More over on the Vagabond Bond.

If you haven’t seen that blog before I urge you to check it out. It’s a collective of inspired creatives with nomadic souls. We’re explorers at heart, capture what we see through light, words, or melodies, and share it with the world. Every day I open the VBB and am in awe by what my fellow vagabonds have seen.

I’m going to dish it all; even though some parts are a little embarrassing, and almost all of it is completely crazy. It’s love, though, and that’s how I know it best. All heart and few hesitations.

Obviously I’m in Tacoma now, but this story starts back in Minnesota. I had been planning on moving to Seattle for a long time. Actively for about 6 months, but in my heart for about 18 years. Once I decided that I was actually going to make the jump I tapped every resource I could because I didn’t know anyone at all (which, after a crazy year, was kind of refreshing . I like fresh starts). After I talked to everyone I knew and exhausted those resources I ended up signing up for OKCupid (embarrassing part #1!) to try to connect with more people.

I emailed back and forth with quite a few people and got to know more about the area, etc. It turned out to be a cool resource for connecting with people that I wouldn’t have crossed paths with otherwise.

Then. I started talking to Scott. On October 26th. It’s now March 5th, only a little over 4 months later. This is where it gets crazy.

So. October 26th we start talking and the connection that we have is immediate. We’re 1700 miles away, though, and have no way of knowing whether it’s real or whether we’re creating it in our minds. So what do we do? Not a big deal, right? I’m planning on moving out there soon anyway so we can just wait it out and find out if this is real then, right? Yeah, no. Scott and I both wear our hearts on our sleeves and take “hopeless romantic” to another level. We couldn’t wait.

On October 30th (4 days later) Scott bought a plane ticket and I was on my way to the airport to pick him up less than a week after that. (First I had to go downstairs and tell my friends, who I was staying with at the time, that a strange boy from Washington was flying in and staying with us for a couple days. Jay+Jen, I love you!)

I get to the airport and am FREAKING OUT so I do the only thing I can think of; take a bunch of blurry cell phone photos to help me chill out.

I see that his plane landed and my heart is RACING. Racing. Luckily a really sweet man started talking to me, so I was forced to breathe and form words; something that wasn’t even feasible before that. I look over and see Scott coming through the doors and can tell that he’s totally freaking out, too, so I immediately switch into “someone I care about is having a hard time, I need to ignore what I’m feeling and help them” mode and walk over and give him a huge hug. We walked a few feet to get out of everyone’s way, Scott dropped his bags, and we gave each other the biggest hugs in the history of hugs; both of us still shaking, so nervous+excited+scared+ecstatic+holyshitourlivescouldchangeforeverinthismoment.

We had the most amazing weekend together; these were taken a couple hours after he got off the plane:

As insane as this sounds, the rest is kind of history. He flew back 2 weeks later, helped me pack my car, and we drove across the country. We’re living together in Tacoma and I have no way of explaining this connection to you or showing you how much love there is between us and how much we care about each other. Luckily I don’t have to try to explain it to him because he just gets it.

I’m overly ecstatic and fortunate that I get to spend every day with him. He’s so kind-hearted and genuine, he allows me to dream HUGE and is excited to live those dreams with me. He doesn’t just say that he supports me and believes in me, but he lives it every single day. I can’t wait for our future together. I can’t even wait for the rest of this day together.

Thanks so much, babe. Happy Birthday . I love you! <3

Also, thanks for being smokin’ hawt!

RAWR!

Thanks for some of my favorite moments ever:

And, because I think I’m hilarious; a video of Scott playing wii hula hoop:

The cherry blossoms are everywhere in Tacoma right now and they’re so beautiful+inspiring. They make gorgeous+dreamy backgrounds for family portraits. *HINT*

Also, you may have noticed that the blog got an overhaul (if you’re reading this on a feed reader jump out quickly to see it). This change wasn’t 100% intentional. I started playing with a new theme because… well… because I can’t help myself. I didn’t want to change the actual blog so I downloaded a plugin that promised me I would be able to edit the other theme on the back end and my regular blog would remain unchanged. After hours of switching billions of things I went to bed, then woke up yesterday morning, checked the blog, and learned that the I-promise-nothing-will-change plugin was a total liar. There were crazy menus all over my blog, widgits in crazy places, colors exploding everywhere, etc. So, in classic web-design fashion I launched this design WAY WAY WAY before I intended to. But! I like it so far, even though I’m sure I’ll continue changing it throughout the next few hours days weeks years forever.

Happy Wednesday!

This is going to be a GIANT post, but there were so many great moments, I couldn’t narrow it down any more.

I wasn’t going to include this next one, but it’s so perfect that I had to. Kass and Eowyn have this hilarious dog, Edgar, who makes the funniest faces. I told Eowyn to make “an Edgar face” and this is what she gave me. Then I walked over to Kass and, without seeing Eowyn’s “Edgar face”, this is what he did. HILARIOUS.

Hope you all had a beautiful weekend!

We pretty much made this entire trip up as we went. The only thing we knew for sure was that we had to be in New Jersey for the wedding, but other than that it was a free-for-all. We could’ve jetted back to Minneapolis right after that but instead decided to head up the coast (for a LONG TIME . no, really . we went to Boston).

The first stop on this leg of the journey was Playland in Rye, NY.

Enjoy the moments!

Not so much. Album Leaf set up and I saw all of these LED light strips attached to their microphone stands. I figured this could either be really good for shooting or REALLY BAD. Turns out it was the latter. Kind of. The entire set, except for the last song, was lit solely with those LED strips and a projector pointed towards the band. SUPER dark. SUPER inconsistent. SUPER tricky.

This is where I think you have one of two options. You can either freak out and tell your editor that it was almost impossible to shoot because there was no light, which was actually pretty valid, or you can expand your default and jump out of your comfort zone. I got nervous for about 4 seconds, and then I got SO EXCITED.

Life is a lesson.

Yesterday I started creating a stop motion movie from the photo booth at the opening of my 3rd studio with Laura Biebl. For those not in the know, Laura and I had a photography business in Minnesota for 3 years called BeeTour and some of my favorite moments in life happened while we were working our a**es off making that dream happen. I had another dream to move to the Pacific Northwest and I finally jumped on that when I had the opportunity, but it was SO HARD to leave Minneapolis, and to part with BeeTour.

While I was editing yesterday I posted a screenshot on Laura’s facebook wall to let her know that I was (finally!) working on this movie. She replied back and reminded me that the opening happened EXACTLY one year ago today! How’s that for timing? I’ve been staring at the computer all day because I was determined to rock this movie out and get it up for our little anniversary. While putting it together I was emailing and sending stills to Laura and her sister, Molly, all day and we were all laughing so hard at these insane moments.

Fact . there’s not a better photo booth in the entire world than a BeeTour photo booth.

For more photo booth magic, click here.