Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Peaceful...


I hope everyone has a peaceful and wonderful new year filled with new adventures.
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Practicing...



So I joined a group called Shutter Sisters to help improve my photography and through that found Grey Street Girl. I find her photography inspiring and she was kind enough to reply to an email I sent her. She spends time every day at it even with a full time job. I'm not sure I can give it that much time especially since I have my fingers in so many things but it's a good goal to work towards. Today I put an aging apple out for the birds and said to myself like I do many times "You should take a picture of that." Well, today I did. These are a couple of the shots that I kind of like. Still needs work in the composition, focus and exposure.
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Sunday, December 28, 2008

I survived...

Well, the week of Christmas was very busy. Cooking, cleaning, painting (pictures not walls), shopping, and other ings. I had hoped to spend some time blogging and catching up on my blog reading but alas it was not to be. There were fifteen of us for dinner Christmas Eve which is when we do the family get together. That way everyone has their own Christmas mornings together. Mom and I cooked most of the day making a Northern traditional meal with the beef roast, mashed potatoes, gravy, yorkshire pudding and green beans. This year I added Chocolate Truffle Creme Brulee which I got from a little creme brulee cook book. It has a little rum in it and is to die for (if you love dark chocolate like me). My brother in law even liked it and he usually doesn't eat dessert.

Everyone is feeling at least a little financial crunch this year so we drew names and I got my niece. She saw one of the paintings I did from Paulette Insall's Organic Backgrounds class and wanted one. I only had the week of Christmas to work on it and fortunately was able to finish it in a day and a half. Below are the pictures of the progression. I did brighter colors for this one and made it 16x20. I wish I had done two of them because I really like the vibrancy of it. I'm very partial to trees but at some point here I'm going to have to figure out how to do some other type of focal point or maybe no focal point at all.







It also just so happens that my niece drew my name. I have an Amazon wish list with at least twenty art type books that I want so she gave me a gift card to Barnes & Noble. I headed over there yesterday and picked up one that I don't think was on my list but I absolutely love it. It's Collage Journeys by Jane Davies. It goes through various techniques and has about seventeen projects to do. I can hardly wait to start playing.
Well, I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas full of love and laughter.
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Monday, December 15, 2008

December Views 6



Lordy, I'm behind as usual. I did get almost all of the Christmas cards in the mail today so that is checked off my list. Now on to making goodies for the crew at work and making Christmas presents for family. I'll post the cards in a couple days after they've had time to get to their destinations.

Above are pictures of puppy from last year. He was such a good sport about wearing this elf hat Mom put on him. It was just too funny.
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Thursday, December 11, 2008

December Views 5



Well, I finally finished putting the Christmas cards together last night. There is green glitter everywhere. Still have to address all of them but Mom may help with that. I promis a picture soon.

Can you tell I'm wishing for some snow? Here is a night picture of a light dusting we had a couple years ago. I like it because of the light reflecting off the flakes.

Monday, December 08, 2008

December Views 3


I am so behind on blogging and I didn't take any pictures over the weekend. Pout. I am still working on the Christmas cards but getting close to done. Mainly at the stage of putting all the pieces together. As soon as I have a finished one I'll post it.

This is a picture of a cool couch at the High Museum here in Atlanta. I love the circles and the play of shadows.
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Wednesday, December 03, 2008

December Views 2...


This is what 65 hand glittered snowflakes look like. These are going on the Christmas cards for this year. Hmm, I should come up with an ornament to make from these too. More later.
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December Views



I'm entering a new challenge called December Views. The challenge is to post photos daily from our lives. The two pictures above are not from my everyday life but from a vacation Mom and I took to Great Britain. This is the Great Orm in the north part of Wales. We had so much fun exploring it and feeling like we were on the top of the world. This is also the site of a small quarry and visitors use the rocks for pictures or messages near it.
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