The Space Between Our Lives
NAPERVILLE - WHEATON - GLEN ELLYN - ELMHURST - GENEVA - ST. CHARLES - BARRINGTON - BARTLETT PHOTOGRAPHER
Happy Sunday my friend!
It was another full week around here—four high school seniors (including one in Chicago), a headshot session, a boudoir session, and apparently a little bit of everything in between.
But now, I am officially enjoying my birthday weekend. Because we don't really do birthdays in this house. We do birthday weekends. Especially when they're mine. I absolutely love celebrating my birthday with Dan because he has always had a way of making me feel incredibly special.
And then, in the middle of the week, the most beautiful flowers unexpectedly arrived from one of my photography clients, the Zolna’s, for my birthday. It completely made my day. After doing this for so many years, I still never take for granted how incredibly blessed I am to be surrounded by so many wonderful families who trust me to photograph their lives. What a gift that has been. Thank you Megan!
I also finally worked up the courage to film my first cooking video for Our Cozy Compound! I had talked myself into being SO nervous about it, and then wouldn't you know...I actually had fun. Sometimes we really are our own worst enemy.
I have plenty to learn, and I hope I'll get better as I go, but I've decided that's not really the point. If I'm learning something new and having fun doing it, that's good enough for me.
Here's to birthday weekends, unexpected flowers, trying things before we feel ready, and hopefully getting a little better as we go.
Some BTS from last week.
Soft Focus: The Space Between Our Lives
This week has been remarkably unremarkable.
I have spent hours shooting and then sitting in front of my computer editing photographs. I have answered emails and texts, made meals, picked up toys, wiped little hands, re-made cups of coffee because I forgot to drink the first one, and spent time taking care of my grandson while Delaney did hair and makeup for our clients.
There have been no great revelations. No exciting trips. No big accomplishments to report.
Just life.
And maybe because my birthday is this weekend, I've found myself thinking about that more than usual.
Birthdays have a funny way of making us take inventory.
We count years, of course, but we also count everything else.
Where did I go this year? What did I accomplish? What changed? What didn't? What did I finally do? What am I still putting off?
There is something about a birthday that makes us look backward and forward at the same time, standing on this tiny imaginary line we've drawn through our lives.
But I've been wondering if perhaps we're measuring the wrong things.
Because we don't actually live our lives in years.
We live them in Tuesdays.
We live them in making coffee and answering emails. In driving familiar roads and folding the same towels. In watering the garden. Making dinner. Picking up toys. Sitting beside someone who needs us.
We live them in ordinary Wednesdays when absolutely nothing worth documenting happens.
And the strange thing is, we probably won't remember most of them.
When we tell the story of our lives, we tend to tell it through the landmarks.
The wedding.
The babies.
The birthdays.
The trips.
The new house.
The accomplishments.
The celebrations.
The losses.
Those are the photographs that make it into the album. They're the stories we tell around the dinner table. They're the dates we remember.
But there is so much life between those photographs.
Thousands and thousands of perfectly ordinary days that disappear almost as quickly as we live them.
I've been thinking about that this week while taking care of my grandson.
He won't remember these days.
He won't remember sitting with me while I made his breakfast or what we had for lunch. He won't remember the toys scattered across the floor or the little conversations we had or that his Mimi put down whatever she was doing because, for a while, he needed her.
And yet, those days are becoming part of him anyway.
Maybe that's true of all of us.
I don't remember most of the meals my mother made for me.
I don't remember every ride someone gave me or every bedtime story or every scraped knee that was kissed. I don't remember all the times someone sat beside me when I was sick or waited for me or worried about me or quietly rearranged their day because I needed them.
Most of those moments are gone.
But the love isn't.
Somehow, all of those things we cannot remember became part of who we are.
And maybe being remembered isn't the measure of whether something mattered.
I think we sometimes treat ordinary days as though they're something to get through.
We wait for Friday.
We wait for vacation.
We wait for the project to be finished or the house to be clean or the weather to change.
We finish dinner so we can finally sit down.
We rush through the errands so we can get back to our lives.
But what if those things aren't keeping us from our lives?
What if they are our lives?
I love beautiful things. I love setting a table and growing flowers and traveling somewhere I've never been. I love making photographs and chasing ideas and dreaming about what might still be ahead.
I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting extraordinary experiences.
I hope I never stop wanting them.
But I'm beginning to understand that a beautiful life cannot be built entirely from beautiful moments.
There simply aren't enough of them.
A life has to be built from the ordinary ones, too.
The Tuesday mornings.
The grocery runs.
The weeds that need pulling again.
The emails that keep coming.
The grandson who needs another snack.
The dinner nobody will remember eating.
The thousand tiny acts of caring for people that will never be photographed or applauded or even remembered.
Maybe those aren't the space between the important parts of our lives.
Maybe those are the important parts.
This weekend, another birthday will arrive.
There will probably be cake and flowers and people I love, and someone may ask me what I want for the year ahead.
And of course, I still have things I want to do.
Places I want to see.
Work I want to make.
Dreams I haven't gotten around to yet.
I hope there are adventures ahead of me. I hope there are more beautiful tables and plane tickets and gardens and photographs and moments that make me stop in my tracks.
But perhaps there is something else I want, too.
I want to be awake for the days that don't make the album.
I want to stop thinking of ordinary days as the price we pay for extraordinary ones.
I want to remember that making dinner for people I love isn't something I have to do before I can get back to my life.
It is my life.
That sitting with a little boy who won't remember this afternoon doesn't make the afternoon any less important.
That a day doesn't have to be memorable to matter.
Because someday, when I look back over this life, I probably won't remember what I did on this particular Wednesday.
But Wednesday was still one of my days.
One of the finite number I was given.
And maybe the goal isn't to make every one of them extraordinary.
Maybe it's simply to understand, while we're still living them, that there was never really any space between our lives.
This was it.
The whole beautiful, ordinary thing.
*This essay and more can be read on my Our Cozy Compound substack
WHAT I’M LOVING THIS WEEK
Inspiring Follow: @rhythm.kitchen
I stumbled across @rhythm.kitchen and immediately fell in love with what she is doing. This past Christmas, her aunt gifted her a cooking scrapbook that had belonged to her great-grandmother, Cela, filled with recipes dating back nearly 100 years. Now, every Sunday, she chooses one and makes it.
And I cannot stop thinking about it.
I have so many old family recipes myself—recipes that go back to my great-grandmothers and even great-great-grandmothers—that have been carefully saved but mostly just sit tucked away in cookbooks. There is something so beautiful about the idea of taking them off the page and actually making them again. Using the same ingredients, deciphering the handwritten instructions, and tasting something that women in my family were making in their own kitchens generations ago.
@rhythm.kitchen has completely inspired me to start doing the same, and I'm thinking this could become a little series over on my Our Cozy Compound Instagram. I already know there will be recipes with questionable measurements, ingredients I have to Google, and instructions that simply say things like “bake until done,” which honestly makes me want to do it even more.
Those old recipes were never meant to spend their lives tucked inside a cookbook. They were meant to be made, shared, spilled on, changed a little along the way, and passed around a table.
I think it's time I start cooking mine again.
What I’m Loving: Elsie Green
This week, instead of one favorite thing, I’m giving you an entire collection to get lost in. You’re welcome. Or I’m sorry.
Elsie Green is a small, family-run shop specializing in beautiful, mostly vintage pieces for the home, and their French Kitchen collection gets me every single time.
Vintage cutting boards, old ironstone, copper, café glasses, linens, serving pieces—all those wonderfully imperfect French things that make a kitchen feel collected rather than decorated. Basically, if it looks like it could have come home with me from a French brocante, I want it.
I also love that so much of what they sell is vintage and already has a story.
Pour yourself a cup of coffee before you browse. And please don't blame me for what ends up in your cart.
Local-ish: Space 519
If I have a shoot in Chicago and enough time to grab lunch before my next session, there is a very good chance you'll find me at Space 519.
Located in Chicago's Gold Coast, Space 519 is part beautifully curated shop, part café—The Lunchroom—and I love both equally. Well, that might not be entirely true because their Tuna Niçoise Salad may have the slight advantage.
It is SO good and has become my go-to lunch whenever I'm shooting in the city. At this point, I don't even pretend I'm going to look at the rest of the menu.
Of course, lunch is only half the fun. Space 519 is filled with a wonderfully curated mix of fashion, home, gifts, and all sorts of beautiful things, so a little wandering through the shop afterward is practically required.
It's one of those places I find myself returning to again and again—not because it's the newest place in Chicago or somewhere I feel like I should go, but simply because I genuinely love it.
And if you go for lunch, get the Tuna Niçoise. Trust me on this one.
FROM MY KITCHEN
Several years ago, I decided to give Whole30 a try. Whole30 did not stick. This salad did.
I started making this Asian Chicken Salad during that little adventure, and it has stayed in my recipe rotation ever since. It’s crunchy, fresh, slightly sweet, and filling without feeling heavy—the kind of thing I love for an easy lunch or a light dinner.
The dressing is what really makes it. Dates give it just enough sweetness, while fresh ginger, sesame oil, and coconut aminos make it so flavorful. And because it uses cooked chicken and a bag of coleslaw mix, it comes together ridiculously fast.
Asian Chicken Salad
Salad
4 cups coleslaw mix (green cabbage and shredded carrots)
1 cup shredded red cabbage
½ red bell pepper, thinly sliced
1 cup shredded cooked chicken breast
¼ cup slivered almonds
2 green onions, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon sesame seeds, optional
Asian Dressing
¼ cup coconut aminos
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
½ tablespoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
3 large pitted dates
To Make
In a large bowl, combine the coleslaw mix, red cabbage, bell pepper, chicken, almonds, green onions, and sesame seeds. Toss gently.
For the dressing, add all of the ingredients to a small blender or food processor and blend until the dates are completely broken down and the dressing is smooth and slightly creamy.
Pour the dressing over the salad and toss until everything is evenly coated.
Serve right away, or pop it into the refrigerator for a bit to let all those flavors come together.
A little shortcut: This is a great recipe for leftover chicken—or grab a rotisserie chicken and make your life even easier. Because apparently some things from Whole 30 really are worth keeping.
with love and light,
Alicia Staley Johnson
of Alicia’s Photography
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