Sadie Olive – The Blog

family, love, and everyday muses.

Thanks for visiting!

Hi! If you haven't been here before, allow me to properly introduce myself. My name is Sara Duckett. I am 32 years old and one of five girls in my family. I am happily married to a handsome, slightly older (37) man named Josh. We live in Orange County, California with our pup Hannah and two kitties, Mason and Annabelle. I am very close to my family and consider my sisters and their husbands my very best friends. We all hang out quite often.

About two years ago, I decided to start an online shop, selling home decor and accessories. At the time Josh and I had been struggling with five years of infertility and I needed a positive distraction. I am a big time shopper (especially online), and thought it would be a dream job to help other people shop just as much as I do! And so Sadie Olive was born. (Sadie Olive being the name Josh and I had picked out for our future daughter). I enjoyed this part time venture until I lost my full time job in the mortgage industry in August of 2007; when I then decided it would take more than one passion put to work to pay the bills around here.

Sadie Olive Design allowed me to keep up with the boutique while helping others start their own online businesses. It provides an additional creative outlet for me and connects me with many new friends and colleagues. I continue to do both businesses, and love it!

Both business have been a dream come true for me and have opened the door to many opportunities I would not have known otherwise; including the honor of being featured in a few magazines. Our home was featured in the March 2008 issue of Romantic Homes Magazine, the Fall 2008 issue of Budget Decorating (A Woman's Day Special Publication), and the Fall 2008 issue of Dovetales (A Boston magazine). My design business has also been featured in Artful Blogging Magazine, the Fall 2008 issue.

For those of you lucky enough to work from home, you know that is has both it's advantages, and it's disadvantages. I get bored sitting alone in my office day in and day out and some crave human contact once in awhile. That is where my passion for photography comes in. I love being behind a camera and capturing those small moments of beauty that often go unnoticed throughout the day. My interest in subjects changes quite often, but my love for taking pictures will never change.

Sadie Olive Photography is a new venture for me, it probably gets the least amount of my attention (I'm juggling quite a few balls here), but it is the most fun of all my hobbies. I truly believe that if you follow your heart and live your passions, they will shine through for others to see. I hope that you find this blog, and my photos worth peeking in on every now and then.

Shades of Inspiration

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With the incredible success of the “I Saw Red” event in 2007, we have decided to continue with this little photography challenge. The new event will be called “Shades of Inspiration” so that we can continue to change the color each week (and even some non-color themes too!). I hope many of you will continue to play and find inspiration in each others photos.

In order to keep this event manageable, I will no longer be listing the group participants on this page, but you can share your photos and visit the other players through our flickr group. (http://www.flickr.com/groups/shadesofinspiration/).

Flickr is a free service provided by Yahoo that allows you to upload your photos and share them online. It is also a great place to network and meet other bloggers and fellow inspiring photographers who have similar interests. Much like a blog, you can comment on each others photos and leave encouragement for one another. If you do not have an account with flickr, you can sign up here: http://www.flickr.com/ The great part is this means you can play the game even if you don’t have a blog!

We currently have around 300 participants in the group, but always welcome new members! As we have all grown as photographers over this last year, we are starting to make the themes a little more challenging so that you are inspired to be creative and learn from one another.

I threw together this little button, if you want to post about it, or just add it to your blog to let people know you are playing and to try to get others to join in. Feel free to use it, or not! You can link it to this page so that people can read the details and play along or you can link it directly to our flickr group page at this address: http://www.flickr.com/groups/shadesofinspiration/. (Right click to save the button to your computer and add it to your blog from there or use the code below. You can link to this page to give people directions for joining.) Shadesofbutton