Happy Halloween everybody!

Last year we had three trick-or-treaters knock on our door.  They said, “Süß oder sauer?”  (Sweet or sour?)  I loved it!  We’re not expecting any trick-or-treaters in America this year since we’re in the country, so we’ll be in town for the harvest festival.

How many trick-or-treaters do you get?

My favorite part of an American fireworks display is the grand finale.  Hugs flashes of colors, loud booms, and a feeling of deep emotion – pure love!  So as we wrap up the two-week-long celebration of Making this Home, Gadanke, and well – being here with you, it’s time for the finale.  What do you say?!

Free “No Snooping” gift tags with every order over $25 (before shipping) at Gadanke for the rest of the month!

Yep.  Absolutely free; absolutely yours to stop holiday snoops.  Leave me a note as you checkout if you have a favorite color.  Otherwise I’ll pick out something fun for you.

Thank you all for being here and helping me with a beautiful second year at Making This Home and first year at Gadanke.  I so look forward to what the future brings all of us.

I’m so happy to introduce you to another beautiful handmade artist today.  Kelly of ekovisions is a photographer.  She has such an incredible ability to soften the colors of her work and really make everything pop in such a unique way.  I really like introducing you to new artists and small business women.  Not only is Kelly both of those, but she’s just now launching the two together.  (Huge cheers to you, Miss Kelly!)

It takes great courage, and I know a lot of you often ask me, “Weren’t you scared to start an online shop?”  Well Kelly’s got some really great insight on that and how we can all improve our photography.  I hope you enjoy her thoughts.  And don’t forget to check out the giveaway she’s offering at the end of this post!

Now here’s Kelly…

1. Tell us a little about yourself. I understand your passion for photography began at my favorite National Park, Yellowstone!

I started really getting into photography when I took the camera my parents got for their wedding to Yellowstone when I was 16. This continued through travels in college and grad school, including an uber-awesome backpacking trip through Thailand. I just wanted to bring home those places so I could always be standing next to that palm tree or on top of that mountain.

A few years back I had a stressful day job and started shooting flower bouquets at night to blow off steam, and did so while kinda dancing around. You can see some of those in the abstract section of my gallery. That started my abstract obsession, and I merged the love of nature and abstract together a couple years ago once I figured out how to do the same technique outside in brighter light.

2. How did you learn to take such stunning photographs?

Mostly practice and experimentation. I’ve bought and soaked up a ton of books on photography, and took a couple of fantastic photography workshops with some famous photographers, David Muench and Jack Dykinga. But mostly I just shoot a LOT of pixels these days, and thank the universe that I don’t have to pay for film anymore. I love the instant feedback you can get from digital cameras—so you take a photo, see if it works, and if not redo it right then and there.

3. What has photography taught you about creating a simpler life?

Photography gets me out into nature by myself a lot, at quiet times usually. I’m the one walking on the beach in a down coat and snow boots trying to get a shot of a wintry sunset. Just getting out there helps me know that these moments are the ones that count, and what I want to be doing with my time. It helps me appreciate the stillness and quiet and beauty of each moment.

4. You just started an Etsy shop. What was the scariest thing about starting, and how did you overcome it?

Is there only one scary thing? I think it’s all pretty scary. I know I went through lots of questions over and over, particularly with regards to pricing and what sizes to offer. One of the biggest things that helps me get past the scary is to realize that everything will evolve. So if I want to change anything later, I totally can. Nobody’s out there waiting for you to make a mistake. Just like any business, my etsy shop will evolve and change over time.

5. What’s a favorite piece in your shop right now?

Oh, that’s so tough! One of my favorites is a new photo, Equinox, that I took just this month in New Hampshire. I’ve been working for a while to get some abstracts of a variety of nature subjects, and I fell in love this beauty.

6. Can you offer any tips on how we could all improve our photography?

Study the light. It’s all about the light, not about the subject. An average tree will look spectacular in great light, and a spectacular flower will look blah in mediocre light. Generally most things look better around sunrise (I am so not a morning person) or sunset, when everything gets that warm glow. Rainy days are your best friend, and a great time to go shoot flowers or leaves—next time it rains, notice how all the greens just pop.

7. And finally, what tip would you give to someone who’s interested in launching a small business to sell her creations?

Just start. And keep going. You’ll probably do some stuff in the beginning that you realize later wasn’t the best decision, but it’s totally better than doing nothing, and you can always change it later. So start… and you never know where your next sale will come from. I’ve done shows that everyone said were great for sales, and sold nothing. But then you turn around and sell to someone completely out of the blue. It’s all about the ride.

Oh wow!  Thank you so much, Kelly.  What do you all think of what she has to say?  There’s some great wisdom in her words, isn’t there?  And now she has something more to give:

Prize: winner’s choice of any image in my gallery, printed 5×7 inches. $45 value.
Specs: choose any image in my ekovisions gallery or etsy shop. Will be printed to 5 x 7 inches with a white border (5 x 5 for square images), signed & titled. If going to USA will be matted to 8 x10 inches using archival materials and a gallery-style white mat.
Entries: One entry per email address and per household please. Leave a response in the comments section below with your answer:

What is something you’ve felt nervous or unsure about… and then took the leap to overcome?

Ships to: anywhere!! Outside the USA the photo will be shipped without a mat to save on shipping and so you can mat the photo to locally-available frame sizes
Contest ends: Monday, November 1, 2010 at midnight in the Rocky Mountains. Winner announced here on Tuesday.

Do you suppose word is getting out?

“Hey guys, we’re safe here.  Vegetarians live in this house!”

Eight deer – bucks and does – hangin’ out at the tire house all day today.

Last night while Martin was doing school work, I added another page to my {Love Letter} from Gadanke.  Once a month, I fill out a page and add a photo from the month.  The idea is that after one year of monthly entries, I’ll have a sweet little anniversary gift for my guy.

The pages start with a piece of a poem/story on the left and lines for text on the right like this.  (I chose the blue and white diamond Italian cover):

And here’s how I transformed my page two to tell Martin’s story:

I’ve loved watching Martin become this month.  The change in the weather, the growth in his heart – those are the things I wanted to capture for October.

I painted this page with acrylic paint.  My brush was very dry, which allowed for the sporadic wisps of paint everywhere.  I made sure a space for text was paint-free.  The trees have the same wispy stroke, but my brush is loaded with paint.  To bring everything together, I used my brown pen to draw a boarder with rounded corners around everything.  Then I wrote the text, added my photo from earlier this month, and finished with a date stamp I picked up at an office store in Berlin.

I love how this little Gadanke journal is coming together.  What’s the October story you would tell?

You can see the first page from September and the journal cover here.

After the emergency slam on the breaks discovery that Martin and I made a few years back, we knew we were working way, way, way more than full-time jobs, and it wasn’t the life we wanted.  The idea of moving to Germany began creeping into our minds.  We always promised ourselves that we’d live there one day.  What if we just went for it now?

We flew to Germany and made our rounds visiting family and friends.  We researched various cities and university programs for Martin, and before we knew it, we were signing papers to move into our apartment the following year.  Germany isn’t like the US where you can move in and out of apartments and jobs as you please.  We had to wait for the current tenants’ lease before the owners gave us the thumbs up to make it our home.

Here’s me checking out the living room.  Yes I was skeptical – could we really make this all work, and in such a small home?

(I’m standing where our coffee table is today; our couch now sits behind me)

We were back in the US, figuring out everything we needed to arrange, working, saving money like crazy, and still not living simpler quite yet.  We knew we had to work hard to create our new life vision, especially because I wasn’t going to be able to work in Germany for a little while.  We also daydreamed about the remodel below.

Thankfully we’ve made it work… mostly because we decided to tear down the kitchen and “Americanize it”.  Our neighbors and family in Germany joke, “Leave it to the Americans to make an open floor plan.”  I guess the traditional manner in Germany is a separate space for each function of your life.  It works really well in larger homes, just not for a less-than-500-square-foot home like ours.

It was so much easier and thrilling to work hard when we knew we were working toward something for ourselves.

We still have to work hard.  Our biggest expense is buying airline tickets.  A lot of expats don’t have the luxury of returning home so often.  I don’t know their financial stories; I only know mine.  And creating a simpler life – walking or biking everywhere, eating at home, cutting Martin’s hair myself, skipping the clothes dryer, buying NO new clothes, having no pets or kids right now – all of these things add up.  There’s no other way we could do this.  It’s that simple.

(Some of the residents in the valley where we live – spotted last week.)

Maybe a lot of these things will change.  It’s exciting to see where our adventure leads.  I do know one thing; it’s never going to lead back to the race we were once running because for us, that felt more like a treadmill.  I like my runs to lead to new places.