Feb 14
Happy Heart Day! We celebrated Valentine’s Day a little early, this past weekend, with Alex and Victory! They are quite the pair! I am so grateful for our beautiful girls!
I hope you have a great day celebrating with the ones you love.
You can view last year’s Valentine’s celebration here.
“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.” —Maya Angelou
Last year, I decided to make family yearbooks in order find a way to keep all of my favorite edited photos organized chronologically, by year, since becoming a family of four. (Printing all of the photos became too cumbersome.) However, I still print photos that I want to frame for our home. Even though it was quite a bit of work, I am so pleased that I made these family yearbooks for our family to enjoy and for Alex to have someday! I refer to these books as a “collection of life.” I used Blurb to make my family yearbooks; and I used archival matte paper with an image wrap. I made family yearbooks for the following years: 2018 – 2021, 240 pages each. In the coming months, I plan to make our family yearbook for 2022, as I am a bit behind on finishing editing family photos from 2022. I highly recommend making these books yearly, and Blurb does a really nice job, and there is a lot of flexibility to create your own templates to create and design a book that will enjoy for years to come. Most of all, it is really nice to revisit and edit the year to capture family memories all in one place, in one book! (Additionally, you can view the book I made of Alex’s preschool art, a way to preserve her artwork, here.)
Feb 3
Today is the eleven-year Blogiversary of the blog! I can’t hardly believe it! It is extremely difficult to believe that eleven years, over a full decade, has already passed by so quickly! The time moves so quickly, these days, and I often wonder where the time goes. Many things have changed, but some things remain the same, fortunately. I am grateful for this little space here.
If it were not for our beloved Biscuit, I am not sure I would have ever started blogging and I know that I would not have started my long-term photography project, for which Biscuit and Victory are my inspiration. Biscuit was such a blessing and gift to us. Biscuit permanently changed our lives in so many positive ways and he sent us our precious little rescue sheltie, Victory, who we adore and love, shown below! And, coincidentally, Victory is the same age (we suspect as she is a rescue dog) as the blog!
Thank you for reading this blog for however long or short you have been visiting! I truly enjoy creating content for the blog to share with all of you, and I hope that you continue to enjoy visiting and reading the blog!
Thank you so very much!
Have you heard about the Alaskan ‘Puppy Bus’ that went viral on Tik Tok, recently? If you have not, it is absolutely adorable. It mirrors having one’s human child get onto a school bus! The dogs literally walk onto the bus and get in their seats by themselves and then they get buckled in! You can view the heartwarming video here!
Mo Thompson and her husband, Lee, run the bus and they take the dogs on off leash on walking and training trips via their business, Mo Mountain Mutts! After picking up the pups from around their small town of Skagway, Alaska, their minibus makes it way to trail walks, hikes, and swims.
You can read more here.
Photo Credit: Mo Thompson
I love this passage about creativity and paradoxes from Elizabeth Gilbert’s book entitled, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. Hopefully, it will help you create!
“Creativity is sacred, and it is not sacred.
What we make matters enormously, and it doesn’t matter at all.
We toil alone, and we are accompanied by spirits.
We are terrified, and we are brave.
Art is a crushing chore and a wonderful privilege.
Only when we are at our most playful can divinity finally get serious with us.
Make space for all these paradoxes to be equally true inside your soul, and I promise—you can make anything.
So please calm down now and get back to work, okay?
The treasures that are hidden inside you are hoping you will say yes.”
Here is Alex’s first portrait of her and Victory together, a real gem! We always encourage her to follow her creativity, where ever it may lead! She is so open and free while making her creations, and I wish we all could be more like this!
I hope you had a nice Holiday! We visited with family, we had some down time with our girls, and we got some sleep and rest, which was so nice. And, I cannot believe our little girl is turning four-and-a-half-years-old this week! She is growing in every way and she loves learning, she is incredibly creative, and she is curious about everything, which I hope never goes away!
It is a new year, which means there has been much talk about fresh beginnings. For me, I keep things simple and I select a word, an intention, for the year, and I try to really embrace the word for the year, which feels like a theme or mantra for the year.
I have reflected on my word for this year: joy. Last year, I chose the word: present; in 2021 the word grace; in 2020 the word bliss; in 2019 the word embrace; in 2018 the word peace; in 2017 I chose relax; in 2016 I chose present; in 2015 I chose flow; in 2014 I chose trust; and in 2013 I chose the word create. The idea of picking an intention has worked well over the past few years.
I have nothing against resolutions (or goals, or plans, or to-do lists), but for me, I have found the most impactful way to embrace a new year is to pick a word — just one word, intention — to keep in mind.
As 2022 came to an end, I know that things were really hectic and busy in 2022, on many fronts. I want to fully embrace joy this year! We have so much to be thankful for, always, and we are looking forward to a new year together. “The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.” —Thich Nhat Hanh
For me, it is an easy reminder to take whatever small steps I can to create clarity and feel better. For anyone similarly overwhelmed by resolutions, I recommend the practice of a New Year’s Word. Plus, since it is so simple, and you can change it at any time.
Happy New Year!
“I think dogs are the most amazing creatures; they give unconditional love. For me, they are the role model for being alive.” — Gilda Radner
Happy Pawlidays! I wanted to thank you so very much for checking in over the past year — I am very grateful.
Below is the front of our Pawliday card (the back of our card containing text is not pictured), along with our matching envelopes using little photo seals of our beautiful girls, Alex and Victory! And, unfortunately, custom stamps are still no longer permitted by the Post Office. (You can view our previous Pawliday cards: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). Sending our Pawliday card is one of my favorite parts of the Holiday season! This is my way of sharing our Pawliday card with you. It has been an exciting year and we have so much to be grateful for. Thank you for reading this blog for however long or short you have been reading. I sincerely enjoy creating content for the blog to share with you.
I will be taking a break from the blog to enjoy some down time with family, and I plan to be back to the blog sometime early next year, during which I will have some exciting news to share! Meanwhile, if you are in a blog-reading mood, you are warmly invited to visit the archives — the links are shown below. Warmest wishes to you for a safe and Happy Holidays!
Dec 16
After a two-year hiatus, due to COVID-19, we recently took Alex and Victory to visit Santa, an annual tradition! All went well with both of our girls during their Santa visit! Alex was a little apprehensive to visit Santa because she viewed the photos from her last visit with Santa, in 2019, when she was in tears on Santa’s lap, but she did wonderful this year! I even found a dress in her favorite color, orange, which she loved wearing to visit Santa!
Victory, our beautiful fur girl, did very well, like always! And, of course, Santa and his helpers remembered our beloved girls, as this is Victory’s seventh time visiting Santa and Alex’s third time visiting Santa! You can see Victory’s previous trips to visit Santa: here, here, here, here, here, and here. This is the only Santa in our area that welcomes both of our girls! Victory wore her light pink monogramed cardigan sweater and her holiday burgundy velvet ruff; and Alex wore an orange jacquard dress. All proceeds from visiting Santa are donated to a local dog rescue, a very good cause near and dear to our hearts, as Biscuit and Victory are rescues. If you are interested, be sure to check with and visit your local pet stores to see if there is a Santa in your area that specializes in furry family members!
A few images from Victory’s and Alex’s third visit together with Santa are shown below, along with images of Victory with Santa from the previous six years! The time really does fly by too quickly! We are so grateful for our fur girl, Victory!
Below is Alex’s letter to Santa that she recently made!
Below is a video from Alex’s recent Christmas program at school.
Below are images from Victory’s seven visits to see Santa: 2014 – 2022 (excluding 2020 and 2021).
The girls’ visits to see Santa in 2018, 2019, and 2022.
Pictured below is Alex in front of our Christmas tree and my parents’ Christmas tree during 2020 and 2021, since we were unable to visit Santa during those two years due to COVID-19.
Happy Holidays!
“There are no forms in nature. Nature is a vast, chaotic collection of shapes. You, as an artist, create configurations out of chaos. You make a formal statement where there was none, to begin with. All art is a combination of an external event and an internal event.” —Ansel Adams
I am excited and pleased to share with you that my mentor and friend, Deborah Samuel, has a new book out this fall, her fourth book, entitled, Elementals, which encapsulates a ten year journey and exploration, using iPhone technology to capture her imagery, in an endeavor to find home.
A decade of travel from Africa to the United States and Canada to mysterious Ireland gave rise to Elementals, an intimate look at our world’s fundamental gravity. It is also a reflection on the wonders of life’s fragility, transience, and persistence of beauty.
“Over time, Elementals became a free-form poem to the enduring beauty of the elements everywhere – earth, air, fire, and water and the transforming power of light. It is an ode to the solitude of wide-open spaces, the fluidity of shifting winds, and the monsoons’ breathtaking phenomena — environmental, atmospheric, and climatic. These elements are not just material substances. They are fundamental spiritual essences, bringing meaning and illumination to life.” —Deborah Samuel
After ten years, Samuel did indeed find home — everywhere. Elementals’ photographs are Samuel’s tangible memory of something too precious to ignore and too perfect to forget.
“Only Nature can inspire this kind of awe and reverence when we allow our eyes to open. Samuel has a distinct sense of capturing this radical truth in all her evocative photographs. In every image, she presents a facet of the profound beauty that inspired our ancestors and reminded them of the great living divinity – the wonder of oneness in every aspect of life. She reminds us of the true power of what our hearts beat for – to discover purpose and meaning, witness spirit everywhere, and know the continuity of the cosmos. Through her lens, we’re invited to see that beauty is all around us, and in an increasingly uncertain world, to know hope is alive and calling us home.” —Colette Baron Reid
“The prints of the images in Elementals are magical. Viewing them is a visceral experience beyond an appreciation of a photographic image or its subject. Somewhere in the genes of these images is Ansel Adams. He lurks there as the classical and majestic now combined with colors so lush, a sensuality that verges on the extravagant but pulled just back, so one has the thrill of being on the edge of excess. However, there is something else, and its existence begins to explain why we’re staring at the image long after our own sunset snapshot has ceased to intrigue. Samuel’s photographs instruct — that we all share a mystical connection to nature, pantheistic perhaps, and this longing apparent because we’re always photographing, painting, or otherwise enthralled by it. Samuel’s photographs of nature are of us.” —Kelvin Brown
Shared below are a few of the beautiful images contained in Samuel’s new book, Elementals. I have my copy of this beautiful book, which I love. To order Elementals, visit here. To view more of Samuel’s work, visit her website here.
I came across Isabel Reitemeyer’s animal collages, and I love them! A few of her collages are displayed below. Isabel lives and works in Berlin as an artist and graphic designer. You can see more of her wonderful work on her website and Instagram, as well!
All of the above images are courtesy of Isabel Reitemeyer.
biscuit's space | The blog of photographer Katherine Carver 