• Fighting Complacency

    Comfort is the enemy of achievement.


  • This Is What I Can Do

    I cannot change yesterday but I can change tomorrow.via STAY POSITIVE!


  • Slow Motion Kittens

    Here are our three fosters near the end of their time with us, when they had unlimited energy and were figuring out their toys for the first time.


  • This Week I Had a Birthday and Somebody Gave Me a Kitten

    sleeping kittenSurprise! It’s Morris, one of the kittens we fostered. Also, he was a gift from Konrad, who I think got him just as much for himself as he did for me. Here he is sleeping under my arm early one morning. Black cats on iPhone’s are so hard to capture!


  • New Video Diaries

    It’s time to begin a new chapter here at Estate โ€“ video diaries! Konrad and I have been talking about documenting our lives in short, music video form for a long while now, and we’ve just finished the first in what we plan to be regular uploads.

    This one happened over the course of a weekend while the classic car show was in town. Konrad was in heaven over the bevy of automobiles, so we watched the cars parade through town and had a picnic at an outdoor showing of ‘American Graffiti.’


  • The Only Thing You Have to Do

    small steps every dayThis applies to everything.

    via A House in the Hills


  • Modern Day Self Sabotage

    When I wake up every morning, ask me what things will make me happy today, and I will tell you: being with my family, eating good food, having rewarding, meaningful conversations with friends, learning interesting things about the world, going on adventures, and so on. Now ask me at the end of the day how I spent my free time, I will tell you: Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, responding to angry internet comments.Such a great quote from this article on time.com.


  • Office Still Life

    desk in office


  • There’s Something in the Air

    la luneA full moon on Friday the 13th. Magic indeed. ๐Ÿ˜‰


  • Saving Memories

    vhs tapesDoes anyone else have an archive of family videos that are sitting sadly in a box somewhere, waiting for the day they see new life and can be easily enjoyed again? I know my parents have so many tapes of themselves pre-kids, and my sisters and I when we were younger that rarely get watched because it involves a long setup, followed by fast-forwarding through minutes of tape that have no footage on them.

    All this to say, I just found out about a company called Southtree and I am so impressed. They accept any type of video tape, as well as film, photos, and audio to be converted to digital files. They even clean up poor sound quality caused by age, and can create separate tracks to be easily sorted through.

    My first objective is to track down the cassette tape of my Dad singing from when I was younger (or maybe even before me! He was a professional musician in his early years). I’ve been meaning to transfer it to a digital copy practically since I got my hands on it, as the recording is not longer perfect, and being without a cassette player I can’t listen to it anymore.

    The whole experience looks beautiful too, with a really simple website to get pricing, and then a user account where you can track the progress of your order. Can’t all user experiences be so simple? ๐Ÿ™‚

    For anyone who’s interested, I have a coupon code for 25% off any order. Just enter ‘blog25’ and use it by July 15th.

    This post was created in partnership with eAccountable. All opinions are my own. Thank you for supporting the companies that make Estate possible.