Happy Birthday To Brad

This Sunday was my wonderful boyfriend's birthday.

He was treated with a beautiful cake, decorate by me, minus the pretty sticky muppets thing.

I also decorated the house, and made spaghetti for all of our friends. 

For his birthday, I got him a custom build your own muppet,

2 seasons of Seinfeld to complete our collection, and some socks.

Brad loves getting socks. 

I must say, I love this boy very very much. 

We've been dating for over a year now, and he never ceases to amaze me.

If I'm having a bad day, and I snap at him.. he never snaps back. 

He is so caring and committed. 

And, oh my gosh so funny. 

I get to laugh a lot every day. 

He is so perfect to me.

I could literally go on all day..

But, I won't..

Just know, I'm madly in love, and very lucky to have him.

His birthday was a great day to spoil him, though I try to every day..

Except today..

He attempted to take his hoodie off, after a minute of struggle, he collapsed on the ground.

Me, being an excellent girlfriend, tickled him for about 3 minutes.

Wilderness Medicine

The other day, we went on an adventure.

It was the year anniversary of Mowgli's death..
I didn't want to be in the house.

So, Brad and I packed up a few things.
Including Mister Wicket, and went for a drive.

We had no plans on where we would go.

We drove for about an hour, then pulled off into a random town, and drove some more.

We turned down a dusty dirt road and drove even more.

We finally felt like stopping, and got out of the car.

Wicket learned that the world is a lot bigger than our little neighborhood.
Brad learned about the rule of thirds in photography.
I learned how healing wilderness can be.

We couldn't see another person at all.
The cars were miles away.
We were free and alone with nature.

I've got tons more photos from our adventure for tomorrow.
So, do check back.

Fillers

This is a filler post.. 

Mostly shots from last week.. 

because I'm constantly taking pictures,

and not all of the pictures are worthy for their own post.

So this is a filler post.. full of random moments from my week.

I started it off by taking the dogs on their walks. 

That's one of my new years resolutions..

It's hard to keep that one when it's so cold.

It took Wicket a little while before he decided he wanted to walk.

But he was pretty good after crossing the street.

I received a beautiful package from my dear friend Erica.

Check out her stuff here.

Though, her shop is on vacation... you can still see the stuff on facebook.

Getting this adorable package cheered me up quite a bit.

And so did this.

Wicket hopped into my purse that was sitting on the couch. 

The purse was full of all sorts of things, sketchbooks, planners, pens, 

and now a puppy.

And yesterday I got back into watercolors, pastels, and colored pencils.

It's been over a year since I did art like this.

And now I will explain why some of these "cheered me". 

I've been having terrible anxiety for the last few weeks. 

Anxiety turns into depression, and depression turns into anxiety. 

It's been a mean little cycle all my life, and I'm normally good at fighting it off.

This time it's been very hard.

And A Happy New Year!

So, I've never thrown a New Years Party before, or any kind of party for that matter.. But I decided to throw the kind of party that I would want to go to. I wanted lots of sparkles, and pretty things. All the girls had to dress up, and so did the boys. I was very impressed with this group of friends. Especially since I've only known them for a year, and I met them through Brad. They all complied to my formal rule.

I had plans to take pictures of everyone like this, but I got sidetracked.. For that I apologize, but I bet you guys could do with a few less kissing pictures.
We decorated the house with blue, black, silver and white. Twinkly lights, streamers and balloons.
We had a party hat making table, and streamers hanging from the ceiling. 
We served black eyed pea bean dip and jalapeno poppers. I put out a bowl of olives, pretzels, and a big platter of cupcakes. I also used colored sixlets (My favorite candy!) as edible decorations. 

And then I stopped photographing the surroundings, and started photographing the party. I figured out that if you have your camera at just the right setting, turn the flash on, and move it just a little as the shutter closes, you can get some really awesome "party" photos. And now I will warn you.. there is a swear word contained in these photos. Don't be mad, they had a little fun with the stickers.

The part where I don't think herealizes what his face says..

The part where he finds out what his face says after some letters fell off.

 And at midnight we kissed our sparkly, well dressed significant others.
Then went outside and lit fireworks, danced around with pots and pans and made a lot of noise.
And this is only half of the photos... See the rest on facebook!