I love these puffypinkballs.

I love these puffypinkballs., a photo by Elli :-) on Flickr.

I got a new add-on for my Retro Camera app (for my cell phone) and I tried it out on these puffypinkballs. (What are they really called?) I love them, and I like the aged look to the photo, but I will take some "real" shots with my good camera too.

We've been having quite a bit of non-camera-friendly weather lately. It's kind of a bummer. I would like to get out and take some joyful pictures of my kids! I love this blog - http://www.kellehampton.com/ - I love studying her joyful kid photos. Maybe I'll get to take some tomorrow.

A trip to Michele's

My friend Michele has two Norwegian Fjord mares that recently had the most adorable babies...


We had a baseball game out in her neighborhood, so we stopped by to see the horses. Oh my goodness - they are the cutest things!!! So soft, sweet, funny...we all loved them! The one little lady - Tule' (pronounced Tula) - loved all the kids, but Kristi especially. She followed her around and kept begging for more attention. The other little lady - Tine' (pronounced Tina - they are Norwegian, after all) - was more shy, but quite willing to be photographed. They are both so beautiful. The mamas, Tone' and Tessa, were content to nibble grain while we admired their offspring. All 4 are lovely ladies, and it was a fun visit.

A new experiment

I’ve been trying out a new (to me) concept of “freelensing.” Here are a couple shots I’ve taken this way…

This was one of my first attempts, and I removed my 28-135mm lens and turned it around backwards to get the macro effect. Here is a shot of this stem of flowers with the lens mounted properly…

This one was taken with my 50mm lens removed and turned backwards…

Here is one taken with the 28-135mm removed and held in its normal orientation…

Now I’m going to go back to planning camping trips! I love planning camping trips! I think I might even like the planning more than the implementing. But it’s all fun. I do wish I could get a fold up kitchen that would unfold and be complete – sink, stove, garbage can, canopy…all set up in one motion. But I guess I’ll make do with the setup we’ve been using.

(You may remember this shot from last year’s South Dakota trip.)

Fields of Sunshine

Fields of Sunshine, a photo by Elli :-) on Flickr.

I stopped on a side road on the way home from Hamilton to take this shot of the lovely sunshine flowers. They sure do make a pretty field!

I took this photo with my HTC Incredible. I used to hate posting cell phone photos on my blog, but I have a different view on that now. First, I have a great cell phone! It takes 8mp photos, and it's quite fast. I love the results I get from it. But beyond that, I have concluded that one does not have to have the big guns (Canon 7d in my case) to get good photos, or to capture memories. Sometimes it's more important to use what you have available - if I had waited until I could come back with my 7d this field would have been full of poofyheads. That might be a nice photo in itself, but not the lovely spring image that I feel I captured here. Granted, the quality is not perfect, and the window glare in the bottom left might be a distraction, but the moment - the spring beauty - is here for me to remember.

I have found this especially important when it comes to shots of the kids. Some of my favorite kid photos have been taken with a cell phone because I had that in my pocket. Those moments would be lost to me and to my loyal readers/viewers if I had to go get the DSLR. So...all that to say this...I am so thankful for my cell phone camera!

Here are a few of my favorite cell phone shots (if you get the email version of this blog, please go to the web version to see the additional photos).

   

As you can tell…

…life has been very busy in Scrivnerburg! We’ve had a lot of baseball games…

Spring (and flowers) has really sprung…

We’ve celebrated National Chocolate Chip Day with chocolate chip pancakes…

And after an afternoon spent with Caleb, Mom and Elaine planting flowers, I went on a search for the Daily Shoot assignment, “leading lines.”

We’ve been busy!

Lovely Weather!

Lovely weather storyboard, a photo by Elli :-) on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
It is a gloriously beautiful day in Western Montana! FINALLY! The weather is perfect, the kids are outside, the sky is blue...ahhhhhhhh.

I loved this view...

IMAG0217-1, a photo by Elli :-) on Flickr.

I took this shot with my cell phone on the way to Hamilton. Spring is slowly working its way into the valley.

It was a good Mother's Day, although my sweetie wasn't here to celebrate it with us. While he was attending church and shopping in Indiana, we attended church and worked our little fingers to the bone here.

Andrew and Caleb cooked scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast today, and then we all headed off to church. When we came home Austin and Nathan prepared pizza for lunch, and then all of us started cleaning the front yard and the front of the house. I told the kids if they worked hard and did a good job I'd take them to Dairy Queen. It seems kinda crazy for a near-hermit like me to take 6 kids to DQ by myself, but I thought it would probably be the incentive they needed to work. It was a good plan - they all worked really well, and my house looks so so so so so much better! The broken toys are gone from the front yard, the mud is off the front of the house, the mess is out of the flower beds...yay!

So we headed to Nana's to drop off her Mother's Day flowers, and then we all went to DQ. They were almost perfect! It wasn't even stressful for me! Whoohoo!

We all enjoyed our ice cream, and then came home and collapsed all over the living room. We were so tired and stuffed with ice cream that we didn't even get around to the dinner Dale wanted to cook until 8pm!

It was really a nice Mother's Day! Thanks, kiddos!