About Beginnings

I got my first camera on my 8th Christmas, I think. All I really remember is the Barbie pink casing on the disposable piece of moment capturing magic. I finished the roll of film within the first hour of receiving it at my grandparents house on Alkire Lake. {And am pretty certain those photographs were never developed.} But that didn’t matter. I was captivated by my new found ability to look at something, click a button, and forever freeze a seemingly normal, even mundane, time in space + turn it into a physical image I could hold and share with anyone.

I started creating my own stories about this time too.

Or maybe the story creating came first.

It’s hard to keep the order straight when digging up memories buried under years of adult-ing.

The first time I was able to write down assignments on a laptop (in high school - yes, I know, showing my age for better or worse here!) was another shifting moment for me in which I discovered this as another lifelong passion.

First Came Love

The story writing came to a pause when my husband and I got married in 2009. And then with becoming a mother the following year + then having another baby a little over a year later + finally a third a little over a year after that!

The writing is slowly, gradually, coming back though.

I have a newfound + voracious desire to finish the novel which my head, heart, + hands have been working on here and there over what’s realistically the past decade.

The first steps: writing smaller pieces more frequently + practicing some photography skills.

I went on a health journey for quite some time before coming to this corner of the world. This process started my writing + photography focus down a new path as I began to share health and wellness inspirations via. “Bobbi’s Health & Wellness.”

This has grown and changed after moving to the PNW into the now:

“Bainbridge Quaintrelle.”

What’s in a Name?

A quaintrelle, by definition, is: a woman who emphasizes a life of passion expressed through personal style, leisurely pastimes, charm, and a cultivation of life's pleasures.

I’ve taken this word, which immediately fills the mind’s senses with thoughts of over indulgences and affluence, and instead use it to represent key importances for me individually and for my family:

• finding joy in the every day

• exploring local haunts + experiencing intentional seasons

• cultivating the art of simplicity + living purposefully

• pouring into the hearts of my children + feeding their desire for learning

• defining health + nutrition in relation to the individual

• wholistic + nontoxic + natural remedies + recipes

• learning + growth in handcrafts, skills + hobbies

I’m so glad you’re here, and I hope you’ll pour a cuppa and stay a while <3