2015 Month by Month

- Stephanie Leave a comment

The majority of 2015 was a pretty great year. I had lots of personal breakthroughs with my business, my fitness and even blogging. Nate and I made some awesome memories together and overall had a really good year. Three pivotal moments I would say were these: leaving our church of 4 years, my Grandma passing away and seeing my little sister embark for the Peace Corps. All three things were hard, but God taught me a lot through each. (I linked up to past blog posts if you want to read more about the events of 2015!)

JANUARY
January was pretty low-key until we got snowed in from traveling out to Syracuse for our annual basketball game. Then it just never stopped snowing. Ever. I participated in Fun-a-Day for the second year! Towards the end of the month I joined a local co-working group and met some great people.

FEBRUARY
It snowmageddoned all. month. long. Luckily I discovered Being Boss and School of Greatness podcasts around the same time, so I binged on those while I hid from the snow. I attended Inspire Photo Retreat, which was a huge learning experience and I met some awesome friends!

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MARCH
It kept snowing. The Fun-a-Day show was hung in Aviary Gallery and so many of my friends showed up to the opening! My little swim team gave it their all at their two-day Championship meet. My friend Kay and I saw Pentatonix in concert!

APRIL
The snow slowly melted. I hosted a day-long headshot marathon to help raise money for the School Sessions. I started taking weekly watercolor classes that I loved! I got into a minor car accident (my first ever) on the same day I was diagnosed with bronchitis. Good times.

MAY
My friend Sarah and I saw Steve Moakler in concert! Nate and I trekked up to Acadia National Park for 5 days to explore which was my favorite memory from 2015! This was the trip when we decided we were going to be more outdoorsy people for the rest of our lives. We also made the tough-but-necessary decision to leave our church of 4 years and find a new one.

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JUNE
I turned 26 and made a commitment to Crossfit regularly (and haven’t stopped yet). We bought kayaks as part of our ‘be more outdoorsy’ pact, which led to many an adventure all throughout summertime. And! I got a new tattoo!

JULY
Nate had a lot of free time and I had zero upon zero weddings, so we used July as our ultimate vacation month. We visited Camp Spofford for a few days, we camped on the Cape with our college friends and we put those new kayaks to work every weekend! I also started blogging for FUN right HERE! (p.s. Nate turned 26!)

Letters from Rita kayaking

AUGUST
Nate + I celebrated 3 years of marriage on the 12th and had gorgeous photos taken of us! I pulled out my back in Crossfit (I got better.) I biked and ran a lot in preparation for my Tri. I also took a solo weekend trip to NYC for a photo shoot and to see friends!

SEPTEMBER
September was PACKED. We visited the family lake house in NH for a weekend. We saw my sister off on her 2 year Peace Corps journey in Cameroon (cried a lot) (it’s fine) (she’s making waves) (so proud of her). I joined and ran with a local running group a few times. My besties and I celebrated 10 years of friendship! I hung two of my art pieces in the local library! I competed in (and completed!) my first Triathlon and loved it. The last conversation I had with my Grandma was the night before my Tri and she wished me good luck. Her condition worsened over the next two weeks until she met her Maker on the last day of the month.

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OCTOBER
I mostly just remember October as the month I drove a lot: up to NH for a wedding, lots of driving around MA for photo shoots and down to CT to celebrate Gram’s life. We had a lot of family time in October. It was nice, but not for a nice reason. I miss her. Also — I don’t know how to transition to this, but it must be noted — Nate and I saw Ben Rector in concert!

NOVEMBER
Nate and I took a last-minute weekend trip to DC to explore! We attended our first Friendsgiving at Amy‘s! I ran a turkey trot and then we went to Nate’s parent’s house for Thanksgiving. A few days later we went up to NH to have Thanksgiving with my family.

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DECEMBER
Christmas happened, and everything surrounding Christmas happened, and now it’s over. No, but seriously, we had a great Christmas afternoon with my family and even got to Facetime with Megan in Cameroon! (oh yes, and I saw Johnnyswim in concert!)

I feel like I’m forgetting stuff.

Theme of this year: Go for it. Do stuff. Don’t be scared. I completed a triathlon, took a watercolor class, went to a huge conference by myself, met locals who also love to run and networked with a ton of local business owners. Nate and I explored so many rivers and lakes, and were spontaneous and curious. We listened to God when he spoke a big thing into our lives and try our best to keep doing so.

I feel like this was the year of becoming an adult. Like. Just do stuff that you want to do and the stuff you know is RIGHT and don’t let anyone (or fear, mostly) stop you. Basically. #wisdom

In 2016 I’m gonna keep doin’ what I’m doin’. Plus eat more veggies.

-S

Weekly Obsessions

- Stephanie Leave a comment

GUYS ONLY TEN DAYS ‘TIL CHRISTMAS. That’s what I’m most obsessed with. But here are some other things, too.

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Nikon 50mm 1.4 lens
The guys at Newtonville Camera hooked me UP with (aka: helped me spend a lot of money on) a 1.4 50mm lens, which is a big, exciting upgrade from the 1.8 (by far my most-used lens when I shoot weddings). I have been wanting this lens for a LONG time, but only recently decided to go for it and I’m so excited to use it!! (I took that above photo of my adorable Christmas penguin with it!)

JOHNNYSWIM
I saw Johnnyswim (husband and wife duo, Abner + Amanda) live on Saturday! It was their Christmas tour, so they sang a lot of classics in their singer-songwriter style. O Come O Come Emmanuel basically turned the Royale into a church service and it was amazing. They also played a lot of their original music, which I was really glad for because their music is amazing! It was such a fun show! I really love seeing my favorites artists live… mostly because I can physically SEE and FEEL just how much they love doing what they do. It’s different than just listening to a recording. Johnnyswim was no exception!

PRETTY GIFT TAGS
Tis the season for cute wrapping paper and fun ways to let people know whose present belongs to who! I made you some free gift tags that you can cut out and string yourself. My friend Mal makes SUPER pretty ones that are on sale right now! And these ones are pretty dang hilarious!

My list is pretty short this week, but I’m planning one more post for December and then I’ll be taking it easy (with blogging, at least) until the New Year!

Exploring DC

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Nate and I decided in early October that we wanted to do a November weekend trip somewhere! We first considered the Adirondack’s, but decided it would be way too cold all the way up there 🙂 So we picked DC! We had visited DC together once before during the summer of 2013, which was my first time there. I love it the first time, so I was super excited to have more time to explore!

I scoured Airbnb for a nice place that wasn’t too far from the attractions (aka: museums). We ended up renting a small row apartment in Capitol Hill and LOVED it. The apartment itself was really nice, and the neighborhood was even better. Super cute and walkable to a lot of restaurants!

Our flight got us into DC around noon and we spent the next few hours walking to and exploring the monuments. Since we were only in town for 3.5 days, we had both brought small duffles, so walking around with them wasn’t bad. It was a super windy day and we took a lot of selfies. Also, my life-long (I’m exaggerating) dream of touching Lincoln’s boot at the Lincoln Memorial was squashed when I realized it’s not even remotely possible to do that. I don’t know where I got that notion. Nate made fun of me the entire trip for it 😉

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We spent time catching up with our long-time friends, Kait and Logan. Together we explored the Museum of Natural History for an afternoon – my favorite exhibit is the jewels and rocks. So sparkly. 🙂 Being locals, K+L suggested a delicious lunch spot called Ted’s Bulletin where we all ate a great meal (and tried to finish pieces of chocolate cake the size of our heads!).

Wait ANOTHER favorite part (ok, I just really liked this trip!) was the National Postal Museum! I love stamps. Like a lot. I just didn’t know HOW much until I was in a huge room full of thousands of old, historic, gorgeous stamps! I loved seeing the design through the ages and learning about all the history behind them. I maybe was so overwhelmed with happiness that I had to hold back tears. Stop making fun of me.

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Ok, but the Library of Congress blew my mind! It was the mosaic floors that really got me. Full walls and ceilings and floors of mosaic had me wandering off from our tour to admire! (Nate listened to the tour guide and told me all the important stuff later) But seriously, this building was gorgeous and I was mesmerized by all the inspiring art in the form of crushed up stone and glass. I was in mosaic heaven – mostly because it reminded me of Barcelona, one of my favorite places.

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We also hit up the National Gallery, Freer Gallery of Art, the Eastern Market and went to the top of the Washington Monument. Needless to say, we like DC a lot.

Stephanie

P.S. I don’t recommend breaking in new Converse on a trip when you walk between 15 and 20 thousand steps a day. :/

Hiking Middlesex Fells | Melrose MA

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Nate and I, along with our friends Kay and Josh, explored Middlesex Fells in Melrose, MA last weekend! It was a pretty chilly day, probably 35 at the warmest, so we all layered up before we headed into the woods. We were out walking – with a few bouts of hiking mixed in – for almost an hour and a half. It was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

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We started at the Woodland Road entrance, which has a small parking lot and a stack of maps. The trail was wide and flat for a while, and then we found ourselves with a few options! Our (ok, MY) first big decision was to take the trail less traveled, which led us down a skinnier path close to the water. We found a huge rock that was – obviously – meant for climbing on, and the views from the top were awesome. It was a good detour. From then on, Josh was on map patrol and only got us semi-lost once ha! Don’t worry, we recovered.

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I really enjoyed Middlesex Fells! There were many trail options, some that were many miles long, and I could tell it was a popular place to be on a sunny weekend! Hopefully we’ll go back next summer to explore even more.

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Weekly Obsessions

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Long time no blog + HAPPY DECEMBER! 😉 I felt like I blogged a lot in November, but I just looked back and decided that it wasn’t actually that much! That being said, my favorite (and your favorite!) posts from November were Holiday Markets in Boston and Planning Your Workouts! Go back and read those if you haven’t yet! For December, I plan on FINALLY blogging about our DC trip two weeks ago and possibly doing a gift guide or two.

And now it’s time for my weekly obsessions! (thanks Superfruit)

View More: http://amyemilyphotography.pass.us/friendsgiving-photobooth

First of all, I’m obsessed with this photo booth picture of Nate and I from Friendsgiving! 🙂 I posted the actual selfie on my insta, so check that out when you get the chance.

EPs! 
I love EPs! EPs are basically pre-albums so that artists can give their fans SOMETHING even thought they might not be done with a full album yet. My favorite EPs from the last week or so have been Maren Morris‘s self-titled EP (country) and Jordy Searcy’s Seasons (singer/songwriter)! They are different genres, but both have great beats, meaningful lyrics and just overall a ton of talent!

SYRACUSE BBALL
Just because I’m not on campus anymore doesn’t mean I’m not watching basically every game from my couch – complete with cheering. Cuse won a 4 game tournament last week, including beating UConn on Thanksgiving, so *high five emoji* to us. I’m patiently-ish waiting until January 30th and February 14th for games in REAL LIFE.

CHAMPION RUNNING LEGGINGS
I also plan on doing a full blog post about my favorite winter running gear probably in January, but until then, I’ll just gush about Champion’s PerforMax running leggings. They are comfy and pretty warm (but the coldest I’ve run with them so far has only been 34 degrees, so we’ll see.) I mostly love them because they don’t fall down like a lot of leggings do!

ETSY
You can probably guess that I love handmade, homemade things, so you can probably also guess that I’ve been having a LOT of fun shopping for Christmas gifts this year! (some for myself, oops.) Some fave shops: NS Pottery, Ross Lab, The Silmarillion, Jill Makes, Salem Style!