ETSY Wednesday

Just a few of my favorites on Etsy right now. Enjoy looking!

Mr. Noah, Tulsa Photographer

Well, it's a rainy drury day in T-Town. Blah. Hopefully it will cool things off a bit, but knowing Oklahoma, it will just make it humid. Oh well, here's a few photo's to put a smile on your face. This is what happens when you leave your kid with me to babysit.

Arizona & New Mexico Desert, Tulsa Photographer

I hope everyone had a great weekend. We spent ours in Fayetteville visiting family and doing a little vintage shopping. If you're ever there check out The Flying Dog Vintage Mall off College. We also found this amazing little store called the Himalayan Mountain Store right off the Square. Many of the locals don't even know about it yet. I bought a few things from them. It's all made in Nepal, except for the basket I bought which was made in Africa. Many of the handmade items were made from wool felt (I'm obsessed) and it was all super cheap. Oh, I just realized I forgot to post a few of the images of the landscape from our trip out west so I thought I would go ahead and post them now. We were in awe of the show that mother nature put on for us. It just proves the existence of a magnificent creator for those that doubt such an existence.

Mondays aren't my favorite, but I hope yours is good :) I was reluctant to leave my babies at school today. I miss them so much this morning :(

Blogging for Bliss, Books and Bookshelves

I love books. The funny thing is that I don't actually like to read very much, but I love the photos in books. Photos, whether of someone's eclectic, modern, cosy decor or of a home cooked meal decked out waiting for it's close-up, are inspiring to me. They keep me refreshed, up to date and inspired. I love to look over at our bookshelf in the kitchen and see a variety of cookbooks with there colorful spines peering through the glass or my living room bookshelves adorning the collection of books old and new. I plan on filling them top to bottom with books one day.



Click here for for more book shelf eye candy.

Another thing I love are blogs. Blogs are like books with a vast array of intoxicating photography, scrumptious recipes and amazing artistry of all sorts that influence, rouse and stir a sense of creativity in me.

There are so many books out there to scour over and I hate to admit it, but I have bought books before that were not inspiring. They were a waist of money. I know harsh, it's true. Not ALL books are a thing of beauty. So instead of waisting money on books, I went to our local libraries website and put holds on several books. It was so easy and a few days later I headed to our library and picked up about 20 books I've been pining over. I checked out recipe books, craft books and home decor books as well as some chapter books for B. Several of these books I read about on blogs and some of them I am so glad I didn't buy. BUT, there were a few that were buzz worthy. One of them was Blogging for Bliss and I'm ACTUALLY reading it! Lots of good information for creating your own blog for fun or for business. Very informative and detailed as far as SEO's and traffic. These are just a few that I loved and since they are informative they are keepers. Well, i'll return these and buy my own copy :)



A few others worth checking out are The Family at Home, Mark Bittman's Kitchen Express and One Yard Wonders. I'm just sayin'...





Do you have any good book recommendations?

Happy Friday. Have a great weekend!

Love.

California from Aja Vaught on Vimeo.

Home Is Wherever I'm With You.

The drive through the west was beautiful, something we look forward to doing again soon. Maybe with an old airstream or even a pop-up in tow. There were several places to stop and camp, the old meteorite site would be cool or maybe the petrified forrest. The Grand Canyon was among them, but would have been 3 hours round trip out of the way. So we stopped at a gas station and showed our little disappointed monkeys a post card with a cheesy photo of it. Bella said "That's it?". We said said, "That's it. Now you've seen it." They were fine skipping it at that point. Not sure what she thought it was all about, but a big gigantic hole in the ground was not it. Next time, we'll camp there or drive up through Colorado and do some camping. Driving into to LA was crazy. TRAFFIC. That's all I can say. We stayed in Venice Beach (which was way more bazaar than we thought it would be), but we loved being so close to everything and the neighborhood we stayed in used to house Julia Roberts and Molly Ringwald. We took the kids down to Santa Monica Pier and there was a celebrity event that night so the rides were shut down. I was a bit relieved b/c I kind of mentioned I would get on the trapeze and swing like a crazy person. Darn, missed that opportunity! I think that night on the pier, the fog started rolling in and it dropped down to the low 50's. Crazy, sunny California was not all that sunny and warm in August this year. It was a nice break from the 104 degrees we had in Oklahoma. We went to a beach in Malibu one day, visited Huntington Beach for the US Open of Surfing, took the kids to Disneyland (most fun EVER), stayed in Beverly Hills, saw a concert on Sunset Blvd at the Viper Room (used to be owned by Johnny Depp), went to the Original Farmer's Market in West Hollywood, window shopped at the Grove, saw Rodeo Drive, went to a few vintage stores in West Hollywood and Venice, bought our groceries at the best Whole Foods in the world (I hate ours now), watched a drum circle on Venice Beach (and took in the sights and the smells that we were not ready to explain to our youngin's so we promptly vacated), shopped on Abbot Kinney Blvd and bought cupcakes from Cupcakes A Go Go, ate In-n-Out like 5 times (which I'm hankering for right now), hung out with Eric (who drove down from Modesto) for 5 days which was the icing on the cake for us, picked a lime off a tree in the backyard of the hills rental, got stuck in traffic, bought absolutely nothing except for food and a few sweaters cause' did I mention it was cold?, and had an amazing time together. We basked in the beauty of each other, the time we had each and everyday to wake up together, wondering what new and exciting thing that day would bring. Each day was exciting, new, and composed, filled with no expectations other than enjoying the new scenery surrounding us, together. We left there refreshed, sad to be going home, in reverence of the beauty that we came from and dreaming of what our next adventure west would be like. It was THE best vacation we have ever had together, but only for now. There will be many more to come. For now though, I'm glad to be home, where our family and friends are.

We're Back from Southern California...

and oh how much I miss it already. I will post more shots from the trip later (I only have about 700 images to choose from) but until then, here's one from the road. Absolutely NO Photoshop done to this one. Yes, the skies are actually that blue in Arizona and the clouds are in fact that fluffy. Now I'm off to spend another day back to school shopping. This year will be hard. I spent last night in tears already having to face the fact that my youngest, my baby boy is going to school. We're going to spend next week in lazy summer mode and as Bella now says "chillaxin'".