Music Monday....with a beard

So i haven't been doing much posting on here, because i've been putting more on my personal tumblr, but music Monday is right up my alley.

Mutemath is probably one of the bands the influences me the most. I love everything them. This is one of their newer videos.....if you haven't listened to them...you need to. Enjoy

Be Mine

There's another version of this picture HERE

30 days of Thankfulness: day 6

Today I've been thinking a lot about community. The past couple of years have been very up and down for me in terms of loneliness and longing for community. I think one of the hardest lessons for me to learn as a new wife was that Matt is the most important and constant community I'll ever have. Over the past 2 years, I've learned to be content in the fact that I have God and I have Matt, no matter where we live. No matter how far away from my closest girl friends we are. It seems like as soon as I learned that, The Lord lead us right back to where I had always wanted to go in the first place! Now I am SO content in knowing that I have Matt with me as my most faithful friend and companion, and the fact that we are living so close to woman who I adore is the icing on the cake! At the moment, we are living in the bottom level of our friends Josh and Tyana's bi level house. Community living is such a blessing when the people you live with are intentional about being in community with you. I guess that's the key, though, right?! Josh and Ty have been a great blessing to us. They've been married a lot longer than us, and they've been through already what we're dealing with now. It feels good to have them around all the time. They hold us accountable, but in a very healthy and loving way. I've already learned a lot about what a "family discussion" looks like from them. Before we moved in, every time we were going to talk to them about the next 6 months and what it would look like, I would seriously get knots the size of New York in my stomach. And before we had our first "family meeting", I had the same thing. Not because of them, but because I've always just had kind of a negative experience with family discussions, and since that's how I saw it, I was expecting them to make me feel like I'm a failure at life. But really they just love us. And that's the most important thing in community. That you LOVE each other. I'm reading the book Bittersweet by Shauna Niequist. *side note* Shauna is one of my very favorite writers. When I read her work, I feel like I could go to her house and hang out with her and she wouldn't think I was awkward or weird or psychotic for showing up at her house. I feel like we're friends. That's why I'm smitten with her work.*end side note : )* she talks about community in the book, and everything she says just hits home with me. Community is so important. And community with the RIGHT PEOPLE is even more important. I'm so beyond words thankful to be here right now, in the community that I love, with people who build into us and let us build into them. I am so happy I could burst. I could go on and on and on about how thankful I am for this, but I think you get the picture : )

P.S. If you'd like to check out Shauna Niequist's book, Bittersweet, you should also check out her other one, Cold Tangerines. They are both at the top of my list. So, SO good.

30 Days of Thankfulness: Day 3

Today I am thankful for one simple thing. The music of Kate Nash. This girl is fly. I was totally obsessed with her about 3 or 4 years ago, then somehow sort of forgot about her for a while, and today I randomly thought of her again. Her music is so fun and upbeat. I can't listen to it without dancing and getting in a good mood. I totally bopped around to Kiss That Grrrrrl whilst putting away laundry today. She is awesome. You should love her if you don't already. There's nothing like good music to put one in a great mood. I'm thankful for that.

Frost Like Ashes

A BeardedLady Christmas

What a great Christmas! This was our first Christmas with kids involved and it was so much fun to just snap snap snap away at every move they made. Caraline loved eating the bows and playing with the paper and reaching for everyone's drinks. She's starting to develop her own personality and it's so much fun to watch her! Madison, our 6 year old niece, is so sassy and funny. She is hilarious. We love them. Here are some pictures of our Christmas.

mounds and mounds of presents.

Madison

Cara

nom nom nom

Madison got a notepad to practice her writing in and this is what she wrote : )

We played Pretty Pretty Princess!

And we played Twister!

It was fun. The end.

(not so) random thoughts from the lady's mind...

Boy, I sure do wish I were as good at blogging as I always thought I would be. In my blog dreams, I always envisioned myself exactly like elsie. She is my blog hero. But alas, I let the everyday stuff get in the way of something that I would like to be a creative outlet for me. I found out this week that at the beginning of the year, my schedule will be opening up quite a bit. As in, I don't have a job. It's no secret that the huz has no "real job" right now either, aside from his awesome band. So that adds up to a very small income for the Hoffman's.Rather than freaking out about this, my awesome bearded other half has encouraged me to focus on the dreams I've been wanting to follow that I haven't been able to follow to the extent I wanted to; like our store, being creative together, building relationships with other creatives who love Jesus,and this blog. So rather than being afraid, I'm choosing to trust that our God is bigger than a 9-5. He is bigger than a paycheck. He will provide for us. And there is a gift in every page of every chapter of life. I'm choosing to believe that the gift in this new chapter is the freedom for me to follow my dream and be creative. And, thanks to the gentle and passionate encouragement of a certain bearded stud, and the many prayers I've received over the past few days from people who love me , I can say with complete truth that I am grateful and ready for this next chapter.

I can also say that we will actually start writing on this thing. And I can't wait to build deeper relationships with other creatives all over the country!!

This was our weekend...

Thanks for stopping by =) Run by our Store and check out the prints we have for sale.

Matt & Lanna

Today....

There WILL be more pictures. We've slipped a little on the posting, but we're not quittin'! Stay posted for some more pictures tonight. Until then, please go HERE and watch,comment,rate & share.

Thanks.
Matt

12.

Got my face rocked tonight by my good friends Brent Reed, Jonny B. Tony and Randy at Fountain Square for the Midpoint Music Festival. These guys are incredible and i look forward to sharing the stage with them soon. I tried to get some good shots of them on stage, but the lighting was awful and we have inadequate gear to get good night time shots while stuff's moving all around and such. One day =)

Anyway, here are a couple of shots that turned out pretty good i think.

i actually like the motion blur in this. Most of the time blurriness can ruin a shot, but this one just feels right to me. If you haven't listened to Brent's music, check it out here


This one is by far my favorite of the night, and the picture for Day 12. Jonny, if you've never met him, is one of the kindest people i know. He's got such a heart for people, and this picture portrays that, i think. Again, the motion blur makes it awesome, for me.

We're heading to Columbus this weekend to visit a couple friends. Should be an awesome time and there WILL be pictures. If we don't update while we're there, lookout for the day 13 and 14 all at once =)

Day 10

It's a day late, but here's number 10:

Also, since i've got you here, if you haven't already (and even if you have) my band, The Waking Point posted the first song off our debut e.p. "Lifted" this week. Go to Facebook or Purevolume and listen to "Faint" and add us, like us, comment, tweet, whatever.

The artwork for the e.p. is one of BeardedLady's photos. It looks pretty nice. Here it is:

Something a little different....

Crossroads is doing a series called "PLAY", so in lieu of that, i wanted to give you some videos that make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.


This is how the series started... a flash mob to "Fireflies" by Owl City



"Marcel the Shell with Shoes On"



This one reminds me of our friend Seth. Cracks me right up.

NKY Exploration Mega-Post!

That title makes this sound pretty epic. Basically, i drove around Northern Kentucky a bit over the past two days and took a few pictures along the way. I like em =)

If you're ever in Ludlow, KY (which there aren't a TON of reasons) go up River Breeze Dr and check out the view. pretty incredible. We'd like to go up for sunset one night.


Shepard Fairey visited Cincy a couple months ago and left his mark all over the city. This isn't a mural, but it made for a cool picture, in my opinion. Not even sure if he put the sticker there or if it was one of his disciples. I just love the Cincy Skyline in the background.


I grew up in good ole' Williamstown, KY. If you've been there, you probably didn't stay long because there's really nothing to do there. However, one thing i love about being away from the city is that most things stay the same. This driveway is about a quarter of a mile long, all gravel, and amazing. It's just a little down from the house i grew up in and looks exactly as it always has. It's always fascinated me for some reason, and this, literally is as close i've ever come to walking it's length. Maybe one day i'll brave the adventure and see where it leads me.Just another gem of the country. No story here, it just caught my eye as we walked past.

There ya have it. I hope it held up to the epic-ness of the title. Tomorrow should be good. Lanna's mom is coming down from Oxford for her first Findlay Market experience.

Nighty-night kiddies.

Day 7

So it was an eventful day today. There are more pictures that we'll post later, but we wanted to leave you with at least the Day 7 picture of the "365", compliments of Five Guys Burgers and Fries at Rookwood Commons. I think this is about as delicious a half eaten burger can look =)

day 6

Date night for the Hoffmans included sitting at the airplane viewing spot at CVG and this place...


...yumsville...

Day 5

the lady is baking cookies for her class, because she's the best preschool teacher ever.

Day 4

sorry we missed this last night. Here's Day 4........on day 5 =) Today's will come later.

Day 3, Lanna's turn.

Sunrise over the flood wall. It's always nice to start your day out with something pretty!

CRABS!

Joe's Crab Shack is one of those places that we rarely consider going, but wins when we do. Everything thing about our experiences there have been magical. Good service, good environment, great food. Friday night we had date night and ended up at Joe's in Newport. Now, i've had crab before but never crab legs. What better time to try them! FYI...they were amazing. Fire-grilled snow shoe crab. Do it. Here was my reaction:

I'll make sure lanna posts the day 3 picture for our 365 challenge. We're doing things a little differently than you're supposed to, i guess, but who cares. it's whatevs.

365, mini-shoot.

So Lanna and I have been trying to figure out a good way to motivate ourselves to get this blog running. She posed that we do the 365 challenge. I said ok. However, on the first day, she's crazy sick...been bed ridden all day today. What does that mean? I'm in charge of the picture(s) today =) Here's what came of the challenge for 09/12/10. enjoy




Puffy (as i'm calling him, since we're super close friends, now) was great and really easy to work with. He gave me complete creative control, which is always cool. Now the question is, which one should be the 1st picture of the 365? Let us know your thoughts! Comment on here or follow us and let us know on Facebook and Twitter!

-Matt