Every now and then, I like to challenge myself to take self portraits. It’s my chance to reflect on who I am and practice a few photography techniques on myself. I’ve been watching a little Creative Live throughout the weekend, and I wanted to focus on connection with the eyes.

I’m currently living in Washington DC on a temporary adventure that Jeff and I are calling our “study abroad in the US.” We had an opportunity to live in a beautiful fully furnished condo in Dupont Circle until the end of August, so we rented out our house in Michigan (cat and all), packed a few suitcases and flew to DC in December. Since we’ve been here, I’ve thrown myself into classes. I’ve taken trapeze classes (you can check out my trapeze video below), a raw/vegan cooking class and a screen printing class so far, and I plan to take others this spring and summer.

I’m looking forward to getting back to Michigan, but I’m enjoying living in the moment while I’m here. It’s amazing how your perspective of a place will change when you know it’s temporary. I hope to take this attitude back to Michigan with me and fully enjoy all that Michigan has to offer rather than telling myself that I’ll “do that someday.”

Here’s my trapeze adventure.

Jeff and I joined our good friends Jess and Paul in Colorado for our first wintery vacation this year (you might remember Jess and Paul from their apple picking engagement session and destination wedding Punta Cana). We usually pick warmer destinations for vacations during the coldest months of the year, but we’ve both always wanted to try skiing the real mountains outside of Michigan.

Jess and I are officially travel buddies. We met in Chicago, but I feel like we’ve spent more time together in other states and countries over the past two years since I moved away from Chicago. We’ve been to New Orleans, Punta Cana, Portland, Seattle and Colorado, and we’ll be rooming together for Entretrip this April in Mexico. I hope the trend continues (P.S. Jess is a travel agent who books destination weddings. Jess and I both got married in other countries and can highly recommend the experience. Shoot her a note if you want to learn more. She’s amazing).

I didn’t take my camera out much—one of the side effects of very cold fingers is the lack of desire to get your camera out—but I did manage to snap a few photos along the way.

Getting directions to Cooper Mountain.

Note the temperature.

Could I possibly be more fashionable?