Magic

Is there anything more magical than fireflies on a summer night? Photographer Yume Cyan captured what looks like hundreds of them in this series of long exposure photos, taken in a forest in Japan. I pretty much want to live in these images.

Via MyModernMet

Pretty Swedish Recipes

I spent a good part of Saturday at IKEA, helping a friend buy nearly the entire store to furnish her company's new office. While loading eight (eight!) sets of dishes into one of our (five!) carts, IKEA's new cookbook caught my eye. It's full of tasty-sounding recipes, but my favorite part is the way the recipes are presented. Like last week's snoball cookie recipe, the ingredients are arranged into beautiful compositions, photographed by Carl Kleiner.

Aren't they beautiful? I can't wait to make one.

Photos via FastCo.

The Prettiest Recipe

Have you ever seen a prettier recipe? It's from the latest Olive Us video about making snoball cookies. I've been shopping around for a recipe box (I got some cute recipe cards for Christmas) lately, but this makes me think that all recipes should be visual. Not entirely practical, but pretty.

Happy weekend! Go make some snoball cookies :)

via Design Mom

Black and WTF

Oh my. Somehow I stumbled on the collection of odd black & white photos at Black and WTF and I think I just wasted an hour clicking through page after page. They are so funny and strange! I'd love to know the stories behind a lot of them. Like, what's with all the bears?







Or strange animal activity in general?









Too funny!

Via Buzzfeed.

A Birthday Date

Earlier this week I took some of my favorite kiddos out for a belated birthday date. I've been taking each of my friend Kristen's kids on a special little outing for their birthdays, and it worked out well that the youngest two, Jones (now 6) and Lael (now 4), were born two days apart.

Since my camera died, I snapped a bunch of photos on my phone that I wouldn't normally post here because they're lame cell phone photos. But now that Instagram is available for my Android phone, I thought this would be a good opportunity to play around with the app!



When I originally asked Lael what she wanted to do for her birthday date, she said "Go to Shake Shack, then Starbucks, then my house." I decided to stick with just Shake Shack :) After picking them up, we headed over to the bus (them on scooters, I was on foot) and took a short ride over to the requested destination.



While we waited for our burgers and frozen custard, I pulled out the one trick I had up my sleeve to make it a "birthday" date: rainbow striped party hats. I was really not expecting the excitement that followed, they were thrilled! Lael ripped off her warm hat (which we put back on a little later) to wear the party hat, while Jones went for an over-the-helmet look.







All in all, a lovely time with this hilarious brother-sister duo. And a fun first try with Instagram!

In Focus

So, my camera died this weekend. It's been temperamental for awhile now, as extremely old DSLRs tend to be, but I think this weekend's photos were its swan song. So while I contemplate my next big camera purchase, I was reminded of a cool little camera that would be fun in addition to your regular camera or phone.



It's called a Lytro and it takes photos with the full field of light, so you can focus later. How cool is that?! I'm not the best with all the technicalities of photography, so it'd be great to be able to just take a photo and worry about the focal point later. You can play with the photos in their Living Gallery to see how it works.

Photos by Mugur Marculescu & Adam Gould via Lytro.

A Gender Reveal Party

My friends Chelsea and Trae are expecting their first baby late this summer, and just last week were able to find out the gender. A few days after their sonogram (it must have been killing them!) they invited friends over for a little party to find out "Wat" color icing would be inside the cake. They asked me to make the reveal cake, and I was honored and excited to be the first to know if little Baby Wat would be made of slugs, snails and puppy dog tails or sugar, spice and everything nice.

Thankfully, friend and ridiculously talented photographer Trent was in attendance to capture everything in these lovely photos.

{The proud-papa-to-be bought out the pink and blue decor section of the local party store.}

{Big sister Pippa looks a little nervous}

{both sets of parents watched the reveal on Facetime}

{pink icing!!}

For some reason, it surprised me when they knew what it was after making the first cut. I had pictured the blog-perfect moment of them pulling the slice out and then knowing, but they got a little sneak peek when the knife came up with pink frosting (everyone screamed!). At that point, Chelsea couldn't even finish cutting the cake, she was so elated to find out that it's a girl. Friends had to remind them to keep cutting, their parents couldn't tell what it was yet! You can see it in the video on their cute baby blog.

It was such a fun night, and so special that Trae and Chelsea wanted all their friends to be there with them to find out. Hurry up, Baby Girl Watlington, we're all ready to meet you!

All photos courtesy of the talented and generous Trent Bailey.

A Surprise Wedding

From what I've heard, it sounds like it's pretty stressful for a guy to orchestrate the perfect proposal. So could you imagine also planning the wedding to immediately follow the proposal?! That's exactly what this oh-so-sneaky groom did for his bride.





After he proposed, Dave walked Heather across the beach to their waiting friends and family. And they got married, right then and there! However, he was also prepared for the worst. If Heather said no, he figured they'd just have a "small but slightly awkward party." :)





I think this is a terrific idea. What about you? Would you jump at the chance to get the wedding over with right away, or want to wait to plan a big shin dig?

Via Simple Song. All photos by James Moes.

Winter Blues

I'd love nothing more than to be enveloped in a world of white, but since snow is not in the cards these days I'm finding myself drawn to winter-y blue imagery. There's something alternately calm and harsh about blue in winter, isn't there? So different from the brightness of summer.

Photo 1, 2, 3, 4