I Heart Faces: Black

This weeks challenge is Black.

This picture is five years old, but I love it! In a house full of boys, it's one of the few times they all look sweet and innocent. :D They actually appear to be calm and mellowed out for the moment. Looks are deceiving...quite isn't our strong trait!

Since this time we've added one more boy! ha!

Click the link below to see some great "black" pictures!

Rainy Day Post

A few days ago I went to our local thrift store to see what treasures I could find. I found this shawl,

I immediately thought, baby prop! So I took off the flower and cut off some of the hem and made a headband. Next I cut a piece small enough to use as a wrap.

...isn't she just darling?! Ha! I'll just have to wait patiently for my next newborn girl. :)

I've got a 0-3 mos. stripped tie coming in the mail very soon too, so bring on the babies!!!

The mailbox has been an exciting place lately. Yesterday I got my new Black Rapid women's camera strap and it is awesome!!! I don't think you have to be a professional photographer to own one. I think I'm going to love it for hiking, at the zoo, traveling, photo shoots, and just plain everyday shooting. I love being hands free without my camera bouncing off my belly when I walk...is that a sign I need to loose weight?!.....and not having my shirt in a heap when I'd wear the original neck strap across my body. Pretty cool stuff! Some things are just worth the money! Just in case you don't have a clue what I'm talking about, here is a lovely self portrait. You will find it to be pathetically out of focus, extremely flat, and grainy, but hey, it's rainy here and the lighting is pathetic in my bathroom and I don't feel like spending all day in there perfecting my snapshot or editing the daylights out of it to make it acceptable.

So here you have it, you can at least get an idea what the camera strap looks like and sorta how it functions...which is the whole idea for the pic anyway! :P

Well folks, not sure I have much else to share right now, except well, rain...

Lots of it!

The boys are enjoying it! :) I actually am too, I love rainy days, but I do feel for the farmers. I do wish the crops were already in the ground, but it's out of our control so I will praise Him in this storm!!! And I will be thankful that so far it's just been rain and not tornadoes or other destruction in our area!!!!

On a final note, there is a nest of baby birds near our house who've been surviving the continual rain. Grandpa showed the boys and they had fun feeding the one who would open his mouth for them. :)

Tomorrow evening my parents and youngest brother should be here from TX!!! This house is buzzing with excitement! They will be here for a whole week and we will love every minute of it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Have a great holiday weekend everyone!

I interrupt this silence...

to bring you the official end of Project 365. I'm making this decision after a visit to the Dr.'s office today that only confirmed, I'm NOT super mom and I CAN'T do it all...no matter how hard I try. (In case you doubted, I am human after all! ha!) So sorry to disappoint anyone, (another fault of mine - MAJOR people pleaser here!) but for my health's sake some things have got to go. And since none of my children are offering to leave, which means I still have 12 weeks of school left to teach and a 2 1/2 year old still waiting to be potty trained and I need my husband and I want my photography clients....things like 365's have got to be eliminated!

I plan to still share pictures, but it probably won't be real regular. This summer is starting to fill up with photography shoots (yea!), so beginning in the next few months I'll hopefully have lots of pictures to share with ya! I hope you won't weary of coming here and finding nothing new and stop checking in all together. I love having you all stop in and the wonderful comments have been and are such an encouragement! So without further ado.....more from the local artists......



This here is Cowboy Isaac, just in case you don't catch it. ;)

He is definitely a pistol packing cowboy with a deadly aim......I'll spare you the grim details at the other end of the chalkboard! Let's just say the four-legged varmint didn't get away!

Meet the "Smiley Brothers". (think The 3 Stooges)

And lastly another tough cowboy from a generation that is technology crazed and code word obsessed. He appears to be "laughing out loud" as he fires multiple rounds! :)

To further prove my littlest man is growing up all too quickly, this is his new bed. He is quite pleased with the arrangement and is the first of the boys to not fall out of it while sleeping. ***Please excuse the assaulting color of his room and peculiar blue line running down the wall. This room like many others are in a perpetual state of remodel and had previously been covered with wallpaper. It does nicely match the green stripe in his comforter though! :D

For those of you who aren't here locally or the surrounding area, after a week of beautiful spring like weather that melted all our snow, Monday greeted us with this! We are once again blanketed in a fresh coating of white stuff!!!



I'm curious if anyone has or has had one of these? A few posts back I mentioned my Grandma "Long Lane". Well she had a few dolls at her house, but it seemed there were never enough to go around. She did however have two or three of these monkeys that worked as stand-in babies. Quite a few years back now, my cousin found this little guy at a Cracker Barrel and surprised me with it. What good memories!!!!

And we come to our final picture. It just seems odd to finish with #49 and not have an even fifty, but you know what? I struggled with having five children. Odd numbers just don't settle in my even thinking mind real well, but I've had to get used to it. And so will you, cause this will be the last numbered Project 365 picture you'll see....at least for this year and a good chance forever! ;) Not because I don't love to share, but.......oh yeah, we've already covered that ground......I can't do it all..........humpf

So anyway, this here is my 5 1/2 year old who has discovered that he LOVES to wash dishes! It's incredible! We're talking the child who finds no satisfaction of picking up after himself and gets overwhelmed and grumpy when he has to go from one pile to the next to clean up, but he begs to do the dishes! Today he actually chose coming home with me to do the dishes over staying at his grandma's house with two of his brothers!?! Seriously?

I'm loving it! His face lights up and he delights in trying to make sure they are spotless. He feels so needed and thrives off the feeling of a job well done.....now if we could just channel that to other areas in his life, he could have some all around joy! Couldn't we all?!

Package Day

Today the boys got a surprise package in the mail. It came from Grandpa & Grandma Texas. Wow! What a treat! Cute "mugs" filled with a hot chocolate packet and candy cane to stir in some sweet peppermint flavor. Books, books, and more books! A few assorted school items and some yummy recipes. :) Buried way at the back was an adorable hat from Sweetle Dee Hat Company for Mr. Adie. It is just so cute and I LOVE the colors!!!! It is excellent craftsmanship and has a cozy fleece lining on the inside. If you've never heard of them, go and check 'em out, lots of fantastic hats! You'll want one of each! It just so happens Little Joe's head is small enough he could try it out too! ;) We all love package days around here!

Brotherly Love

It's been a long time since I've joined in the weekly photo challenge, but this week I felt inspired with the theme Hearts. :) I had two ideas, but since you can only enter one, maybe I'll show you the other one some day soon just for fun.

(If you click on the picture, it looks much better larger!)

 Thanks for stopping by and be sure and click the button below to hop on over to I Heart Faces to see some amazing entries!

This is.....

getting humorous.....or annoying. I'll let you make the call! :) First I decided to try and do a picture a day this year and it's gone, well, so so. I was doing great at taking a picture each day, but not keeping up on getting them posted daily. So I've turned out to be a super "batch" producer! Well tonight's pics don't even qualify in the "daily picture" category! These were all taken the same day. So not only have I not taken a picture a day, but I'm also going to leap ahead and cover tomorrow's picture. How's that for cheating?! What a mess I've gotten myself in. :)

And while I'm on a roll, I've flunked two other themes. What happened to "Flashback Friday" (that has happened once) and I Heart Details (it got done three times)?! Oh boy, good thing I'm not getting graded! I just hope you all could care less what's going on here as long as you have something to read and look at! :)  Right?

Well enough tattling on myself, if it wasn't already obvious to ya, and on with the show.

***Teresa, ya you, I know how you've anxiously been waiting for this update, but you may as well go get yourself a cup of something warm and toasty before you look further because what your about to see.....well, I'm afraid you just might not appreciate it very much. Can we still be friends though? Perty please?!







As most of you know, we've been dumped on with snow, snow, and more snow and the boys have been loving it! We spent several hours the other day digging snow caves in the huge pile that's been formed from clearing our long lane. These here are in the snow drift that runs along our basement wall.

This last one is for Sunday, which it technically is now. :) This was to be my 4th I Heart Details shot, but my mind is so groggy right now that I'm sure I'm not going to do it justice! This little guy is a true one and only! I've never met anyone like him!!! Often times at loss to even describe him, but oh how I love him!!!!!! And that's all I'm going to say for now about this shiny eyed boy. :) My sweet 'lil Joe, he makes me smile!

{Flashback Friday} Family Wedding

I really hope not to make a habit of this all year long, but I seem to be getting good at it. :( We've just come through four solid days of dull, boring, drab skies and that has done nothing to help my creative juices flow. Thankfully today the sun broke through and how wonderful it was! Amazing how our setting can be so influential.....if we let it! And that's the hard part!!!

So anyway, in my funk, I've been doing some brainstorming about how to make my 365 a little more exciting or at least give me a little more direction. I feel a little silly doing this now as a fellow photographer friend just announced this week a weekly idea also, but it's pure coincidence. Guess that means both of us were looking for creativity huh? ;) I realize Flashback Friday isn't a new picture for the day, but it'll give me an opportunity to edit/re-edit or just share a picture from the past with you all. We'll see how it goes anyway. :)

In light of that, though this picture is really supposed to be for this past Wednesday's picture it is a few months old. Around that time I ran across the idea for "lens bling" to help attract the attention of little kiddos. I thought they were adorable and that I surely could make my own. So I made a pattern, bought the supplies, and wala! Meet Mr. Parrot! I've gotten to use a couple times and it does work at least for a limited time...ha!

Thursday's picture gives you a sneak peek at something else I've been working on, bettering my design. Details on that coming soon! ;) ....don't you just love surprises?!

And here we are to Friday's picture. My brother Orrin got married almost two months ago now and I hadn't even started touching the pictures I took at the reception until this week, but I knew this one was a favorite of our dad and my new sister-in-laws dad. It's totally a "right place, right time" shot and I just love it! Wish I had gotten one of the lovely mothers too! :(

And since I shared one, I'll share another from the reception. ;) This is my "oldest" (9 years younger than me) brother, Brandon and little Adin. Adin looks so much like Brandon did when he was that age. Two very handsome men!

And just in case you are rebelling against the idea of no "new" picture for my Friday entry, here is what we woke up to this morning.....and exactly why you shouldn't sleep with Silly Putty in your bed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ......................just ask little Joe! LOL!

Slipping

It's only week 2 of this Project 365 and I'm starting to slip... I think however that we are over the hump with these chicken pox and ready to move on! Yippee!!! So here are day 14 & 15 fashionably late. :) Neither were taken on the day, but both are very much recent.

This tree has long been an inspiration to me and I pass it almost weekly. About two winters ago I got an amazing shot here with the sky full of angry looking clouds. It was "perfect", but with my old piece of junk camera, so it can't be blown up. :( Since then I've been on a mission to accomplish another one with my newer camera, but the sky just hasn't cooperated with me. So here you have it, the latest version of "The Dog Party Tree" (think "Go Dog Go" book).

This next one I was thinking of entering in the I Heart Faces "Winter Wonderland" contest, but missed the deadline. Little Joe had went out to play all by himself and had to check up on us while we were doing school in the basement.