Whew!

Hey everyone! Did everybody have a great weekend? Well, I sure did! :) Saturday was definitely an experience for me for sure. I was a volunteer Photographer for the Sheridan Sesquicentennial and boy was it HOT saturday! I was basically there all day shooting different events that were going on. I started out with the "Noodles on the Lot". One of the churches in Sheridan made HOMEMADE Chicken & Noodles! Homemade noodles! They were amazing, and also the people were super nice while I stuck my camera all up in their faces and food :) Then I went out to the Park and heard a band called "Hammer & Nails" under the gazebo. They were pretty good, they did a lot of country covers that I liked! Then after that, it was off to the beard & mustache contest :) Then my last stop, the "Wild Mustard" Concert! I was super excited about seeing them because one of my friends is from Sheridan and she follows this band around a lot (and also used to do the marketing for them) and she had said they were really great and fun! I had a wonderful time shooting them and just milling around the town taking random shots of people :)

Geesh, I truly do have so much to learn about photography. Since it was basically in the middle of the day, with direct sunlight and half of the events were under shaded tents--lets just say I had a lot of lighting issues. There is only so much you can edit, you know? I had an attachable flash, but frankly, I just didn't know how to make it work! :( I finally got it in Manual Mode and played around with it enough to where the shots were looking decent. So, I know I am not so great on the technical side of using the camera. But this is only my second time using it for an actual shoot. SO, maybe I am expecting too much of myself to know everything right away....

Anyway, I had a blast and I can't wait to learn more and to be able to get my own camera soon and just to get the chance to do something I love to do!!! :)

I will post more about the kitchen later (UGH) since this blog is so long! Ha!

OH Wait! Small note: Daniel and I are going down to Georgia this weekend to see Jason, Tara, Ethan, Elaina & Howell baby # 3 this weekend and we are super excited about it! We haven't seen them since Christmas and our niece & nephew are growing up without us :( So we spontaneously decided to go down there! Pray for safe travel please!

Love,
Courtney

Kitchen Disaster/Blessing?

Wow, so it has been almost a week since I have posted anything! I have a lot to catch up on for sure.

Well we will start with the Blog title. Yes--only 4 weeks into being in the house we have issues. Right now our kitchen looks like this (see earlier post for what it looked like before):

(excuse the poor quality, it is from daniel's phone)


When I see this I think "AHHH!!!" SO basically what happened was we had gotten a Culligan Water Softner installed and also a water filter on our kitchen sink. About a week after that, I noticed the carpet was damp under the sink. So I open up the cabinet and WHAM, there is mold everywhere! Long story short, after finding moisture in the kitchen floor, laundry room floor & bathroom--Culligan is having to replace the floor, some damaged cabinets and drywall in our kitchen. Right now it is a little stressful around the Howell household :)

You are probably thinking "And how is this a Blessing??" Well I will tell you! :) Daniel and I had talked about at some point replacing the floors in these rooms (because there is carpet there now and we dont like carpet). SO now we get all new floors in all 3 rooms we wanted and for almost free!! Since Culligan is paying to replace what is there, we will only have to pay some extra to get the flooring we want. I know this a round-about way of being a blessing. But I see it as a Huge Blessing! Because it would have taken us a while to save up enough to get this done!

Then I got a call about something exciting last week in regards to my photography! Sheridan, IN is having it's 150th year festival this coming week and they called me to be an "Offical" photographer for a bunch of events this satruday! I know that most people are like, "oh woo hoo, Sheridan...." But this is a great way for me to get some awesome shots and experience. I am so stoked about it :)

I will hopefully post up some picture of that next week. So, these next few weeks will be interesting to see how to repairs go. I will keep photos going of the process. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Love,
Courtney

People I Love.

So this past month the McClain family was back in the US (they are missionaries in Costa Rica)to connect with churches and to visit with family. Really, there are no words to explain the love I have for this family. Brooke (the mom) was one of my closest friends before they moved to Costa Rica. She was one of those women that I had always looked up too, and she was always guiding me through those "rough" days you have as a teenager :) They have to most wonderful & beautiful children I have ever known--I guess I am kind of partial because I basically watched them grow up!

So, when they came to visit Daniel and I at our new house, I was so excited! I am not going to even attempt to try and explain what this family means to me. They have been in my life through good times, bad times & confusing times. They mean the world to me and I hope that the pictures I am about to show you will tell you a story of who they are and what they mean to me!

Brooke I hope you enjoy these! :)



The girls were having a blast playing in our front yard :)








Miss Isabelle, isn't she so sweet?


and of course Audrey--I love how this captures her sweet spirit :)


I hope that this is a picture I can capture once daniel and I have little ones running around. It warms my heart to see this picture of him chasing the girls around the tree :)


And last but not least, Izzy and her momma :)


I hope you guys enjoy these pictures!

Love,
Courtney

Little Things in Life

Blogging has become so much fun for me lately. I know I am not very good at it, but I still think it's fun :) I just want to be able to share my life with people, you know?

Now back to the title of this blog! We were driving last week (story of our lives) and I took this picture of the beautiful blue sky and I started to think about how pretty it was. And with my scatter-brain thoughts I just started to think about how truly blessed I am!



I have a wonderful family, an amazing husband and a wonderful friends. I often forget how many people go through this world without any of these things. We also often forget about how much love God has for us. He loved us enough to create this entire world just for us! I can't even fathom that. When I look at creation it is overwhelming to think that God created every single branch on a tree and every blade of grass--all for us :)

So today, when you go outside (even if it is raining) take a minute to just observe the nature around you and think about how BIG our God is!!! Think about how He loves us enough to give us the things & people around us. And how he wants us to see these things and worship Him and Him alone. Try to think of the smallest blessings in your life and Praise God for them today! Because it is the small blessings that God gives us daily that we should remember to praise Him for!

Love,
Courtney

Our New Home

I can't believe that I haven't posted about this yet--but Daniel and I are now offically HOMEOWNERS!! :) yes, yes--we have purchased a house, I still can't believe it. It is wonderful to come home and it feel like "Home". We are in Anderson, IN now and we are loving it! I will share a few pictures with you so you can get a feel of what our new home looks like. Now, I know what you all are thinking...."oh not too long and a baby should be coming!!" Well you all just keep saying that for about 3 more years, then we will talk :)

I have some other exciting news about my photography, but that will come later once I get more info about it. let's just say that one my pictures is going to be posted somewhere....

enjoy the house pictures! :)














Hope everyone is having a wonderful week!

Love,
Courtney

Weekend of Fun

So this week has been fun--one of my friends was gracious enough to let me borrow his camera (Nikon D5000) for the week! Needless to say, I have been like a kid with a new toy at christmas time. I took it with me everywhere I went. Seriously, ask daniel. I even took pictures as we were driving...(not like they were good--but hey, I didn't want to pass up any good shots!)
Since i had the camera for the week I wanted to get the chance to actually take pictures of someone, so I called up my sister and asked if her and Robyn would mind me taking some casual shots of them and their dogs..she agreed :) So I was able to experiment a little this weekend and having the dogs was a bit of a challange! But here are a few shots. I have only edited the first one and the rest are just all natural! :)

Hope you all enjoyed the pictures! Let me know what you think. Hope you all have a wonderful week.

Love,
Courtney

Revival!!

Oh my goodness! It has been months since I have posted anything--I am so sorry!

So many things have happen these past months! Well first of all, I am deciding to revive my blog because I am starting to consider doing some photography and I want to share with you guys (if anyone even reads this!) and get your opinions and such. Photography is always something I have enjoyed, but I just haven't had to courage to go forward. The only thing that is holding me back is that I am afraid I won't have the creativity to be unique. I want to bring something to my photos that will set me apart from other photographers and that is going to be a huge challenge!

So, back to Daniel and I. well.....we bought a house!!!! Can you believe it?! Pictures will be coming soon, but we are so happy to be able to have something of our own! :) It is almost our 1 Year anniversary and I can't believe it has already been a year. it feels like just yesterday we were standing underneath those beautiful trees saying "I Do"!

So stay tuned, and I will hopefully be blogging a lot more frequently now and will also be sharing some of my photos with you guys!

Love,
Courtney :)