SUMMER KICK-OFF POOL PARTY 2018 - VIDEO

Summer 2018 from Christine Lu on Vimeo.


Another year, another summer kick-off party! ken made this video from the party this past weekend.

Summer, THANK GOD YOU'RE HERE.

NIC AND MEGAN

12 years, these two have been married! And I am lucky to say we've been able to do life with them for most of those 12 years. I took these photo last weekend when they were over our house to commemorate, and it was great fun listening to them catching up about their day and week while I shot around them. 

I've been pulling out my camera more frequently these days to shoot for friends and I have been challenging myself to be more creative with every aspect of photography - whether it be capturing personalities, trying different angles, understanding my camera more, or being more confident with my editing process.  It's been fun!

Also, not that anyone asked, but I will post a wordy post soon. I obviously love sharing images, but lately I've been wanting to get back to including longer form essays here - both for documenting and discipline.

That being said, some photos of these lovely souls.

HOME INSPIRATION: ARKANSAS FARMHOUSE HOME TOUR

I came across this house tour on Design Sponge a while ago and loved it.  The homeowner, Ashley and Sahid did all the extensive DIY work to remodel this 1910 house themselves, and has made it into a place that is home for their family and also a gathering place for their community.  

There's several things I appreciate about how they made their home (that sunporch!) and especially how they encourage creativity in their kids, but my favorite thing is their philosophy of making sure their home actually work for them. Ashley says: "We decided, after trial and error, to live in the space before we decorated it or started any type of remodel process. We need to get a feel of the purpose of the room, the energy of the space and what functionality it can bring to our family. I never feel obligated to keep something where it’s at if it doesn’t feel right just because I screwed a hole in the plaster to put it there.” You can see more of their before and after photos here!

SALAD ART

I love that feeling when you are ramping up in a book you were reading, and up until that point you weren’t very excited about the book but you powered through because, hope, and all of a sudden you can’t put that book down. And even when you are forced to, you are just itching to get back to it again. That was my experience with this one  and the protagonist in that book is a writer and a woman, which immediately makes it interesting to me, and as someone who has great interest in writing, it fascinates me to read about someone else’s process, no matter how different or torturous or pointless or amazing, I always like it. The best part being that it makes me want to write more. And that is a wonderful place to be - wanting to write, wanting to tell a story, wanting to communicate better - because wanting to write makes you pay attention to the details. When I am in this mode, all of the small details are interesting. I am seized by this compulsion to want to write down everything, to make small details more important than they are at any other time. It makes me wish that I had the ability to pause time, so that I could write down everything in my head with reckless abandon before I forget the sentiment and specific words.  Do you guys remember the movie with Adam Sandler where he had a remote control that actually could do this? I think about that movie often.

Work is busy, very busy, and this kind of season always make me feel like I do not have enough time. Busy for me means that I want to give 100% of myself to each one of the things that is happening in my life, and I’ve run into the wall of realizing I am not able to do that. And because of that squished face in the wall, I had been feeling squished overall during the last few weeks. This week is not that much less busy, and Ken is away for work, and our car isn’t working for the record, so overall I thought it would get even harder, but somehow I have felt like I have been able to be present within all of my moments, which makes me feel less torn, which makes me feel less busy. Boom.

The past couple of days I have resolved to stop thinking about work when I get home, which probably helps a lot, and also to not rush time with the girls. If anything, I pretend that there is a slow motion button that has been pressed on my evening as soon as I get home, and I like to languidly make dinner and look at the girls and play and get them to bed. There really is something spectacular about doing and moving slowly through the mundane things. We have enjoyed each other immensely over the past few days. One of the evenings this week, I picked up the girls and ran an errand, mostly to enjoy being together, and then came home to do salad for dinner (salad art!), read books and snuggled in bed. Afterward I felt the glow of being present, which is much more satisfying than the feeling of being busy. 

Salad Art came about first through Face Salad, which was me just arranging things of a salad into a face shape, and then I thought - why don't I let them make the face or house or whatever else they want?  I put wax paper or parchment paper on a baking sheet, pull out all sorts of different vegetables, fruit, ham, egg, or cheese or whatever else I have in the fridge, and then let them build things with the food. The girls have great fun with it and then we gobble it all up afterward.

Logan made a castle (strawberries, mini apple, cucumbers) with an ocean around it (shredded carrot) that had slides in it (pear sticks).  There was a forest (arugula) next to it and some sheep (ham) and a couple of boats (avocado).

Sloane made a version of a castle too, and then reworked it into a face!