Rooftop Blues Party | Photography

When my friend Aubrey asked me to photograph her and Matt for their Christmas card this year, I was one so flattered, and two thrilled. You see, if I'm completely real, I wish that photographing people was my job (that, or any work that captures the beauty of life). I love capturing moments in such a tangible form as photographs. And for my first official request to play photographer, it was perfect because Aubrey is super dynamic and pretty much a dream to photograph with her joyful personality overflowing on film. And her and Matt's love for each other is as clear as day. She wanted a downtown setting, since their lives are completely centered around it, so when Aubrey planned a rooftop birthday celebration at Denver's Museum of Contemporary Art, it was pretty obvious where these photographs needed to be taken - on the rooftop. This is just a little sneak peek. You can see why I loved photographing these two. They're adorable and the setting (that wood!) was just to die for. 

(all photographs taken by Lauren Tien)

Home and Dutch Apple Pie

I used to be that girl, at eight year old slumber parties, who would miss her mom and want to go home in the middle of the night. Miss home and want to skip out on feeling uncomfortable in an unknown place. Sometimes I would get to go home. My mom, or dad, would drive and pick me up. And I felt safe. But eventually, I had to stay the night. I grew up, and eventually slumber parties were no big thing when it came to being away from home.

And I'm learning that for the past four years, having moved every year, that I have had a difficult time feeling like I'm home. Sometimes I've felt like I want to cry, or maybe I do, because I want to feel like I'm truly home. 

There is something about the home you grow up in, or spend most of your years in, or perhaps more the comfort of a mom or a dad, that sometimes lingers longer into adulthood than we like. And we have to grow up, and eventually have our new homes become no big thing, because, well, they are home now.

But I ache sometimes. And as embarrassing as it is to say it, its been a journey to not feel homesick. Even now, as much as I love Colorado, I get that feeling every so often that I want to call, get picked up, and go home. But then tonight, as I walked into the kitchen, with all of the lights off in our house, Matt asleep on the couch, the dim stove light on, and opened the refrigerator door for my second piece of dutch apple pie (hey, it's my birthday), this overwhelming feeling of home gently hit me as I sliced into the crumbly pie topping and slipped it onto a clean white plate. It all felt familiar. Like what the home I always miss feels like. And I felt safe. 

I know that sometimes I might be homesick for my old home--yet I feel that tonight I was given a gift. A moment where I felt overwhelmingly thankful for the home that we have here, and what that finally feels like after so many years of moving from town to town. What a perfect gift to receive on my birthday.

Hey Dad, It's Your Birthday.

I once heard someone say that the heart of a dad is nature's masterpiece. Perhaps the curiosity and sense of independence they instill in their little one's is a mirror image of what we were created for--a sense of wonder in this world, and the urge to go out and explore it. Today is my dad's birthday. I haven't seen him in quite some time, but as his one and only daughter, and he my dad (no matter the distance), I thought it only fitting to thank him for those things that made me who I am. The parts which are very much him, are very much me too: