Welcome to What About Sara!

“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}