Maternity Pictures!

I am so excited. We got our maternity pictures from our very favorite photographers, Dox Photo. We hired them for our wedding because we LOVE their style and now we have done five (!!!) photoshoots with them. Our engagement, an impromptu photo shoot in our garden for the New York Times, our wedding, a family photoshoot when we got Soba, and now our maternity pictures. Every single time, they capture us and our family so perfectly. I can't recommend them highly enough.Here are our maternity pictures!

And we are back!

Hello! I would say sorry for the hiatus but I'm not. We are back from our amazing honeymoon and getting back into the swing of things. I can't believe it all happened, that we pulled it all off, but man... it feels great to be married!In case you missed it, here is the New York Times article on our engagement. It came out the day we were married... more to come! 

Talia Davis, Daniel Haykin

Dox Photo
By ROSALIE R. RADOMSKY
Published: March 10, 2013

Small Garden, Big Yield: A Marriage

Talia Hava Davis, the daughter of Iana Kade Davis and Rabbi Bahir Davis, both of Lafayette, Colo., is to be married Sunday to Daniel Solomon Haykin, the son of Elena Haykin and Michael Haykin of Centennial, Colo. Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi is to lead the ceremony, with the bride’s father participating, at the McNichols Building, an event space in Denver.

The bride, 31, will take her husband’s name. She is the senior manager for marketing of the Allied Jewish Federation of Colorado, a nonprofit fund-raising group for Jewish organizations, in Denver. She graduated magna cum laude from Jacksonville University in Jacksonville, Fla., and received a master’s in public relations and marketing from the University of Denver.

The bride’s father is a rabbi in Lafayette, where he also runs Rocky Mountain Hai, a spiritual group, of which her mother is the administrator. Her mother also works in Lafayette as an executive assistant to the chief executive officer at Ilantus Technologies, a security technology firm based in Bangalore, India. The bride is the stepdaughter of Danielle Davis.

The groom, also 31, works in Denver as an investment adviser with his father, who runs a private financial investment firm in Centennial. The groom graduated from the University of Rochester. His mother retired as an electrical engineer in Longmont, Colo., at Seagate Technology, the hard-drive maker.

The couple were introduced by a mutual friend in early April 2012. Halfway through their first date at a Denver wine bar, Ms. Davis texted her roommate. “This is the man I’m going to marry,” she recalled texting.

A week earlier, Ms. Davis had acquired a small plot that needed tending at the community garden at Ekar Farm in Denver. By their third date she recruited Mr. Haykin, along with one of her friends, as gardeners.

Mr. Haykin showed up with garden tools. For several hours they worked.

Every Sunday they returned to the garden for “a big weeding date,” he said with a laugh. “We’d get dusty and dirty, and got blisters.”

They also stopped by during the week to water, and six weeks after the seeds were planted, they sprouted, along with their relationship.

“I was leaving for a trip,” the bride said, “and he took me to a cute bar and blurted out that he loved me. I started to tear up and said that ‘I love you, too.’ ”

In September, with the garden in full bloom, Mr. Haykin proposed with a ring hidden inside a gardening glove. “Babe, come here, you have to see this,” she recalled him saying from where he crouched behind a couple of plants.

“I came running, asking if it was a squash,” she said. He stood up with the open ring box. She froze.

After she said “yes” at least a half-dozen times, he quickly tended to matters at hand. “Can you put this thing on your finger before I drop it in the dirt?” he said. ROSALIE R. RADOMSKY

Even More Pictures!

We were fortunate enough to get to spend an afternoon with our wedding photographers. We are SO excited about them. They are a very nice young couple who shoot amazing pictures! They are totally in our style and totally in our budget. :) Check them out at DoxPhoto.comHere are a few pictures they shared with us... There are more here on their blog or click here for even more! :) 

As The Candles Gutter Out

Today is the last day of Chanukah. Last night we lit our last candles of this holiday.With all the hype that led up to Chanukah, it's hard to imagine that it is over. I can't image what it feels like for Christians who have (I feel) an even bigger build up to their holiday and then only one night and one day Xmas.With all this holiday spirit and war on Xmas talk... what are we, as Jews to feel when we look at our lit chanukiah?Our chanukiah brings light into the world. We are obligated to light it in a window or so it can be seen from the street. Why? Well it came from a time when we could not do that. When we were forced to hide who we were for fear of persecution or death. Since we no longer live in that fear, since we have the freedom to worship as we want here, we show the world that we are Jews by lighting our menorot in the window. So the menorah, or chanukiah, is like a symbol of our freedom, right? A shining (literally) example of our right to worship. Our Chanukah lights shout from our homes "WE ARE JEWS!"Well, we aren't always about shouting... shouting isn't always the right reaction, correct? Sometimes an outward symbol also teaches us something internally. So we light these candles every night and we gather as families. In my family, at least, we tell stories of Chanukahs past. We sing the same songs that my father sung with his parents (laughing in the same spots at our terrible voices). The candles burn with the warmth of family and love and history and tradition. They are lit in a safe space, for them (on tin foil to make sure they don't burn down the house, says my father and to keep wax off the furniture, says my moms), and a safe space for us. A space where you can be you and you will be loved and accepted and held in the warm arms of generations gone before.But that's how I feel communally and with my family, what about me... personally... what does the chanukiah bring into MY life? So the word Chanukah come from the Hebrew verb - חנך - chanach meaning 'to dedicate.' Funny that this time of year falls within proximity to the secular new year, which is a time for resolutions... or rededicating yourself to ideals and efforts.So as I watched the candles gutter out last night for the last time this year, I thought to myself... to what shall I rededicate myself this year? Well, dear readers, here is my list.

Talia Hava's Chanukah Rededication List:

  1. Blogging. I will be better about blogging more regularly, really.
    1. Subhead - Writing in general. I would really love to publish more work.
  2. Photography. My camera and I have had a chilly relationship lately. I plan on warming that up soon!
  3. Me. I get bogged down in all the work and other stuff that I forget about me. That means exercising and doing things I enjoy (see numbers 1 & 2 above).
  4. Volunteering and philanthropic work. I miss it. When I was in school, in my sorority, that was a focus. Let's get back out and help people!
  5. Sticking to a budget. I'm trying, I really am... but numbers isn't my strong suit!
  6. Dating. A very wise rebbetzin once told me, "Talia, if you want to get married you have to make dating your full time job." Ugh, but you were right! Here goes...
  7. Learn how to crochet. Seriously! I've learned twice and I keep forgetting!
  8. Start an Etsy store with my friend Amanda, fill it with our art, my photography, her knitting, and other goodies, and sell lots of fun stuff!
  9. STUDY MORE TORAH AND HALACHA! Very key. I miss the regular learning I was doing in Israel. Gotta get going again!

Well, those are mine... what does your rededication list look like? May you all have nothing but Mazal, Bracha, Hatzlacha, Briut, v'Shalom for the (secular) new year! (Definition: luck, blessing, success, health, and peace)

Privacy In An Online World

As of late I have been doing a lot of thinking about privacy. The topic has come up with friends several times recently and it's been on the top of mind. When I started this blog I knew it would bring more transparency to my life than either Myspace or Facebook had. I started out as a small time Tweeter but now I have over a thousand followers and am climbing close to the 10,000 mark on blog views. And slowly, over the years, my threshold for privacy has decreased. I still look to Facebook as a private place where I am only Friends with my actual friends. I don't accept Facebook friend requests from strangers or blog readers (sorry guys) because that is the last bastion of privacy for me. That is a place to share pictures and stories and frustrations that I don't want the general world to know about... but even so, I remind myself that once it is on the internet I no longer have control over it.Increasingly in my life I try to live by a simple mantra... If I don't want my parents to read about it in the newspaper, don't do it. Otherwise, I own my behavior. I think another reason I keep my Facebook private is that I have earned the mark of true internet celebrity in that I have received many unwanted messages from people, messages that could make a girl nervous. But again, all was expected when putting my life online.I know I could never be a politician and people may use the behavior they see online to try to hurt me but, like I said, I own it. It is no secret that I enjoy hanging out with my friends or an adult beverage.But there is another factor here. The onus of responsibility for MY online privacy is not in the hands of others, rather it is my own job to ensure the image I wish to project is projected. Being in the media industry and the social media industry specifically, I know that there is always someone with a camera or a phone nearby. Another good case for reputation and brand management online (i.e. check twitter...)!But what I find so fascinating is how integral the online world is for me daily. I don't show people photo albums anymore... I direct them to my Facebook page or Flickr feed. When asked by a friend to take down some pictures from Facebook, I was confused... well, where are you going to look at them if I take them off?While I am the first to extol the internet's joys and value, I realize that we have lost something when it comes to memories. To rely on jpgs and png files to hold our memories is flawed. And he was right. Not every picture is for sharing online, not even in my contorted system of privacy levels. Sometimes, it is better to keep thing private and share them another way.Just as my stalker incidents had me rethinking location based services, this has be rethinking how I store memories. I mean, as a photographer with over 3000 images on my Flickr stream alone (those aren't all of what I have on my photo external harddrive), it is hard to imagine having time to sit and go through all of them, much less printing and photo albuming them... but there has to be a way...Food for thought.

There Once Was A Girl Named Talia

There once was a girl named Talia.She was born under a full moon,On a very special holiday called Purim,In a leap year, in a month called Adar II.Her early life was filled with laughter and whispers.Tea parties, costume parties, doll parties, and Purim parties.Nothing was ever quite normal for Talia,Always a slight detour just out of the mainstream.Talia embraced her unique life,Just as soon as she figured out how.Her journey was filled with pot holes and misleading signs.She learned the art of retracing her stepsAnd paying attention to details on her journeys.She met many characters along the way,Some so wonderful and some very much less wonderful.A king, a queen, a jester, 5 little princesses,A friend, a lover, a sneaky confidante,A car named CiCi, a ferret named Sammy Davis Jr,A tired, washed out blankie with sage advice to share.Along her journey, she laughed and cried copiously.Sometimes she cried when she laughed...More often, she laughed when she cried.She pierced things (and often threatened to pierce more).She tattooed things (and still threatens to tattoo more).She made people proud.She made people mad.She made people wonder...There once was a girl named Talia.She was born under a full moonOn a very special holiday called PurimIn a leap year, in a month called Adar II.

She now fills her life with laughter but few whispers.Yoga, photography, and writing replacedTea parties, costume parties, and doll parties.

Nothing will replace her Purim parties.

Nothing will ever be quite normal for Talia,She likes to speed and swerve,making a slight detour just out of the mainstream.

Happy 30th birthday to me.

13 Adar II, 5741