As I daydream with Jordan about our future someday family, I often find myself reflecting on my own upbringing. When I think about my childhood, my favorite memories involve reading Golden Books with my family, rollerblading in the unfinished basement with my brother Brian, and playing Barbies with my cousin. I remember riding bikes with Brian inside the warehouse that my Dad worked in. I remember fighting with my brother about which one of us deserved or was assigned the “better” side of the Christmas tree to hang our ornaments on. I remember traveling ten long hours from Missouri to Sioux Falls every Christmas to spend time with our grandparents and our cousins. I remember crying whenever we had to leave Grandma and Grandpa’s house to head back to Missouri, but always feeling excited to see my friends as soon as we arrived home.

These memories, still potent and redolent with child-like joyful emotion, make me think about how simple memory-making is. As a child, all it took for me to make a lasting memory was an empty basement and some rollerblades, or a warehouse with high shelves and forklifts and trophies and pallets and long, geometric alleyways perfect for bike-riding. And now, as an adult, when I’m examining my life honestly, I’m finding that the same is true – I still delight in the simple opportunity of taking a walk with my husband and our dog to explore a little more of our town. I still feel energized whenever I head home for a weekend.

It’s memories like these that make me motivated to start traditions with my own children someday. I can’t wait to leave cookies for Santa and a carrot for Rudolph with my little ones. like we did as children. I am anxious to see what memories my children make with something simple like an empty basement, a Barbie, or a book. Or, maybe my children’s memories will involve something else entirely, like a river, or a camera, or a dog. But whatever object or occurrence catalyzes the memory-making of my future children, I know one thing for sure: I’ve found throughout my life that in simplicity, memories can be made. For my brother and I, it was never in grand vacations to far away places or in expensive toys that memories are made (though I won’t doubt that memories are in fact made in these instances). We never embarked on any fancy vacations as a family, but what we did do (rent a boat and a tube in Okoboji for a few hours, or go to Sioux Falls at Christmas, or play kickball with our neighbors in our cul de sac) was memorable enough for me. For me, for my childhood, and for my future children, I know that memories can and will be made from anything and nothing at all – even from a seemingly boring warehouse full of shelves.

A full post on our fantastic vacation is coming soon, I promise, but for now…here’s a teaser!

I apologize for the drought in posting, y’all – it’s been a busy summer! Hubby and I are getting ready to take off on vacation, or what I’m calling our “honeymoon redo.” It’s not that our honeymoon wasn’t so fun last year, but we didn’t have a totally blissed out time, so we’re looking forward to making our own adventure for the next week in Seattle!

We’ve always wanted to go to Seattle, and thanks to a nice tax return, we’re spending five nights in the Emerald City! I’m so looking forward to meeting up with some friends of ours, who just welcomed a little baby into their family, and to exploring such a fun, bustling city!

Have you ever been to Seattle? What’s a can’t-miss attraction that you recommend? I’d love any suggestions that you have to share!

[Image from Free-Wallpapers-Free.com]

One year ago today, I married my most favorite person in the world. I married the world’s best cuddler, the world’s best doggy-daddy. I married way out of my league, because I married the best man I’ve ever known.

I’m a lucky gal.

To my husband of one year, Jordan: here’s to many more years together. I’m so excited for the adventures ahead of us!

And also, a reminder of the reading that was read one year ago today…I still feel these words to my core, my love.

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a person loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.” “Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit. “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.” “Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?” “It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

Love always, your wife, Sara.

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}