dear spring, hurry up!

while the snow is very pretty and falling snow is always magical, after valentines day i am over winter. it's been freezing since november so i'm good to go on some 50's-60's weather soon, please.

i'm glad the girls seem to love it more and more, though. emmy stomps around the house in everybody's snow shoes and says over and over, "outside? snow? snow shoes? outside? snowman? sled? snowman hug? snow? outside?!" and genevieve is newly fascinated with the fact that apparently the dogs go pee-pee quite a lot as is evident by all of the yellow snow. ;)

we've missed almost all of this session's (8 weeks) toddler playtime classes due to weather cancellations, enough 2 hour school delays and keeping our water running so our pipes don't freeze overnight. it's time to be done and move on to warmth! momma is ready! plus, we're going to Austin in march for SXSW and i'm flying to Florida a few days later for Kaleigh's wedding so i'd like to ease on into that weather. plus, i'm so tired of playing candyland in my living room. i'd rather blow bubbles and ride bicycles outside right now, thank you very much.

i'm pretty sure everyone can get on board with the fact that i am over my winter clothes. i don't want to wear socks, my shirts are all washed out and i'm bored with my heavy scarves. capris! flip flops! light scarves! COME ON, SPRING.

i win valentines day.

haha but no really. valentines day has never really been a huge deal to me. sure, i love any excuse to get flowers from my hubby but otherwise NBD. but over the last few years it has kind of become special on accident.



emmy is a valentines day baby, for starters! valentines day was our, "we'll wait till then and then start trying for baby #2" day, but i'm fertile myrtle so it was pretty exact. HA. last year, kyle had been away on a business trip and we'd been snowed in until valentines day when he came home. he waltzed into chili's to meet us with tulips for the girls and roses for me. it was quite the spectacle and made us all feel really special. and this year. THIS YEAR. it wasn't for valentine's day specifically, but it happened on the day so it counts in my book! ;) this year the man bought me a new car! i'm so excited! we downsized from a van to a chevy equinox suv. we were really only using the extra space in the van to store forgotten toys and empty snack bags from the backseat litter bugs. we used the 3rd row only when family was in town and for that we can just take 2 cars places for a few days, no big deal. so we have the same trunk space just no 3rd row but WAY nicer insides. genevieve kind of loved car shopping. she wanted to sit in every seat and test drive them all. she announced today that she wanted a pink sparkly car and i was on board with that vote. chevy, get on that. she kept asking if we were going to buy this one, how about this one, this one?? so it was exciting to get to tell her, "yes, this one!" i'm sure i'll be posting instagrams of it tomorrow since it's getting dark out and kyle hasn't made it back yet from the dealership just yet. we split up since it was the girls' nap time. he did all the financial dealings and we just had to look at the cars. it worked out in my favor, for sure haha.

it's been rough this year with all of the crazy that comes with major depression and a husband who travels a lot for work (not that i mind, i love his job! i just don't do that great on my own after a few days, unfortunately). so it is really really nice to have something good happen to us. i feel super thankful and grateful today. i got a nap and a car, how about that. heehee just kidding.

branding for my photoblog

i've had that love/hate fun with re-branding/rebooting my brand for Studio Britt. it's hard to get past each creative roadblock, but once you do you feel great! i love the direction my new logo went. i initially had my sister sketch out some ideas since she's brilliant with sketching typography and i'm more of a digital cat. her handwritten type for studio led me to find this sweet font. i love it!

so i think i've finished it but you know how that creative bug never quite dies. the website is done and i'm wrapping up my marketing materials and business cards. i'm hoping to get those sent off to print this week and maybe pass them around local bulletin boards next weekend. i think the feel from this branding page really does represent the type of sweet magic i try to get in my photos. i'm nowhere near the photographer i'd like to be, but i do have a sort of style and i'm trying to find strength in it. so without further rambling, here's the branding Studio Britt Photography! i'd love to know what you think!

lately.

i feel like we've been going a thousand miles an hour and my grand plans for blog posts fall to the side. so i'll do a low-expectation catch up post instead. ha.

1. big news for me! backstory: i pinned my st. patrick's day woods shoot with genevieve to pinterest years ago. she was 18 months old. since then, i get 1-5 emails a day saying someone has repinned it. just the photo i put up there has been repinned over 2300+ times. pretty crazy! well, i got an email last week that i heart faces wants to use one from the batch in a st. patrick's day inspiration blog post. i just love i heart faces. i used to be on there constantly when i first became interested in photography so it feels fanfreakingtastic to get something featured!

2. we're getting little waves of snow storms. an inch or two here and there. it hasn't been bad at all. at least there's a reward to the cold! the girls love it and emmy now begs to go "SLED?!" we're waiting for our next wave on thursday for some more snow for our little hill behind the house. it's perfect for sledding littles. i'll have to get a video of it the next time we all go out together.
i remember all of our vacations to go skiing during christmas time and as we'd go to dinner while it snowed and drove by houses blanketed in pretty snow, i always thought "this is some people's real life. they get to live where it snows every couple weeks during the winter. not once a year on a ski trip. how lucky are they?" i craved being somewhere with seasons even then. and if i'm honest, even charlotte didn't give me quite the winter i wanted. baltimore is doing a good job, so it gets points for that.

3. i'm 2 doses (2 weeks) into my vitamin d meds and 4 days into my light therapy. i do really feel a difference. it's small, but it's the difference between staying seated on the couch for an extra 10 minutes or putting away that little pile of laundry during those 10. it's already making a dent in my productivity. i've started in the basement and have a huge load for goodwill from the girls' closet, playroom and basement. i'm still taking naps pretty regularly but i don't feel so drugged and lethargic mid-morning. if you have a problem with fatigue and the normal remedies don't touch it, i would highly suggest getting tested for vitamin d deficiency. it's totally changing my world already. the only con i can find is that with the light therapy, i need to sit in front of it for 45 minutes before noon. so i keep trying to get up at 6:30 and working on my computer and watching the news while i sit with my light. it's HARD. today i sat for only 30 minutes while the kids ate breakfast before school because i did NOT want to get up when my alarm went off. kyle suggested we do yoga together in the morning for an hour while the light shines on me. i don't know if you can really do something like that during light therapy, but why not? and it's a way to keep each other accountable and exercise.

4. genevieve is a few weeks into her dance class at the Y. she's obsessed and pretty good at it. she's a good listener in class and is so excited about it. she remembers the moves and practices a little at home (any excuse to put on the ballet and tap shoes!). i think the end is in another 3 weeks, so we'll for sure have to sign her up for another round. if she's excited about it all the way through another 2 months of it, i think we'll look into summer dance lessons at a real dance studio. right now the Y is just simple and short, just enough for little kids. it's the cutest thing i've ever seen. kyle offered to take her last week but i just didn't want to miss it! i should work out during her lesson, but we're allowed to sit in the room and i'm so addicted to seeing her blossom.

vitamin d deficiency

you learn something new every day! i'm serious. i had post partum depression with both my girls and have had at least a low level depression for as long as i can remember. i'm a two scoops of emotion kind of lady. so i would say that i have gone very far down the depression research rabbit hole and i have never come across the words vitamin d deficiency. in november, susan, my wonderful MIL, said i looked a little paler than normal and asked if i'd had my vitamin d levels checked. baltimore is a very cloudy place, i've discovered, and november was about the time i was starting to see improvements in the severity of my depression. i didn't ask my doctor about it at the time but as the weeks went by and i still had that need to sleep all the time, i figured i should at least check with her. my doctor, being incredibly awesome, ended up bringing it up with me before i got the chance!

so i had my bloodwork done and i do have a deficiency. i am oddly excited about this. i mean, this means i'm not the laziest piece of work ever! there's actually something still wrong! i was feeling really down recently because while mentally i can definitely see improvement, my body is still so lethargic even when i push myself to get up and workout 3 times a week and clean the house. knowing that this feeling will eventually go away and i'll have my energy back feels incredible. now we just wait and watch for improvement. i have 8 weeks of the supplement so i guess i'll report back in 2 months haha.

resolutions!

yeah yeah, it's almost february. i'll get there.

so this year i have the regular lame-o resolutions and a few bucket list things i'd like to accomplish. i might as well write them down so they're on record to look back and keep me semi-accountable.

this year i want to:
-- quit soda down to once a day or not at all
-- increase my water intake
-- eat more real food, especially fruits
-- try a class at the gym and stick to it for 6 weeks
-- taking all the above into account, lose a significant amount of weight
-- accomplish something creative that's real
-- organize the basement
-- purge/donate/sell all unused clothes/toys/items
-- print more pictures to be framed
-- write thank you notes
-- heal enough mentally that i reduce my need for weekly therapy
-- read helpful books and guilty pleasure books, preferably 12+.

i'm trying to incorporate weight training into my workouts but have no idea where to start, so i think a sculpting class might be exactly what i'm looking for.

and by creative, i mean get my photography site/marketing done enough that i actually start to get calls for work AND/OR take a fun class like the photography track at the baltimore city community college or a local calligraphy course.

i'm doing a smidge better on my water and eating, but i'm still not on fire for it yet.

genevieve and i just purged the toys ready for sale and donation in the playroom. now i actually have to cart them out and list them online.

a decent list, overall, i think! maybe i'll even be so good that i'll cross them off as i go. but let's not get too fancy.

bringing me back to life.

so i kind of disappeared for the better part of a month, yes? i feel like i'm trying to shed my skin and it just won't leave. granted, we're only twelve days into the first month of the year but when you're ready you're ready.

to start the year i feel like i can't really blog (or live) if i can't be honest about my life, so i'm going to lay it all out in an effort to feel a little freer from this. keeping it a secret is such a burden when you're a natural over-sharer. and what's a blog without a little too much information? ;)

my therapist calls it major clinical depression and anxiety. so i have a therapist. and a mood disease. this means i'm on a boatload of medications to level out my emotions and my brain, plus it means i'm always riding the shame train. i've been in therapy for 4 months and i'm a long way from where i was in the beginning even though a lot of days it doesn't feel like it. i think the one of the worst things about having major depression aside from the lovely thoughts attacking me all day long is the way it makes me behave. the fatigue was so bad that i couldn't get up to cook or play with the kids. my house has been a mounting disaster for months but i just haven't had the energy. the fact that i'm cooking meals and playing with my daughters now is huge for me. cleaning and, gasp, organizing is still where i'm coming up short. and if you look at me the wrong way i still might burst into tears. i'm a smidge better than that now but only a smidge. having this today totally sucks. i'm sure it would have sucked equally back when it was less public and referred to as melancholia (abe lincoln had it!), but now it's almost cliche. i'm A) a mom, B) a momtog/wannabe photographer and C) i have a mood disorder. isn't that what all the cool kids have nowadays? *womp womp*

but i'm trying to move forward and take hold of my life. i have felt very motivated with the new year and my improvements in therapy, so i'm going to try and "go for it" in a few areas of my life. i'm going to try to quit soda and lose weight. like really try. not go to the gym but grab a diet coke on the way out kind of try. and i'm going to try to launch my photography here. the worst that could happen is it could go the way it is now, which is nothing. i'll build up my portfolio and do a little marketing and see what comes of it.

i've been reading a lot of books about depression and self worth and have been searching for a bible verse that really feels comforting. i've never really had a verse that stood out to me in times of need but this time, i keep hearing/seeing this one come up and really believe God is showing it to me.

Psalm 34:17-20

17 

The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them;

    he delivers them from all their troubles.

18 

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted

    and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

19 

The righteous person may have many troubles,

    but the Lord delivers him from them all;

20 

he protects all his bones,

    not one of them will be broken.

"...and saves those who are crushed in spirit." i would say crushed in spirit is pretty much how i would describe myself these last few months. so i'm clinging to this as if He had written my name down in that verse. it means i might just resurface.

my word for this year is REVIVE and i am planning on doing just that.