Woods Family | Hoboken Coffee Roasters At Home | Family Portraits in Guthrie

i could be sweet
and i could be sweeter
i want to be where your heart is home
she & him - home

You met Trey and Mallory behind the bar at Hoboken Coffee Roasters.  You met their dream - their wooden, mechanical, brown, window-ed, handmade dream.   You met a part of them that isn't just their career or their work, but their hearts on display on Division Avenue.  Hoboken is more than a part, but it isn't the whole.

Today you'll at least get to meet more of the parts, that will help you know the whole far better.  The parts about an OSU cowgirl-student, paying the bills by working at a college town coffee house.  The parts about her meeting Gerald Woods, the Third (or "Trey," for three.  Get it?)  The parts about an engagement three months later.  And a wedding four months after the "Will you?" And the parts about their bike ride - on their bicycles, with pedals and wheels that runs on human muscle, determination and exhilaration - from Oklahoma to Oregon.  Yes.  The parts about their time in Eugene, working working working, playing playing playing, learning learning learning, dreaming dreaming dreaming.   They continued to pay the bills by being hired at, well, where else?  Coffee shops.  And they looked forward to big new parts.  Baby parts and a shop of their own parts and a house to make their home (at least for a good long while) parts.  

On a personal note, before I wow you with more heartwarming Woods tales, I have to recite, once again, why I love shooting people in their real life.  I'm not the biggest fan of styled shoots (I understand their fun and place), I'm never going to be a commercial "America's Next Top Model esque" photographer (but I sure am glad someone does it, because I adore the spreads in Vogue and Vanity Fair), I have no desire to learn camera and photoshop tricks and magicals to create Popular Page worthy Flickr creations (though I adore it when those are well done - they're dreamy.)  Honestly, I could take or leave photography.  And "art."  Not in the world, oh no.  But in my own life - I don't "need to take pictures!"  What I do "need," however, is to create (bedrooms or meals or outfits or blog posts) and to know people.  I'm far less bubbly and outgoing than I was a few years ago.  I may be less social and, heck, even less friendly!  But my heart is "on" and I'm addicted to knowing and discovering the stories of people.  I love shooting a birth story or a wedding or a friend of mine at the pool.  I just, oh, feel alive!  Like life is tasty and happening and dazzling!

And here, in a living room on Oak Street, in a town set aglow by the promise of "Munson and Sons" (or "Mummy Fords," depending on which old lady in town you speak with), is a wife and mamma and female who doesn't know how to pin something onto Pinterest.  And a husband and daddy and man who looks like American Storybook Jesus, according to my husband.  And a coffee-shop babe who takes her naps under a espresso machine, and who kind of looks like a munchable little coffee treat herself.  And this is where they wake up and come home and close their blinds and take their showers and park their jeep and rest.

And it makes me feel alive.

They moved into this home, less than two minutes from their store, last month.  They have hardy plans for it.  When we opened the blinds they fell off the window and Mallory tossed them into the kitchen.  Where the dish and clothes washer live.  And the plaster needs to be repaired in the walls, and the bathroom isn't "them" at all.  Just the night before this shoot Mallory went all "destroy the shower doors!" and hung up a curtain and rod in their place.  It's just on the cusp of all it will be, but it's undoubtably theirs and beautiful.

In my various conversations with the Woods family over the past eight months, I've watched a trusty thread stitch their thoughts together.  "It just wasn't us, ya know?"  "That was just SO 'me'!" "It was us!" "It really wasn't 'me.'" They have some of the most developed, unstuffy, natural, pleasant, makes-you-feel-comfortable-not-judged-happy-not-like-a-failure sense of personal taste and desire I've ever come across.  They aren't trendy or trying to be cool - they just dress and decorate and drink and do what they love!  It's so simple and good. 

Trey is the sort of person who you feel really proud-of-yourself when you've made him laugh.  He's easy to talk to, interesting and not-shy - but he also doesn't pity-laugh.  Mallory, on the other hand, is a feather of a speaker and, if she caught on that you were making a joke, would laugh no matter what - just to make sure you didn't feel bad.   But as a couple they make you feel like you're family.  It doesn't matter if you're at the shop or in their living room.   And their little offspring daughter is a holdable part of their love.  She is so easy to adore and want to be near.  She's (obviously) super used to being around people all day long.  She sucks her fists and is working on coordinating her back with her mind, and she looks at you like she's got you all figured out - and then usually smiles really big, which makes you confident that she assessed you well ;)

These three must be a little window light of heaven.  Everyone - from my own family to the church ladies to the Town Member of The Year to the instagram-and-tweeters to myself - have only experienced memorable, rich and addicting love from this crew.  It's honest and not something that can be faked or manufactured or posed.  

Trey, Mallory and young Autumn, er, Harmony (hahah just kidding. Harvest.) yes, you're beautiful.  "Inside and out," as they say.  Yes, you're inspiring.  But thank you, sincerely, for your hearts - especially towards people.  Thank you for not making people different than you (basically your whole town!) feel snubbed or looked down on.  Instead they feel a part of you.  Thank you for living out what you believe is best, but not talking about those things in a way that makes me-or-others feel like half-bakes.  You love differences and don't want everyone to be like you - you want them to be like them.  And you bring that out in people.  Thank you for talking about God like He's really your friend, and not like you're "good Christian folk who have to bring up prayer now."  It's obvious that your life in Him is so interweaved with your everyday life that they just simply can't be separated.  It doesn't feel hokey, ultra-spiritual or pushy.  It just feels right and helpful and delightful.  

Thank you for the start of a friendship - I hope our babies will be buds for a long long time, and I hope you'll get to eat at our bagel shop someday, and I hope for many nights and meals and BBQ's and holiday parties and coffee-breaks and conversations and knowings with our families.

It's been so nice to meet you.

Red Dirt Life | Personal

"and drivin' down the road
i get a feeling that i should have
been home yesterday, yesterday"
country roads - john denver

On the border of Logan and Lincoln County, forming the third point of a triangle with Meridian and Shiloh, is the forgettable "town" of Merrick.  The roads here are all numbered, not named.  780.  3300. 800.  105.  As orderly as geometry graph paper, the lines of the red dirt go straight, in both directions, for more miles than you could drive in a day.  Likewise for the cross roads.   God help the soul who gets lost out here (and don't worry, God does, through His friendly and blessed people who call these paths "home.")   The only memorable town trophy is the old school house.  It's been closed for decades, but the former students who live nearby (all grannies and granddads now) have a monthly town dance in the empty, square building.   If you happened upon the right lumpy lane, and knew where to stop, you'd see these trees:

These trees look like the rest of the trees lining sunburned roads in Merrick (and Meridian and Shiloh and Frost and...).  But these trees our our trees.   Almost three years ago, long before he met me, my husband bought 25 acres of trees.  At one point the path through them had been cleared out, but spending almost two years in Maryland gave the grass and reeds ample time to reclaim their territory.  Behind these trees, about a quarter mile straight in, is the beginning of our house.   There is a concrete footing and foundation, as well as concrete exterior walls (I was there for that stage), with cut-outs for the windows and doors.  In a couple weeks, we're headed to Meridian, and we'll be passing the old school, and we'll pull up to these trees.  During our month long stay, we'll trample down most of that helpless but persistent greenery on the ground.   We've been saving for over a year - counting pennies, not taking trips we could have taken, waiting - and now it's time to put a roof on the house.   Caleb will spend 10-16 hours a day, nearly everyday, making this roof become real and not a drawing.  Early mornings, late nights, sweet rest, unexpected costs and satisfying progress are sure to be our story.

This was never how I imagined my first year of marriage.

No, I wasn't exactly a Red Dirt Bride in my mind.  Before I met Caleb, I imagined staying in my outskirts-of-DC-location for a few years, and then maybe moving somewhere quaint down south.  South Carolina was the location of choice.  Beach, class, lower cost, East Coast (near route 95 and all the beloved cities who live up and down it - from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, DC, Charlotte, Charleston and on).  Close enough to not drastically change my photography clientele, but far enough away to change my world.  Close enough to spend long weekends with my family, but far enough to miss my birth city.  I also dreamed of quick California fixes.  The California coast is my favorite and best place in the whole world (well, that I've had the honor of experiencing so far.)  My mother and her family is from and still near and around California.  I have friends - so many friends - out there.  When I was still younger than 10, we moved out to San Diego for a year and a half.  It was the longest vacation I've ever taken.  I'm a summer girl, who craves a beach and tacos and fashion and a dry heat world.  I imagined that.



But I met a red dirt man.

"... somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to cradle his own grandchild... somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife’s done feeding visiting ladies and tell the ladies to 'be sure and come back real soon' — and mean it... Somebody who’d bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life ‘doing what dad does.'"

He dreams of carrying on the family business he and his father and brothers began years ago.  He bounces in his seat, and gets flushed when he explains to me the plans for his, er, our, home.  We often nestle into bed and begin using our hands to "draw" a new idea we have.  Usually this turns into lights popping back on, and someone googling or doodling to "see" the idea better.  I made a few changes to his original plans - a woman's touch.  The kitchen has been moved and there are far more bedrooms now.  He's talked me into some ideas I didn't love initially (*ahem* stone, turrets *ahem*) and I've gotten him quite excited about acrylic chairs, glass and crystal, and bright and white over dark and "cabin-y."  Dark wood floors, wood-beamed ceiling and a white-exterior with black accents have been our chocolate fondue melting pot. 

So we begin.  Living this life as "one," a Hollywood half-blood crossed with country wind and grit.  There is more preppy in him than he was aware of, and I've discovered there is more small-town in my heart than I had ever understood.  Our neighbor across the way, for example, plants two gardens every year: one inside his fence for he and his family, one on the outside of his fence, by the side of the road, for anyone nearby or passing-by who needs an onion or potato.   Every year.  Just to be kind.  Yes, there is room - much room - my heart for living life with people like him.  Caleb's favorite shoes are either his Cantor Low Ralph Lauren canvas sneakers, or his classic brown Sperry Top-Siders.

I love being changed, and watching someone else change, and yet somehow still retaining ourselves in the process.  I love being a Red Dirt Bride.  It's better than I imagined.

---

Our road-trip to build the roof starts the first weekend in March.  We'll be cruising through country in my little white Corolla, and we'll live in Guthrie (the latest stop for the Mumford&Sons tour! What what!  "The biggest thing to happen to Guthrie since The Land Run.")

I'd love to meet new friends in the surrounding area.  E-mail or get in touch somehow if you're available to chat and hang-out during the month of March.   We can mingle at Hoboken!  Or if you'd like a photoshoot of some sort - I'm available for a few sessions :)  

Hoboken Coffee Roasters | Guthrie Local Shop

"what city, what town
so many roads 
mothered in stone 
surrounded by bones 
it feels so alone 

the last waltz
don't mean the last dance is over."

the band - the last waltz

Priscilla Ahn music video style, Trey and Mallory had a dream.  A coffee shop, opened and run with heart and soul.  Made to meet, know and love people.  Napkin sketching and imagining.  Cue the harmonica.  Penny pinching and saving.  Waiting patiently.  Honing in on the details: a coffee shop where they not only ground and brewed the coffee, but even roasted it themselves.  Where every cup, every sip, every flavor was the reward of many hours of effort, not a simple online shipment order.  The coffee house would be for family, for strangers, for their kids, for us, for we, for love.  They dreamed.







And it's funny.  Amidst an ex-Oklahoma-state capitol-turned-Small-Town-USA, where there are too many antique shops, a "Cowboy Cafe" and Stables Diner, and a town centerpiece (the highschool football field), where grand-dads and toddlers wear Ariat's and Wranglers, where the choirs sing every Sunday in all four side-by-side churches, where 25 buildings are empty and for sale, where the parking outside looks like a Ford F350 commercial, where the entire, conservative, drawled town takes off work early to watch the homecoming parade at 2:00 pm, where not a single chain store is allowed to open (the city council wouldn't allow it), where the older ladies gossip at the hair salon, where the culture is a country-people who "grew up workin' on the land," where they "fell in love with a small town woman and... a few years later... seven people livin' all together in a house built with his own hands," where tornado shelter signs are plaqued to old brick, where cobblestone says a weary "hello." under the worn-down parts of asphalt, where all the fine folks, bless their heart, are meat-and-patate-a's folks, where mom's yell down the street "HEY! All ya'lls better getch yur-selves up that hee-ill! School's startin'! And you otta be busier than a one-legged man in a butt-kickin' contest!" - in this town - a young family who seems to fit the Portland, Greenwich Village, Kinfolk world, did the beautiful and opened up their dream.  And a little lady in her skinny jeans, head wrap and moccasins pours over a cup (made with love), while her forever-boy mans the french press in his hoodie - very skater-meets-hipster like.  And it's Guthrie, Oklahoma.  Not a trendy new chain in Chevy Chase, or a typical mountainside place in Vancouver.  In the land of fried chicken bucket bets, hunting, Carhart jackets, leather boots and Stetson cowboy hats this couple, and their new baby girl named Harvest, have successfully stayed true to their personal vision and personality and the entire town is simply smitten with them.   An Anthropologie in the middle of a rodeo.  This hasn't been done.  It's brave.  And it's working.  Watch out - this sleepy sweet town is on the rise, and because of people like Trey + Mallory, it's going to be a different place in five years.  Better.  Home-ier.  Lovelier.



"Oh, we wrote our blue-prints and design ideas on notebook paper!" They drive a very simple car, Trey actually bikes almost everywhere, they've saved and saved and saved so they can do it "right" and not get themselves into the crazy world of debt, they waited.  "And prayer, Kristen," Mallory told me with a gentle head-shake and tight-lips - if she could let herself, she probably could have cried - "God has taken this and made it so much more than we ever thought it could be.  You can do the numbers and the math, and then God just blows it all away.  He's blessed us.  Prayer.  We spent so much time in prayer.  He's been so good."

And now their people-oriented, town-focused, made-with-love, share-their-hearts coffee house is real.  It's hard.  And you can see it. And it's not an idea anymore.  Hoboken Coffee Roasters is open.




The unroasted beans below and the eye-catching roaster above //





Roasted beans!  About to be ground...



























































The stories in this small building could delight your soul for hours.  The $20 Chandeliers Story.  The Sweatshirt In The Guthrie Sports Museum Window Story.  The Crib in the Corner Story. The Home Made (nearly) Everything Story.  The Blue Print Story.  But, really, the story Mr. Woods and his Woodsy Wife and round Harvest Woods want you to know about is the one where Love came to earth, and did good and beautiful (and eternal) things, so we can spend our life (forever) enjoying good and beautiful things, and we don't have to fear the evil and ugly.  They want you to know the story about how Love changes everything - your soul and your cup of coffee.

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and props to their designer, emma dime, for the remarkable logo!