Last Christmas as a Dillon

So I just spent my last Christmas at my parents' house as a Dillon daughter.

I didn't think anything of it until Dad was saying the prayer at dinner and he said, "...and thank you for bringing Kit home to us for her very last Christmas..."

Although we must excuse my father, because I think he was just giving me a hard time, there is some truth to it. From now on, we'll be doing the split holidays, traveling during snow storms and important football games.

So, in honor of Christmas as I've known it, here are some photos of "Christmases Past":

My beautiful sister & I

Larry & Cheryl

Bailey opening her COAL from Justin

Last Christmas with Ma & Sis

At the old house...

Actually I think this is Thanksgiving?

At the Gaylord with the fam - in 2006, I think

Dillon Girls!

But the good news is, I am very much looking forward to Christmases Future. I'm excited to wake up in footed pajamas with Justin and drink coffee and open a zillion presents with him, Owen and our families..

So, here are some photos of Christmas as I will know it:

Justin and I at Jeff & Tara's

My future sister-in-law, Anna!

AND! Gasp! Now you know I wore the same shirt twice during the holiday season.

Hope your holidays were Merry & Bright.

where to start?

So I haven't blogged since I made my promise...sounds a lot like a New Year's Resolution to me...but let's get (re)started with something simple: WEDDINGS! Particularly, my wedding!

I am not your typical girl who squeals and hollers over weddings...but now that I get to do my own, I'm that girl who doesn't stop thinking/talking about it. And since I haven't done anything creative in so long, I am completely immersed in our theme. I'm even obsessive about it.

So here are some pictures that jump started our bee theme.

No brainer...it's a BEE! But that's the style I'm going for (harder to find than you'd think....)

This is my background for everything I make myself...which hasn't been much more than the website so far..but my invitation looks similar to this, too.

Sweet. Not sure what this is. But it's sweet.

Ya, not a bee. But to keep with an antique theme, I want to incorporate a variety of crests however I can, i.e. invitation, program, menu? Am I doing a menu? Not sure yet....maybe I could get a caterer first....

Anyway, there's a post for ya! Maybe tonight I'll take a picture of the honeycomb vases I've bought and share those, too.

Much love.

Blogs inspired by blogs!

So I can't wait until Tuesday to write again, or else I'll feel like my blog is somewhat empty..

And I was thinking about other blogs that have had a resonance with me, one being a blog Taylor and I read together one night, during an evening coupled with wine & Bon Iver playing on repeat.

Bon Iver's music is one of those things that I accidentally became an advocate for - and at no charge to Bon Iver! I started telling as many people as I could, "download Bon Iver..." sometimes even as my signature at the end of a phone call...

Mom: Glad you had a good day, I'll talk to you again later this week.

Kit: Okay Ma, love you...download Bon Iver.

But anyway, I was lucky enough to get to see Bon Iver at ACL this year, an experience that I shared with Justin. It was perfect because Justin introduced Bon Iver to me (naturally, he's actually the musical explorer and I'm just a lazy copy-cat) and I couldn't imagine seeing them for the first time without him.

Here are some pics from our "experience".

All dry before the rain storm swept ACL

Karma worked it out and the rain poured and poured during his set. Bon Iver is ideal when paired with a soupy backdrop.

I remember the day Justin heard about Bon Iver and he called me, put me on speaker phone and just belted out the words to Skinny Love...I wish I could relive that phone call over and over again. I felt like a giddy 8th grader, falling in love with this guy who had a passion for something. Though the words to Skinny Love are so painful and tortured (lovelorn, if you will), to me it means falling in love.

All this to say, download Bon Iver!

A pledge to creativity...

So I suppose I had a day today that left me feeling prompted....

Prompted to live a life that produces visual and emotional evidence that I am utilizing the things around me to think outside the box and live off of the beaten path.

Do you ever feel torn when you see other people's lives unfolding from a distance? While I wholeheartedly admire people's successes, feel for their losses and appreciate people's random humor, I can't help but wonder if I'm living to my potential.

For instance, I LOVE the two yards across the street from my future house (yay!). But today, instead of spending the day outside in the yard, I watched countless hours of Cold Case Files (don't get me wrong, a day well spent if you ask me). To give myself credit, I did mow the lawn, I just didn't go to the extra effort to pull weeds or do anything to better our yard. And the only reason I actually did that was because I didn't want to get judged by our neighbors who have told us they "appreciate" when we do the yard....whoa I think I feel a rant coming on! But all this to say, I had the opportunity to make "more" of our yard, but I did just what I needed to to get by.

No more "getting by" for me, people. (That sentence makes me laugh because there are no people who know about this blog.)

I am at a very important point in my life right now. This next year will even further determine what type of woman I will be. I will be a new wife! This is the most joyous anticipation and I absolutely can not WAITTTTTT to marry Justin. At the same time, I want to make sure that I am not just bringing "enough" to the table. He deserves someone absolutely outstanding and I hereby pledge to remember every single day to bring more to the table.

Writing all of this down kind of scares me, because of how seriously I take this pledge. Because how embarrasing for someone to read this and then look at me 2, 5, 10 years later and see a person who settled. But let me note, I am a very light-hearted person and 9 times out of 10, I will try to make light of a situation. So this heavy pledge to be better, I fully intend on having fun to become this woman.

After a day of stalking people (aka reading blogs for hours upon end), I feel charged to make an honest effort to nurture my creativity. So that I love Justin creatively. And love my family creatively. And so that I love myself creatively.

I guess through things like Facebook, gossip and random run-ins you see people's lives in a nutshell and it all seems so perfectly compact and put together. I'm sure when people look at my life, they see a lovely little life, too. But I want to actually have that full life.

So here goes nothin! My plan is to write in this blog on Tuesdays (ugh, to add something good to the worst day of the week) and not that I plan to address this with each post, but perhaps it will help me remember what made me want a blog to begin with.

To be creative!!