Lifestyle Archives

Social Story Templates for 2018 into 2019

| #story #nye #yearinreview

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| A cute little trend on Facebook / Instagram / Snapchat stories are little templates to fill in your own answers to questions, comments, goals and more.

Design Background:

There were a few other designers that created their own versions of these story templates for the year and and the new year but ultimately many of them were too complicated or did not distill the information down to an understandable point. Additionally, many of the design templates I looked at were also very helter-skelter with positioning, fonts, colors, etc… I decided to start with making my branded version of these story templates, and While not everyone will like this blue template i created, there is also gold version as a secondary option that is maybe a bit more festive.

Please feel free to use them and tag my account @zamartz.

2018, A Year in Review
New Year’s Resolutions
2019, My New Goals

Robe in Hotel Bed

A robe left on a hotel bed always feels like an invitation and a warning at the same time.

The room is quiet in that careful way conference hotels are quiet: carpet swallowing footsteps, air conditioning breathing in measured sighs, the hallway’s life kept at a distance. Inside, it’s just the bed—white sheets pulled tight—and the simple weight of fabric waiting where a person should be.

Travel does that. It compresses you. Days become lanyards and schedules, small talk and bad coffee, a loop of elevators and meeting rooms. Then you come back to the room and everything you carried in your head finally sets down. The robe is there like a placeholder for rest, a soft uniform for the hour when you’re no longer presenting anything.

I think that’s what I notice most in places like this: how the ordinary becomes briefly strange. A bed that isn’t yours. A mirror that doesn’t know you. A silence that feels rented.

And still, there’s comfort. The room doesn’t ask for your history. It doesn’t creak with the ghosts of old years or hold the familiar scuffs of a life lived. It just offers clean edges, a lamp glow, and the chance to be anonymous for a night.

Somewhere outside the window, the city keeps going. In here, the robe waits. So do I.

Seattle Sightseeing

Seattle Sightseeing is supposed to feel like motion—tickets, turns, the bright insistence of places you’re meant to see. But this morning the city is doing something gentler.

From a hillside vantage, the Seattle skyline sits behind a seam of trees, as if the neighborhood is holding the view in its hands. The Space Needle rises like a compass point, less a spectacle than a quiet reassurance: yes, you’re here. The buildings gather around it in clean edges and softened grays, while the sky refuses to be tidy.

Clouds spread in layers, mottled and luminous, the kind of weather that can’t decide whether it’s clearing or arriving. The light is early and careful, turning glass into something almost warm. Off to the side, water glints faintly, not demanding attention—just present.

I think this is the kind of sightseeing that sticks. Not the rushing kind, but the moment you pause and the city becomes a landscape instead of a checklist. Green in the foreground, steel in the distance, morning threaded through everything.

If you’re looking for a Seattle view, you could chase the famous angles. Or you could find a hill, stand still, and let the skyline meet you where you are—beneath a sky that looks like it’s still deciding what the day will be.

Seattle Space Needle

There’s something about looking up at the Seattle Space Needle from directly below that makes the city feel quieter than it is. The legs lean inward like a careful brace, and the saucer above hangs there with a kind of calm confidence—steel and geometry holding their place against a soft, shifting sky.

Today the clouds are scattered, bright and uncommitted, and the white structure catches the light in a way that feels almost domestic—like a familiar porch light in a neighborhood you haven’t visited in years. It’s a landmark, sure, but it also has the steady presence of something that has watched a lot of ordinary days go by.

I like monuments best when they don’t demand anything from you. When they just stand there and let you move around them, letting your thoughts fill in the empty space. The Space Needle does that. It doesn’t need to be explained; it just needs to be seen, from the street, from the park, from the angle that makes you notice the bones of it.

If you’re visiting, you can do the obvious things. But if you live nearby, or if you’re passing through with time to spare, it’s worth stopping for a minute and looking up—letting the wind and the traffic fade, and letting the city feel a little bigger, a little brighter.

Weekend Vaca with Boo in NOFO

The weekend in NOFO felt like the kind of pause you don’t plan, you just fall into.

The sky was a wide, soft gray—nothing dramatic, just a ceiling of cloud that made the water look steadier and more honest. We stood close at the edge of it all, shoulder to shoulder, letting the wind do what it wanted with our shirts and our hair, letting the moment be unposed even as the camera caught it.

There’s a comfort in getting away with someone you love and realizing you don’t have to fill every second. A short drive turns into a different rhythm: slower meals, longer looks, quiet jokes that only make sense to the two of you. NOFO has that effect. It doesn’t demand a checklist. It just gives you room.

I keep thinking about how places can hold feelings the way old houses hold heat—subtle, stored up, and easy to miss until you step back inside your own life. This trip wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. It was the simple relief of salt air, an arm around a shoulder, and the ocean stretching out like a reset button.

If you want the little details and reactions, the Instagram comments tell the rest of the story.

My baby is sooooo handsome

My baby is sooooo handsome.

He’s the kind of handsome that doesn’t try too hard. Just a tri-color face turned slightly toward the window, ears caught between perked and relaxed, like he’s listening to the house breathe. The tag on his collar taps softly when he shifts, a tiny chime in a quiet room.

I took this photo and realized how much of loving a dog is learning their still moments. Not the sprinting, not the chaos—just the pause. The look that says he knows his name, he knows his people, and he’s deciding whether to be brave or be cuddled.

Some days the world feels loud and over-lit. Then a dog settles into the blanket like it was always meant to be there, and the room becomes its own small weather system—warm, steady, and familiar. If you’ve ever looked at your pup and felt your chest soften for no logical reason, you’ll understand this picture.

Read Insta-comments -> https://bt.zamartz.com/2lZ6YXm

Happy Pride from our Family to Yours

Some days arrive like a familiar coat you pull on without thinking—soft, worn-in, and somehow new again. Pride feels a little like that in our house: not a single day on the calendar, but a season of remembering what we’ve built, who we love, and how we keep choosing each other.

This photo catches that mood perfectly: our dog, calm and watchful, wrapped in a rainbow bandana like a small flag of belonging. The colors are bright, but the feeling is quiet—steady eyes, a settled posture, the kind of presence that says, “I’m here.” It’s a simple image, but it holds a lot.

Family isn’t only the big moments. It’s the everyday rituals: the familiar creak of the floor, the way light lands on the couch, the sound of tags jingling when someone gets up to follow you into the next room. Love lives in those ordinary corners, and it grows there.

So from our family to yours: Happy Pride. If your home is loud or peaceful, crowded or still, if you’re celebrating openly or finding your way in private—may you feel safe, seen, and held. May you find your people. May you keep making a life that fits.

The Spa is Mine

The Spa is Mine.

It’s a small claim, but it feels true in that quiet way—when the water is glassy, the sky is a clean, wide blue, and the whole yard looks like it’s holding its breath. The pool sits there like a bright square of calm, bordered by sun-warmed concrete and a strip of green that looks too orderly to be accidental.

From this chair, with my legs stretched out and a book open in my lap, the day becomes simple. There’s no rush to get in, no need to prove anything. Just the soft sound of water shifting against tile, and the steady light that makes everything look a little newer than it is.

I like how places can feel lived alongside you. Not loud, not demanding—just present. A backyard can be a kind of home for your thoughts, the way an old house can hold seasons in its walls. Out here, summer doesn’t announce itself; it settles in.

Maybe that’s all “mine” means today: a brief pocket of stillness, claimed without conflict. A moment where nothing is being remodeled, improved, optimized, or explained. Just a body in the sun, a page turning, and water waiting patiently nearby.

Rain Dance for Arizona on Bell Rock Trail

The sky over Sedona looked heavy, the kind of gray that can’t decide if it’s going to give you shade or finally give you rain.

On Bell Rock Trail, the red earth felt wide and open, stretched out like a stage. I stood there with my arms thrown up, half-joking, half-hopeful, doing my best rain dance for Arizona. The rocks held their rust color under the clouds, and the whole desert seemed to pause and listen.

Hiking out here has a way of making you pay attention to small shifts: wind changing direction, a cooler breath of air, the way distant buttes fade when mist drifts through. It’s not the same as a summer storm back home, where rain arrives loud and certain. This was more like a question hanging in the sky.

I don’t know if the dance worked. Maybe it’s enough that it made me stop and look around, to feel how big the landscape is and how quiet you can get inside it. Even when the ground is dry, you can still sense what it’s waiting for.

If you’ve ever walked Bell Rock Trail under a brooding sky, you know the feeling: that the desert isn’t empty at all. It’s just patient.

The two most beautiful thing this weekend in one photo

There are weekends that feel too big to hold in your hands, so you try to press them flat into something simple—one frame, one breath, one small proof that you were there.

In this photo, the red rocks sit under a heavy sky, muted by cloud and distance, the way landmarks do when you’re not trying to conquer them—only notice them. Below, rows of clay-colored roofs and soft green trees make their own quiet pattern, a lived-in grid at the edge of the wild.

And then there’s the other beautiful thing: the small human moment in front of all that ancient stone. Someone leaning in with a phone, framing the same view, saving it the way we all do now. Not to replace the memory, but to give it a place to live when the weekend is over.

I like how the scene holds two kinds of scale at once—the patient, unmoving rock and the quick, fleeting act of photographing it. The world pushes up against itself: wilderness and neighborhood, weather and weekend, permanence and a thumb tapping a screen.

Maybe that’s what makes the best trips feel settled instead of crowded. You don’t take the landscape home. You just let it follow you a little, like color on your sleeves.

Family bonding time

The photo catches a quiet kind of closeness—two dads stretched out together, the world narrowed to a couch, a soft black-and-white filter, and a puppy tucked in like a warm punctuation mark at the bottom of the frame.

There’s something about moments like this that feels bigger than it looks. No big plans, no perfect lighting, no reason to perform. Just the small weight of an animal settling in, the familiar angles of someone you love beside you, the unspoken agreement to stay still for a while.

Bonding can sound like an activity, like something you schedule or work at, but more often it’s these ordinary minutes that do the stitching. A shared look at the camera. An arm draped where it always ends up. A dog’s sleepy eyes, half-trusting and half-curious, as if it’s learning the shape of this home in real time.

Family bonding time doesn’t need much space. It just needs a little quiet, and the willingness to be there—together—until the day feels settled.

Two dads cuddling with puppy, framed in a simple snapshot, says what a lot of words can’t: this is what “home” looks like when it’s alive.

The Morning face I love

Mornings have a particular kind of hush—the kind that makes even an ordinary room feel a little larger, a little softer around the edges. And then there’s that face.

The Morning face I love is equal parts brave and tender: ears still undecided, eyes half-open like they’re negotiating with the day, and a stripe of sunlight landing right where the world wants your attention. It’s funny how a small creature can hold a whole atmosphere. The bed is still warm, the house is still waking up, and for a minute everything is simple.

“Sleepy morning puppy close-up” doesn’t just describe a photo; it names a small ritual. The pause before the first footsteps. The quiet check-in that says, without language, “We’re here. We made it to another morning.”

That’s why I come back to moments like this. Love is often unremarkable in the best way—found in routine, in warm blankets, in a look that asks for nothing except that you stay close.

Some days move too fast. But this one starts slow, with a face that belongs to the morning, and to the home we’re making together.

Design Background:

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