Sometimes wielding that power takes a bit of fantasy, like pulling back the curtains and helping you find your beauty or shedding light on your dreams.  Sometimes it’s just holding up a mirror to your work and showing you how amazing you are.  Other times, it’s arranging a playdate for you and your people and making sure I’m the mirror you can see it through.  But it always takes intention.  Curating our lives is necessary.  Less of this, more of that.  Decisions we need to make every day to be certain we are leading the lives we want instead of life leading us.

I’m jumping back into what I love which is helping you commemorate what you love, who you love, and stepping into more of yourself.  And I’m doing this for myself, too. Please join me in a movement to revel in these glorious lives of ours; to savor all the joy of our people, homes, work, play, and all that makes ups our nights and days.

100 Days of Revelry on Instagram & Facebook.  Here’s how it works.  Look for the moments you want to revel in, wrap yourself in them, and enjoy every delicious minute of it.  Snap a pic, write a line, and post it with these two hashtags:

#REVEL100

#REVELin________ (fill in the blank with the word that makes the most sense to you)

It’s true that often you have to sift through the chaos to pull out the pieces that glimmer.  Sometimes while sifting through it, you start to really appreciate the chaos and recognize that beauty and worth are often disguised.  So go ahead and feel free to revel in chaos.  Go ahead and revel in a dirty house if it meant tons of time spent laughing with your kids.  Or revel in the hard work of that new flower bed, the delicious strawberries from the farmer’s market, or your newest achievement at work.  I want to see it all. The guts & the glory.

I really do believe that people have the power to lead glorious lives.  Often, our lives are already more glorious than we realize.  Let’s illuminate that.  Let’s inspire each other. The movement begins June 1.  That’s three days from now.  In the meantime, go here.  Follow me and leave a comment so I can follow you back and watch as all this glory unfolds.  Let’s REVEL in all our glory!  After all, that is WHY I started all this in the first place.

To guts & glory,
M

As promised, here is more from Kathleen’s epic maternity portraits.  I’m so proud of bringing this vision to life.  See the other images and read about our inspiration, you really don’t want to miss these.  And check out what Kathleen had to say about her portrait experience.  She can teach you things, so explore &Kathleen and and dig around Braid Creative, too.  She’s so rad.

To Fringe & Ferocious Love,
M

Kathleen is also a proud champion of Oklahoma. (Cue sweeping Oklahoma landscape.)  She has a warrior spirit that is expanding along with her baby bump. (Enter strong warrior references: the Amazons of Greek mythology, Mad Max, Viking Warrior Princesses, and the Cherokee heritage that both Kathleen & I share.)  While we are both native Oklahomans with Cherokee blood running through our veins, we didn’t set out to create a specifically Native American concept.  Although we certainly wanted to celebrate and respect that heritage. (Insert several emails discussing how to honor our heritage in a sensitive way, especially since we look like two white girls.  Special thanks to my friend Catherine Foreman Gray, a History & Preservation Officer at the Cherokee Nation, for her guidance.)  Rather, this concept is a fusion of Warrior Mama: past, present, and future. The whole “dust we are from” meets “modern Kathleen” meets “apocalyptic heroine”.  And I’m crazy proud of what Kathleen & I created together.

These conceptual portraits make a huge statement about Kathleen and her personal journey into motherhood; but like all good art they say as much about the universal human journey.  I wanted to create a portrait experience that was about beauty, grace, and strength – one that would spotlight a ferocious love and symbolize the coming adventure.

Hidden in the glorious wildness like unmined gold. – John Muir

I love to name my portrait experiences.  Sometimes it is sparked by something running through my head during the shoot and other times I dig for just the right thing.  So when I read the quote above, I immediately felt a connection to the heart of this portrait experience.  The future with Kathleen’s sweet boy is exactly that – hidden; a gloriously wild adventure in the great unknown.  But it will be such a treasure, even on the days that seem like the roughest of gold fragments.  Parenting is amazing, wild, glorious, and precious.  And a whole lot of other hard stuff, but mostly gold.

To the wild & glorious,
M

P.S.  You can read Kathleen’s thoughts about her portrait experience here.
P.P.S.  Stay tuned for part two, where we show off more of the Warrior Mama’s soft side.

I had the sense that Victoria didn’t know just  how beautiful she is.  That’s when I love to make a date with my camera.  I enticed her with the promise of a fun late afternoon of playing in makeup and playing muse to me.  We had a great time and I love the portraits we captured.  Isn’t she lovely?

To Brains AND Beauty,
M

1. Take in the gorgeous colors of autumn on a road trip with your favorites.  One of the most spectacular stretches for a fall drive in Oklahoma is the Talimena National Scenic Byway.
   Photo above by Carolyn Fletcher via TravelOK
2. Football!  Whether you are tailgating for your favorite college team or cheering during Friday Night Lights, there’s something exhilarating about crisp air, the roar of the crowd, marching bands, and the crunch of helmets.  Even if you aren’t a football fan, the atmosphere is so much fun.  And I heard my alma mater Oklahoma State University was just named as the #2 South’s Best Tailgate by Southern Living magazine.
3. Make one great fall recipe from Pinterest.  You know you’ve pinned at least 20!
4. Visit a pumpkin patch, take a hayride, and get lost in a corn maze.  (Make sure your kid doesn’t turn around all the helpful markers.  Lola did that once!)  We always enjoy Parkhurst Pumpkin Patch and make a stopover at Pop’s along the way.
5. Make s’mores over a real fire.
6. Carve pumpkins.  Make it a festive occasion – invite the neighbors over for a carving party in the driveway.  Use the hose to wash away all the mess.
7. Freshen up your style.  Buy a great new pair of boots or a fantastic scarf.
8. Leaves, leaves, leaves.  Jump in them, collect them, craft with them.  It’s gonna be a while before you see them again.  I’m planning a walk with my kids to gather some beauties for this project I’ve pinned.
9. Practice gratitude… every day.  Journal, talk about it at dinner with your family, write thank you notes, pray – get creative and make gratitude more than an abstract thought but a felt and expressed emotion.
10. Find your signature scent for fall.  A new perfume, a great hand soap, or the yummy candle you vow to burn all season long; cement this fall’s memories with it’s own delicious smell.  You do know about the scent/memory connection, right?

Capturing all of these memories is super important.  In fact, here are two bonus ways to do just that AND keep the revelry going.

Bonus 1:  Commission your fall portrait session and take advantage of the beautiful weather and scenery.  Call quickly, I’m almost completely booked for 2013.  Only a handful of spots left!

Bonus 2:  Join in the REVEL in Fall Giveaway!  Win this lovely little package.

Here’s how to enter:

• Sign up for news & notes on living gloriously here.
• Follow me on Instagram.
• Upload your shots of how you REVEL in Fall to Instagram and use both hashtags #REVELinFall and #REVELphoto.

Each image counts as an entry and may be featured on the REVELphoto blog, Facebook, or my Instagram.  Entries will be gathered and a winner chosen at random.  Contest ends November 1st. That means you have lots of opportunities to enter AND you can get all those great Halloween shots in there!

To Making Memories & Fall Festivities,
M

“In this world love has no color yet how deeply my body is stained by yours.”                           
     – Izumi Shikibu, Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan

It’s funny.  In all my years of working with creatives and mentoring/coaching them, you would think I had taught myself how to get unstuck.  But when the rubber meets the road, I really want to be more like Sally Field beaming, “You like me, you really like me!” than “I give you permission to not like me or my work.”  Yes, that was my big aha! moment of the day.

Let me back up…
Some of you who knew me pre-REVEL know that Randy & I spent many years running Spindrift Creative.  We worked with businesses and churches on their branding, design, web presence, copywriting, events, and more.  But we also worked with creative artists and entrepreneurs through what we called the Creative Development Experience.  I started having babies, Randy was given some great career opportunities, and it felt like we were leaving Spindrift behind,  at least for a while.  While Randy’s star was rising as a Mad Man, I couldn’t escape the creative itch. What started out as plans for a blog or possible online-mag on Oklahoma life, arts, and culture took a crazy turn when Randy started booking me for photography jobs.  Before I knew it, I was in love with photographing people.

Skip forward…
I’m following Kathleen’s blog because a friend introduced me, when I catch that she is joining forces with her sister to begin Braid Creative.  I’m intrigued, follow over, and fall in love.  And of course, I point Randy that direction and we marvel over how well they do what they do, how razor sharp they are, and say “Hallelujah!” and “Amen!” a whole lot. I’m a process girl and love self-helpy exercises that extract truth and the bottom line. These ladies have a fantastic grasp of their method and have crafted targeted exercises that do exactly that.  I’m hooked.

Skip even further ahead…
Braid begins to offer E-courses for creatives.  With my creative experience and after spending $$$$ on business tools, books, and CreativeLIVE courses in the last year; I wrestle with laying down more cash for education.  Especially when I am pretty sure that I’m just procrastinating the hustle and stuck on more deep-seated issues.  But I’m hooked and I decide to sign up for the Personal Branding E-course.  I gobble up the exercises and feel refreshed and excited but still feel like I don’t have the energy to jump the hurdle.

Around that time, Kathleen writes this post about the importance of permission givers in your creative journey.  Holy cow did it resonate with me!  I had made my life about being a permission giver to others, but it didn’t seem authentic to do so for myself.  The crazy thing is I am married to someone who I admire as a creative powerhouse with incredible taste; but his amazing support and belief is required, right?

Finally to the workshop…

Images via Braid Creative

I signed up for the Braid workshop even though I had taken the similar E-course because I obviously had not put the coursework into action.  I also felt like being with other creatives, especially Tara & Kathleen, could give me the energy I need to push myself out of this rut.

On Friday night, I had a bit of weirdness feeling like the stalker about to come out of the woodwork.  (I even asked Kathleen if it felt weird that people knew so much about her when she didn’t know them from Adam.)  But meeting for breakfast at Kitchen 324 allowed everyone to meet and get comfortable before diving into the vulnerability that accompanies your work.  And I was excited to meet Lisa from Elembee who I had recently started following.

We moved over to LEVEL and Kathleen began by exploring the marriage of your personality into your brand.  During this session she conversed with one of the creatives about turning off potential clients and said something like, “Say there are five who are turned off.  Would you want to work with them anyways?”  Even though I know it is disastrous to work with clients who don’t get you, inside I screamed, “Yes!  I want everyone to love me and my work!”  Within a few seconds I heard as though the voice of heaven had spoken to me, “You want permission, but what you really need is to give people permission to not like you or your work.”  Whoa!  I found it hard to pay attention the next few minutes as I had to grapple with what that would really mean.  I’m gonna need some accountability on this one, folks.

Kathleen led us in an exercise that helped us hone in on our personal brand.  Tara helped decipher it so that we could see aspects of ourselves that we need to employ to further us on our way.  That’s kind of a mouthful, which is fitting since it needs to be chewed on.

After lunch, Tara talked about selling what we do.  The big takeaway was to 1.) Stop pleasing and shouting and 2.) Start sharing your process.  Then we did another exercise that was eye-opening, a bit of a painful look in the mirror with how much I have put off the work I know I need to be doing, and empowering all at the same time.

They say Kathleen is the sparkly one, the personality, but she is also brilliant in her intelligence.  However, don’t mistake Tara’s comfort with letting Kathleen shine as dullness. Tara is razor sharp.  She is like a surgeon cutting right to the matter with ideas and correction for your course.  Yet she is so diplomatic about it that there’s no need for defensiveness.

The day held a lot of interaction which allowed for getting to know the other creatives and learn from their journeys.  Ultimately, the workshop was more than worth the investment.  I left with more exercises to employ, new friends, plenty of encouragement, and a bit more bravery.  My only regret is that it was over too soon.  I’m sure I will be sharing more as I work through the homework and as I introduce you to some of the creatives I met.  A big thank you to Tara, Kathleen, and Kristin for a fantastic and challenging day.

What this means for REVEL...
My life-long battle has been trying to please everyone.  I know that is a ridiculous notion for the sheer impossibility of it.  And yet it has been a hurdle to hurling myself into the work I really want to do.  It has impeded my desire to create valued work that people recognize as the art of portraiture and not simply as family pictures.  If I am truly honest it goes so much deeper into every aspect of how I live my life.  But I am starting in this one place, with my work.

My style may not be for everyone; but if the following statement resonates with you, we should create some magic together.  And if not, I give you permission to not like me or my work and I will not hold it against you.  But I might think you’re crazy. *wink*

You want to live your life with style and passion.
You’re creative, thoughtful, adventurous, and
you love wholeheartedly.  You want your one wild
and glorious life to make a difference.

You’re drawn to art, fashion, music, and literature
because you crave beauty and meaning.  And when
you find something or someone you love,
you want to shout it from the rooftops.

It’s undeniable.
You are glorious,
so REVEL in all your Glory!

To Bravery & Revelry,
M

But back to Chelsey- not only does she inspire me in these images, she does so in real life, too.  She is lovely and kind, a former collegiate golfer now coaching high school golf, she is an event coordinator for a golf course, a marathoner, model, and loving wife.  I want to be her when I grow up!  Check out her working her magic in the Crystal Bridge here.

To strength & beauty,
M

We were able to get some great shots with an old muscle car.  My dad has several show cars but wasn’t able to get them to me for the shoot.  My cousin Hayden came through big time by borrowing his friend’s gorgeous Camaro and bringing it to us at the top of a parking garage in downtown Oklahoma City.  We were racing the light to get our shots, and just when you need thing to go like clockwork that’s when they don’t.  Hayden must have burned through quite a bit of gas by the time he got to us because he ran out at the bottom of the garage.  Randy ran to the rescue (what an assistant!) and the guys came just in time for sunset.  We had plans to shoot by headlight anyways, but the drama was a nice kickstart for the adrenaline.  I love the results.  Hopefully, Hayden didn’t hot rod it too much home.

To fantastic people & sexy cars,
M