A POST ON VALIDATION: SOMETIMES IT FEELS GOOD TO WIN.

We all grew up with the phrase "winning isn't everything". As kids, it's supposed to make us feel better when our T-ball team comes in last place. As adults, it's supposed to calm us down when we start to freak out that our kid's T-ball team came in last place. #circleoflife.

And it's true.

Winning isn't everything...but that doesn't mean that winning isn't awesome when it does happen.

I've been running this blog for 4 years, and over those 4 years I've been trying to get better at photography to make posts more appealing- as well as to up my instagram game. I've been lucky enough to have been re-grammed by big name bloggers and companies like A Beautiful Mess, Martha Stewart, One Kings Lane, and Target. Those re-grams ROCK; every single one of them feels like a small win. Knowing my picture, out of thousands, was noticed by those people (or at least their social media managers ;-) ) and liked enough to be shared with their followers leads to some feelings of serious pride.

Recently I entered a photo contest through the Cranberry Marketing Committee for the Cranberry Friendsgiving Contest...and I won! (See the Press Release HERE! ) After doing some serious happy dances I realized that while winning the monetary prize was amazing, just the sheer validation that the work put into learning to take better photos and the time to continue to create was all totally worth it is a prize in itself.

If you need me, I'll be celebrating my win by baking another one of these cranberry galettes :)

Thanks so much to the Cranberry Marketing Committee & their PR teams for this opportunity- so happy to take home a win for Wisconsin!

xo, lp