Category — Photos

That was Sean Carabine’s motto, and one he definitely lived his life according to. Today will always be a day of remembering and reminiscing for all who knew him. It has been a long three years without him, unbelievably long, and yet, sometimes it feels like it has only been days.

I wanted to share a playlist today in memory of Sean. This is a playlist that was created for his memorial services, initially. Over time, I have added and deleted songs from this list. I hope that you will enjoy it as much as I have. Some of the songs are songs that Sean loved, others are songs that remind me of him. (You can click on the play button to listen to the entire playlist right here.)

And, as a special bonus, here are some of the photos from the slideshow we ran over the weekend when we had our memorial gathering for Sean. I hope you all enjoy these as much as I do! (I apologize for the slideshow running off on the sidebar, but I wanted to make the photos as big as possible.)

We are officially into the second month of the new year and it has been an incredible year so far!

January brought lots of fun and surprises. I can hardly believe the turns my life has taken in the last few weeks! Let’s dive right in, but I am going to save the best news for last!

We started January off with a gigantic party with our closest friends to celebrate Shawn’s divorce finally being final! It has been such a long time coming, almost three years, and we were all so happy for him! A true fresh start. To celebrate, we had everyone over to get the night started with some drinks and snacks and we rented a limo bus to take us out on the town! We had an awesome fun time and it was a great way to start a new year!

Our last big hurrah for January was the Polar Bear Plunge. This is an awesome fundraiser for the Special Olympics of Maryland. The whole idea is to raise money for a wonderful cause, get a little crazy with your friends, and take a dip into the Chesapeake Bay, often frozen and always always cold! So Shawn and I ventured out with his boss’ Krav Maga martial arts group and boarded a bus to Sandy Point beach where we would take part in the big plunge. This all would have been fine and good if Maryland hadn’t been hit by a nice surprise snowstorm and 13 degree weather! It was freezing and started snowing at around 8:30 am. We were scheduled to plunge at 1:00. That’s a lot of waiting around in the cold and snow to jump into the frozen Bay. What the hell where we thinking??!!?!? As it turns out, since this is my first year actually making it into the water, it will also be my last! I am done with the Polar Bear Plunge. We had a fun time, until waiting on the beach to plunge and trying to thaw out after. We have had our fun with the PBP and will now retire our frozen bathing suits!

And the biggest most exciting news ever happened in January too! (drumroll…blrlrlrlrllrlrlrlrlrlrlrlrl…!)

Shawn and I are engaged to be married!

As of January 22nd we are officially a betrothed couple! I could not be more excited as this starts a whole new chapter of my life and our lives together. It’s amazing. I want to do a separate post for the whole story, but here is a little ring bling to tie you over!

It’s absolutely gorgeous! I could not love it more! The kite set diamond and the mill grain along the sides, it’s so vintage and beautiful! Thanks Babe, you’ve done good!

It is very hard to believe that we are starting a whole new decade, not just a new year, but a new decade. So much good and bad has happened in the last decade, I can’t even imagine what the new decade is going to bring my way, but I am excited to find out.

This New Years Eve was quite low-key. Shawn and I were joined by my mom, sister, aunt, uncle, and little cousin. We had a great time, playing games and hanging out. We don’t have cable tv anymore, so watching the ball drop in Times Square, which is definitely a huge part of New Years Eve for me, was a little challenging. We were able to find it being streamed online and so we watched that happily, but we were sad that the streaming was a little slow and we really celebrated the official New Year about 3 minutes late (shhhh don’t tell anyone!! )

Anyway, it was a very enjoyable night and a nice way to welcome in the new year, calm and relaxed. Here are some of the photos from the night, some of my favorites are of Shawn and I dancing a chorus line to New York New York! Ha!

I am back today to post the highlights of the second half of 2009. This year has definitely been a busy one and a good one. But now the New Year is here and it is time to put another year behind me and move forward. But before I turn to go, here is what happened during the second half of my year.

July found us gallivanting all over the place. First we spent a whole week in the Outer Banks of North Carolina with our good friends Jessop and Lauren, and Mike. We rented a really nice beach house and had a great time. Then we drove from North Carolina to West Virginia to meet my family for our big family reunion. Wow, what a trek! Despite the rain we had that weekend, we had a great time with everyone.

In August, we ventured back to good ole’ San Diego, our home away from home. We went to visit our dear TracyAnn and keep her company for a week. It was great to be there for so long, and we had such a blast while we were there.

In September we took our annual Labor Day trip to Ocean City. This year Nikki, Andy, and Sami joined us at the beach for the weekend. We had a great weekend of golf and good times.

October and November were really busy months for us. We hired Nikki to work with us on our new photography project Allure Studios. We visited my parents on Halloween and had a good time with the family. Then Thanksgiving we spent with Shawn’s family and then with mine. It was a very low-key holiday, and apparently so low-key that we didn’t take any photos!

December brought even more plans and we were busy as usual. The first weekend in December we got together with my mom’s family for our annual candy making.

Around the middle of December we took a group of friends to Hampden to see the Christmas Street lights. Nikki, Andy, Jessop and Lauren had never been to see the Christmas lights so this was a great opportunity to take them to enjoy the sights and experience.

The month continued with a Blizzard the week before Christmas. That was awesome! School was closed for two whole days and it was a wonderful much needed time off work. The night of the storm, Nikki, Andy and Sami came over to visit and enjoy being snowed in with ys.

And last, but not least, the end of December brought us another wonderful Christmas filled with our fantastic families and lots of good memories.

Well that’s a wrap! 2009 was a fantastic year but I am so excited to see what my 30th year has to bring me!

Happy New Year to all of you! Live Well, Laugh Often, and Love Much!

I do so love a new year. A fresh start. Moving on. Leaving the past behind. Well, maybe not leaving it behind completely, just tucking it away for safe keeping. New goals and hopes and dreams. New planning and plodding. Though I am not quite sure what is on my plans and goals list for 2010 yet, I do know that 2009 was a wonderful year, and if it is any indication of how the new year will go, I better hold on to my hat.

Here are the highlights of 2009, in photos of course, from the first half of the year.

January started off with lots of parties and nights out on the town with friends…

We closed out the first month of the year with the Polar Bear Plunge. Oh what a fun, fun day!!

February was a lot of fun, but surprisingly not a lot of photos. I know we took some from our Valentine’s Day weekend trip to Deep Creek Lake, but I have no idea where they are!

March was my birthday (again no photos…how does this keep happening?) But it was also the wedding of a family friend, Christen. She is my sister’s best friend. We all had a great time at her wedding.

April was Easter, which is always a nice time with our family.

April was also Leah’s Bridal Shower. I was so happy to be celebrating with my bestie. We had a great time planning her surprise.

May was our annual trip to Ocean City. Once with the gals for the Rubber Stamp convention and once for Memorial Day.

June was a wonderful, amazing month! Lots of fun and good memories! We had a very busy month in June…HonFest, No Doubt in concert, Leah’s Bachelorette party, Bert and Leah’s wedding, and camping and Dorney Park with Shawn’s family. Good times!

Well that is the first half of the year. I will post the second half tomorrow. I can’t believe how many good memories I have from this year.

Well the festivities have all occurred and another Christmas has come and gone. It was a wonderful holiday around our house. We spent Christmas Eve with my Mom’s family, then Shawn’s parents and sister spent the night here at our house. We woke up Christmas morning to open gifts together and then Shawn and I headed to my mom’s house to open gifts with them. After we finished there we met with the rest of Shawn’s family at his aunt’s house. We finished off the night back at home for dinner, gifts, and games with my Dad’s side of the family. Needless to say, it was a very busy couple of weeks.

Today Shawn and I slept in (way in!) and had a very leisurely day. We played some Wii and I watched Love Actually while Shawn played with some of his new Christmas techie goodies. I LOVE the movie Love Actually, I might venture to say that it is my favorite movie.

Correction: It is DEFINITELY my favorite movie!

Here are the pictures from Christmas Day. I will have to retrieve the pictures from Christmas Eve and post them later. I stupidly forgot my own camera and so I had to use my sister’s camera. I apologize for this being so big that it hangs into the sidebar, but I wanted the pictures to be large enough to enjoy.

It has been another very busy weekend around here these last few days. Saturday I spent the day with Lauren and Carolyn working on Christmas cards. It was so nice to take the time and enjoy each others’ company and have some crafty time.

While I was out with the girls, Shawn was a busy boy at home. He put up our tree, (Yay!), it’s not decorated yet, but it’s up! Then, he and his Dad built the table for our soon-to-be train garden! I am so excited about this new addition to our Christmas traditions and decorations. I think Shawn is pretty excited too, and we can’t wait to see how it turns out. I will definitely post pictures here when it’s all finished.

Saturday night was a night full of one of our favorite Christmas traditions and activities. Shawn and I went with Andy, Nikki, Sami, Jessop, and Lauren to Hampden to visit the Christmas Street lights. You can read all about that event here. This is definitely a Baltimore tradition and we love to go out, no matter how cold or crowded, to see the lights and walk down the street taking in all of the Christmas goodness. These residents of this block of 34th street do an amazing job of decorating and it is a labor of love all in an effort to share the spirit of Christmas. Here are our pictures from our visit.

Today was a day of shopping and family Sunday night family dinner with the Partos and Grimes’. That is always so much fun! Tonight we went to Pizza Johns, one of our favorite places to eat and we had a special visit from Santa and Mrs. Clause while we were there. You can see the pictures from that here in an album on my sister’s Facebook page: Santa pics.

Right now Shawn and I are camped out on the couch with our tree lit, Christmas candle burning, fireplace going, watching Home Alone, another of our favorite Christmas movies.

Here are the Christmas music videos for this weekend.

The first is one of my top five favorite Christmas songs, “Wonderful Christmastime”. I remember seeing this video on Vh1 when they used to play Christmas videos. It’s so fun!

The next is another modern classic, U2 – “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”. I love Bono’s voice in this song. Just another song that instantly puts me in the mood for Christmas.

Today was a super busy day. I took the day off from work to get some holiday things done that absolutely needed to be done. I needed to finish my Christmas shopping and get started on the decorating. I was almost successful with the shopping, but not so much on the decorating. But that’s ok. I still have time.

Tonight, my dad’s cousin and aunt were in town from California visiting at my grandfathers. To celebrate, we had crabs for Christmas! They were so yummy! We had a great time listening to the stories from my grandfather, great uncle, and my dad. It was an awesome evening with family. Lots of reminiscing and good fun.

my sister Jackie

wow, what a mess!

Shawn, my sister Courtney, and her friend Kacie

my darling sisters, Courtney & Jackie

Tonight’s video, since it is only fitting, is Crabs for Christmas, by David Deboy…A true Bawlmer classic! (Oh, the video is pretty darn funny too!)

Tonight was a work night for the gang here at Allure Studios. However, I did manage to get a few holiday tasks completed. First of all, I stayed at school late to work on a special Christmas surprise with a co-worker, MaryGin. I am super excited about this surprise and can’t wait until I can share it here. But I don’t want to spoil the surprise, so I can’t say very much. But I can say that it was particularly fun to collaborate on this project and we had a great time.

Tonight I finished my holiday photo slideshow that I created to show on our living room tv over the holidays while we have company. It is a sort of Christmas and New Year retrospective collection. It is great! I think I am pretty pleased with how it will turn out. I haven’t seen it scrolling on the big screen yet, but it should look pretty good. It was fun, and a little sad, to go back through some of these photos. Here are some of my favorites from the bunch.

I can’t wait for my friends and family to see this slideshow! I think they will all enjoy it very much! My plan is to add to it every year with new holiday photos. It is something that I hope my kids will one day enjoy. I would also like to go back and add some holiday photos from my childhood and Shawn’s childhood. But that is going to require a LOT of scanning photos and I just don’t have time for that this year!

For tonight’s music video, I promised this one to my dear friend MaryGin. She was not familiar with this song and the video is just incredible, so I needed to share it with her! (By the way…by “incredible” I mean totally 80s with the long hair and all! ) This is another of my favorite modern Christmas classics. I mean who doesn’t love John Cougar Mellencamp…er….John Cougar…er…John Mellencamp…well you know who I am talking about!

Enjoy!

Wow, it has been a very busy two days. I was so exhausted yesterday (Sunday) after running around town and candy making all day on Saturday and then running all day, I totally went to sleep without writing my blog entry for the day!

So my day six activity was really a jumpstart to a pretty good size project. Shawn and I have a new Apple TV in the living room and one of the coolest things about it is that you can run slideshows from your iPhoto library. We are currently using this feature to show portfolio photos during our photo sessions. I had the idea to use this to create a holiday photo slideshow. So I spent a bit of time last night choosing my favorite holiday pictures and Shawn will do the same and then we will add them to the library and they will play on the slideshow on our TV. So awesome! I think (and hope!) that everyone who comes to visit us during the holidays will enjoy the photos. I know that I will love seeing them.

Day 7 is today and it was another busy evening. The activity for tonight was burning my new holiday scent wax tarts from Yankee Candle. I am a big candle fan and the holiday season is my favorite time to burn tarts. Really from fall right on through winter. Although, this year we have been burning them all year for the studio. My new scent is absolutely perfect for Christmas! It could be my favorite scent that Yankee Candle has ever come up with!

It’s the perfect mix of berries and pine scent. It’s just plain awesome! And I love it because even thought my house is nowhere near ready for Christmas, (admittedly, my fall leaf wreath and garland are still hanging in my foyer!) the house was filled with Christmas smells all night. And it is pretty chilly tonight, so we had the fireplace going all night.

The main event, despite all of my hype about it was not the candles, it was a new holiday movie. We rented Four Christmases from iTunes with Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon, and it was absolutely hilarious! It will definitely be added to our holiday movie viewing in the future!

So before I head off to lullaby land for the night, here are the holiday music videos for day 6 and 7…

This is strangely one of my favorite Christmas songs. I like the beat and the song is just fun! I had no idea there was a video for this song, but how fun!!

And this one is because I used to LOVE Wilson Phillips when I was younger. And, again, because it’s fun!