Having our friends in town from the Northwest a couple weeks ago week brought one thing to the forefront of our minds: coffee! We are absolute coffee nuts, and living in the Northwest for a short season did nothing for us but magnify that love! There was a constant, unending supply of local coffee roasters to indulge our caffeinated taste buds with. We are coffee junkies for life! We couldn’t wait to show our friends Amber and Mikey the local roasters in our lovely home state of Arizona, but it also got us thinking about how coffee has always been a common denominator for us. A common ground (pun definitely intended) for memories, relationships, and all of life!
Jon’s love for coffee really took strong root in his second year of college. One of his roommates was a black apron barista at Starbucks. (If you aren’t in the know with the Starbucks apron color meanings, it basically means he knew a TON about coffee!) Thanks to his friend Tom, Jon had everything from a Starbucks espresso machine and burr grinder to coffee and syrups available to him in their room! One of their first nights in the dorm, Tom taught Jon to make about everything on the Starbucks menu, and Jon drank them one after another during the lesson. He didn’t sleep much that night, and learned his coffee limits!!
Erica always woke up to her parents sitting and enjoying a cup of coffee together on the couch in the mornings. She loved that time they had together and started drinking it herself. It started as milk with a touch of coffee, but slowly transformed into something Jon now allows her to call ‘coffee’!
For us though it is so much more than a quick pick me up to start the day. Yes, we absolutely require a cup of coffee to start our day! But, we’re fond of coffee in a different way too. It’s one of those things that seems to always be present in our memories.
Jon looks back on his college years and remembers coffee! Not just the one day learning to make drinks with Tom, but the endless nights spent typing term papers with Coldplay, library books, and a French press. We both remember our morning meet-ups before our 8:00 am classes when Jon brought Erica her daily Caramel Macchiato that he made in his ‘dorm room Starbucks.’ We remember meeting with friends over coffee for the first time not knowing that it would become a life-long relationship. We think about our first ‘official’ business meeting at a local coffee roaster with our graphic designer friend who would help us develop our branding for our brand new photography business.
It just seems like coffee has the power to bring people together.
It has worked itself into every area of our business as well. Mondays are Jon’s coffee shop day where he goes and sits and works on all of our content creation for the week while drinking cup after cup of wonderful bean juice (as Erica’s dad would call it!) Coffee is what brings us back to life after a busy day of shooting! When we meet with potential brides and grooms, it’s over – you guessed it – coffee!
He likes it black, she likes it with cream, but here’s to the drink with the power to bring people together, to make lasting memories, and keep us all a little more awake and alert!!
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