what a year

2011

what a year

so many great things happened..

the greatest thing to ever happen to me this year happened in september. near the end of the year but still worthy of the number one spot. i got engaged! clever enough on 9/10/11.

what a smart man i have. 

choosing a date we both can remember forever.

coming in on the number two spot is my fresh new business venture.

being inspired by those artsy kids i hang out with and genius photog blogs out there, i decided to start Heather Lynn Photography. it's still very small. but i see a great future! it puts my creativity to good use and i get to meet awesome people!! always trying to learn the many tricks of photoshop has been a fun and exciting challenge. what more can i ask for in life? :)

topping the list is ms.barley. our lovely little puppy we rescued just before thanksgiving. shes named after my fiance passion in life: BEER! if we ever choose to get another dog, his/her name will be hops. i love it. she's brought so much joy to our lives already. still just a baby, but she's growing fast! she also keeps us on schedule. waking up early to greet the day with licks and a wagging tail, only makes you want to get out of bed that much faster and embrace the day! instead of sleeping in like usual :)

what do i look forward to in the new year?

i hope to see alot of change within myself.

i'll be graduating may! that's is so crazy for me to think of right now, but it is coming up soon.

i'll be working on expanding the blog and photography to new and better things.

i'll still be planning a 2013 wedding :) i'm on pinterest all the time pinnnig great ideas. If you want a sneak peek of the overall feel to my upcoming nuptials, feel free to click the pinterest link on the right side of the blog. there's some great stuff on there.

i will be seeing see alot of change in this coming year. but it will all be for good. i'm hoping anyway. a bunch of renewal and discovery is coming my way. i can feel it..:)

see you in 2012

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My week in instagram

So this week has been kinda crazy...not in an insane kind of way, just a "so-busy-all-you-wanna-do-is-sleep" crazy. From holiday travel, meeting extended family members of the fiance to breaking in a brand new macbook. These are a few photos from this week that have been edited with instagram on my iphone.

            The first: a photo of mathieu with our puppy barley. his parents have this spotlight shining on         their house, so that is the light you see. he was taking her out to potty and I just happened to walk past the open door and spot this photo in the making. It turned out really cool looking! This is a part of the crazy week i've been having. Staying at his parents house and trying to take care of little barley!

            The second: the queen herself. Barley. sleeping as she always does. all turned and oddly angled. she's a weirdo but you gotta love her! she had to stay in a kennel for three days while we traveled for Christmas. :( I missed her sooooooooooo much, that was a huge part of my crazy week, not being able to spend time with her was so hard. 

             The third: the canadian stamp!! during the whole drive up to montreal (nearly ten hour drive) i was told that the canadian stamp was not a possibility. that they had stopped that great part of travel all together! I guess it was my lucky day because we all got stamps!!! just one for entering, not one for returning. I guess in 50 years when i look at all the travel stamps I've collected, i wont know for sure when i actually left canada.

          The fourth: just a marking of our packed family van travels. :) it was fun to measure distance and time using the iphone for the time that i could. once you get around 10 minutes around the border, you have to turn your phone off. otherwise you'll pick up ROGER. I really expensive data wifi. So turn em off! 

            The fifth: driving through northern new york, you'll find yourself driving through a huge national park! nothing but trees and mountains for 200 miles. only the highway cuts through this massive reserve. So beautiful.

            The last: i;m so excited for this one! this is my new "used" macbook. i've probably lusted after the macbook for oh...about five years. never mustering up the courage to spend the money. Then one day, a great man named mathieu thought after christmas would be the best buy to hit up craigslist. AWESOME IDEA! This macbook: newly cleaned, re-booted, fresh as a daisy. Guess how much it cost?    $110.  wooo hoooooo!!!! cannot ask for anything better. Just us ole bargain hunters here haha. If you dig hard enough, you're sure to come across a great find.

well, thats my week through instagram. Havent been blogging in a few weeks so sorry if its a bit lengthy. 

Craft Time

 So I was feeling a bit crafty over the weekend and I decided to share it with whomever is reading out there. It's a simple and fun way to create a cute pencil cup or to hold pretty much anything!

So I started by just cleaning and de-labeling an empty soup can, grabbed scissors and some rough yarn. You can use any color yarn or string that you find suitable for your object!

 Then I began to wrap the string around the base of the can. You can use hot glue to hold the end in place, but this was very spontaneous for me so I just decided to wrap it under. Leave a little bit out because we will use it to tye the bow at the end

                                           (not necassary if you use hot glue.)

 Remember to pull tight as you go around and around. But don't pull to hard or else the string will move out of place.

                  And Viola! For me, I put my wine bottle corks in the crafted soup can.
           ( I'm saving them all for another craft I plan to do for my wedding reception)
              You can place any small item that you have a large amount of in this
                                             re-furbished soup can!!

It took me about 20 minutes to finish and tye the bow. Oh! I also trimmed all the extra fly aways fromt this particular twine, just to make it look neat.



Barley is getting sooo big!

She wheighed 15.3 pounds today! She is a boss at "sit" and she's getting there with "down".

But today, we had an emergency visit to the vet! Nothing to be alarmed about mind you, but she was soooo excited when we came home this afternoon that she bumbed the corner of the door frame and....

(not for the squeamish)

...she knocked her front paw nail up and she was bleeding like crazy!

Being thoughtless barley fortunateley, she just started playing around again and with ouir failed attempts at relieving her pain, we took her to the vet to get them all trimmed for safety.

barley, barley, barley

how can something so cute and loveable cause so much stress??

( here she is sleeping the night we came home after thanksgiving. Laying on all the laundry and clean bedding we still had yet to put away.)

Good Grief

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round two

The Fam

definitely a crazy group..gotta love em though :)

Mathieu got to experience his first "American" thanksgiving:

with the turkey, cranberries, melt in your mouth mashed potatoes

the way only grandma makes. I think he enjoyed himself.

It got me thinking about how different and how simliar our famalies are

will my parents get along with his parents

will his sister get along with my sister?

probably not in any way i expect. They have to i guess.

I wonder if the wedding will be the first time they meet or will we put them together somehow so that both our fathers can be socially awkward and our mothers can be chatty cathy's.

And will our grandparents ever meet? Both sets being of an ethnicity other than American, i think it will be very interesting.

Questions that will go unanswered for quite sometime i'm sure, still, they can't be the worst questions to think about right now i suppose.

My sisters pal came over for dinner as well with her two year old child and the inevitable glance to me..

"you'll probably have kids soon"

"I havent really thought about it...really."

That question could go unanswered for awhile and that would be alright with me :)

Families gathering for calendar marked holidays really makes you think...

A Gascon Thanksgiving

This year, the lovely fiance and I spent the holiday break at his folks house. I had a small hint that it wasn't going to be the typical thanksgiving that I was used to because his family is from Montreal: no turkey, no cranberry, no green bean casserole the way grandma makes... I really sacrificed here!

But it was amazing!

They have a Raclette: a hot stone that cooks while you eat. A slow process but it leaves for great conversation and fun fighting over your "property" on the stone.

We had filet mignon, chicken and shrimp. Mathieu made me try the shrimp ( I'm not one for seafood) and I still don't like it very much. But I tried it for him. Also with baked potato and salad. It was a great meal!

I also got an unexpected chance to practice my french. Let's just say that my brain hurt a little bit afterward.

Overall this holiday was spent with great people ( including the love of my life), rolling on the floor funny moments and amazing food! What more can you ask for?

:)

Puppy Monday

MEET BARLEY!!!

The greatest puppy in the world. Named of course after one of the key beer ingredients (one of Mathieu's loves in life that might surpass even me)We rescued her about a week ago and she has already brought so much joy to our lives! Mathieu handles the training and I handle the fun playfulness that is Barley.

It is hard to have a puppy around too. Not as much school work gets done, not getting enough sleep but its all worth it! I mean look at her-she's gorgeous, a cute ginger pup.

A day in the Studio

 I gave Mathieu ( the lovely fiance ) the control of the camera for the day. He did a pretty good job and was clever and creative in his shots. The subject: Me-The place: painting studio..where i spend most of my days lately. I took the painting course because in high school, I had a certain flare for putting a brush to canvas. But that was a hobby then and now, this is work!

 Measuring, cutting, stretching canvas onto the frame which I hammered into place and once that was measured and redeemed acceptable to size, then the stapling and more stretching of canvas. Then finally, prime the canvas and let dry over night then the painting begins! Phew! Thats work!

This was not something that I was used to. I normally would paint from thought. imagination or just go straight to painting color on color until finally an image appeared. But this course taught us to paint in steps.

Outline, paint tones in monochrome, paint color in tones, apply detail, glaze, finish

When the day is done and over and im feeling seemingly accomlished with my work, I get to home (or to work) and hope to be inspired to create something new.

So much work for a semi-satisfying result

and something nice to hang on the wall

NJ

Another one down

With what was supposed to be my last semester here, i'm finally done with this semesters finals...
I grew very unmotivated while watching my friends finishing their last "undergrad" class...

one more year for me

At least i'll have accomplished what i wanted to get done

a pal of mine told me the other..he said,
gradutaing in four years is like
leaving a party at 830
gotta enjoy every moment here

so cheers to the 5-year plan i say!


anyway

this sunday i leave for another week down on the farm!
joined by our new priest and a polish exchange grad student,
this coming week should be everything i need!

Time away from M will be good
I think i will actually be able to relax this time, since i already know what to expect

I can sit in their hammocks and write or read or just think while looking out onto the vast farmland.

I'm excited to go again!

Then i come back and a summer class starts up right away, can only work on the weekends because of the length of the class. Can't even go to the lake during the day because its so time consuming!

Screenprinting should be fun though. Get to be taught by the amazing prof. Lupo. Even for the drawing 1 class i took a previous summer, he always offered advicce even to us novices! So inspiring.
He should write a book.

Heres to Summer!
Happy 5 de mayo!

new year, new...something!

Its almost as if the drudgery and resentment from last semester has forced its way into the mind of this semester. Aren't new years supposed to bring good tidings and all that?!

Wishing there was a large rubber eraser to take away the wasted hours of thought presiding in my head is too much to hope for. So that a mental moving forward could take place,
       {suppose that's what prayer is for}
To relinquish all your worries and doubts up and away from your earthly self, so that they will be taken care of..so much more than they ever could be if stuck inside by a mental roadblock. yet even then, there is worry..
      {suppose that's what faith is for}

Give it up
all of it
every sigh, frustration
worry or sense of hopelessness
of never finishing and
not being right
send it up
and away

still, it's hard to take advantage of this free service
time constraints or personal vendetta always seems to get in the way.

I wish i could eat,pray,love my way to resolution, peace
but that's only just a million to one true story turned book turned film.
still, a new idea at least
.
.
.
realizing the other day that i'm further away from an art degree than i had anticipated caught me off gaurd..i was hoping one ( maybe one and a half ) more yrs..but it might be more. I've been thinking though..this semester is dedicated to that other major of mine. Bogged down with political science, history, english (no french this time though, very happy about that), that perhaps next semester; i will lend my time to art..every class (prob 18-21 credit hours worth) of getting this completed! and then also the summer spent with two or three class..
maybe then i could finish on my once expected timline, somehow my mental timelines never seem to work out, maybe they are also stuck in a mental roadblock....

anyway, school rant out and set aside..should probably be sent Up, but who has the time really...


i never know how to end this things, so here it is...