Christmas!

I have been BUSY. When I say busy I mean BUSY. Did I mention BUSY! My family started arriving on December 21st of last year (ha) and they just kept coming. It was like some historically impactful battle that ends in a hostile take over. Okay I'll be serious, I love having my family here, especially at Christmas. There is something comforting and fulfilling about a warm, cozy house filled with family and friends, twinkle lights and tons of food. Especially really good food.







Such as Lou Malnati's pizza, brought from Chicago by my Uncle Jamie and cousin Jacob who spent Christmas with us. (Aunt Carolyn had to work a lot around Christmas, so she had to stay home, which was  sad. Hopefully they can all come visit with us this spring or summer!)

Also, Kim makes really good salads. With a smile. *CHING*!

No Thiessen/Porowski/Rice get together would be complete without an intense, loud, competitive card game. 

My cousin Jacob... as serious as they come!

Christmas at our house was fun. 

Coffee Crisp, the best candy bar ever, and they don't even sell it in States... it comes from  the far off land of Canada.

Sasha

My Dad - a mature example for the family. Bahahaha :)

Typical!

My wonderful parents!

You can see our wonderful fake Christmas tree in the above photo. The beginning tree itself was a little sparse, so when Kim and I decorated my house, we filled it in with fake branches from another fake tree (I'm a tad bitter about not being able to get a real tree this year, but we wanted to spend the cash on other things. Like gifts. Pfft.) which actually made it look really cool. I was really happy with our creation in the end, as happy as I could be without having a beautiful, naturally pine scented, sap filled, needle dropping, real tree.

My Dad took some great pics, so I thought I'd share a few of his as well!

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Years!!

Merry Christmas!!!

Oh hai?

I would really like to blog more. If you know me, you know I usually have lots and lots to say. I'd love to do a lot of that jabbering on my bloggy blog. But, alas. Life is so busy right now that all I can really say is: Hi. And bye. Consider this a drive-by wave.

Hope ya'll are having a wonderful December and holiday season so far. Remember what it's really about and who really matters: Jesus. I've been very convicted about this lately. Everything and everyone else will fade away one day, and He will be all that is left. He deserves to be glorified above all else. I challenge you to ask yourself who and what is most important to you right now, especially during this season. What will be most important to you in the end? I've been challenged in this and many aspects of my life lately... it's been good, and exhausting, geesh.

More caffeine plzkthx.

Loves and hugs! Hopefully more to come soon.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope your turkey day is FANTASTIC, bloggy friends! My seester and her fiance will arrive in the morning, and I am SERIOUSLY excited about hanging out with them over this Thanksgiving weekend. My intent was to post an intricate list of things that I am thankful for, but I am already burning the midnight oil and I'm not done cleaning yet. I shake my fist at procrastination, a deceivingly attractive friend that is always, without fail, revealed to be a sneaky little wolf in sheep's clothing. But I digress. 


I will just say that I am very blessed to live the life I live, and I am thankful for where I live, with whom I live, and that I exist for the greater purpose of glorifying Jesus Christ. My Savior died for me and made it possible for me to have eternal life in heaven with Him, something I will always be more thankful for than anything else. There is a lot more to say about that but I will keep going for now. My husband and my daughter are gifts that I don't deserve, and despite life tending to get messy, I will always treasure them. I can't help but think of all the people in the world who are in need, so much more than I am. I'm thankful for those who inspire me, encourage me, believe in me, and pray for me, for those who are dear to me and bless me every day just by being who they are. I'm thankful for those who have blazed the trails and done the hard work to make this country and our lives the way they are now. I could go on forever. Really. So I will end this in a grateful, humble, reflective mood. 


If only I didn't have to go and reflect on scrubbing the toilets. -.- Happy Thanksgiving everyone - be thankful!

PS ~ Does anyone else think that turkey looks a little worried? Or even.. sad? Gah. 

Coffee or Roast Goat?

I simply had to share this quote I found. And put it in a cool looking frame for added drama. I simply refuse to be boring right now. HOWEVER, that is not the point of this particular blog. I'll keep this one short and sweet. 

Mr. Bach and I would have gotten along swimmingly, what with our mutual love for coffee and fugues. It really is time for me to get my Bach books out... I have been practicing classical music again lately and my fingers are itching to play the addictive, recurrent voices of Bach's fugues. I never thought I would say such things. But the day has come that I am ready to practice regularly again. No more 3 hour practice days for me, but my neighborhood will soon be blessed with hearing the sweet, haunting, relatively-out-of-tune, squeaky, wild-west-cantina-piano-sounding tones a lot more often. And in order to not feel (or look, please God) like a dried up piece of roast goat, I will be sure to down an ample share of my morning coffee beforehand. 

Thursday's Thrill

Oooooh do I have something to post about! This is probably not going to be as exciting for you as it is for me, but hey. This is my blog, so you get to read all about it. :p 

My love of photography goes hand in hand with my love for photo editing. If I could, I would spend endless hours sitting here, testing out different colors, brightness and contrast, blur and bloom (adding a glow effect). The fact that I currently take pictures with a point-and-shoot (one with the ability to tweak manual settings, however limited) has created the possibly bad habit of thinking ahead, processing how I might be able to edit the photo to make it look different, what sort of filters I can use with it to give it a high contrast or wistful look, etc. Similarly, I find myself lazily thinking, "I can just edit this photo later instead of trying to find the perfect camera settings at this very second." While this kind of thinking is sometimes okay, it doesn't help in furthering my skills in learning the art of fine tuning my settings or discovering what settings bring out my "signature look", so to speak. In my mind I have a "signature look", a color scheme and way I want my pictures to look. As time goes on, I really hope to be able to capture that look more from the raw picture itself than from editing. But I know that editing will always be part of the process. 

Less talking, more pic posting, right?! So, a friend from church recently told me about a photo editing program called PhotoScape. It's completely free, so I definitely recommend checking it out. I am IN LOVE with it. Like a kid at Christmas. Like a fat kid loves cake. A gigantic, delectable, melt-in-your-mouth piece of chocolate cake smothered in the best free filters and color settings I have seen yet. Last week, my wonderful photographer friend Katie did a shoot for us at Inniswoods and got some AWESOME photos. Because she knows me so well and knew what joy I would find in editing them, she gave me the raw jpgs straight out of the camera! THANK YOU KATIE! I don't want to share all of the photos quite yet because they are mostly for Christmas stuff (you will see them all eventually!), but I do want to share one of my faves of Audrey. A before and after editing. I LOVE this stuff! HEART FLUTTERS! Click for big versions! 

The original

My favorite edited version so far - I've done a few. My beautiful girl!

That's all for now. Peace! 

Hrm.

I have this urge to blog something, but I'm not sure what to write exactly. I used to have zero desire to blog, but now that I love my new bloggity bloggy blog and I have made it more my own, I would like to fill it up with all sorts of awesomely, interestingly, introspectively amazing (and possibly boring and mundane) things. I have a relatively busy life so you'd think I would have a plethora of things to write about. In reality, I do, I just don't know where to start. The possibilities are (in a delightfully cliche manner) truly endless. In writing about my life, opinions, et al, I want this blog to be a glimpse into who I really am, not only as a wife, a mom, a sister, a friend, a believer in Jesus Christ, but also as a human being, chock-full of quirks, flaws, and a sometimes explosive personality (if I do say so myself!).

So. Stand by (for a day or two) while I cook up something to write about. And have some sort of caffeine, because I can tell you need it. I know I do! I highly recommend coffee, because:

Word.