9 ALBUMS THAT I LOVE RIGHT NOW! // V. 3

My current playlist.  I have to say that out of all of them I am probably listening to Armon Jay the most.  Brooke says there is something about it that makes her feel like we are dating again!  Enjoy!

1. Del Rio by Armon Jay

2. We Are Young + Free (The Remixes) - EP

3. Delirium by Ellie Goulding

4. Strange Love by We the Kings

5. The Canyons EP by Andrew McMahon In The Wilderness

6. Encounters by Pathway Music

7. You by Phillip LaRue

8. Ready for You by Hunter Hunted

9. Soak by New Life Worship

Open app - Post - Close app - Go live life - Follow Jesus

About three weeks ago, I unfollowed every single person I was following on Instagram with the exception of Brooke, June, and our two companies.  I didn't do it with any malicious intent, or out of annoyance, or anything like that.  I have simply been having this overwhelming feeling like I waste too much time - too much time checking in on other people and places, on multiple social avenues, that I end up missing out on what is happening in front of me or what I should be doing.  So I wondered that if there was literally nothing new in my feed, would I check it a lot less? Turns out, I would!

Prior to unfollowing everyone though, I had already noticed that when I was checking my feed I found myself totally disengaged.  I would just mindlessly scroll and scroll down a feed with a mixture of baby photos, intense political views, sports victories and advertisements for a new outlet cover that allows you to plug your iPhone right into it.  I was checking on everything more and more, and yet caring a whole lot less.  I haven't read Craig Groechell's book "#Struggles" yet, but I heard him speak on the topic and that apathy I mentioned is definitely a big aspect of that book. And I totally get why!

I started to think about all the other things I could do instead of social scrolling.  

I could probably work out in the amount of time I spend on social.

I could probably write a few more blogs in the amount of time I spend on social.

I could probably finish a few house projects in the amount of time I spend on social.

I could probably play with June more in the amount of time I spend on social.

I could probably rub Brooke's shoulders in the amount of time I spend on social.

I could probably do the dishes in the amount of time I spend on social.

And honestly, the list could go on and on and on.

Now I fully understand that Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat are all tools that I use to do what I do, but I was finding that I wasn't using them as tool at all, but as walls.  Walls that were blocking my time and mental energy from actually doing something positive or impactful.  I totally get that social media is an important part of my business, but not as important as ideas for my business or customer service or cashflow or great products.

If I am being really honest I love that I have more followers than the average person on Instagram.  I love that I have a little "K" after my number, but lately I have been pressed by God to stop caring about such silly things of this world and start caring about the beautiful life He has for me.  I have really been trying to disconnect from a world of praise through social media and instead lean into praising the King of Kings.  It's hard.  I really enjoy when people compliment my daughter June or tell me they love my shirts.  I really do! And I think that's okay to enjoy those things.  But the question we should all be asking is "Am I enjoying those things more than the truths Jesus wants to speak to me?"

When you double tap an Instagram a little full heart shows up.  When is the last time you laid your heart before to God and let Him love on it - making it full. When is the last time you actually listened when God double tapped your heart and nudged you to move here or help that person or give away that possession.  We are quick to reply when people tell us how gorgeous we look in some new outfit, but do we have that kind of immediate response when Jesus calls us out?  We are equally quick to defend our political opinion or point of view, but are we as quick to respond with love or joy in ALL situations?

For me, I need to spend less time on the social media apps, so I turned off all my notifications and only use it as the business tool that it is.  I needed to unfollow people so there was simply less to scroll through.  Now instead of mindless scrolling, I look up and go to specific peoples pages, with the intention of being totally interested in their life and I actually look at and read what they are doing! I also might try to actually reach out to people in real life instead of just letting the updates of Facebook be enough for our relationship.  Sounds pretty crazy, right?  I have simply decided to use all social media tools as exactly that, tools, and not as walls. 

Open app - Post - Close app - Go live life - Follow Jesus.  That is my social media strategy.

Three of My Favorite Christmas Traditions

Brooke and I have been doing Christmas together for seven years - one was while we were engaged and six have been while married.  This year will be our 7th Christmas together!  It is my favorite time of year and I really love some of the traditions that we have started, so I thought I would share them with you.  Please feel free to steal them or add to them or make them your own if you want!  I think traditions can be a great way to connect with your spouse over and over again.  It gives you something to look forward to and something to look back on.

The 2015 ornament to commemorate all the iced coffee we drank this year!

1. Giving Christmas ornaments!

Every year Brooke and I give each other a Christmas ornament. Currently, we have 12 ornaments (we only started exchanging them after we were married) total. Our ornaments have ranged from a weird handmade circle I made for Brooke, out of twine and wire, to a Dwight Schrute figurine, to a glittery piece of bacon.  Every year we try to highlight something that was unique to that year.  For example, one year I gave her a Marilyn Monroe ornament because that was her halloween costume at our first ever halloween party.  Last year she gave me a glittery piece of bacon, because all of last year I was trying to perfect the art of cooking bacon, which I totally did and have the 5 extra pounds to prove it! The one thing I would recommend is, if you are going to take up this tradition, to write the year on the ornaments right when you give them to each other, because when looking back we had to guess about a few of the first years and ornaments.  It doesn't take long to get them confused.  I am excited to add June to the tradition and pick out an ornament for her, too!

Arthurs sweater game is strong.

2. Decorating the tree and house while watching Arthur Christmas!

This tradition started by simply watching any Christmas movie while decorating the tree until the year we watched Arthur Christmas.  By the end of that year the tree was half decorated and Brooke and I were crying on the couch. For real. Tears of joy mostly, because the movie is so cute, awesome and amazing.  It's an animated film that really doesn't get much credit when it comes to Christmas movies, but man, we love it!  Every year we put it on in the background as we start to decorate the tree and by the end of the movie, Brooke is still decorating and I am fully sucked in to the movie.  I think putting the movie on helps us feel like decorating the tree and our house isn't a chore, but instead, it's something we can look forward to every year! There are too many people out there who have this really terrible ability to complain about everything, including Christmas decorating, and this helps us not be those people.  I look forward to watching the movie and decorating the house and tree every year!

Target + Hunger Games = Stocking shopping

3. Shopping for stockings in the most terrifying way ever.

When we were approaching our first Christmas together as husband and wife I looked to Brooke and said, “I have an idea for a Christmas tradition... What if we shopped for our Christmas stockings at the same time in the same store?”  Brooke gave me kind of a funny look, like “What are you talking about?”, to which I reiterated my idea and asked her to just give it a try.  Brooke is always so willing to just go with whatever idea I have dreamed up in my head, so we tried it. And six years later we are still doing this tradition!  The idea is simple: we walk into Target, each with a set/equal budget, each take a cart and split off in opposite directions!  What follows is the most terrifying, exhilarating shopping experience of all time because you don’t want the other person to see what's in your cart, but you want to see in there cart!  To bystanders we probably look a little crazy as we creep up and down the aisles and scream at the site of each other, turn and run. This tradition is probably one of my favorite parts of the entire Christmas season.  I love that Brooke and I can still act like kids with each other. Now that we have June, we will be able to switch off every year who gets her in their cart, only adding to the excitement!

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I don’t know what you do each year for Christmas, but I would recommend adding some traditions, mostly goofy ones, to it.  It’s easy to look at every milestone in life as another year to complain about requirements, but when we choose to live with passion, excitement and energy we can add awe back into our lives. It's easier than you think. We can make things a big deal and a good time just by changing our attitude or perspective.  I think marriage is easily one of the greatest gifts God has ever given me.  I love being married to Brooke and I always want her to know that.  I think these simple traditions we started encourage that kind of attitude!  We can look back at the ornaments and remember what we’ve been through, laugh about the one time she thought I left Target without her after stocking shopping and had me paged to the front of the store, and we can look forward to the future and what the traditions will end up looking like with little June, and at some point, June's siblings!  I hope that while you go through Christmas you can remember the good times, enjoy the right-now moments and look forward to all that God has for you!

Small Business - Big Heart

I am a small business owner.  My company is quite small in the grand scheme of companies, but large in my heart.  Throughout the day I think most about following Jesus, loving my wife, loving my daughter and how to sell more shirts.  That's about it.  I really love selling shirts and for the last ten years I have been able to do it as a part time job.  In 2016 it will officially be the full time job for my wife and I for the first time ever.  That was something that we thought impossible six years ago but with work, dedication, planning, hustle, help, efficiency, some dumb luck and a ton of God showing up, we've been able to do it.

Taken on Small Business Saturday with a stack of orders from Black Friday!

I don't know what the future holds from walk in love.  Will we grow to the level of being a million dollar company or tens of millions or hundreds of millions?  Will we stay right around where we are?  Will we shrink?  Will we survive?  I don't know.  I would love to know but that is impossible.

But here is what I do know.

I do know that there is a God who loves me enough to allow me to design, market, photograph and sell t-shirts every single day.  I know that there are tons of amazing customers out there who give me the ability to keep going, whose love for our product propels us forward.  I know that I have an amazing, albeit small, team of people who work hard day in and day out so that we can have orders shipped, e-mails answered, products to sell and beautiful content to market it with.  

I know that no matter where we go I will never forget the first person who ordered a shirt online - Melissa Patterson (now Melissa Kochan) via MySpace.  I will never forget the LEFC youth group ordering a hundred shirts for the students six months after I started.  I will never forget my little brother's friend, Taylor, selling shirts at school.  I will never forget when my family lugged 300 shirts across the world so every camper in Russia could have one.  I will never forget messaging a cute girl on Facebook to have her photograph the shirts (mostly because I get to wake up next to her every day).  I will never forget when my father-in-law told me that "a kiosk might be a good idea to sell shirts around Christmas".  I will never forget how ghetto our first kiosk was.  I will never forget saving up all my vacation days so I could work at the second season of our kiosk.  I will never forget launching an IndieGoGo campaign to raise money to open a full-time retail store.  I will never forget the staff that worked at that store and had to deal with me figuring out what it meant to be a boss.  I will never forget the phone call that said we had to move our store to another location because a big box store purchased our space.  I will never forget moving that store and everything in it, all in one night with the help of friends and family.  I will never forget the 22 days spent getting our second store ready for opening day.  I will never forget the 4 times I shocked myself trying to get that store ready.  I will never forget the failure that the second store was.  I will never forget the moment Brooke and I decided to close down both stores and move exclusively online.  I will never forget moving into the our new studio with only 4 shelves of product to sell.  I will never forget watching those 4 shelves turn into 16.  I will never forget the first day June came into the studio.  I will never forget the discussions with Brooke on making walk in love. our full time job.  I will never forget launching collections.  I will never forget the models we met, shot and became friends with in California.  I will never forget all the people who helped fold, pack, pick and do all sorts of work for the company I love.  I will never forget the people who posted about our shirts. I will never forget...

I could go on and on about all the great memories that are so large in my heart.

I know that I am just one small business owner out of thousands, maybe millions.  

And I want you to know that when you shop small you are adding to the full heart of memories for every entreprenuer out there.  Thank you for that and so much more than I could ever express in a blog post.

If you want to shop from my small business you can save 30% today with the code "shopsmall" at shopwalkinlove.com!  

Thanks!

CRAZYLIZ827

For the past two and a half years Brooke and I have had the absolute privilege of employing a young lady by the name of Liz Parrett.  Her AIM screen name from back in the day was CrazyLiz827, hence this blog’s title.  If you didn’t already know, Brooke and I recently decided to step away from shooting weddings as a profession and step into the next phase of our professional lives at walk in love.  You can read more about that here if you are interested in knowing why - Seven Years For a Footnote.  Liz also made a similar decision and so she will no longer be under my employ.

So one of the ways I wanted thank Liz for her two and half years of employment was by writing a letter. It’s mostly just for Liz, but I am pretty sure that if you read it you too might be encouraged by some of the great traits and qualities that have made Liz an excellent employee!

Liz, her husband Weston and their son Jeremiah!

Dear Liz,

For the past two and a half years Brooke and I have had the honor of employing you.  We’ve watched you grow as an artist, friend, mother, wife and follower of Jesus and we have thoroughly enjoyed it all, even when you were an angry pregnant lady :)

Multiple times you have expressed shock that Brooke and I actually hired you in the first place. You have gone on to tell us that your work wasn’t that good and blah blah blah.  You are right.  When we first hired you your work wasn’t great.  It was okay, sometimes good, but not great.  We hired you because of you.  You had all the intangibles.  You were passionate.  As a social worker you decided to pick up a camera and say “I’ll try this.”  That is not something you can teach.  We knew that we could teach you new tricks to add to your repertoire, but we couldn’t teach you to have the passion you already had.  That was all yours.  It was your passion that we saw and that is what we hired.

And that passion did not disappoint.

Over the years we saw you direct that passion toward photography and grow leaps and bounds.  You decided earlier on that you were going to be the best photographer you could be and you wouldn’t settle for anything else, and you didn’t.  You practiced, experimented and took risks with your work.  You’d constantly ask Brooke for her opinion because you wanted to get better and better.  In a sea of photographers who are constantly proclaiming they’ve made it, all while bobbing up and down in the middle of the ocean, you were fervently swimming to the shore.  It was inspiring and motivating to watch.

Brooke and I didn’t hire you because of the photographer you were.  We hired you because we saw the photographer you could become. And man-oh-man did you become that, and more! And it wasn’t just photography that you had that attitude.  You had it toward all of life.  As you stepped into motherhood, and started crying a lot more, we saw all that passion take root in new ways.  We saw your desire to be a good mom to Jeremiah and a good wife to Weston.  Your passion is a constant in your life and I know that as you step into whatever is next it will be that passion that carries you.  Don’t ever forget that or lose it.

I will also be forever grateful to you Liz for helping me be a better leader.  You were unafraid to have hard conversations with your employers.  You pushed us to lead better by having those conversations.  You didn’t just sit back and let your feelings fester, while we had no idea we were doing something wrong, you spoke up.  You asked for things that weren’t easy to ask for, and even when we had to say “No” to some of those requests, you responded with respect, grace and love.  Thank you for that.  As I learn what it means to be a boss for future employees I will always remember the lessons you taught me by talking things out.

I could go on and on about all the great and funny things you brought into our company and life but I will end with this.  From the bottom of my heart I want to thank you for loving my wife so well.  Whether it was a funny text or stopping by to drop off a gift while she was pregnant, you always were and continue to be such a good friend to Brooke.  For that I will be grateful again and again.  Thank you.

So, Crazyliz827, as you step from one phase of life into the next I hope that you continue to let that fiery passion guide and push you.  I pray that you continue to have those harder conversations both for your personal gain as well as the people around you.  I am excited to be able to watch your life grow and flourish as a friend and not a boss.  I am excited to celebrate victories with you and your wonderful family as well as be there for anything during the defeats.  Brooke and I think the sky is your limit and we are excited to watch you climb.

If you ever need anything we will be there, even if it’s just for a double date to Red Lobster, a morning Starbucks run or a delicious hot dog lunch.

I know I speak for Brooke and myself when I say that we love you and are so thankful for all you taught us while you worked for us.  We are excited to have a front row seat for whatever is next for you.

Love, 

T.J. (and Brooke) (and June) (and Penny)

Liz and Weston are middle school sweethearts and this photo makes me so happy!

Notification-less

For the past two weeks almost all the notifications on my phone have been turned off.  The only time my phone buzzes, beeps or rings is if I am getting a text or a phone call.  No snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TimeHop, ESPN, Fantasy Football, or any other app notifications.  You don't see a single red bubble on my phone alerting me to the number of notifcations I am missing.  They are all gone, all turned off.

AND GUESS WHAT?!?!

I don't miss them at all.

Lately I have been so tired of notifications controlling what I am doing.  My phone vibrates and I am eager to check what it is.  I slide to unlock and then 2, 5 or 30 minutes later I am still looking at my phone.  I end up so frustrated at myself for wasting so much time doing quite literally nothing on my phone.

For example, I would be having a conversation with Brooke and my phone would buzz and then I am ignoring her because I am looking at Instagram or checking out what I was doing this time last year on TimeHop, instead of focusing on what I should be doing now - talking to my beautiful wife.

The struggle of technology controlling my life is real and I am tired of it.

Now, I am not the type of guy that is going to tell you to throw out your cell phone and live technology free in a bomb shelter.  I believe that technology, social media and the internet has done, can do and will continue to bring amazing things to life, but all in it's place, all in moderation.  I don't want the buzz of my phone to control my time! I want to check Instagram, Twitter or anything else on my phone on my time, not my device's time.

Now you should know that when I started turning off all the notifications I was feeling a little nervous.  I thought that I would be missing out on something.  Like there was going to be a social media or Instagram party and I would miss it.  I was nervous about missing life on a screen.  HOW CRAZY IS THAT?!?

So, two weeks later and I can tell you that I have missed absolutely nothing about notifications.  I have spent less time on my phone and more time looking at the loves of my life.  I have spent less time checking vibrations (or phantom vibrations) and more time laughing with Brooke. Imagine that, when I am not checking my phone every 2 minutes I am more engaged with life...

It's like when I switched the notifications off, I switched my eyes on.  I am starting to see real life in front of my face and not through the glowing screen, but as it happens, in 3-D, living color!  It's awesome and I really like it a lot more.  I think I let myself believe that I needed to know everything at all times, because that is what made me enjoyable.  What makes me enjoyable is being engaged in the life that I have been given.

I challenge you for one week, a mere seven days, to switch the notifications off and switch life on.  Don't let your apps and phone determine when you check them, you determine that stuff.  Engage with the life in front of your eyes away from a screen.  I think that you will end up in the same place that I am now - not missing them at all, more engaged and fulfilled.