31/365

Snapshot Sunday, and the last day of the first month! This month of photos has been effortless! I remember when I started my first 365 and I thought there was no way I’d remember to post a photo every day. Now it’s just a matter of fact, and I never even have to think about it. It’s a habit, and I love it!

Today’s photo truly is a snapshot. I took a few snaps at church, and I was going to use those – but then this opportunity arose. Every one recognizes Superman, Spiderman, and Batman. Now it’s time for the world to know Pictureman – saving the world one snapshot at a time!

Yes, I realize Pictureman doesn't have a camera. He doesn't see that as a problem. (Please note how he solved the cape problem that was brought to light in The Incredibles. Why didn’t Thunderhead and Dynaguy think to tie their capes around their legs?)

30/365

I got tired of the same ‘ol, same ‘ol gray skies and cloudy mountains. I went out and found some different scenery! These guys are always colorful!

Their dad needed some quiet time for schoolwork, so I took the youngest 6 kids to Hideout Mountain to play for an hour, then we went to Frontier Cafe and had hot chocolate and french fries. All of the kids were perfectly behaved the whole time! Yay kiddos! (They each got a dollar in their game night pouches for that!)

(I did not get any good shots of Dale because he spent most of the time in the Suburban.)

29/365

Friday Food! We had our Ladies’ Fellowship meeting this evening, and the theme for our food was “pizza.” I made a fruit pizza…yummy!

The Project 365 Fun Friday photo theme was a self-portrait. I was going to do something that told a bit more about me, but I just didn’t have the time today to work it all out. So this is it…just me.

28/365

I’m finding Thankful Thursdays to be harder than I anticipated! It’s not that I’m not thankful for everything…just that I’m struggling to shoot new things, or the old things in a new way.

Since I’m struggling today, I’ll make a blessings list and see if I can offer some illustrations.

1. A cozy home. We have a house that’s big enough for the 9 of us, it stays warm, and it’s full of happy sounds and smiling people.
2. Coffee. Okay, so it’s not profound. I love good coffee. I especially love when my first cup gets to just the right temperature and I can enjoy drinking it – it’s even better when the house is quiet in that moment. (Hey Mom [and anyone else who is local], wanna go get coffee again soon?)
   (not taken today)
3. Clear skies. I have gotten so tired of gray skies! We finally had clear skies today! I didn’t get out to take pictures until the lovely moon was rising – but the fact that we could see the moon means it was clear!
4. Music with my friends. I am part of the praise team at church. We lead the music each Sunday, and I love it!
5. My husband. He is the most wonderful man I know (really! it’s true!), and I’m so thankful that he’s mine!
   
   (not taken today)

So there you have it. Thankful Thursday.

27/365

It’s another non-walkabout Wednesday. This time it was more a case of no time for walkabout – but even if I had the time, it was a slushy, messy day.

I walked from my living room to my dining room to take this shot of King Caleb the T-Rex. Not much of a walk, but this is one cute T-Rex! They are doing a dinosaur unit at preschool, and Caleb is totally into it! He loves dinosaurs! So this crown makes him a King T-Rex. That works for him!

26/365

It’s Texture Tuesday, and since it’s finally snowing I decided to use snow for my texture. This was shot on my Suburban – isn’t it nice of my Suburban to keep providing me with textures?

Here’s an older picture of Andrew (I took it a year ago) that I put my snow texture on just for fun.

25/365

I was hoping for a dramatic landscape for Monochrome Monday. Nope. Just gray clouds again.

I went to a Thirty-One party today. Neat stuff! Check out that site! I wasn’t able to buy anything today, but I have a wish list, for sure! While I was at my friend’s house for the party I took some shots of her beautiful grand piano.

24/365

It’s snapshot Sunday, and I thought it was time to take some shots of the youngest member of our family…

This is Molly. She’s a sweetie, even if she did pull all the clean laundry out of my chair so she could curl up in it. She could have at least folded the laundry first.

(If I lay my ears back a bit will you not be mad about the clothes on the floor?)

(Okay, I’ve been cute, I’ve been apologetic…can I have that Goldfish cracker now?)

23/365

We’ve got quite a streak of overcast Saturdays going around here. I haven’t had one pretty Scenic Saturday since I started this 365 project! I snapped a few shots while we were up at the church, but we can’t see the peaks.

The weekend challenge over at Digital Photography School is “Good Morning” so here was my first photo this morning.

22/365

Friday Food! I was so hungry when we got our food at Perkins that I didn’t even think to take a picture. Oops. But Austin gave up his Perkins cookie long enough for me to snap a shot of it.
 

By the way, I think Perkins’ raspberry mammoth muffins are my new favorite food.

In our Facebook Project 365 group we’ve been having a Fun Friday challenge. This week’s challenge is to do a color collage. We choose a color and take photos of that color – I think most of us are putting them into a collage. Here’s mine…

The middle one is another attempt at “poor man’s macro” – it’s not as clear as I’d like, but there is one tiny bit of that butterfly in focus! lol. It was a tiny butterfly bracelet – those butterflies are probably about a half inch tall.

21/365

If you’ve been keeping up with my themes you had to know this one was coming…

It’s Thankful Thursday, and I am so thankful for this crew!!

If you are one of my new blog followers you may not be familiar with how this conglomeration of kids came to be. We have a non-traditional family, and it’s wonderful! You can find our family’s story here.

20/365

Walkabout Wednesday wasn’t too thrilling – again. It has been so foggy that I could walk for miles and never see anything different. This afternoon it finally cleared off for a while, but I had already taken my photos for today, so I didn’t get outside again.

Here’s one shot from walking from the school to my car (that’s a walkabout, right?)…

I love the lacy edges on these leaves. They got dressed up for the literacy lunch!

I was at the school for a Literacy Lunch. Each of the elementary classes has one every year. We do a literacy activity and then have lunch in the kids’ classroom. Today we made a cute little tree picture by tracing Kristi’s arm and hand on paper, cutting it out, then gluing it and colored leaves on blue paper. Caleb cut the fringies for our grass. He did a great job!

The first photo is Kristi coloring leaves. Our leaves represent many types of trees and seasons. lol. The second shot is Rose working doubly hard at her coloring! Next is our finished product, and then our yummy taco salad lunch.

Here’s a bonus shot of my beautiful little lady.

19/365

It’s Texture Tuesday once again. I tried a couple different things today…

Shooting up the side of the maple tree – I boosted the color a bit with Topaz Adjust.

Shooting straight on – same place as the first shot. I added a bit of texture with Topaz Adjust.

I had a special request to try more macro stuff…there’s not a lot to shoot right now – no bugs, no flowers…just a lot of dirt and dead leaves. So guess what you get?

18/365

I’m having a hard time with Monochrome Monday – I want my pictures to be in color! We finally got a beautiful day – blue sky, bright sun, warm temps. Aaaahhhhhhh…

But here’s my Monochrome Monday shot – the fog this morning was light and beautiful. I loved the way it was just hanging around that farm.

Here’s the same shot in color…

And another one of the same view…

And then one more down by the river…

By the way, Mom is doing well and should be coming home this afternoon. Thank you all for your prayers and support.

17/365

Well, today is truly Snapshot Sunday! My mom called at 5:30 this morning asking me to take her to the emergency room. She was having some severe pain, and felt like it needed medical attention. We spent the whole day there – in fact, they liked her so much they decided to keep her! She’ll probably come home tomorrow. Thank you to those who have been praying for her today.

I didn’t do a whole lot of photography today, but I did take some terrible, terrible snaps of the kids playing in the hallway this evening. These were at ISO 3200 because there was little light and I couldn’t light them all with a flash, so I just did without. This cracks me up –all 6 of my younger kids wrestling in the hallway – don’t you just love how girly and ladylike my youngest daughter is?

When Kristi was really little and could only army crawl around the house she used to take her brothers down and wrestle with them. It was hilarious – they would be walking by and she would wrap her arms around their ankles. They would fall, and she would crawl on top of them. Yep. She’s a lady alright.

16/365

I went out for a drive looking for my Scenic Saturday shot. I saw a bunch of wild turkeys (they wouldn’t look at me), several deer (they looked, but then ran), and a lot of trees.

As I was driving home I passed some cows (surprise, surprise – I live in a very cattley area). I took several shots of various cows, but none of them were great. This one isn’t great either, but any woman who has borne children will feel sorry for this cow. She must be wondering if this is ever going to be over. We should be seeing calves in the next couple weeks – this lady might even drop one sooner.

(Her legs look too fragile to carry that load!)

Okay…one more cow…

15/365

I did two photos for today! (Well, okay – I took more than 2.) My daily theme for Friday is food, so here is my Friday Food photo…

The other photo(s) are for a secondary challenge in my Project 365 group. It was a Fun Friday Foto challenge to take a photo of a character or toy from our childhood. I couldn’t get to the Winnie the Pooh collection I have, so I raided my Mom’s toy box to get some photos of this great little train. I used to play with it every Christmas, and every time I see it it brings back memories of building cities with leftover boxes. I love this little train!

I added the Serendipity books for this one – I loved these as a kid, and now my kids love them too.

(Oh – for those who might wonder about the mats – it’s a Photoshop action I downloaded from here. This one is Sharon’s Mattes, all the way at the end.)

14/365

I’ve had my Thankful Thursday shot in mind all day, but by the time I could actually take the photo I was too tired, too hungry, too cranky to do it justice. Oh well…

I’m so thankful that Ken now has a job with Dayspring Restoration! Yay! He’s worked for them on a temp basis for several months, but he’s a real employee now! Whoohoo!

(This is his new work coat.)

This is a side note…I saw this young man petting my cat, and I had to ask…what happened to my BABY?? With those white, lace-up sneakers, the big boy jeans, and the nice sweater he looks all grown up! Where did the last 4 years go?

13/365

I didn’t actually walkabout much today – I did get out, but it was in my Scriburban. (For those who don’t know us already, that’s the Scrivner Suburban.) I got out and walked across a bridge for one shot though, so that counts as walking about, right?

I downloaded the 30 day trial of Topaz Adjust yesterday. Now I need to get the money to pay for it – I don’t think I’m going to want to give it up after 30 days! This is a grainy, soft, bland photo on a dark and dreary day…but it was fun to play with Topaz on it.

Here’s one more that I Topazed. There were great sun rays through the clouds, but by the time I could get off the highway to place where I could shoot them the clouds had moved so the streaming light was almost gone.

12/365

I had an unusual subject for Texture Tuesday – my Suburban! We had freezing rain this morning, and my vehicle was completely iced over. This is actually a combination of two shots – one of the blue hood with a shot of the icy windshield laid on top as a texture at a low opacity.

And this was just for fun, and just cuz I could. I got the action for this from panosfx.com – it’s from a set called The BnBig Picture.

Here’s one more shot – a before and after of yesterday’s photo. Thanks to Melissa Bradfield for pointing me to the patch tool!! Whoohoo!

11/365

Just another monochrome Monday! (Did anyone else hear The Bangles when they read that?) This is a church just down the street. I edited with my own normal workflow, then used CoffeeShop Creamy Chocolate on this twice, then put the brand new photo corner template from CoffeeShop on it for a somewhat old-timey look.

Photoshop gurus…what would be your suggested method for removing the car and garbage can from the lower right?

And while I’ve been working on this my mini-geek has been working hard too…

10/365

It’s Snapshot Sunday! I did try some outdoor, full-sun, natural light photos of Dale. I didn’t really get any I was excited about…

He was putting on his “serious” look.

This evening I finally cut the boy's’ hair. I don’t enjoy it, but it’s a necessity. Dale took 1 of these photos, Andrew took one, and I took 2. They did a pretty good job!