preview!

Here are 2 shots from a special little family session I did today. I can't wait to finish editing and share more!

music monday, beard edition: friendly fires

try not dancing to this song.

Music Monday: Matt Costa

I have loved Matt Costa's music since I first heard it about 4 years ago. Matt and I got to see him a couple years ago at Miami and he was SO good. This song is one that I have to do a little dance to every single time it comes on my ipod and then I usually hit repeat at least once or twice. 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.

embrace the camera

These are our friends Seth and Kelly. It feels like we've been friends forever, but we've actually known them for less than 2 years. We lived RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET from each other for a while, but never actually met until we were both in a "Love and Respect" community group through crossroads. Matt and I couple crushed on them from afar for a couple weeks, and then by God's glorious hand we were walking by their house one night when they pulled up and got out of their car. I, not being able to contain my secret love for them any longer, shouted at them. And from there it's all history. They have been great friends to us. They moved to Madison, Wisconsin last year and we miss them terribly. This picture is from when they came to visit us at Christmas time. We had a breakfast and church date. Then we discovered that someone *ahemmattahem* locked our keys in the car, so they stood out in the bitter cold with us until we could someone to drive out and break in our car for us. While doing so, we took this picture. Since I'm thinking of them and missing them today, I thought it appropriate to make it our first "embrace the camera".

p.s. Matt has a job interview today, please be in prayer for him!

30 days of Thankfulness: day 4

this is our niece, Caraline. She is so scrumptious. I could kiss those cheeks for hours! She is about 6 months old, and she is such a blessing to our family. She makes all of our days brighter just by being alive.Love Love LOVE her. She's so squeezable! I'm so thankful for Caraline today.

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.

1866

This post really has no significance. I was a little bored so I messed around with this picture i took of the Roebling. I've been kind of diggin' the fuax-rays in the prints lately. Haven't quite decided if i wanna throw this up on Storenvy yet, so we'll let it simmer on here for a little bit.

What do you think of the new sidebar??? ----->

(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!!

2 new prints.

Just wanted to throw a quick post up to let everyone know that we have 2 new prints up in our Store.

Check out "Hail Gladdening Light" & "Closet"


Working merch tomorrow night for Needtobreathe and The Daylights tomorrow night. Gonna be AWESOME! Probably gonna take a ton of phone pictures. Lookout...

This was our weekend...

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

Matt & Lanna

Promises....

I promise i'm NOT a liar....i just get distracted sometimes. Here are a couple pictures i took of Harlem yesterday =)



Please go to my IWYS profile and comment,rate and share this video with everyone you can. I really want to be one of the 4 people they hire for 2011!!!

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

Let's play some catch-up?!

OOOOOOOOK, so it's been a few days. Busy, busy, busy. Columbus was AMAZING! We're already planning another trip to visit our friends Bethany and Aaron, as well as an early spring family vaca together to Nashville!!! Gonna be some good times.

On Saturday, we went to Columbus' Oktoberfest. Day 14 is the first picture, the other two are extras...


It was still dark when left from Columbus, so we got to see the sunrise. It was amazing...and day 15


Day 16 was monday, and band practice day for The Waking Point. We needed an updated picture, so with the help of the self-timer, this is the end product:


and for day 17, we had coupons to try Chick-Fil-A's new spicy chicken nuggets. AMAZING? How could they put out anything thats not? Seriously. The cow agrees....



p.s., sorry the pictures are all over the place. its acting goofy when i try to post.
Hope you enjoy, regardless.

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.