2012: Thriving in the Roots (my favorite photos of my own collection from 2012)

So 2012 was all about planting roots and thriving.  Seriously, remember when I said that I was going to have an intention word for this year?  Well, I had 2: Thrive and Roots.  In 2012, our family did THRIVE.  We got pregnant with Asher and also got our financial house in order to the point that we are in the process of becoming HOMEOWNERS and because Luke and I feel like we are thriving in our lives and careers here in St. Louis.  Thrive. Yes. It has been a long hard road of feeling as if we were just keeping our heads above water.  But, here we are. Thriving.

Then, it changed to ROOTS for the same reasons we began to thrive.  We dug roots in the ground here in St. Louis.  I became more involved in the arts community both locally and in the world of blogging and social networking.  I began recreating my photography portfolio after a 2 year sabbatical by taking Andrea Scher's online photography class:  Superhero Photo Class.  I love the photos that were created from this class.  What made it such a fun experience was taking this class with one of my great friends and fantastic photographers, Michelle Jarvis.  I also felt very blessed to get my artwork shown in 3 different shows here in St. Louis.  Getting myself back into the art world after my 2-3 year sabbatical has felt amazing.  My ROOTS  are always in the creative world.  To quote a movie I recently stumbled upon that was created in my hometown of Kansas City:  "Creating is How We Find Our Superpowers" from Art Saved My Life ( we will feature this very cool film project on this blog here soon.).

 Generating roots also comes with an aspect of the bitter and the sweet.  We lost Luke's dad after a 2 year fight with a rare autoimmune disease.  But, we count our blessings for the memories we have from knowing him and the stories we get to tell because of our relationship with him.  But we dig roots into the memories of Fred and story tell to the people we love the most about living in relationship with him.  That's how we thrive in the messier parts of our theme word of the year: ROOTS.


My favorite photos from 2012:

PHOTO GIVEAWAY: I will give away one print of any of the photos above to the first person that comments on the Life Astonished Facebook Page about how they feel that they THRIVED this year."