I got my 7d!!!

(I'm sorry this didn't get posted on Friday! Oops!)

I finally got my 7d! I'm so excited! I've been wanting this camera for over a year, and today was the day! It's wonderful. It's big, and heavy, and takes superdy-duperdy sharp pictures! Even the snapshots look nice! I didn't have time to get very creative with it tonight - I had to charge the battery - but here is my first keeper photo from the lovely Canon 7d.

I can't wait to get out and about and really practice with it. Several of the controls are different from my 20d, so it's going to take some time to get used to it. Fortunately, the weather is improving, so I should be able to get outside a bit. Oh, and I need to practice with this and my lights. Ooh! Ooh! And I need to try off-camera flash outdoors! And a full family portrait (my family) with the tripod and everything! So much to do! 

I haven’t lost all my marbles!

See?

I was just practicing lighting. I held my diffused external flash directly over both of these marble containers to light up the marbles. The second one is not actually a marble – it’s a glass ball that my mother gave me for Christmas – but I like the way it looks surrounded by marbles.

It’s been a very long day. Work this morning, 5 parent-teacher conferences this afternoon, dinner, then Praise Team practice, then more work. I’m all done. ‘Night!

Cool stuff...

I have a new knitting project...I'm excited about this!
 
I am going to make a few scarves for the Special Olympics - www.scarvesforspecialolympics.org/
This is the start of my first one.

I also want to share my wonderful new knitting bag!

I got it from Thirty-One. 

Now I'm off to work on my first scarf a bit more. I'd like to be working on my second one by the weekend. Whew!

Christmas isn't really over!

In December I got my hands on a great book for the Advent season! It’s Everything Christmas, published by Waterbrook Press. This book is designed to be read daily from the first of December to the 24^th. Each day is filled with nuggets of fun, interesting, and evocative snippets. Recipes, carols, stories…all very interesting and short enough to keep the interest of most family members.

I didn’t get this book in time to use it through the recent holiday season, but I am definitely looking forward to using it next December. We have found that it can be easy to lose the meaning of the holiday season, so I love the daily format – it’s a good way for the family to enjoy the Christmas season and remember the purpose through the month.

Another great feature is the recipes that are included – some of them sound really good, and would be great to expand our Christmas traditions beyond our American borders.

Words to carols and their stories are also included – I love reading about the origins of hymns and carols, so I find this very interesting. We might use this aspect to bring caroling back to our piano!

Be sure to put this book on your Christmas preparation list!

'Can't forget to tell you - I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.

Check out an excerpt here - http://waterbrookmultnomah.com/catalog.php?isbn=9780307729293&view=excerpt

Prepared

The Daily Shoot assignment today is "preparedness." I must confess that I don't have good enough examples of "preparedness." I don't have emergency supplies prepared for power outages or disasters...I don't have my menus prepared (that's unusual for me)...I don't even have my clothes set out for tomorrow! But my kids' backpacks are prepared for tomorrow. We put hooks up on this wall to hold the 6 younger kids' backpacks - it makes it very easy for us to see whose backpack might be laying in the middle of the living room floor, and it also makes it simple to check for papers they've forgotten to hand over.

Today was the 100th day of school, and the younger elementary kids always count out 100 things. Kristi chose to count 100 pennies. She took them in to school for the project, and then brought them home and spent the whole afternoon counting pennies. Truly, she spent about 2 hours at the dining table counting, recounting, and overrecounting the pennies. There are 100 of them.
 

Snow and tomatoes

The Daily Shoot assignment was to take a photo framed by a window or door – I wasn’t actually able to frame this by the window I shot through because it was the windshield of my Suburban. My cell phone couldn’t get the windshield too. I just liked the look of the snowy, wintery scene on Eastside Highway. Just for the record, I was not driving when I took this. I stopped the car (in the middle of the highway). There were no other cars within sight, so it was safe enough for that moment.

Because this was shot with my cell phone and then cropped down the resolution isn’t good, but I thought it kinda came out looking like a watercolor. I still like it, even though it’s just a cropped cell phone shot.

This was supposed to be a Berry Hat, but it came out looking more like a Tomato Hat, so I’m calling it a tomato. I think it’s cute as a tomato. It’s toddler-sized…now I need a toddler to model it…hmmm…how did my babies get so grown up that I can’t put toddler hats on them?

What to do while waiting for the Super Bowl?

Make a baby hat! I wanted a quick, easy project for this afternoon, and I found this on Ravelry.com. 

Please forgive the less-than-stellar photos...I was having a lazy Sunday afternoon, and didn't take the time to really set things up properly. Here is the link to my project page on Ravelry.com. 

Is it just my mood, or are the Super Bowl commercials disappointing this year?