getting to know the other vendors.  and the cool stuff they had to sell – honestly….all i wanted to do was walk around and take pictures.  which i did because i’m  a total dork.

oh so do want to see my favorite thing?? first let me tell you that for the past year or so i’ve had a bad case of chair envy.  because alot of my photography friends have these really cool old, antique chairs that they use for cool still life shots.  well so after i got my booth set-up, i spied this cool chair in one of the vendor’s stalls. 

total score! best 20 dollars ever!

just to let you know…tripp was not nearly as excited about my new, old chair.

anyway, the rest of the market days went well.  i made a little extra money which was kind of cool….although i will tell you that i’m not going to be quitting my day job anytime soon.  but that’s ok.  because in the end, it really didn’t have anything to do with money.  vintage market days for me was about putting myself out there for the world to see.  almost like, ‘here i am.  this is me.  this is what i do.  this is the way i see the world.’  it felt really good to own that.

almost as good as it feels to own my new, old chair.

love, kelly

truly, it is such an honor to be sharing thoughts about photography and life on their blog because they have all been such an inspiration to me on my own journey in photography.  and in appreciation for terri’s kind gesture, i promised that i would not talk about my cat’s hairballs or litter box.  that is a special treat that i will reserve for you my friends.  

i would also like to add that i’m going to try very hard not to abuse air quotes or hashtags as well.

anyway, today is my first ‘real’ post with them and i’d be delighted if you visited me there.  and i would just like to say thank you to all of you who read my blog and support and encourage me.  without you it would not have been possible.

love, kelly

to my parents…for planting the seeds of faith.  for the courage to dream.  and most especially, for permission to fail.

to tripp…for enduring the tears and the sadness after kelsey went to college.  for his support and encouragement.  for lifting and carrying.  and for not once complaining about the fact that we haven’t seen the top of the dining room table for a month.

to kelsey…for sorting and packaging and tying bows.  for singing and for laughing.  for being the light of my life.  and for inspiring me to dream bigger, scarier dreams.

to my bff’s carrie and suzanne…for their advice.  for high heels and jewelry.  for loving and accepting me for exactly who i am but believing in what i can be.

to terri…whose floral photography make me sit up and say, ‘one day i hope to be able to take flower pictures like that.’

to my friends…for listening.  for encouraging.  for the advice.  for believing in me.  and for telling me i am good enough.

to all of you who read my blog…for love and support.  for the sweetest and kindest comments that you’ve left me.  for the encouragement.  and for sticking around when i talk about my cat’s litter box.

i dedicate this to you. 

with all my love, kelly

just a heads up…there are alot of flower pictures in this post.

hello friends!  happy wednesday.  how are you??  i hope you had a nice weekend and mother’s day.  mine was great.  sunday it was time spent at home with my family which is pretty much my idea of a perfect day. 

i also got to spend some time with my mom on saturday.  earlier in the week we were talking on the phone and she was telling me about a public garden not far from their new place.  and i have to tell you, saturday was just so pretty.  the weather was great.  so it seemed like a perfect way to celebrate.

actually seems like since i got back from my trip to the dallas arboretum with my friends terri and leigh, i have been a total public garden junkie.  a couple of weeks ago, tripp and i took our evening walk through the tulsa rose garden.  and not long after that, i made a trip to woodward park to take in the tulips. 

anyway, as you can imagine…a trip to lindenwood garden was right up my alley.

so i wouldn’t say lindenwood is a formal garden.  but rather, it’s more like a woodland garden that’s been sectioned off into a few different ‘rooms’.  once inside the gate, we were greeted by pretty walking paths and lots of pretty places to sit and enjoy the peaceful surroundings.

lindenwood is such a beautiful place.  i loved the woodland garden feeling.  so many wonderful shade plants – hostas, azaleas, japanese maples, dogwoods.  and the light…oh my goodness…the light is utterly magical.

the dappled sun is perfect for growing hostas.

and well, it’s pretty much perfect for growing a variety of flowers.

{see…you thought i was joking didn’t you??}

anyway, we spent a delightful hour or so wandering through the garden.  i should tell you that my parents became well acquainted with my ‘camera face.’ which i used alot.  because it was just so beautiful. 

on our way out of the garden we stopped in one particular section known as the ‘garden of hope.’  it’s a peaceful little spot on the grounds of lindenwood dedicated to families who have lost loved ones – especially young children.

and i don’t know…something about standing under the trees….hearing the breeze in the branches.  it was quite moving to me.  definitely one of those moments of intense gratitude.

gratitude for the beauty.  gratitude for my healthy family.  and especially that day…gratitude for my parents.

peace, kelly

so a few months ago, as my girl was getting started in her childrens’ psychology class, she called me and said, ‘hey momma…i need your help.’  {my favorite four words in the english language} 

you see, she was a assigned a ‘virtual child’ to to raise.  which a virtual child is the new-fangled version of the family living classic assignment which, depending how old you are, was probably either 1.) duct-tape wrapped flour sack that you carried around in high school or 2.) the robo-baby with the key that you had to turn whenever the baby cried.

anyway, my girl begins telling me about this program/app whatever you want to call it.  it starts by asking the student some questions about him/herself and then some questions about the kind of mate they are looking for.  and from that questionnaire it then generates a child based on some of those characteristics.  pretty cool right?

well then the real assignment begins because once the child is born, the program starts giving the student various, real-life situations and for each situation, the student is given usually three or four choices for how to handle it.  there was usually one answer that even someone from mars would know is the wrong answer, but there were also at least a couple of answers that could be right depending on the situation. and then at the end of the semester, the student receives a grade on their assignment based on how well they cared for this virtual kid.

well with a virtual newborn around two weeks old is where my girl found herself on the day of that of this phone call.  because her virtual newborn wasn’t eating well and she wasn’t exactly sure what she should do.  the two most likely answers to choose from were a) called the doctor or b) wait until the next feeding to see if it was better.

anyway, so kelsey is asking me what she should do about her virtual baby’s problem and i told her that if it was me, i would wait until the next feeding.  so kelsey chooses B and then that generates some kind of algorithm i guess and then the next question comes up and the it goes on and on.  kinda like motherhood right?

well after about 30 minutes on the phone with this virtual baby, and these questions with no real right or wrong answers, kelsey, in total exasperation says to me,

so let me see if i’ve got this straight…i’ve got this kid and i have to make all these hard decisions and i won’t know if i’ve done it right until the end??? this is crazy!!

{insert pause for laughter}

once i stopped laughing long to regain my composure, i told her than in fact…this is exactly how it works. 

motherhood is not for sissies.

i had this friend who used to tell me that this is the time in a woman’s life that her chicken come home to roost.  and i never really knew what that meant until kelsey was away at school.  and all those decisions i made along the way – whether conscious or otherwise – i now see how they are working in my child’s life.  and thanks to the gift of 20 years of hindsight, i think i maybe could have done some things a little a differently.  i wonder…maybe i should have made her stay in piano lessons.  or maybe i should have made her go to camp when she was twelve.  but you know, i did the best i could.  made the best decision i could with the information i had at the time.

so maybe you’re reading this and you’re rolling your eyes because you’re the mom with all the answers.  maybe you have never doubted yourself and your parenting abilities. maybe you’ve done everything perfectly and would get an A+ on your assignment.  and if that’s the case, well then this blog post isn’t for you. 

this blog post if for the moms who maybe let their toddler watch an extra thirty minutes of barney so they could unload the dishwasher without ‘help’.  moms who sent their kids to school when they were sick.  sick enough that they probably should have stayed home, but who didn’t have anymore sick days and didn’t want to piss of their boss.  moms who told their teenage daughter to quit being a hypochondriac only to learn two days later that she had an infected bug bite and chicken pox.

pretty sure i’d get an F for those.

i think as mothers sometimes we tend to focus on all these things to much.  times when we have failed to hit the mark.  i know i have. 

but today, instead of focusing on that, i want to celebrate us.  the imperfect mothers who have slept sitting upright in a chair with a sick baby in their arms.  mothers who read ‘go dog go’ just one more time even though they were so tired they could barely hold they eyes open.  mothers who stood in shower in the middle of the night washing the vomit out of their daughter’s hair and then changed the sheets where she threw up red gatorade all over the bed.  today is for the moms who helped glue candy wrappers to school art projects and ran through the times table flashcards every night.  today is for the moms who stayed up late to wash their girl’s favorite pink shirt for picture day and for the moms who sit quietly while their girl cries all the way home from her last day of the school she won’t be going back to.  today is for moms who hold back tears on the hardest day of her life so as to not spoil the joy of the best day of her child’s.

surely these count for some kind of extra credit.

for me, motherhood is messy, and hard, and imperfect at best. and i have made mistakes along the way. things i wish so desperately i could do over.  motherhood is at times frustrating and heart-breaking, but yet, motherhood is the most wonderful, gratifying, inspiring thing i have ever done with moments of pure joy.  and i am so blessed by my beautiful girl who sees me for who i am and knows how much i love her.  who forgives me for all my imperfections and brings me so much joy.

and today i am personally celebrating the fact that i have a mother with a fierce kind of love that makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. a mother who would walk through fire for me if needed her.  a mother like me who maybe doesn’t have all the answers either but has a few extra years of hindsight that she’ll gladly share. a mother who will sit on the phone with me and let me pour out my fears.  a mother who will let me be independent and crash and burn and then be there to pick up the pieces.  and that is what i call making the grade in motherhood.  and that is the kind of mother i want to be.

happy mother’s day friends.

love, kelly

just to be fair i wouldn’t say i’m ‘sick’ per se…just battling a bit of an allergy/sinus thing.  because it’s spring in oklahoma.  and the wind blows.  so therefore every speck of pollen in the southern half of the unites states is currently blowing into my neck of the woods.

anyway, for me, when i’ve got this kind of headcold, all i think about is food.  and i don’t mean chicken soup.  no, what i’m craving is a cheeseburger and fries.  or pizza.  or chicken fried steak.  or greasy tacos.  actually anything fried or greasy.  or spicy!  and oh my gosh greasy and spicy…now that’s what i’m talking about!  all washed down with a diet coke of course.  which makes perfect sense when you think about it.

seriously…what is wrong with me?

well so yesterday morning i got up and got my coffee.  then fixed myself some peanut butter toast (which in case you’re curious – and i mean why wouldn’t you be – is what i eat for breakfast 87.6% of the time).  and then i got onto my computer to check my email and then facebook to make sure i didn’t miss any important internet memes that might be currently circulating.  which i didn’t.  but what i did see is a status update from the guthrie green announcing that it was food truck wednesday.

now if you’re not from these parts, the guthrie green was once an old, abandoned warehouse in the middle of downtown tulsa that has been renovated into a beautiful park.  they have all kinds of cool activities and it has completely transformed that part of the brady arts district. 

anyway, once i got to work i told my girlfriend carolyne about it. you see she and i have been wanting to do this for months.  because there’s this one particular food truck – lone wolf – that we have been drying to try. 

the thing about lone wolf though, is they are kinda like an urban legend.  we hear about it all the time.  see it in the paper.  but can never actually find it.  that’s because they don’t have a website and the only way to know where they are going to be on any given day is to follow their twitter feed.  and friends i cannot twitter.  i’ve tried.  but i am physically, mentally, and emotional incapable of twittering.  or tweeting or whatever.  i think it’s because i’m too wordy (i know that might come as a shock to you).  or really probably more the case…i’m just not that cool.  which probably is no shock to you either.

well so, carolyne and i set out for the guthrie green around 11:20.  it’s about a 10 minute walk from our building which was actually nice because it was a pretty day – pollen-infested air and all.  and so we come up to the row of food trucks lining the street and were greeted with the line of people lined up waiting to food.  but lo and behold!  there was the elusive lone wolf food truck.  which is what most of the people were lined up for.

the lone wolf food truck is somewhat famous in town for their bahn mi sandwhiches.  which if you’ve never heard of them, they are basically a meat-filled (usually pork) vietnamese style sandwiches served in a chewy baguette.  they also usually include vietnamese style vegetables such as cucumber, carrots, and radish.  and finally, condiments usually include spicy sauces, jalapeños, and cilantro.

sidenote #1 – my dad is probably grossing out about now.

anyway, these sandwiches have developed a kind of cult following here in tulsa and so carolyne and i started to worry that they would run out before we got to the order window.  but i am happy to report that indeed we were able to get our bahn mi and we went over to some steps to enjoy our delicious lunch. 

sidenote #2 – wearing white pants that day was a bad idea.

so here’s where i’m going to channel my inner giada de laurentis and try to describe to you how wonderful this sandwich is.  first of all, the baguette is wonderful…really light and airy with just the right amount of chew.  and the pork filling was savory and very flavorful.  and just a teeny bit spicy.  then the vegetables which added a nice crunch and texture.  and topped mine with extra jalapeno because…well you know.  and i know there are alot of cilantro haters in the world, but i have to say it was the perfect little fresh bite at the end.  so, so delicious. 

and just what the doctor ordered.

and so with that i think i’m going to wrap up this already way too long blog post.  because i’m hungry.  which is ok because i’m meeting my girlfriends for mexican food tonight. 

wishing you lots of love and spicy food.  kelly xoxoxo

hope the sun is shining in your neck of the woods.

love, kelly

t w e n t i e t h.

i’ve been saying it over and over to myself for the past three days, but i swear it still doesn’t seem possible.

now if kelsey was writing this blog post, she would tell you the twentieth birthday is a non-birthday. no major milestone –nothing big happens like when you turn eighteen or twenty-one.  but for me, for some reason…it feels really huge.

so to celebrate this big (to me), non (to her) birthday, i had this whole big ‘through the years’ kind of blog post planned out with pictures from every year.

i actually started it on saturday on instagram, but once i got to age eleven, i got a cease and desist ordertext from my girl.  something about ‘awkward teenage years’ or some nonsense like that.  that’s the problem when your kids get older – they have opinions.  and because they are technically adults, you sorta have to listen to them and respect that. 

the thing is…being the parent of a young adult (see what i mean – i can’t even use the term ‘teenager’ anymore!) feels a bit like i’m coming into uncharted territory.   how to parent when your child, technically speaking, doesn’t need your approval.  and WANTS to start making their own decisions about their life.  it’s big.

as i type this, my girl is finishing up her sophomore year in college.  she has a couple more finals to go and then we’ll be packing up her stuff and bringing her back home.  she’s halfway finished with her college education.  {{seriously…this year has gone by so fast}} and without going into too much detail, it’s been a bit of a challenging year.  nothing bad.  it’s just, you know, these kids…my kid…they have to make so many decisions right after high school.  decisions about how the rest of their lives will look.  how they see themselves.  and i know i that there is a percentage of students who know from a very young age what they want to do with their lives. which is so great! but i would say a larger amount, although they might have a general direction in mind, find that the plan they entered into college with doesn’t quite fit the same a couple of years down the road.  and that’s where my girl found herself.  and as a parent, that’s where i found myself – trying to help her figure that out.

my girl (because the apple does not fall far from the tree) is quite fond of the inspirational quote.  and i remember one afternoon during spring break and we were driving back from running errands.  she was talking about her dreams and the future.  anyway, she shared a quote with me…something along the lines of ‘if your dreams don’t scare you a little, then they aren’t big enough.’ 

seriously…how much do i love this kid.

i think what happened that afternoon…is somewhere along hwy 169, my girl came to realize that the dreams she had for herself after highschool were good dreams.  honorable dreams.  safe dreams.  but in heart, she knew they weren’t big enough.  and so now after alot of talking, and soul-searching, and prayer…i think my girl has some dreams that are more her size. 

i’m so proud of my girl. for a million reasons.  and looking forward to seeing where her dreams take her.

peace, kelly