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toronto in the springtime, 2013. these guys get married this weekend and we’re pretty excited for them!

the single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world // michael pollan

Lately, we’ve been feeling a deep tug to get back to the earth — to the trees, the open skies, and to places more free of the things we’ve built up. Do you ever feel that? I feel it so much lately. I remember as a kid there was a raspberry bush that lined one side of our house, and when the time was right the berries would practically fall off into your outstretched palm and you’d eat them right then and there. I remember in more recent years watching a clip of Jamie Oliver in a kindergarten classroom asking the kids what the names of the vegetables were… and they couldn’t answer… I mean not even the more basic ones, like a potato or a tomato. We think about ingredient lists on packages that are a mile long containing unpronounceable things, and even the things that appear natural being altered in ways beyond what they’re meant to be and it’s enough to feel trapped and decide it’s easier to just not think about it anymore. Have you ever felt that way too?

A few months ago we signed up for a locally sourced and organic produce box to be delivered once every week to our front door, and it has been SUCH a game changer for us! For us to be able to know the farms just outside of the city where our food comes from, and for it to arrive, dirty and covered with soil like it should be and not oddly identical and uniform like you see in the supermarket is a pretty big deal for us. For our eggs to arrive from happy chickens not stacked ten wire cages high, bred to make more eggs for us than naturally possible. And as a small business ourselves, to be able to support other local small business owners who are passionate and commit themselves to the work they believe in is pretty big too, and it fills us up to be able to do that.

How it works is every week a bin full of local, in season fruits and vegetables arrives at our doorstep.. the email telling us what’s coming is sent to Dave’s inbox, and you can customize it to your liking, but I choose to be surprised and it’s like a little taste of Christmas day every week. :) Wild leeks (pictured above) arrived the other week and you know what, I had no idea what they were at first… to see spinach as a full plant, in a bundle with stems and roots, and not pre-washed and packaged into a plastic container… it all reminds me of where our food comes from… that it’s hard work to grow and harvest food. It makes me appreciate more.

After we’ve oohed and ahhed over our stash of goodies, we build up a ‘menu’ of what we’ll make for lunches or dinners that week… if we need any extra items to complete a meal, we go to the grocery store to pick it up. You know, we used to stress out so much before trying to figure out good, wholesome and healthy meals.. trekking to the grocery store only to not be able to find key ingredients or just find that they looked bad that week, not to mention having no idea what chemicals have been used on them.. struggling all the time to come up with something new and exciting. Now we’ve got these amazing and new ingredients and we go from there and it has become so much simpler, and more fun too. We always have enough. And the food that comes tastes amazing.. I don’t know how to describe it, but somehow the carrots just taste ‘carrot-ier’, everything is full of flavour that hits you and reminds you what food should taste like.

You know, Dave & I both grew up hearing ‘one person can make a difference’ a lot, and I think as we get older we get jaded a bit, or smile knowingly at the cute phrase of our childhood.. but I really think that if I choose to believe that I can make a difference, and if you choose to believe that too, and you, and you… and all of us ‘one person’s’ say that our actions do matter, that collectively it will add up to make a huge difference. :) If you’re in Toronto, check out the produce box we have delivered, Mama Earth Organics, and if you decide to try it out, we’d love if you’d let them know we sent you over! :)

Happy Wednesday, you difference makers. xo, jenn

(ps – mama earth organics had nothing to do with me posting about their company, getting back to the land and thinking more about what we eat has really been deep in my soul lately. and i just really love what they do and wanted to share!)

The anthem of the days around here. A lot of sitting out on our back deck in the sun brainstorming in between work. It’s been an interesting little season for us, and it’s been good for us to just take each day at a time. I’ve taken a bit of a break from blogging this past week or two, but I am ready to get back at it and share again and am excited for where this little blog of ours is going. You know, it used to be that we’d use this space to share our work, but I’m excited to see it stretch its wings a bit. Excited for some ideas we have in the pipelines. This big beautiful world of ours is just full of surprises and possibility if you’re willing to just stop and look for it. I’m learning this! So, just a little random hello today. We hope you have a happy weekend friends and can get out there and enjoy, no matter sun nor rain don’t let it keep you inside, ok? xo, jenn

you open your eyes one morning, and there it suddenly is, all around you. spring seemed to arrive overnight around here! the end of winter is a funny thing in a northern climate.. people are starting to come out of their houses… kids are wearing bright clothes and laughing and taking their time as they walk home from school.. there is a general feeling of thawing out and actually feeling warm again for the first time in a long while, haha. friends in colorado drove home through a snow storm yesterday (!!), but here, here it is definitely spring. and i for one, am very glad about this ……and if you’re reading this from snowy colorado, grab those snow shoes this weekend so that one day when you’re old and wrinkly and wise with many adventures to share, you have a great story you can tell the grandkids about what you did, that time there was snow the first weekend in may!

soak it in my friends, and here is to new seasons, or, making the old season stretch just a little bit more so you really get your money’s worth. :)

these past few months we’ve slowly been sharing about our roadtrip out west last november (click the tag ‘november road trip‘ if you want to browse through the archives!)… we set out on our trip with the desire to experience travel in a different way, a way that did not revolve around sights and tourist destinations but as much as we could around people and where they lived and what was important to them. we wanted to give back to people that had meant something to us and also to complete strangers, something from our heart and for us that was photos… i’m sure there were many ways in which we fell short of this goal, but still we learned so much and i am so thankful that we made this trip happen. those four weeks of traveling were some of the best… if you ever get the chance to just pack up and go, i couldn’t recommend it more. it might not even be as hard to do as you may think… an adventure may lay just outside your front door in many cases. we’d just encourage you to take whatever chance you get. many thanks for following along as we’ve shared! we’re now taking suggestions for the next adventure in the comments section below… ;)

Traveling with a view to connect with as many people as possible along the way is really humbling. We’d never before really traveled the way that we did on our trip out to the west coast in November… the number of kind souls that opened their doors to us, fed us, had amazing conversation with us, basically invited us in with open arms…. it was the best thing possible I could have hoped to have gained from this experience.

Mary and Joel are two of those kind souls, and they were our last stop on the way from Toronto to Los Angeles. We said goodbye to them overlooking Monterey Bay sometime in the mid-afternoon and booked it to LA to catch our early morning flight the next day to fly home. These two. We met them in Portland (where they live) earlier that year as we both attended the same photography conference and we felt like we’d connect again at some point.. part way through our trip we heard from them that they were spending a few weeks in their airstream and would we have time to stop by to catch up? Yes. We met in Santa Cruz and they took us up the mountains outside of town to the plot of land where they and their two cats have their airstream parked. The view is incredible, we sat in the warm sun and ate deep fried burritos together… and our friendship was sealed :)

These guys inspire us in their attitudes about life and in their enthusiasm for living adventurously. Their Portland/Airstream way of life is unconventional and awesome and one that we give a hearty two thumbs up to.

We made this for them below, we just had this picture of them in our minds, driving from rainy Portland to their little sunny getaway and so we made this little video :)

but it’s also the story of how children fill a morning of waiting, of navigating through icy snow and of kisses from grandma (and best friends), of giving a thumbs up on a job well done. it’s the story of remembering those who were taken away from us, and in the remembering having a part of them there in our thoughts and hearts. it’s the story of the young mothers who went to play group together with their babies, dancing together with their now-grown kids and a few more years of memories under their belts. it’s the story of looking back and looking forward. remembering and dreaming. all while trying to soak in every moment that happens.

it’s the story of the normal mixing with the extraordinary, and finding that the normal is extraordinary.

amy and steve, you are extraordinary. thank you again for inviting us in.

hello, friends.

it’s funny how sometimes in life a lot of non-connected things seem to all conspire together at the same time, at the right time, so much so that it makes you shut up, sit down and pay attention.

on the day the bombs went off at the finish line of the boston marathon, dave and i had been out for a walk. it was a sunny afternoon, and after a lot of rain and cold here, we decided to take advantage of it and walk through the park near our place where we don’t go nearly often enough. a few weeks earlier the universe and a lot of random happenings and random connections and kind-hearted people gave us a seat at a table shared with other photographers gathered to talk about the gift we have of making photos that really matter, so that had been on our minds. a few days earlier, we had discovered a very inspiring blog and later, this particular post, so that had been on our minds too. we walked in the door to a message from my mom with the news of what had happened. you see, my (jenn) brother lives in boston, and when we finally got through to him on his cell phone, the first thing heard was a lot of sirens from the other end. he had been downtown with friends who were visiting, thankfully not near the finish line at the time it happened, but in moments like that, when your mind starts racing in those few minutes of waiting, the truth that life is fleeting hits home.

that night we worked, hard. every day since, we’ve sat down and boiled down what we really believe, and asked whether we are really living it (this was hard stuff). we watched the incredible film recommended on the very inspiring blog one night, and it spurred us on even more. this is not about a new direction, but rather about the fact that life is short. life is too short not to say what we mean and not to pursue what’s important to us. it’s too short not to have the courage to do that. we have only one shot to leave our mark and we have no shot at all by playing it small.

we’ve made some changes here that i hope you’ll go and check out. :)  it’s our hope it says better what we want to be about and what’s in our hearts.

and if you get the chance, please watch 180 south, in solitude or with someone important to you (it’s available on american netflix or itunes), i think it will mean something to each one of you. let’s all go find our adventures that are out there for us with courage.

180º SOUTH Trailer from Woodshed Films on Vimeo.

I keep a (somewhat) daily journal. One thing that’s important to know about me is that except for a few things, I rarely ever work in absolutes, and so this journal has always been whatever I wanted it to be.. sometimes I write everyday for a while about my thoughts, and sometimes I go a week or two without writing a word, never feeling guilty but simply knowing my journal is there when I feel the need to write. But sometimes I flip back and when I flip back to last fall, around the time I was thinking of ‘quitting’ social media, I read the words of someone who was tired and who was scared of what others might think. Oh I poured endlessly over the decision to cut and run, and for many weeks I felt so conflicted. I crafted the words I would say and I fantasized about my ‘goodbye’ messages and clicking delete on my accounts. These thoughts took over a lot of real estate in my brain :) Social media had become a real source of negativity for me, and it was bringing. me. down. in a serious way.

So I did. One day I stopped signing in and didn’t sign in again for a long time. I really need it, and it was really good for me, so good for me, to step away completely.

I realized that there had been a lot of noise in my life. Noise that was telling me I wasn’t good enough, noise that was telling me I would never be loud enough or clever enough or popular enough to be heard. Thoughts of ‘how should I tweet about this?’ that were clouding my brain and robbing me of really experiencing things. It was really good just to get back to myself, and my life, the things I wanted and valued. To not feel the pressure to share all the time, or to feel that I had to shout over all the other voices. To stop seeking the ‘high’ of number of likes or favourites or follows.

What I want to say is this: I realized that social media is neither good nor bad. It’s an inanimate object.. it just is. Like everything, it’s about the relationship we have with it. Our relationship with it is what determines whether it’s good for us, or not.

And it can be really hard to be really honest about the state of any relationship. :)

For a while I thought I would make a statement by just choosing not to participate. I’ll show them what I think of social media!! (I will? And who exactly is this ominous ‘them’?!) But I realized that it’s kind of like the voter who says the system sucks, and therefore refuses to cast a vote. When you take your voice out of the game completely.. you kind of give up the privilege of having a voice. Even if it’s a small voice.

The very nature of social media works like this (or at least, this is how I was using it, 99% of the time). It went like this: I’m bored, or lonely, and I have this little window of time that I want to fill, I’m craving some outside input into my life right now… craving some kind of social interaction.. I click through my instagram/twitter/fb/etc accounts and see what all my friends and strangers alike are up to. This is when we take the role of the consumers. The disconnect comes here — the ones creating the content are usually the ones who are actually doing something noteworthy.. ie here I am having the best day on my trip around Europe, or here I am with my best friend eating the first ice cream of the summer. And the thing is that here I am sitting by my lonesome and a part of me is wishing I was you having that wonderful experience. Or I wish I was the friend you invited for ice cream. Or I let myself think wow, she sure has a lot of time to instagram while I’ve been waiting for a reply to my email from a few days ago… and all these feelings really suck. Comparing my life to yours robs me of my own joy, makes me think less of mine and more of yours. When yes, our lives are probably different in many ways, but there are probably an equal number of high and lows in both too. But in those moments, we forget about that.

What did I find during those months away from social media? :) The biggest thing I first noticed was I felt a sudden calmness. A weight lifted and anxiety removed of that feeling of having to keep up. I felt a clarity of what was important to me, without being swayed by what others were doing or saying. I could get back to interacting with friends face-to-face or one-on-one over email in a genuine way (no more oh, I already know that, I saw it on your instagram) and I actually enjoyed these interactions more. There was of course a freeing up of time, more creativity and ideas going on in my mind, more real conversations between me + my husband. If ever you want to get a clear picture of the hold something has over your life and to get your priorities back in alignment, I’d strongly encourage you to try to go without it for a season.

So…. where am I now about all of this? :)  Like I said, I’ve realized that I’m not really one for absolutes in life. I think of social media now much like I think of eating properly… I’ve never been one for diets or deprivation. It makes more sense for me to think about how the food I eat makes me feel. I think we all know how we’re going to feel after eating junk food…  And I think that the minute we blacklist something as bad all the time and deprive ourselves of it, the more it becomes a game of willpower, a game we will all sooner or later lose. It’s not about feeling a weird sense of pride by staying away from Facebook, nor is it about making it a kind of ‘reward’ for a stretch of ‘good behaviour’. For me, it’s been about realizing there are things that will make me far happier that I can fill my life with instead of all that junk food.

These days, I do pop up now and then on social media, but what’s changed I think is the intention. I’ve realized that sometimes I do feel like I have something to say that might be encouraging to someone else out there… or I want to encourage someone in what they’re doing. But after taking such an intentional break, I think I’ve broken that ‘need’ to post updates all the time. I really try not to let my posts or words be the cause of the same kind of negativity or discouragement for someone else. When I go and visit other blogs now, instead of just scrolling through my social media feed and clicking on the links that come up as I used to, every single visit is with the intention that I want to leave a comment that will encourage this friend/writer/blogger/photographer/human being in what they’re doing. It’s helped my relationship with social media change from one of jealousy and letting it consume my thoughts and cloud my own experiences, to one that allows me to have the most genuine interactions I can on it… which, if it’s going to be a part of our world, that is honestly the best use I can think of for it. :)

I do still really limit my time on these things, because I know it can spiral downwards really quickly. And after my own experiences, I’d really encourage anyone to think about taking a break and seeing how it feels. Like I read somewhere recently, the internet is partial truths, it gives us the ability to heavily curate ourselves and it gives the false impression of relationship and community. The internet is also what we make of it, and I’m trying to do what I can to be as vulnerable and encouraging and real as I can whenever I’m a part of it.

Otherwise, the real world has been treating me well, and I can’t say that I’ll look back any time soon. You know guys, it sounds super cliche to say, but this is our one life.. this is the one chance I get at being in my twenties, living in this place, being with these people, doing these things.. and I want to savour + remember that while I can. :)

a million thanks to our friend athena for these images of us in this post.

there are a handful of cities in the world where the minute i stepped into them, i knew i could live there. sf became one of them in the first thirty seconds.

also, our first night in san francisco we had driven all day and were tired so we ordered indian food and i found the joy of painting with bob ross on tv. if you grew up watching the joy of painting with bob ross on tv then you know exactly what i’m talking about. :)

oooh and i thought i’d share a few of our SAN FRANCISCO’S MUST VISITS..

1. The Phoenix Hotel, such a cool vibe 2. FourBarrel Coffee, busy for good reason 3. The Golden Gate bridge on a foggy day. We were so lucky to spend a warm sunny day in sf, but i found watching the fog and listening to the foghorns the morning we left immensely peaceful. Even though we were only there for a day and spent most of it just walking the neighbourhoods, I definitely left my heart in San Francisco, November 2012 :)