I like all the neon signs, eclectic decor, and red brick. Their matcha latte wasn’t life changing but it was a nice pick-me-up before heading to Half Price Books.

I didn’t take any pictures in the bookstore but Bones will show you what I got!

The World’s Great Operas (1959) by John Tasker Howard catalogs more than 200 of the most popular operas. I love opera and am excited to have this book as a reference going forward.

Next up was Zion Market for lunch.

There is a huge Korean grocery store in the Lewisville Mall as well as a diverse Asian food court with options like Korean corn dogs, bingsu, pho, noodles in black bean sauce, and so much more. We love coming here to try new foods but today we were both just craving pho!

This was by far the best pho i’ve had since we traveled to Vietnam in 2019.
It made me so happy:) and was the perfect way to cool down on this 100º day.

We walked around the mall for a while after eating and tried some Korean cream sodas. I had strawberry and Alex had banana - both were great!

It was a really great day and the first day of some personal changes I am making in life.

I would like to blog about said changes once I feel more confident in sticking with them. I don’t want to get carried away on day one!

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Thanks for being here.
Remember to be kind to yourself.

x

Kelly

New Stickers

And here we have them in their proper places…

(they turned out so good I am really excited about them)

You can shop our new stickers on the breafkast website!

Thanks for being here,

x

Kelly

I’m glad I made it happen this week as I am practicing being more intentional with my photography.

According to people online, the roof caved in during our January 2026 ice storm and was never fixed. The weight of the ice and snow collapsed the roof and actually pulled a section of the building off the foundation.

Also according to people online, the building will likely be torn down.

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Thanks for looking at pictures of a condemned laundromat!

I am practicing photographing buildings (because I don’t like photographing buildings) and am enjoying it more than I expected. So I will share more from around Denton soon.

ttyl
Kelly

I have been bringing it with me everywhere lately. I appreciate how it authentically captures a moment.. and it’s just so tiny and cute.. I love it.

Norman Roscoe (shown above) is where I bought my Charmera!

They still had several available and they’re an awesome place to check out if you’re in town.

That’s all for now but more to come!

Thanks for being here,
Kelly

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my friends and I would sneak out and speed down the dirt roads behind my parents’ house, turning off our headlights and racing through stop signs.

It was incredibly stupid and unsafe,
but as a kid growing up in the country
it made me feel untouchable.

These days, I still love to wind my way down the empty roads, I just do so at the posted speed limit.

Windows down,

warm breeze on my face,

the chirping of cicadas crescendoing around me.

There is something about these solitary drives that quiets my mind in an almost meditative way.

I think it’s how you can drive for miles and not pass another car.

How it’s all pasture and small ponds,

cattle guard entrances and railroad tracks.

I think it’s how getting lost on these roads has never felt so familiar,

like a shared experience with my younger self.

I think I am drawn to photography because it is clear and legible in a way that memory is often not.

In my mind it’s all glowy and faded, an almost hypnagogic experience to piecing the past together. I feel most connected to my childhood through sensory moments that take me back entirely. Not like i’m recalling a memory, but like i’m living a new moment shrouded in deja-vu.

It’s a blur of love and adventure and freedom and healing.

I feel these past moments inside me at all times, dull but persistent, like the feeling of forgetting something.

These photos seek to represent the hazy daydream that is my memory.

My remembered feelings of growing up in a small Texas town, learning to drive on back roads, and the freedom of youth that was so unbeknownst to me at the time.

I hope that in trying to capture the reverie of my mind, I can learn to know myself and my existence better.

Thanks for journeying back with me,

x
Kelly

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At the children’s hospital where I was evaluated, I was surprised to see the glowing x-ray of my spine, curved over 40 degrees and looking like a poorly written “S” down my back.

It is a shock to be told there is a problem with your body. A problem that even with the recommended stretching and even with that horrible, thick-plastic brace they custom fit to me, may not improve. May only get worse.

This curved spine of mine and pulled-too-tight tendons are a problem that require daily stretching and exercise and walking and drinking water, and even when I try to do everything right there are days that I wake up to a pain that causes me to crumble.

Is it the pain itself that is so overwhelming or the fear that one day it becomes a pain I can’t stretch away?

I don’t know. And I have to be okay not knowing.

I believe that pain can be a great teacher. It can teach you to let go of your ideas of control. It can teach you to practice acceptance. It can remind you that everything is fleeting and that this, too, shall pass.

Some days I am able to practice these beliefs better than others. There are times I am able to seperate myself from my pain, but there are other times I wake up with only anger and resentment towards this body I inhabit.

Is it not the age-old question?
Could we know the light without the darkness?
Would I celebrate the pain-free days so much if I didn’t know the other side?

One day my pain might get worse, and I do have a lot of worries in that regard, but I have to let those thoughts go.

Say hello to the thought with an inhale… say goodbye with an exhale.

One day will arrive eventually and all I can do until then is practice acceptance with myself and with this body I was given. Part of acceptance is saying, I don’t know what the future holds, but I know that I won’t let fear hold me back from it.

Thanks for holding space for me today,

x
Kelly

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I feel a lot of pressure to look towards the future. Pressure to plan and save and strive for more. It’s easy for my thoughts to get trapped in a fruitless loop of the unforeseeable.

Slowing down and documenting the present moment is often the only thing that relaxes the constant cycling.

Turning the camera on my own life enables me to see everything anew.

Sometimes it takes looking at things through a different lens, but the beauty was always there.

It’s these insignificant moments that will shape our entire story. The future will arrive and it will then be the present, and that’s really all there ever was.

Thanks for giving my thoughts space.

Until next time.

x
Kelly

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The weather is changing and the trees are starting to blossom. Our crape myrtles haven’t turned their beautiful rich magenta, but the blue bonnets growing at that church around the corner have never looked prettier.

Last week, we held a funeral for a squirrel.

We have many that grace our backyard, eating the bird seed and knocking over planters. We love watching them and they love us for the soft, warm cushions we provide via our lounge chairs. Every winter they tear into the seats and gather filling for their nests.

We’ve stopped replacing them at this point and have given full domain to the squirrels.

When we found one dead on our back patio –seemingly having missed the jump from our roof to the tree and hit his head just so on the concrete– we wanted to give him a proper send off.

We made sure to put some bird seed, nuts, and a little tuft of cushion in with him to soften the journey.

I died as a mineral and became a plant,

I died as plant and rose to animal,

I died as animal and I was Man.

Why should I fear?

When was I less by dying?

– Rumi

March was certainly the month of laundry.

More than almost anything, we find clothes while dumpster diving. It’s an easy thing to donate, but even easier to simply take it out with the trash.

Finding clothes in the dumpster and getting them ready to be donated is honestly pretty fun. Sure, it’s a lot of laundry, but I enjoy looking through other people’s clothes and I especially enjoy getting to keep anything that I like. It lets me branch out to try something I wouldn’t normally wear, without the commitment of having spent money on it.

I mean, I never imagined I would love Kirkland brand outdoors pants, but I found two pairs in the trash and now they’re practically an everyday wear.

It was a good month in the sparks household

and I hope it was for you, too.

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Thanks for reading,

x

kelly

Lately, I’ve been bringing my CampSnap camera with me everywhere. It’s a digital camera, but there’s no back screen to check your shots, so you don’t see the pictures until you upload them later.

It allows you to just take the photo and move on instead of obsessing over whether it’s “good” or not. It also looks and feels like using a disposable camera, which is so nostalgic to me. I just love it!

I am always dragging Alex into these photo booths and i’m so happy he indulges me. They’re my favorittteee

Here’s where I hung my purse knowing it was a place I might easily forget it.
I did indeed forget it… but thankfully remembered before we got to far and found it in the same spot.

I mentioned in a recent YouTube video that I wanted to use this blog more casually, so I figured sharing some pictures from our recent zoo trip would be a fun start.

Thanks for looking and I hope you have a great day!

x

Kelly
aka breafkast

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More days than I can remember, my parents would drop me and my friends off at the mall and we would wander the corridors unencumbered and alive in ways that I thought would last forever.

As a teenager, these long, packed hallways were filled with our every childish desire; Victoria’s Secret’s Love Spell body spray, sticky lip glosses, and roll on body glitters. We could pretend adult for the afternoon and would ride high on that feeling until the next grand adventure.

Returning to this space as a “true” adult (whatever that means) feels surreal, walking the same open corridors as decades past, but now unsure where the all the magic has gone.

When my dad passed away unexpectedly in 2022, I felt the way I imagine the mall feels now. Empty, void of purpose, lacking in all the joy that used to roam so freely throughout.

The place I once felt invincible is now a stark reminder of the impermanence of life. I can appreciate its honesty, though, and maybe that’s the most important lesson.

In life death is a given, although we oftentimes allow ourselves to willfully forget this fact. Grief changes us in ways only felt after facing it head-on, body shaking, head in your hands weeping.

Accepting that the passage of time is a part of existing allows us to create space for growth, for sorrow, for all the emotions we feel when looking back on something that once felt so safe, and realizing it will never be the same.

Maybe I feel at home in the mall because we’re both missing something.

Maybe knowing that something is missing is a part of life’s mysterious journey.

Maybe holding space for transformation is a testament of strength, no matter how difficult it feels in the moment.

I miss my dad everyday and hope to keep discovering spaces that remind me of the in-between; that constant feeling of wanting to go back to a simpler time, mixed with the powerful knowing that we can only ever move forward.

I appreciate you reading and send love,

x

Kelly

We had only noticed the abandoned home a day before, even though it sat in clear view of a street we drove almost daily. The week after we snapped some pictures, it was demolished.

What a mysterious adventure.

We never saw any of the kittens the handmade signs proclaimed there to be.

I hope they made it out okay.

Seeing as this house was situated directly behind a vacuum repair shop, my best guess is that it became of a burial ground of sorts for unused and unrepairable vacuums. What they did with all of them when it was demolished is beyond me. Perhaps the were destroyed in the process and hauled away in trucks.

It was an intriguing discovery, and one I think about often. I look for the now vacant plot of land whenever I drive by, remembering the fantastical feel of a collapsing house filled with the most unusual devices.

Thanks for coming along on this journey with me.

x

Kelly

I often told people that I would never have a cat. Although I had cats growing up, I had become such a dog person, practically swearing off cats all together in my adult life.

It had been almost a year since we had to unexpectedly lay our beloved companion, Pilgrim, to rest and we were beginning to open our hearts to the idea of another animal friend. We would go to the shelter to see the dogs, but they would all remind us too much of sweet Pilg. They could never be as good a boy as he was, we would say. They couldn’t compare to that desert mutt we adopted as a young pup in Utah and traveled all over the country with.

We quickly realized our hearts weren’t ready to receive another dog, we needed more time.

It was Alex who initially suggested a cat. He had never had one growing up and had always wanted a solid black one. He would browse the available cats online and I would noncommittally watch over his shoulder, judging them and finding a way to dismiss each one. Until one day, a shift occurred and I opened to the idea. I woke up one day and I was ready.

We checked the shelter’s website and there he was. A solid black kitten, three months old, and available for viewing in two days. We thought about it. We considered all the factors of having a cat and heavily considered how much we loved our leather couch.. how while Pilgrim was always good about staying off it, a cat might not give the same respect to our boundaries.

But still, we made our way to the shelter two days later, arriving exactly as the doors opened for fear that someone else might get him first. We were led into the viewing room where we were able to play with him, or more accurately, where we got to watch him explore and give him brief pets as he wandered by. We both thought he was kind of goofy looking. A little too long for his slim frame. Ears a little too big for his face and a tail that seemed to go on forever. He was a weird little boy but we instantly loved him.

We looked at each other with that knowing look, the kind that says, are we really doing this? Each understanding the other’s answer of yes.

Fast forward one year and we truly couldn’t imagine life without him. He brings us so much joy the way he chirps at the birds outside, meows with excitement when we open the bedroom door in the morning, and holds his tail in a full curly-q just like his brother Pilgrim did.

Not only has he grown into the most beautiful cat, he’s also friendly and curious; not afraid to meet new people or explore the great outdoors on his leash. He gets compliments by everyone who interacts with him, and even at the vet he’s a calm and patient boy.

We are so blessed by this little void of a kitty. He has helped heal my heart and reminds me everyday of the importance of the here and now.

He lives his perfect little cat life and I couldn’t be more grateful for him deciding to join our family when he did.

Fun Facts about Bones

How did you pick the name Bones?
We got his name from one of our favorite tv shows, I Think You Should Leave. “The bones are their money / so are the worms”

How old is Bones?
The shelter didn’t have an exact birthday for him, but we believe he was born in mid-December of 2022.

What breed is Bones?
Glad you asked! Bones is predominately American Domestic, but also has a mix of Siamese, Sphynx, and other lesser breeds which you can see below.

Thank you for reading,

I hope you enjoyed hearing a little about Bones!

Talk soon,

Kelly

x

You can follow Bones on Instagram @catbonesworms

We noticed that looking for mushrooms is a lot like looking for trash to pick up. You train your eyes to find a specific item, and when you see one you end up seeing many.

Our hobbies are colliding.

Thanks for reading :)

xo Kelly

Tyree Guyton started this neighborhood-wide art installation back in the 80’s when his grandfather took him to clean up the abandoned properties and empty lots near their home. From there, he reimagined what the debris and trash could be, creating a block of colorful homes and found-art installations spanning the entire block.

Over the years, several of the decorated homes have burned down, but the main house, his childhood home and where he still lives today, stands strong; covered in polka-dots and acting as an epicenter to the whimsy.

The remaining slabs and weather beaten children’s toys mix the feeling of hope and despair into one haunting image of what used to be.

Seeing garbage used to create something for the people was really impactful to me. My job and a large portion of my life revolves around trash, and yet this project forced me see it in a completely new light.

This trash gives back to the community. This trash makes art accessible. This project, dedicated to turning unwanted items into something beautiful, creates a space for all of us to feel something.

There is something so raw about it.

Something that felt equally inspiring and disheartening.

Over the years The Heidelberg Project has changed so much. Burned down and reimagined. It won’t stay the same for long but it will continue to ignite my passion for turning trash into something that creates conversation.

I won’t come back to Detroit without seeing this project again.

x