A Hudson Valley Weekend

 

As we begin to close in on the last weekends of summer I jumped at the invitation for a weekend upstate shared among friends. The cool mountain air, quiet afternoons for reading and home cooked meals filled my soul and recharged my batteries. We stayed in this amazingly redesigned Catskills home where nature was the framed art and dancing light our whimsical entertainment. Now the only problem I have is how to stop day dreaming of this peaceful place at the end of the road between tucked between a mountain and a creek…

A group of friends spend the weekend upstate in the Hudson Valley. A group of friends spend the weekend upstate in the Hudson Valley.

 This summer I have been reading photographer Sally Mann’s memoir Hold Still. There are some books I read on my kindle and then some I have to physically buy so that I can mark them up, make notes in the margins and revisit or even research what I find among the pages. One of my favorite underlined parts so far: 

“Because I am still that girl when it comes to developing film. There is nothing better than the thrill of holding a great negative, wet with fixer, up to the light. And, here’s the important thing: it doesn’t even have to be a great negative. You get the same thrill with any negative; with art, as someone once said, most of what you have to do is show up. The hardest part is setting the camera on the tripod, or making the decision to bring the camera out of the car, or just raising the camera to your face, believing, by those actions, that whatever you find before you, whatever you find there, is going to be good. And, when you get whatever you get, even if it’s a fluky product of that slipping-glimpser vision that de Kooning celebrated, you have made something. Maybe you’ve made something mediocre- there’s plenty of that in any artist’s cabinets- but something mediocre is better than nothing, and often the near-misses, as I call them, are the beckoning hands that bring you to perfection just around the blind corner.” 

A group of friends spend the weekend upstate in the Hudson Valley. A group of friends spend the weekend upstate in the Hudson Valley. A group of friends spend the weekend upstate in the Hudson Valley. A group of friends spend the weekend upstate in the Hudson Valley. A group of friends spend the weekend upstate in the Hudson Valley. A group of friends spend the weekend upstate in the Hudson Valley. Continue reading “A Hudson Valley Weekend”

HowAboutWe…

After our first year of marriage we decided it was important to keep dating each other…to keep discovering, learning and growing together. Thanks to HowAboutWe’s new service for couples, for those of us who want to “stay in love”, we have been able to easily achieve this goal we have set. Of course we still do the classic nights at the ballet and all those oh-so-glamorous events as dates, but with HowAboutWe we get to really do something different. Last month we tried our hand at glass blowing (I now show off our lopsided glasses on photo shoots at the studio like a proud parent) and this month it was a hot air balloon ride, planned and booked through the HowAboutWe Concierge! The concierge service allows you to make special one of a kind dates like this one with the help of a HowAboutWe planning expert…perfect for celebrating anniversaries, planning a baby moon, or setting up the proposal just so…

I don’t know if you guys caught this but we just bought our first car! I’m still trying to name her (deciding between Jolene because she is a lady that has been around, you know, Khaleesi because she is such a queen, or E.H. Yuppie…you know, to celebrate the 80’s). So I really wanted a date where we could drive out of the city! Such an exciting new adventure!

     

Watching the balloons take shape… feeling very trepidatious!

Continue reading “HowAboutWe…”