lynn in love with camping

Did you guys have a lovely week?... whether it was spent with family, or with friends, or just with good food, I hope it was a good time. Ours was beautifully busy with all of it! I was out of town for most of the week, so I apologize if I haven't been commenting on your blogs!

Well I'm just going to jump into my recaps and reviews, because this post is going to be long and full of pictures! We started off the week by going camping. Now, the husband and I are by no means "roughing it" kind of people, but we really wanted to get away for a night and spend it in fresh air and God's beautiful country. So we loaded it up the car and headed out to Tyler State Park! We've never been there before and from recs on facebook, we made it our destination. Only 90 minutes from Dallas, it was perfect for an overnight camping adventure.

Once we got there, we found a lovely camping site. Look at our view! We were surrounded by beautiful colored fall trees, and the serene lake. Site 124 will always be our site if we ever come again.

I was so thankful for my sister in law who lent us all her awesome camping gear. We were surprised to find the tent easy to assemble.

After we set up camp, we went off on a hike around the lake, finding little delightful things in the forest carpet of fallen leaves.

I'm so proud of the huz for finally learning how to use my camera, so I can get some SLR action :)

Maybe he can be my second shooter one day!

After the hike, we came back to the site to take care of the real business...our dinner! We built a fire and set out our sweet potaters and corn out to roast! Sometimes, there is nothing better then a real wood fire ablazing to warm our bodies.

The Huz manning the fire.

:) We take our camping food seriously in the lynninlove household! Dinner Menu: Ribeye steaks, veggie kabobs, roasted sweet potatoes, and corn!

I don't why fire cooked food tastes sooo good... but seriously, this food was perfection.

There was hungry wild thing in the forest!

After dinner, we sat by the lake watching the sunset and making our mark with the rest of the lovers on the bench.

The night set in with cold crisp air and so we bundled up into our tent and slipped into sleeping bags cocoons. I have to say... I was a little freaked out! I kept hearing all these noises. We peaked out to see what all the ruckus was about, and found this little racoon family coming to check us out!

Oh, the dawn light coming in through our tent was so so beautiful! We woke up and went on another short hike. Love this light!

That's it folks!!

So our final review of Tyler State Park? 4 1/2 stars! It's a bit small for the more experienced camper/hiker, but for folks like us who wanted a short excursion, it's a wonderful place to spend a night or weekend! Beside camping and hiking, they offer mountain bike trails, fishing, as well as canoes and paddle boats which we hope to check out next time! The camp sites are clean, beautifully placed around the lake and offer fire pits and a water pump. Loved it and definitely recommend it!

lynn in love with blessings

this year I am thankful for:

-8 months of marriage to a wonderful man

-finishing residency

-times of rest

-health of my family

-blessings from the lord

-a bright future to look forward to.

-husband matching into his fellowship

-rekindling friendships

-special times with my family

-a generous sister

-a sweet brother

-supportive parents

-peace in prayers

-exploring new places

-contentment in having in having less material possessions.

-exciting new career paths

-joy in my work.

lynn in love with thanksgiving week

Happy Thanksgiving y'all!

This year has been AMAZING. I have so so much to be thankful for and glad to have a whole week off to celebrate. We have a busy week ahead chocked full of fun stuff that I'll tell you all about next week. I *may* have a blog or two up this week, but if I don't make it up here, I wish all you sweet, dear readers a lovely holiday full of friends and family!

I'll just leave you with a picture from an awesome family photo session I did yesterday for lynninlovephoto. The Lin's were so much fun, and I was glad to spend time with them.

*Edit* Ahh... I finished the post on the Lin's! Go check them out at

lynninlovephoto.blogspot.com!!

lynn in love with wedding dress

Speaking of wedding...huh! imagine my surprise when I was stalking Jasmine Star's photography blog yesterday, and I saw the model in her most recent workshop wearing.... my wedding dress!!

you guys... I LOVED my wedding dress... it was everything that I was looking for: simple, flowy, comfortable, pretty and flattering on my petite body... without making me feel like a giant snowball which was how I felt on every dress I tried on prior to mine. And I got a fantastic deal for it which made it all so perfect (b/c I love a great deal). Seriously, I got this lovely Vera Wang number for $550... crazy huh?

As all brides do, after I got my dress... I stalked and googled my heart out of my dress to look for inspiration and so forth... and NEVER once saw my dress online. Nary a silk or chiffon angle to be found. It saddened me a little, but I did sort of loved that I was wearing an original. :)

Until today, when I saw this Jasmine Star post... and here's my dress on the model! It fits me a little differently then on her, but it still evokes all the same feelings that I had for the dress: lovely, elegant, flowy, and just a little different! and I absolutely adore the way she styled the dress! That necklace, the headpiece, those shoes! This is great inspiration for when I finally do my trash the dress session on our anniversary!

As I still waiting for my pics, I pulled this one off my photog's website of my dress and shoes...

and even though it's not a good view of my dress I just wanted to post this pic that I just downloaded from huz's cuz, becuase I love it so.. :)

Happy Saturday!

lynn in love with bicycles

mmm....kay... so I'm following this new blog Hilltop glossy. It's sort of a Sartorialist for Dallas, and she shoots the people and kids around SMU,

today she posted these bikes and I'm in love.

I leave near the SMU area and I've never seen anybody on bikes this cute, or for that fact bike at all.

But I've been wanting to.... and would love a sweet cruiser like this: The turquoise? the basket? (and the tory burch tote) In. Love. Where can I find one?

lynn in love with wedding snippets

Aw, you guys rock, totally my people :) Thanks for all the comment love, big hugs to all of you sweet readers!

Work is getting better, it's nice to get my medicine back, and I kinda love my patients. Even the smelly snarly ones. I kinda feel they just need a little love.

My husband just downloaded some pictures and videos that his cousin from Korean took at our wedding. In all the craziness that was our 4 day wedding extravaganza, I still love love loved our wedding. I'm still waiting for my fabulous pictures from my photographer, heather essian before doing recaps...

but here is a small 1 second video snippet our wedding! (sorry, I really do hate myself on video...this is all I'm giving you!) Makes me smile down to my soul!

lynn in love with naked cupcakes!

lookie me! posting everyday despite my new crazy schedule. Working night shifts giving my body a run for its money. Post-shift, I pretty much sleep all day the next day until 5pm... and leaving me feeling all sorts of discombobulated.

Anyhoo... late last night I was craving... CRAVING some cakey goodness. I was still all woozy, and as awesome as my husband is, he refused to get out of bed to go get me some cake. I guess it was 11pm.

well, I looked into my empty refrigerator and thought I had just enough ingredients to make my favorite cupcakes. I remembered I also had a tub of store bought icing in the pantry to dress them up since I didn't have enough ingredients to make frosting as well . (poor us, literally just 1 stick of butter and 2 eggs left in the fridge).

I made my favorite cupcakes which are so quick and easy and when I left them on the wire racks to cool, I searched for my icing... and it's nowhere to be found. I go wake up the husband. "where is my frosting??" ... in which he replied "oh, i threw it away, it had expired."

grrrr.... no frosting, no icing.... and no ingredients to make some. I was perturbed at midnight.

But honestly... the cupcakes are SO so good even without them! Sure the icing give them that extra oomph... but seeing that I ate 4 of them on the spot, I'm pretty sure they can stand alone :)

Love me some naked cupcakes!! Especially those in cute cherry liners from Vietnam!

(yay, the camera shop just called and said my 50mm f1.4 lens is fixed). I pulled out my ol' kit lens for this picture. Not so bad, I do declare. (my southern accent via michael scott)

Cupcakes (from here)

Ingredients: 1 stick+1tbsp of soft butter, 1/2 cup+1tbsp sugar, 2 eggs, 3/4 cup flour,

1/2 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp baking powder, 2 tsp vanilla extract, 3 tbsp milk

1. Take all ingredient and leave out to room temperature. Line your cupcake tins, and preheat the oven to 400 F

2. Put all ingredients into mixing bowl, and mix until smooth. Add milk until smooth dropping consistency.

3. Divide the mixture into the cupcake tins and make in the oven. The recipe says 15-20 minutes, but that's too long in my oven. I usually put the timer on 10 minutes, and watch them every 2 minutes, until pale golden brown on top.

4. Let them cool a little in their tins on a rack, then take them out carefully and cool them completely on a wire rack.

5. Then frost/ice with whatever.... or not!

See! Easy peasy! Go make some now!

lynn in love with trent and le's wedding!

Trent and Le had a beautiful and fun wedding reception at the Kim Son Ballroom in Downtown Houston. The food was yummy, the bride and groom were gorgeous, and it was so much fun to hang out with old friends from medical school and residency.

Sometime during the reception was when my camera was dropped and I didn't realize that the autofocus was busted meaning I only have a handful of pictures that weren't blurry. Doh! Still we have our memories of a great night!

Congratulations Trent & Le!! Here's to a beautiful start to a wonderful marriage!!

The boys and one of the pretty centerpieces

The bride and groom were swarmed by family and cameras all night, this is the only shot I got of them by themselves! They had a cute picture mat for their sign-in.

The boys again. There were about 5 cameras pointing at them at this point.

Their wedding cake was gorgeous! & one of the best wedding cakes I have ever tasted!

Haha... one of the Vietnamese traditions is for the bride & groom to greet tables and receive their gift envelopes. However at the young tables, they are usually required to do something before getting their envelopes. This usually means a shot of alcohol or playing a risque game. We made Le thread this lemon up one pant leg and down the other!

Le changed into this beautiful feathered reception gown for the cake cutting/dancing!

Trent's best man, Alan, made a sweet and funny speech. He was in our wedding too!

The girls!

Haha: Houston humidity+dancing = hair disasters!

Tonia & Thayer

We had the after party at lucky strike and "upscale" bowling alley in downtown. A great night!!

lynn in love with weekends

(I, my darlings, am a complete idiot.

At a wedding this weekend, my dslr got dropped and now the autofocus doesn't work.

Grr. this does not bode well for my track record. At least it's a two-fer for the repair shop)

----

Ok, Happy Monday, y'all!

Did you have a good weekend? Hope so! Husband and took a MUCH needed break from Dallas and work, and hopped into our car on Friday and drove down to Houston for a friend's wedding. It was a lovely wedding and a fabulous weekend filled with old friends. We're tired from all the fun but refreshed for a new week ahead of us!

We got a great deal and stayed at Aloft Galleria. I love the W hotels, and was pleasantly suprised to find that Aloft was a little sister version of the W hotels. It was chic, modern, clean and comfortable with fun details that we appreciated! I wish I had more pictures to share from the weekend, but between my point and shoot being dead, and my dslr autofocus busted I only have a few to show.

Friday we rolled in exhausted from the drive in the dark and long days at work. Our friends were asleep, but we wanted to have a little fun so we went down to the hotel bar to hang out. They had fun furniture, table games, and a pool table, so husband and I entertained each other.

We had some yummy drinks at the bar and some chicken taquitos.

There were oh so many games of pool this weekend. All of them of which we played very poorly. oh so poorly.

I love finding new ways to do ring shots! Aren't these adorable? :)

And while I was doing these ring shots, I turn around to find the husband setting up our initials in the connect 4 slots. I do adore me some cheesy love!!

Okay, tomorrow a few shots that I was able to get at the wedding...

**Update**

My canon point and shoot's repair would be half of what I payed for it! No way.... guess I have to wait til Christmas to replace it.

My 50mm f1.4 lens is at the shop (Garland Camera and Repair). Hopefully the autofocus will be fixed by the time my first paying shoot comes up this Sunday!!

lynn in love with the canon sx200 IS-may she rest in peace.

Sigh. I appear to be a serial killer....of cameras.

First it was my diana

And now it's my sweet little Canon.

As you know, I love taking pictures: Right now I consistently shoot with 4 cameras: my dslr Nikon D70, my polaroid camera, my iphone camera, and my Canon Powershot Sx200 IS.

I loved my canon. For a point and shoot it is very powerful. It rocks 12 megapixels, HD video, and semi-full manual controls. It produces clear and crisp images. For any time I'm too lazy to lug my dslr around, it alway stands in as my go-to camera.

Sigh...now its in camera heaven with diana, since I totally killed it while shooting and rollerskating at the same time.

The evidence:

My friend Connie and I went skating around a lake on Saturday. The camera give me clear brilliant colors.

For some reason, I think I can skate and take pictures at the same time.

And then I drop it. On the gravel. Where it bounced several times on that gravel.

I picked it up in horror....took a picture. And this is what I see.

Sigh, its little messed up sensor likes psychedelic colors. Not good, not good at all.

I am so bummed about this as I can't afford to replace it right now. And I loved this camera. I'm going to take it to a repair shop, but don't know how much they are going to charge or if it's even fixable.

For now... let's have a moment of silence for my canon.....