Ramble Ramble

Todays guest post is brought to you by
Elizabeth
from
The Spotted Ottoman.
This is all part of the 20 Something Bloggers “Blog Swap 3″.
Don’t forget to go check out my post over on her site.

Hello! I am Elizabeth from The Spotted Ottoman, and I am so excited to have the chance to swap blogs with Ginger today, courtesy of 20SB. We decided to do a Top 10 list of photos that describe our lives because we both love photography and too many other things to really name.

Mine are completely unranked–the pictures are just in the order that they were displayed in iPhoto. Obviously this list is far from exhaustive; I just wanted to have some fun describing pictures I might not really use over on my blog. Here they are!

Adley
My then boyfriend (now husband) and I got Adley, a mini-dachshund over two years ago. I think getting him was one of our first real signs that we were in the relationship for the long haul. Adley immediately became a huge part of our lives, and has been with us for so many important things.

Books
I love reading (and more pathetically, studying things that aren’t even connected to school)–here are the shelves in our old home full of some of our books. My husband and I joke around that we could lose almost any of our possessions and be okay with it, but not our books. Give me my Nabokov or Hemingway (opposites, I know), and I will be happy for hours.

Buddha
Buddha is the cat I got while in middle school after one of my grandmother’s cats died. He still lives with my parents, and has adopted my little sister as his caretaker. I suppose you could say that Buddha paved the way for my eventual passion for animals. Isn’t he adorable?

(Attempted) Domesticity
I got married in March, and along with the wedding came tons of gifts meant to be used in the home. We bought, then sold a house, and now we live in our dream apartment. I love baking, so I have done a reasonable amount of that. I try to keep things simple around the house, now apartment, especially because there are only two of us. Here are some ridiculously delicious peanut butter/oatmeal/chocolate chunk cookies I made.

Eric
Shh…I am cheating for this one–I have two pictures. Eric is my husband, and I can honestly say he is my best friend. He is with me when I am crying and choking from laughing too hard, and he is also with me when I am crying for real. He makes breakfast and does so much for me–I could not have found a better guy for me.

This was right after our wedding. I was elated to finally be married to him.

This was actually on our honeymoon in Mexico. I love his smile here. Okay, okay. I hear you–enough of the smoochiness and on to another category.

Friends
I love my friends, and I really love the friendships I am developing right now. There are some friends I wish I could see more, but they live so far away. Somehow they remain such a vital part of my life. This picture just happens to be of one of my dearest, oldest friends from out of state. I know, it’s another wedding picture, but I just have so many of them that work for this!

Home
Next up is home. I am from Texas. I don’t feel particularly loyal to it as a place, but it is where almost all of my family is, so it will forever take up a huge chunk of my heart. And really? What’s not to love about the view? From my parents’ deck, I can see miles into the Texas Hill Country. Umm. I cheated on this one too. It is hard to appreciate the sunset without seeing the daytime view also.

Family
I am so attached to my family that it borders on ridiculous. I talk to my mom and grandmother every day, and keeping them near me was a big reason I decided to stay in Texas (but in a different city). After my sister leaves from sleeping over with me, I have a stomach ache from laughing so hard. I appreciate all of them for so many different reasons. The picture is of my sister’s legs entangled with mine. We’re goofy like that.

Politics
I call this one politics, but what I really mean is social justice. I may not always be very vocal about the issues I feel strongly about, but in a debate, I will always hold my own against any type of bigotry. I believe in exercising my rights, and defending the rights of those who find their civil or human rights threatened.

Marriage
Enough with the wedding right? Forgive me–I need to eke out all the pictures I can while I can still claim newlywed status. This is the last wedding picture. I promise. My marriage is very important to me, and one of the reasons we have such a strong relationship is because we actively communicate with each other to work things out before they blow up into something negative. We treat every misstep as a learning opportunity for how we can improve ourselves and our relationship. Yeah, we were liberal arts majors, and we just may meta-analyze kind of a lot.

Radish
Eric and I got Radish a few weeks after the wedding. I felt compelled to rescue a miniature dachshund to round out our little family of three. I placed an ad online looking to rescue, and we had her by the next morning. She was diagnosed with heartworms, and had clearly been abused. A few months later, she is free from the heartworms and has made such huge strides toward being mentally and emotionally secure. It is such hard work, but every kiss or excited pitter-patter makes it all so, so worth it.

Travel

Okay, so I cheated on this one too. I am hugely in love with traveling–we go every chance we get. I have found things to love about all of the countries and cities I have been too, but I think my favorites so far have been Munich and Siena. The first picture is of me nursing another love (cocoa) in Garmisch, a town in the Alps near Munich. It was freezing–the cold was like no cold I had ever experienced.The second is of a creepy statue in Siena. I can’t tell you much about it, because I really know nothing about Renaissance art.

This is arguably one of the longest picture posts I have ever done. I hope you enjoyed this small glimpse into my life! Now go visit Ginger’s post over at The Spotted Ottoman!