Carolina Beach weekend

This past weekend I went to Carolina Beach to spend 3 awesome days and nights with 12 other girls for Julie Liles' bachelorette weekend. I have known Julie longer than I've known almost anyone I can think of so it was really special to take part in this. We had a lot of fun, sun, and an all around great weekend. Congrats Juuuuuuulie!

Julie, Casey, Dani, Sara
Kimberly
Darbee, Kim, Casey
Row of women!
The WC crew....Sallie, Lindsay, Kristin, Julie, Amy, Mary Katherine, Jessamy
Julie showin off her moves

Summer pics

As I promised, I took another shot at using my Diana camera and have 3 pics to share. The rest were over-exposed but I know how to correct this now. Hopefully I will have more pics to share with the 2 rolls of 120 film I bought when I went to pick up my last roll. And these next 2 rolls will be from the beach so that will be the perfect setting.
I'm also posting some pics that I took with my Nikon on a day we had some friends over to swim and hang.

NC Rules 2

We went up to Lake Lure and Chimney Rock this past Sunday for a little hike and R&R. I had never been to this area for some odd reason and really enjoyed how beautiful it is. We started with the hike to Chimney rock and the water fall. This is a very touristy area but beautiful nonetheless. The hike felt sooo good and I'm hoping the hundreds of stairs we climbed worked off the 3 cinnamon rolls I decided I needed at 9pm on Saturday evening. After the hike we had lunch in town then rented a pontoon to take a ride around the lake. Not many of the first real boat houses are left and plenty of enormous 10,000 sq. ft. homes have taken their place, so that is a bit sad. But Lake Lure is very calm and peaceful and surrounded by a beautiful mountainscape that you just don't see at many lakes.

View of Lake Lure from Chimney Rock

Bottom of the Falls...and first belly shotLake Lure boat houses (not the kind people used to live in)

This is Ben doing his "Smith gang sign" for the cameraAnother belly shot
And the final one for my 13th week

This is Ben entertaining himself on the drive home...yes I will have 2 children to care for next year

NC rules

I woke up Friday morning with a burning desire to be in the mountains, where it's cooler and close to nature. Lucky for me my Mom was up there finishing her 2nd week at the Blowing Rock Horse Show. So I got to see her ride and also enjoy the awesome weather. I have been so blessed that my parents have had a house in the mountains since I left App State. It is only now that I truly long to be in the mountains more than ever...but this may be because the days at a free house are numbered. My parents are selling their mountain house -big bummer.






Tanner spent a couple hours at the show with me and loved it.















This is my Mom...jumping 3 ft on her horse, Secret! How amazing is that!

The Diana+

Earlier this year I purchased a new camera. It's called the Diana+ and is plastic and looks like a toy. The first roll of film I took (which I had to purchase from a camera store because this camera only takes 120 film) didn't turn out so well. The guys at the camera store where I had to get this film developed kind of laughed at me and told me this is to be expected. I didn't enjoy this experiance so much so my Diana has been in a drawer for a few months.
Lucky for me (and the Diana) that I have a super cool talented artsy friend that recently took some amazing pics with his Diana during a trip to Jackson Hole for a wedding. Thank you John Vergel de Dios for renewing my faith in Diana and giving me hope that I can (eventually) take cool pics with this camera. I wanted to share a few of these awesome pics Verge took:

Harper (Verge's wife and my best gal pal)

A friend of Verge and Harper's (Anthropologie catalog?!)
I would have loved to have a pics like this from my wedding. Check out the brides' cowboy boots!
If you are interested in purchasing a Diana camera (and who wouldn't be after seeing these pics) you can get one from Bobby at NICHE MKT in NoDa (Charlotte).