Beautiful sunshine.

This past Thursday was our first glimpse of spring and we took Jax outside to enjoy it, soak up the rays, and ride his trike!

I am free!

Free of braces!! Yayyy!

First... before & after pictures




It is so surreal to have straight teeth. I am 24 years old and have had crooked teeth obviously my whole life... it all dates back to when my "upper cuspid" teeth were falling out and my Dad took a pliers to them and tried yanking them out and couldn't get them out so we had to go to the dentist to have them removed. Haha, I'm kidding, but I do tease my Dad blaming him because those were the two teeth that "hid" behind my others and made it look like I was missing teeth. My parents offered to pay for braces during high school for me, but I refused to because I honestly didn't think my teeth were that bad and I played trumpet and didn't want to ruin my chances of being able to play (yes, you may call me a band geek now). Although I will never forget one of Tyler's friends saying that if it wasn't for my teeth I'd actually be pretty...lol. But once I got to college, things changed and I had a few friends that made comments to me from time to time about how I should get braces. All the sudden I started realizing everyone around me had straight teeth and I didn't... I'll always remember walking down the aisle on my wedding day not smiling as "full" as I should have been because all I could think about was how people probably thought I was missing teeth. I had to sit to the left of servers at restaurants because I was afraid of them seeing my left side of my smile, which was the worst side. I had to be on the right side of the picture in order to hide my left side. My teeth started consuming me and once we could financially afford it after getting married, I started looking into getting braces. Had 6 different consultations and 5 of the orthodontists said I'd need surgery to break my jaw, because my bite was so off. Found an ortho that I really clicked with and said "heck no" to needing surgery... 2 years later, my braces came off and yes I did indeed cry. Not because image is everything, but because I am finally comfortable and confident in my smile. I don't have to put my hand up over my face when I laugh in fear of people looking at my teeth, and for the first time ever, I wore lip gloss on Friday. (never wore it because I didn't want to bring attention to my mouth). Crazy, huh?

Getting braces off doesn't identify me and it doesn't solve all of my self-esteem issues that I have. And ultimately I know that God doesn't focus on our outward appearance. It is what's on the inside that matters most to Him. I am thankful for the opportunity and the way we were able to afford me getting braces, but even if I never got them and still had crooked teeth, I know it wouldn't matter in the end, when my life is over. But while I'm here, hopefully I can help someone who may be struggling with the same kind of issues... with confidence or self-esteem. And to use my smile to encourage people, and make others smile back in return.

One more thing... look at these beautiful roses my hubby bought for me on the day I got my braces off. I think he was almost just as excited as I was that day, because he knew how much it meant to me. I love him.


Proverbs 31:30 - "Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting: but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised."

1 Samuel 16:7 - "The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."

Wordless Wednesday

{ my sister and i }

Twelve weeks to better photography: week one

Saturday while I was at work, I was on thenest photography board and ran across a girl talking about a 12 week challenge she found that she was apart of in order to enhance her knowledge of her camera and her photography skills in general. I thought it would be a great idea considering how much I love my camera and taking pictures and how I really desire to be good at it. I took a photography class in high school, but we obviously didn't have DSLR's so I don't know as much about my camera as I'd like to.
So... Imagine my excitement today when I stumbled across Meredith's post talking about how she (and a handful of other bloggers) will be doing the same 12 week course together! I am going to join in... and what perfect timing, starting today!

{Feel free to join in or if you'd rather just read the tutorials, here is week 1}

So here we go! Week 1's lesson is on aperture (f/stop). The lower your f/stop, the less of your photo will be in focus. The higher your f/stop, more of your photo will be in focus. So naturally you think you'd constantly want to use a higher f/stop, because who wants blurry pictures? But this all depends on the photo you're taking... if you're trying to really focus on one particular thing in the photo and want to blur out the background, you'd want to use a lower f/stop, where-as if you want everything to be in focus, you'd use the higher f/stop. Make sense?

The challenge this week was to take 3 pictures... one with the f/stop at the lowest setting it will go, mine is f/4. The second picture at f/8, and the third at the highest it will go, which for me is f/22.

Here are my shots:

{f/4 -- everything in background completely blurred}
{f/8 -- everything in background "mostly" blurred}
{f/22 -- almost everything in picture is in focus, making that ugly satellite really stand out and taking away from the tractor, which was the 'subject' of this photo}

Pretty cool, right? Loving this already!

Hair S.O.S

Okay my beautiful readers... I am in desperate need of some hair help. I have these little hairs growing in on the side of my forehead, you know those ones sticking straight up... (someone called them 'baby hairs'?)



These suckers are the worst thing and I have not figured out a way to tame them down. I have tried blow-drying my hair a different way, not blow-drying my hair at all, wetting these things down... NOTHING works! So I've been wearing headbands and trying to pin them back with my other bangs, which my husband has informed me is not my best look ever. (thanks hun!)

Anyone know of any product that would help?