I ♥ Faces: Hilarious Outtakes

This weeks I heart faces challenge was to show of our funniest outtakes.

Here are just a few that make me smile.

Photo #1:  I swear that kid can find a camera no matter what she's doing.

Here she is supposed to be warming up for her tennis lesson, but...

"Hey, look!  Someone's taking a picture.  Let me flash my cutest smile."

Photo #2:  "Hurry up and take the picture!  I'm freezing my buns off!"

Photo #3:  I swear no child was hurt in the taking of this photo.

I love the expressions of my son and brother in law.

Ooops!

I can't wait to go check out everyone else's outtakes here.

The Day after Christmas

Twas the day after Christmas and all through my home

Not a surface was uncluttered wherever  I roam.

The stockings were strewn all across the floor

The recycling was spilling out the closet door

The children were sleeping off their sugar high

“Too much egg nog and cookies and candy”, I sigh.

Mama wanders aimlessly wondering what to clean up

“I know!  I’ll put a new blog post up!”

The kids had a blast with all their new toys

Seeing them all play together brings us great  joy.

The grandparents have discovered the thrill of Wii bowling

But  rock band is what gets me going!

I hope your holiday was wonderful  for you

Filled with love and family and happiness too.

So from our family to yours, we say with delight,

“Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

Silent Night

Although I posted this earlier, I'm linking this to the Macro Monday challenge.

Check out more great close ups here.

Deck the Halls

With boughs of holly!

Falalalalalalalala

Tis the season to be jolly!

 

Happy Winter!

I'm adding this post to the weekly winners.   
Check out more great shots here. 

Macro Monday

mI found another photography challenge that may be just my thing!

It's Macro Monday.

Ever since I realized that this silly old point and shoot that I own (am stuck with) actually takes pretty decent close-ups (or macro shots), I've been using that function as often as possible.

I'm actually quite excited by the pictures that I've been getting now that I've moved the camera off of the "auto" function.

This picture was taken earlier today while someone (whose name should be obvious) was eating lunch.

Didn't her mother ever teach her not to play with her food?

What?

Oh, I'm her mother?  Well... darn.

Want to see some other really great close ups?

Check out macro monday.

There are some great shots of dragonflies and mushrooms and other such things.

oh, and for those who have already seen this picture on Julia's blog, sorry for the repeat...

Snow, snow and more snow!!!

It looks like we're going to have a white Christmas this year! 

Yesterday's storm dumped 20in of snow at my house.

That's the most snow I've seen in forever!  It's amazing.

We woke up to a whopping 8in of snow and thought that was a lot,

but we hadn't seen anything yet!

By the time all was said and done, our measly 12in ruler was buried in the snow and we had to pull out the yard stick to watch the totals rise to 14"... 17"... 19".... 20"!!!

The kids played at burying themselves in the snow.

Julia was the abominable snowgirl !

Juncos are a new addition to my bird family this year.

Several of them found my bird feeder yesterday.

Good thing I thought to fill it recently!

I'm going to have to trudge through the snow to refill it later today.

Gluhwein was in the crockpot all day, keeping us warm and happy.

(check out this post for the recipe...yum!)

Spiced apple cider was had by the under 21 crowd.

Dinner was homemade chicken soup and these rosemary twists.

So good!

All that snow provided us with an excellent reason to sit back, relax and enjoy being together as a family.

We played together and worked together (shoveling!) and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas fever!

Odd.... my last post disappeared.

Combine one extraordinarily large box of gifts from the grandparents

with the anticipation of up to 20 inches of snow

and only a week until the BIG day

and you get...

Christmas fever!!!

You capture: Holiday Decorations!

This week's You Capture challenge was to photograph your favorite Holiday decor, try different angles and different editing techniques. Get creative!
So here are my attempts....

My Christmas tree resides in the family room where everything is all red and green and warm, traditional Christmas colors.

The living room has blue furniture, so we went with a snowflake, silver, blue theme.

There was an empty basket on top of my bookshelf that was just begging to hold some Christmas decorations.

This is a new perspective on one of those 3-D snowflakes that everyone is making. 

Even Beethoven gets into the spirit during Christmas!

Often our house becomes an explosion of Christmas crafts and cooking, during the weeks before.   So, you may find bowls full of jingle bells...

Or bowls full of candy...

Or cookies topped with the yummy candy.
Hmmmm... that cookie looks awfully good.

Ooops!  Who did that!  I was taking pictures....

And finally...

Here's one you might not see in the Martha Stewart magazine.

I bet not many of you thought of decorating your teeth for Christmas!

Merry Christmas!!!

If you want to see more unique perspectives on Holiday decor, click here!

You're a mean one...

Mr. Grinch!

You really are a heel.

You're as cuddly as a cactus,
You're as charming as an eel.
Mr. Grinch!

You're a bad banana
With a greasy black peel.

I've been feeling a little grinchy lately.

Christmas is coming so quickly and I've never been so completely unprepared.

I've made a good bit of progress over the last couple of days, so I'm feeling a little better about things.  In fact, I'm sure I'll be ready for Christmas somewhere around New years. 

Do you think I could get the kids to wait until Epiphany (January 6th) to celebrate Christmas?

Now,  if only I could get this heart to grow threes sizes today.

Maybe it will help if I spend some time looking at everyone else's ornaments over at Mama Bear's blog.

I ♥ Faces: Pets only

This week's I ♥ Faces challenge is all about animals.
I had two pictures that I thought about using, but decided to enter the guinea hens.
I went for color and composition over highly edited.
Besides.... I think these guinea hens have lovely faces in an ugly sort of way!

Space Needle Ornament

I mentioned before that I try to buy an ornament from places that we've visited or lived.

Being in the military, we've moved far more times than I like to remember. 

We always appreciate the opportunity to see and experience new things, but some places leave a bigger impression on us than others.

Seattle was one of those places.  We miss it a lot.

I still find myself thinking that we should go down to Pike's Market for some Christmas shopping and Turkish delight, but that would be quite a long trip involving airplanes and such!

We also miss our friends that were left behind.

One of those wonderful friends sent me this lovely skyline for Christmas last year.

I hope she knows how much I love it.

Every time I look at it, I want to click my heels together and say, "There's no place like home."

I could go on and on about all the things we loved and missed in Washington, but I should leave it at that for now.

For more ornaments and their stories go to Mama Bear's blog.

Did you see that sequined tree hiding behind the space needle ornament? 

I have a really good story about that one that I'll share another day.

Some Christmas Craftiness

Since we are a military family, we move often.
That means that our Christmas traditions have to center around what we can do as a family, not so much about going to that "favorite" Christmas shop or show or whatever.
Beside making cookies and putting up the tree, we always find time to do a few crafts and decorate a gingerbread house

Below are a few pictures of the giant paper snowflakes that everyone in the bloggy world seems

You can see the ones that my sister made here.

You can get the tutorial with lots of great pictures at this blog.

I was worried that the weight of the snowflakes would pull too hard and rip where I attached the string, so I decided to sew a quick line.  I figured that that would help distribute the weight a bit better.

The tinsel trees above and the gumdrop trees below also came from Crafty Crow.

I loved the look of the gumdrop trees and thought that they'd go really well with our gingerbread house.

You Capture: Lines

Lines!
UGH!! Who knew that this You Capture challenge would be so difficult!
In my head I could imagine amazing photos of railroad tracks, fences, even wires, but where was I to find these?
I spent all week looking around the house trying to come up with any lines worth looking at.
Want to see my dirty grout lines? No?
Or the lines of the window panes? Boring.
I wandered around my yard and was uninspired.

I really wanted to play along, so today, while Grant was at piano lessons, Julia and I made a trip to the park in a last ditch attempt to find some lines.
What do you know? We found them!

Lines on Benches
(love this one)

Lines in the parking lot.

Julia found the lines on her gloves.

Swirly lines in the playground

Straight lines too.

Natural lines in the tree bark...

And in the tall grass.

Then we went to the library and found more lines on the outside of the building

Shelves of books

Straight and crooked lines

Then we looked up and found the mother load of lines!
They're everywhere!
(Click on this one to make it bigger. Even as we took the picture, we didn't realize how many, many lines there were.)

It turned out to be a fun challenge after all.
I love the You capture challenges, because it forces you to look at things differently than you normally would. I know that I could have gone to that library a million times and never once looked at the ceiling and all the lines.

Click here to see what other people came up with.