Morning, all! I’m sorry for my absence these past few days; my husband and I had a busy weekend, complete with visiting family, purchasing a new vehicle and having our new mattresses delivered!

Today I figured that it might be useful to give you a “tour” of sorts of my new blog layout. On the homepage in the top left corner, you will see my brand new logo, compliments of my husband Jordan. I hope to post here five times per week (during the work week), but some weeks may be crazier than others, so five posts may be a bit of a lofty goal. But, I’m not one to shy away from hard work, so I’ll do my best! To read more about what I hope for this space, click here to read my first post.

Also at the top of the home page, you will find my navigation panel. I encourage you to click through the “About Sara” page to learn some things about me! My favorite new feature of this blog layout is the “Our Wedding” page. What I’ve done for this page is to re-post on What About Sara all of my wedding recaps that I’ve posted over at my other blog (Eco-Vintage Weddings), so that all of you newcomers to my blog can read about our wedding day! Finally, the last page in the navigation panel is the “Portfolio” page (which is currently empty). On this page, I will be uploading some of the photos that I’m taking as I learn how to use my new camera (a Canon T1i). I’m not boasting to be a professional (at all!), but I’m having fun learning how to use my new “toy,” and I wanted a space to share my photos with you all. For a taste of my photography efforts, check out the photo at the top of this post; I took this photo last week while playing outside with Wyatt the dog!

I’m sure that you know what a typical “Contact” page looks like, but if you feel like getting in touch (which I hope that you will – I love hearing from kindred spirits!), feel free to send me an email from the “Contact” page.

Like a post that I wrote? YAY! Do you use Twitter? DOUBLE YAY! If you feel so inclined, I encourage you to share what you like with others by using the “retweet” button, which is found to the left of each post. I’d love to gain new readers, and this is great tool to accomplish that.

Below the title of each new post is where you have the ability to comment. I am a huge fan of blog comments – it makes me feel great! So, if you have ideas, a personal story, or a reflection to share after reading a post of mine, I’d love to hear from you! I’m always looking to build a community of friends and kindred spirits, so I would love to get to know you all through the comments. Don’t be shy!

Lastly, if you scroll to the bottom of the homepage, you will see a few things. First of all on the left side, I’ve listed a bunch of blogs that I frequent every day. I’m a lover of blogs, and I’m always looking for new blogs to add to my Reader! Should I be reading your blog? Send me an email, or comment on my blog with your URL, and I’ll check it out!

In the middle navigation panels at the bottom of the homepage, you have the ability to subscribe to my blog in a variety of ways (I suggest the Entries RSS; that’s how I typically subscribe to blogs that I read), as well as to search my blog for a specific content area (such as “marriage” or “dogs” or “wedding”).

On the far right side of the bottom navigation panel, you will see my most recent Twitter posts. I’d love if you’d follow me on Twitter; my Twitter “handle” is @EcoVintageWed.

Lots of love to all of you kindred spirits; I’ll be back with new (and more exciting) posts soon, including a tour of our apartment!

I’m a Momma to our little canine boy, Wyatt the dog. He’s our two-year-old Yorkie, and he’s our rambunctious, cuddly puppy that keeps us busy each and every day. We purchased our puppy before we were married (before we were even engaged!) from a breeder outside of Brookings, a small town in South Dakota, and we chose Wyatt from a picture of him and his brothers and sisters on the breeder’s website. While I was a bit nervous about picking a dog based on a picture, instead of meeting him first and then bringing him home, something just felt so right when we chose Wyatt. There’s just nothing that I can compare to picking Wyatt and then meeting him and realizing that he was perfect – our little Wyatt just fits perfectly into our family. He’s just the right amount of cuddly for me, and plus –  he hates being alone and, therefore, has a penchant for following me, his Momma, everywhere I go (which delights me to no end!). My husband Jordan loves to play ball with Wyatt, and the puppy is just one of the best things in our lives.

As silly as it may sound, Wyatt has also given me a wonderful dose of what it means to be a Momma. While I have no idea how mothering a child will change me and my priorities (though I know that I can count on the fact that being a Momma to a baby certainly will be a life-altering, blessed, difficult experience), I feel so fortunate that I’ve had Wyatt the dog to “prep” me for what it means to tend to another being’s needs before satisfying my own, most of the time. After we brought Wyatt home for the first time, we learned that while our breeder had led us to believe that he was potty-trained, Wyatt in fact was not even close to potty trained. After a few stressful days of cleaning up after Wyatt, I even said to Jordan that I was feeling a bit of what I imagine post-partum depression to look like. I don’t boast to know exactly how post-partum depression manifests itself for everyone, but when we brought Wyatt home, that’s sure what I felt that I was going through! I was so overwhelmed, so emotional that I cried all the time; I was disinterested in tending to Wyatt’s needs, and all I wanted to do was hide under a pillow. And this is just a puppy, not a baby! But, Jordan and I helped each other through those first few stressful weeks, and by the time Wyatt was home for a month or so, we felt like we were the ones who were finally in control, instead of Wyatt.

As an introduction to Wyatt the dog (who I imagine will show up on my blog every now and again), check out the video linked in the photo feature at the top of this post, which chronicles Wyatt’s homecoming. We couldn’t love Wyatt more!

Meet my hubby of ten months, Jordan! He’s the best man that I’ve ever known (well, next to my father, of course!), and his support of me and of my goals is unwavering. Jordan and I have been together for nearly four and a half years, and we’ve been married since July of 2010. While I’m pursuing a Masters degree in English Literature, Jordan is working for the university’s foundation organization, and he is also pursuing his Masters degree online; he’s studying sports psychology. We both feel so fortunate to feel so fulfilled in our current job/school ventures, and overall, we’ve enjoyed the challenges and the blessings that we’ve experienced during our first ten months of marriage.

Jordan’s taught me so many things about marriage, the best of which is that it takes a lot of work! I’ll be sharing on this blog a little of what Jordan and I have learned (and continue to learn) about marriage, so stay tuned for a few insights from this newly married lady.

To learn a little more about my guy, click over to Eco-Vintage Weddings, my other blog, to read how we met and how he proposed to me – he put his heart and soul into the proposal, and that’s a perfect description of how Jordan approaches our marriage, too. I feel so blessed!

[Photo by Creative Kindling, our lovely wedding photographers]

“Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”
~Peter F. Drucker

Welcome to What About Sara, a space I plan to use to reflect on life’s blessings and other happenings. It is my hope that this space can be a platform for me to muse about a variety of things, including marriage, crafts and creations, motherhood (of the puppy variety – for now), education (my own, and my efforts to educate the youth of America), recommendations of must-read literature, our home, my adventures into the world of photography, blogging, creating a sustainable life, searching for my authentic self, my dreams and goals, and other ventures and undertakings.

I’d love for you to join me on my adventure into marriage. I’ve been blessed to call my best friend my husband for seven months now. Jordan and I met about five years ago while we were both working for a nationally known bank in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We were married just seven months ago in Sioux Falls, a day that both Jordan and I were committed to handcrafting, so that our wedding day was reflective of us as individuals and as a couple. Click here to read about our wedding day over at my other blog, Eco-Vintage Weddings. I hope to add motherhood (of the human variety; I’m already a mother to our loving Yorkie pup named Wyatt) to the mix eventually in the future, and I can’t wait to utilize this space to chronicle my successes and foibles into the world of mothering a child someday.

Join me as I begin to navigate the world of teaching. As a teaching assistant and graduate student in English literature at a local university in South Dakota, I’m definitely learning how to teach while teaching. I graduated in 2009 from a local private college in South Dakota with a double major in English and journalism, but I’ve never had any formal education training. My forays into teaching college freshmen (I’m teaching English composition and introduction to literature) have meaningfully fostered within me a love for education, and I plan to pursue my teaching certification immediately following the completion of my master’s degree, and, later, possibly, I’d like to pursue doctoral studies in either rhetoric and composition or in education (possibly a policy-related degree track). I’d also love to use this space to recommend compelling, life-changing literature for others to read. I believe that writing plays such a pervasive role in our society, regardless of the advent of technology, which is precisely why I elected to pursue a master’s degree in literature.

I invite you to join me in my forays into the second quarter-century of my life. I’ll be 25 in November this year, and I can’t wait to see what the next 25 years (if I’m so blessed to endure that long) has in store for me. The first 25 (well, 24 plus a few months) have certainly been an adventure, full of family reunions, weddings, birthday parties, Barbies, moving from SD to Missouri as a child, and then back again, imagining, to-do lists, the excruciating loss of three grandparents, learning to drive, and then learning to drive again (this past summer: a manual vehicle), sleepy summer mornings spent watching reruns of “Dawson’s Creek,” music (particularly of the Backstreet Boys variety), pets, love that’s failed, and love that’s endured.

Join me as I try to navigate the worlds of making our house a home. We’re in the process of trying to make our small, kitchen pantry-less, one-bedroom apartment feel like home, so you may encounter some home decor posts along the way. Our aesthetic style shifts quite often, but my dream is to own a home (someday) built before the 1950s with the original woodwork still in tact. I’m a lover of all things old and vintage (see: our wedding), but for now, we’re (slowly) trying to navigate the intermediate (and hopefully rather temporary) world of apartment living with the things we currently have.

Join me as I attempt to learn how to snap beautiful photographs, and how to blog in a way that is fulfilling and meaningful to me (and, hopefully, in a way that’s interesting to you). I think that these two goals of mine operate in tandem with one another, meaning that through photos, I hope to find fulfillment and meaning in the everyday adventures of my life. Whether it’s snapping photos of our puppy Wyatt dressed in his yellow raincoat or taking pictures at a family birthday party, a reunion, or in an open field, I hope to learn to capture the joy and the beauty of everyday life, and to use these photos as fodder for this space. {NOTE: My camera is a Canon T1i.}

Finally, I hope that you’ll join me as I search to uncover the ways in which to lead a sustainable, authentic life. I’m a believer in (someday) using cloth diapers and making homemade baby food, in upcycling, and in reusing. I’m a lover of handmade and upcycled items (hello, my name is Sara, and I am an Etsy addict). I’m obsessed with the idea of growing and preserving food for my family; I’d love to try to do that someday – for now, our apartment is rather limiting to us in terms of the fact that our home is lacking entirely in garden space. I love the idea of intentional communities, and I am eager to learn more about educational opportunities that surpass the options of public and private school (including charter schools, Montessori schools, etc.).

I am eager to develop this space into a platform for reflection, conversation and fulfillment. I’d love it if you’d join me in my adventure to navigate life’s daily blessings and other happenings.

{Photo by Creative Kindling, our outstandingly talented wedding photographers}