Taz

In our home, pets are family.  We play together.  We go places together.  We eat together.  We sleep together.  We have fun together.  We share lots of love.  It was no different with our friend Taz who joined our family just over a month ago.  Sweet as could be, this little guy brought so much love and happiness into our family.  Each day when I would come home Taz was there to greet me with his "happy dance" and excitement.  Each night we'd snuggle on the couch to our favorite TV shows.  Each morning he'd gratefully lick a little peanut butter from my fingers secretly wishing I'd share all of my peanut butter toast with him.  He really was a wonderful little guy with a seriously cute under bite.
Today we had to say goodbye to Taz.  It breaks my heart to even write this.  After a short, painful battle with lymphoma, Taz (in true Taz form) left us with lots of love and many of his famous puppy kisses.
I will miss him very much.

A belly grows

This video makes my heart swell.  It's perfect in every way.  Will any of you, my dear, sweet creative friends, volunteer for this project when I'm pregnant?  Please say, "I do."

Magic- A Belly Grows

Christmas in January

Check out this rad cooler that my dear friend Sara gave us.  Not only is it Cubs, but it's a convertible backpack/rolling cooler with wheels.  It's big enough to fit a lot of beverages and super handy.  I can't wait for tailgating this year.  I told Bob that he's going to be the coolest kid there. :)

Thanks, Sara-love!

Snow angels

Isn't this a great idea for a winter engagement photo session?  I'm looking forward to doing my first snowy engagement photo session today. The weather is perfect: not too cold and just cloudy enough.  Wish me luck!

photo from here

Moon Glo

This weekend the Kacich family made our annual trip to the Moon Glo restaurant in Danville, IL.  This little dive restaurant is tucked away off the beaten track about 30 minutes from home.  They've got giant burgers that come served on wax paper, tasty fries and out of this world fried pickles.  Nobody is too formal in this place, but the service sure is friendly.  A frame newspaper article detailing a holdup that happened decades ago hangs over the fireplace and the salad bar has all of your favorites: whole scallions in water, beets and radishes.  Oh, the pickles...

Read more to see the photos.

Self-compassion vs. self-critic

What a beautiful idea for the New Year:

"...accepting yourself in where you are, and forgiving yourself in setbacks will make you more likely to succeed. Self-compassion will increase a sense of personal responsibility without triggering the self blame that are common when you take a self-critical approach to change."

Read the entire post by Bee here. Love her.

Sewing Saturday

This weekend I'm making curtains.  Hopefully, that is... if I can figure out how to work my mother's Sears Kenmore sewing machine.  So far I'm not having luck.  But, I did buy this beautiful fabric...

... that looks something like this... and I plan to use it to make a faux-headboard for my bedroom.  The two windows in the room provide great light, but also prevent me from positioning the bed anywhere that isn't in front of a door or window.  So, I'm going to make a giant curtain to do double duty - cover one of the windows and serve as a sort of headboard.  I think it will look great once I'm done.  I just have to figure out how to get the darn machine threaded and working. :)

I hope you have a wonderfully relaxing weekend!

Happy New Year!

After a long holiday hibernation... I'm back.  I took a little time off of work, blogging, checking email (mostly) and pretty much everything else to disconnect and spend some quality time with my family and friends.  Boy was it worth it.

Bob and I adopted a new dog. Taz is the most recent addition to the Kacich family.

We went for lots of walks.

We had a wonderful Christmas with our families.

My mother-in-law and I took my nieces Lily and Julia ice skating. That was a really fun day!

My dear friend, Heather, sent us a bottle of homemade apple brandy.  Looking forward to trying this!

I wore these fun nails on New Year's.  We had a great night filled with fancy drinks, fancy dinner, fun games and fabulous friends!

It was a great break.  Now, I'm looking forward to focusing some energy on getting our house decorated and in order.  I'm REALLY looking forward to growing my photography business.  I've got a few engagement sessions and family sessions lined up for the beginning of this year already.  I'm looking forward to seeing the Kacich family grow again in about a year - Matt, my-brother-in-law, will be getting hitched to Jackie.  Oh yeah, and Bob and I will be taking a trip to Ireland this spring.  It's going to be a great year!