Free Stock Photos

These are some photos that I took around my neighborhood that you are welcome to use! 

To download, click here.

*Note: For personal use only.  Free to use as desktop images, for blogs, or other personal use.  NOT allowed to be sold or used in whole, or any in part thereof, for profit. When you download you agree to these terms.*

I hope to provide more in the future, so stick around and make sure you subscribe!

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Snapshots of life

Coffee Table Wedding Album || & A Mini Review

This post is not sponsored.

I recently saw an ad on Facebook for a company called Artisan State.  They were advertising digital photo books for as low as $5.  I was intrigued.  So I went to their site and created an account.  Sure enough, for your first order you could choose from a photo album or framed 8x10 for as low as $5 (plus shipping/handling).  I ordered one right away!

This book is small, and it is perfect for my coffee table.  The $5 version gives you only 20 pages (10 pages front and back), but you can add as many photos as you want to each page (the more photos you add, the smaller the photos will be).  The layouts are easy to use.  They don't crop any of your photos, and you can rearrange and adjust as much as you want.  They have pre-set layouts that you can choose from, and you can specify the number of horizontal and portrait photos that you have for each page.  The layouts adjust accordingly.  Very simple and easy to use.

The pages are thick card stock and feel very durable.

Front Cover:

Spine:

That is dog hair, not a print imperfection ;)

Some of my favorite inside pages:

These full-page spreads are my favorite

Back Cover:

The print quality is ok, but it's probably not the best you'll find out there.  The covers are a little blurry.  But I love that they give you the option of doing a full-page of one picture.  The pictures go all the way to the edge and, to me, look really awesome.  I didn't include pictures of the reception (cake cutting, bouquet toss, etc) because I was limited to so few pages.

Overall, for $5 these are an excellent deal.  I don't think I would purchase one at full price though ($30 for 20 pages).  There just aren't enough pages to justify the price.

I'm keeping this one on my coffee table!  Do you think you will try it out yourself?  For $5 you can't go wrong!  They still have the $5 deal going on now.  Click here to try it out.

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Note: I purchased this album with my own money and did the review on my own whim.  Artisan State has no idea who I am.

We got married at a park in San Diego, CA.  The park is called Ventura Cove and is located in Mission Bay.  It is one of my favorite places in San Diego.

More wedding pictures:

cake

guest book (diy)

ceremony

decorations

mr. & mrs.

family

bridal party

dad and daughter

the kiss

groom

Sugar Loaf in Rio de Janeiro

We lived in Rio de Janeiro for a year, but it wasn't until our last week there that we decided to visit Pão de Açúcar, or Sugar Loaf.  And now, half a year later, I'm finally posting pictures!

When we left the house it was sunny, but I commented to Peter and my in-laws how smoggy it looked.  Turns out it wasn't smog, but fog.  And it got a lot foggier!

To get to the top of Sugar Loaf you have to ride two cable cars.  The first cable car takes you to the top of the smaller mountain, and the views were pretty.  Too bad we had already sold our nice camera...  Also too bad that the fog was starting to get heavy.  We decided to get a bite to eat at the restaurant and hoped that the fog on top of the taller mountain would go away by the time we were done eating.  Well, it didn't.  It got worse.  And let me just say - riding a cable car into pure white fog is terrifying.

We took pictures of... fog... and then headed back down.  The views coming down were not what we hoped (on a sunny day you can see the entire city of Rio), but they were still unique.

So that was our adventure up Sugar Loaf.  I'm really bummed that we didn't make it on a sunny day, but I'm still glad we went.  If you go to Rio de Janeiro, make sure to add Sugar Loaf to your list.  It's a bit overpriced, but in the end I think it's worth it.  If you go on a sunny day you get an amazing view of the city.

Linking up for Travel Tuesday.  I've been so busy lately but I really hope to hop around and read some other Travel Tuesday blog posts!  There are so many fun things to discover in blogland!

XO,

Julie