It’s kind of a kooky story.

The story of Cliff Dwellers begins during the Great Depression, when one Blanche Russell gave up a highly successful dancing career back East to tend to her husband, Bill, who was suffering from tuberculosis. The couple packed up and moved to the Southwest, crossing the recently completed Navajo Bridge across the Colorado River south of Lees Ferry.

The Russells only made it a few more miles, however, before their car broke down near the big rocks. Blanche got it in her head that it wouldn’t be a half-bad place to live and the couple threw up a lean-to of tarpaper and boards against the largest rock. Then, she started serving food to passers-by in return for labor as the house got larger.

Pretty soon, the couple had a full-scale restaurant on their hands and added a hand gasoline pump for some of the earliest motorists to the Canyon’s North Rim. They also catered to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in wagons who were taking the Mormons’ nearby Honeymoon Trail to have their marriages sanctified at the temple in St. George, Utah.

According to author Kay Campbell, who wrote a booklet about the Cliff Dwellers lodges, the Russells sold water they took out of nearby Soap Springs and also sold pigeons out of a coop they kept at the site.

After about a decade, though, Blanche tired of the isolation and sold the structures to a local rancher named Jack Church, who turned the restaurant into a bar during World War II. Then, Art and Evelyn Greene purchased the land in the late ’40s and kept the old dwellings, which then consisted of eight buildings and a gas generator, open until the new Cliff Dwellings Lodge was opened in the early 1950s.

Source.

What makes this story so interesting to me is the concept of just coming across a site of land and claiming it as your own, and then being able to sell that claimed land only 10 years later – you certainly can’t do that nowadays!

Plus there is an actual old model car tipped over and lodged between some rocks on the site. I’m not sure if it’s the actual car the Russells were driving that they just left there, though I believe that’s the assumption.

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And, the added bonus is that the more confident you are about how you look, the more it will come across in your wedding photos – and the more you’ll enjoy being photographed! Imagine – one less stress to worry about on your wedding day!

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Hi Everyone! My name is Michelle, and I’m a personal trainer and group fitness instructor. I’m also a newly-ish wed (can you still say that after almost two years of marriage?) and so I was thrilled when Laura asked me to write a post on a topic that is on every bride-to-be’s mind, which is how to look – and feel – your best on your wedding day.

Having been there myself not so long ago, I can totally relate to the pressure that comes with wedding planning. As if working on all the little details weren’t stressful enough, there’s also the deeply engrained notion of wanting to look “perfect” on your wedding day. Maybe you’re putting the pressure on yourself to look a certain way, or maybe it’s coming from other (hopefully) well-meaning people in your life – I know when I was in the planning process, if I skipped dessert, I sometimes got comments like, “Oh, so you’re dieting for the wedding,” or if I went for that cookie, it raised some eyebrows because I wasn’t on some crazy crash diet.

Putting that kind of pressure on yourself – or accepting it from others – is a lose-lose situation, especially during an already stressful time. Obviously you want to feel confident on your wedding day, but in my opinion, that should never come at the cost of your sanity or your health. I would instead encourage any bride-to-be to take a smart, balanced approach to fitness in order to look and feel like the healthiest version of yourself on your wedding day. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

Exercise will help you relieve stress. No matter how many to-dos are on your Knot timeline (does that thing give anyone else major anxiety like it did for me?) it’s important to carve out some time to be active. Not only will it hopefully keep you from freaking out on your future husband over something mundane, like wedding programs (not that I would know anything about that, haha), but it will give you some time to focus on yourself, and something other than the wedding for awhile, which is really important.

If you’re not the type that cherishes alone time as much as I do, grab your significant other for a walk or run with you, or plan a fun workout with your bridesmaids. I work with Rogue Female Fitness, and they do a lot of cool workout events, like Workout & Wine, which would be a fun way to fit in fitness and quality time with your friends at the same time.

And don’t think that you have to spend an hour a day working out, or even have a gym membership in order to get in shape. You can get a great workout in at home in 15-20 minutes. Check out my site for some workouts I’ve designed that you can do at home – for example, this one, this one and this one – some of which don’t even require any equipment whatsoever!

Not only will exercise help you look good on the outside, it’s also empowering. We all know that regular exercise is great for our bodies and can make us look toned in our wedding dress, but remember that frequent sweat sessions can also do wonders for clearing up your complexion and making your skin glow, and of course it keeps your heart and lungs healthy. Along with that, achieving fitness goals like completing a few real push-ups if you’ve never done them before, or turning your daily walk into a jog gives you a real sense of accomplishment. During a time when you may feel like so much is out of your control – like the weather on your big day, or those stragglers who still haven’t RSVP’d – exercise can give you a definitive way to feel empowered and in control.

Fuel yourself properly to avoid binges. There’s never a good time to go on a restrictive diet, but this is an especially bad time to do so, because you’re just setting yourself up for failure – at some point something will go wrong, and when it does, if you’ve been starving yourself you’ll be much more apt to spiral out of control and go on a crazy binge, which will only make you feel worse.

Instead, focus on healthy meals and small, frequent snacks throughout the day. You know what’s healthy and what’s not – eat more fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean protein, and less processed and fried food, soda and sweets. If you’re looking to lose a few pounds in a healthy way, I’d suggest going to a site like Livestrong or use a calorie calculator to figure out how many calories you need to eat a day in order to lose about a pound a week (a healthy, totally doable rate), and then fill up those calories with good-for-you stuff!

Remember, your partner already loves you just the way you are. At the end of the day, this is really the most important thing to remember. If you slip up on your healthy eating or exercise plans, or don’t lose a single ounce, don’t get discouraged. Know that, no matter what, your fiancé already thinks you’re the most gorgeous woman in the world, so don’t stress out about a few pounds.

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Thank you, Laura, for allowing me to guest post on this Words of Wisdom Wednesday! Laura and I had an awesome photo shoot together last summer when she took all of the photos on my website, so I can tell you firsthand that she is every bride’s dream come true – she definitely knows how to make you look good and feel comfortable in front of the camera!

Last but not least, if you’re getting married, congratulations and happy planning! If you’re looking for more workout ideas or motivation leading up to the big day, feel free to stop by my website (www.michellemasonfitness.com), come to one of my classes, or reach out to me with any questions. I can even design a workout program especially for you, just contact me for more information.

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I request that you all also note and appreciate Kaylie’s patented “silly face,” which makes a frequent appearance

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These were taken at Ames Cove in Islesboro, Maine. Across the water is 700 Acre Island, known for the summer residence of Charles Dana Gibson (the creator of the “Gibson girl”).

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Interestingly, Nissequogue River State Park was established using land from KPPC, meaning that park walkways weave around the old buildings. It’s part park, part history, and part spooky.

Sadly for this history and adventure-loving girl, the buildings of KPPC will soon be demolished (it is scheduled to begin this spring).

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Hsiaolei and Alisha live in Park Slope, so it seemed like the perfect place for their shoot. It’s an area I’m shamefully not too familiar with, and I admittedly had never stepped foot in Prospect Park before. But we had a lot of fun wandering around during dusk, and I personally had a lot of fun trying some new concepts out.

Thank you guys for putting up with all my direction and stopping every two feet to take “just one more picture” on a chilly January evening.

Before we finished, we ended up doing some fun silhouette shots in Prospect Park. This involved a lot of dancing, a piggyback ride, some do-si-dos, cartwheels and failed handstands. I love my friends

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But this is all besides the point! Business-wise, 2011 was a pretty good year for me. I learned a LOT this year – I really realized how much “business” goes into a photography business. It’s probably only about 25-30% photography, and 75-80% everything else. I consider 2011 to be my first successful year in terms of bookings. I forget sometimes that my business is still very much in its early stages – which is due to the fact that it keeps me so busy…which is not a bad thing!

With that in mind, I’ve been thinking a lot about goal setting for 2012, and what I hope to accomplish this year. I thought I’d share it with all of you so you can get a better sense of who I am and how much I love what I do

1. Blog more
I’ve been getting much better at this, thankfully. I enjoy blogging, and mostly what keeps me from doing so is time constraints. But I’m really going to try to continue blogging at least three times a week. Fingers crossed…

2. Update my website, then update it again and again
I want to continually make sure my freshest content is on my website. Right now it’s not and I hate knowing people are visiting it and not seeing my most current work. I’ve considered switching over entirely to a blogsite (a website that is actually a blog but a little fancier) and I’ll re-evaluate that later this year.

3. Find ways to streamline as much as possible
I’ve spent 2011 streamlining my editing process, and have improved the turnaround quite a bit. Now I need to turn my attention to streamlining all across the board – to blogging, to posting on Facebook, to responding to inquiries, to managing my expenses, and even to booking more efficiently.

4. Spend more time with clients
Not just literally, but in all ways. It’s the little things that can make a big difference. My relationship with my clients right now is great, but I know it could be better (ie, sending a card for illness or birthday). Again, this is largely in part due to time constrictions, but it’s definitely something I want to work on. Personalized gifts, a note here or there – these are things I really want to focus on.

5. Blog with Pinterest in mind.
I recently got onto Pinterest (feel free to follow me!) and boy, is it AWESOME. And it makes me realize how some of my blog images are unpinnable (for example, two vertical images I would put together but that were of different things – like the cake and the card box, for instance). It may even change the way I photograph things, thinking about how it would look on Pinterest. I want to make all my images super pin-worthy. I’ve already added a “pin it” button to every post. Can you tell I really want my stuff on Pinterest? LOL…look how pinnable this bouquet is! (shameless, I know)

Here are some long range goals I hope to accomplish within the next 5 years…

1. Take this shindig full time
I have a day job, which I do enjoy, but at some point I definitely want to take my photography business full time. Right now I’m averaging about 5 hours of sleep a night (as it is, I’m writing this at 2:15 a.m. on a weeknight), and I don’t really have a social life. It’s tough to keep it up, but I am so determined to do this, that I know it’ll all be worth it. In order to take it full time, I’ll need to pull in about $80-$100K a year in order to account for paying taxes and to cover overhead. Mark my words: it will happen.

2. Get a studio space
This is something I daydream about and I know I can do it at some point…just not sure when.

3. Hire an office manager/assistant
Oh man. When this happens I will sing from the rooftops!!

4. Get a wedding published on Style Me Pretty.
I don’t think this needs any further explanation…

5. Do a destination wedding
Preferably with palm trees!

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Their wedding was beautiful, and I loved all the little Halloween-themed details. And Katie’s dress was to die for. (happy sigh). The ceremony was at Sacred Heart Church and the reception was at The Old Bermuda Inn. Their “post wedding” shots were done at the Alice Austen House.

In order to understand the depths of Katie and Jeff’s complete awesomeness, I also suggest you check out this post I did on bad wedding day weather tips.

Congratulations Katie and Jeff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And a HUGE thank you to Charles Eames for being an awesome second shooter for the day!! Also thank you to Ivy at the Pleasing Posy for her beautiful “post wedding” shoot bouquet. Gorgeous!!!!

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