Day 31

Today is one of my guilty pleasures. I love these things!! I could eat an entire bag in one sitting, but I think I only managed to eat half of the bag today. And I won't share at all. There are some things that are just for momma.

Day 30

Another uninspired photo today. I got this guy out of the box nearly two weeks after I bought it. My four-year-old made me do it. He thought it would be a game that he would like to play. We did go jogging together, which is pretty funny since he can run laps around me. But I'm all for it if it wears him out.

Day 29

I'm either getting really tired or losing inspiration, but I could not think of something to take a picture of today. I'm throwing in one of my pictures for eBay.


This was one of my very favorite outfits from last summer. I've even bought it again for this year. It's a little romper with a hood and so cute on Matt.

Day 28

So it starts. I've been pulling Matt's summer clothes from last year out of his drawers and getting them ready to sell. Step one, take pictures. Unfortunately, one picture of all the stuff (or at least the beginning) doesn't help.

Day 27

I really love where we live. We're about 15 minutes or so from several large cities, but our city is still relatively small. We don't live out in the remote woods or anything, but about 60% of our property is forest, which I wouldn't change for anything. This morning I peeked out the window to see our momma and fawn friends. It's just something you wouldn't get in a big city.

Day 26

On my way home from work today I was hearing an odd sound from the tires. It was that click, click, click sound you get sometimes when there's a rock in the tires. I thought I should check it out since the day before the Mega Snow Storm of 2008 I got a bolt in my tire. I wanted to make sure I didn't have something else like that.

I got home and checked out the tires and was having a hard time finding anything wrong. Then, I got to the back tire on the drivers side and saw a pretty good sized rock wedged right in the center of the tread. It actually looked like it might do some damage to the tire if I didn't get it out.

Well, I couldn't pry it out with my keys, so I got a screw driver. Then that wouldn't work, so I got my hubby. He came back in the house and said he couldn't get it out either, but now the tire was loosing air. I called my dad and brother out with the car jack to change out the tire with the spare. I was dying to know what was in my tire so we pulled it out. This is what we found.

Not quite the rock I thought it was. I took a picture of it with a AA battery for perspective. I wonder what the odds are of picking up two very large fasteners in two different tires in the span of about one month.

Day 25

This is my kind of snow. We woke up to some of the white stuff this morning and it snowed pretty much all day, but it hardly stuck at all. I really like seeing it up in the trees, but not on the road.

Day 24

I love watching babies play with balloons. Matt is just fascinated with them and I'm excited for his first birthday so he can have his own little bunch. That'll probably be better than any gift we get for him. This balloon was from yesterday, so all the helium is gone, but he doesn't care.

Day 23

This little device saved me today - or maybe granted me a bit of sanity.


This is Paul's timer for his "quiet time". It gets set for an hour with the hope that he'll fall asleep and take a nap. He hasn't taken a nap in probably a good six weeks, but today he crashed for about an hour and a half. And his brother slept too. It's a rare thing to have both boys sleeping when the sun is still out.

Day 22

Matt's been taking some steps with encouragement. I was trying to get a picture of this outfit and he was determined to come over and see the camera. Right after I took this picture he let go of the camera and closed the couple of step gap on his own! He'll be walking on his own sooner than I'm ready for.

Day 21

Matt got this ball popper for Christmas and I was trying for an action shot. The focus isn't perfect, but I think it worked out okay.

Day 20

This is another photo taken with my iPhone. I took the boys to the library this morning and was so pleased to see them "reading" in the back of the car when we got home.

Day 19

This is why I can't ever get anything done in the evening.


This little guy is pretty sure that all this computer work is meant for him. I wish I could set him to the task. I let him play around a bit this evening, and I'm hoping it's not something I end up completely regretting.

I had some fun playing with the depth of field on this one. It was actually hard for me to decide on which photo was the best - meaning where the focus should be.

Day 18

Just a picture of the valley taken from our front porch. There's actually no snow, flooding or fog - a rare thing lately.

Day 17

Two boys playing together - something I hope to see more and more of as they get older.

Day 16

Paul made this wavy track in the playroom, and I took several shots trying to capture the track, but also get a different perspective by playing with the depth of field. I only know how to accomplish this by using the different presets.

This one was the Landscape mode which kind of surprises me, but I think it gave the entire track that I was trying to capture while focusing on the closer pieces.

Day 15

Falling down and loving it!

Day 14

Not very exciting today. Brothers playing trains together.

Day 13

I still can't figure out how to manually shoot with my camera, but I decided to mess around with the various presets and see what I ended up with. This one was labeled as the "close up" setting, which I think was the little flower symbol on the camera.

Day 12

This big guy does not sleep nearly enough, but he's too sweet looking when he does.

Day 11

I figure it's about time I post a picture of the love of my life.


While the baby is pretty cute, it's actually the man behind the baby. After nearly 12 years of marriage, this guy still puts up with me. ;)

Day 10

The waters are receding.

I took this photo yesterday at one of the roads out of town.


Today, nearly 26 hours later, you can tell that things are much better. Hopefully the road will be open again by early next week.

Day 9

More flooding pictures today. The bridge from yesterday is closed. Turns out there is some damage on the road, and now they don't want people walking on it.

I went to another spot so I could look out towards the north. I'm kind of impressed with how this one turned out for my iPhone. And with the snow in the foreground it reminds me that just a couple of weeks ago, we couldn't even leave the house because of the snow.


It's been a fun winter!

Day 8

Today my town is kind of like a little island. It's been raining here, but warm and all this snow from the mountains managed to melt and flood every single route out of town. This isn't exactly unheard of, but it doesn't happen too often.

My picture today is from one of the bridges looking out at the flooded river. One of the things that I don't like about people posting this kind of thing is that there is no point of reference. Sure, it's a lot of water, but how much water is there normally?


Unfortunately, this bridge isn't normally closed, so I can't generally go out and get a picture. I do have one that I took in October. The angle isn't quite the same, but you might get some idea of how high the river normally is - or at least how wide.


You might just have to take my word for it. The river is about 8 feet over flood stage, so it's a bit more water than normal.

Day 7

I read with the Project 365 that you should have pictures of yourself from time to time so you see how you've changed as well. My baby came to work with grandma at lunch this afternoon and he was fast alseep in the car. I figured I'd bring him inside and sit with him until he woke up, but he snoozed for a good 30 minutes and then I had to interrupt him to nurse.

I know his days of sleeping on momma are numbered, so I had grandma take this pic for me.

Day 6

I ended up with this picture on accident. My iPhone froze this evening, and I was pushing buttons to get it to restart. I heard the camera "click" and all of a sudden I had this pic of the Passcode screen. Since this is one of my very favorite tools (AKA toys), I thought it'd make a good pic for the day.

And you can see my babies.

Day 5

I didn't do a very good job of getting the camera out today. I'm already wimping out and including pictures of my boys.

But this one will highlight one of my obsessions. I love my dressing my boys! Matt is wearing one of the first things I bought for him when I found out he was a boy. It is some penguin stuff from Gymboree. One of my first new Gymboree purchases for Paul was from this line when he was the baby. I thought this line was adorable!


I was taking pictures because it's obviously too small for him - unless the 3/4 length winter sleeve is popular on boys. It might actually be a new trend!

I just noticed this, but his knees are wet from crawling around in the bathroom after big brother's bath.

Day 4

The white stuff is back, so I thought I'd try to take a picture. I did a couple without the flash, but I really need to drag the tripod out. Here is one with the flash at my parent's house. It's kind of neat to see the falling snow.

Day 3

We went to the zoo today and it was so cold outside that when we went to the indoor exhibits my lens fogged over. I took this picture and thought I'd use it today.

Day 2

I was very good and read my section of Understanding Exposure last night, and tried to work it out today. It didn't go very well. I didn't really follow the directions correctly. I was supposed to go outside and I thought I could maybe swing it inside. It is January after all.

The mission was to experiment with f-stop, but once I figured out how to make the changes on my camera, I went the wrong way and opened up the shutter for even longer instead of shorter. I don't have any idea what I'm doing. But then it was kind of fun. So this is what I'm posting today.


The blur in the center at the bottom is Matt playing around.

I might need to pull out the manual on my camera before I play around anymore.

Day 1

I don't know why, but the new year always puts this sort of pressure on me that puts me in a funk. It's like you have this new beginning, but there is so much I want to tackle and make new that it's too overwhelming.

A friend of mine on Facebook posted that she's going to be doing Project 365, and it just sounded like something I could maybe do myself. She's going to be focusing on her photography skills, and that sounds like a really good idea. I think I'll try going in that direction, but I might incorporate some other stuff as well.

So, here goes. Day 1 with a photo of my work space.


I figured it was a good way to start. I have my favorite tool in the house - our computer. It's on one of my working desks. Now I could embarrass myself and zoom out so you can see that both of my desks are piled high with stuff, but you'll just have to believe me.

Strategically placed in front of the computer is my Understand Exposure book by Bryan Peterson, which I believe I received for Christmas about three years ago. I spent a good 30-45 minutes digging through the unpacked boxes in the garage looking for this book (and finding all sorts of treasures).

I'm ashamed to say that I have not even flipped all the way through it. It's one of the books I hear about over and over again when anyone mentions a fantastic photography resource. It's about 150 pages and broken up into 2-3 page articles.

One of my challenges to myself will be to take the time to read through one of these articles a week and apply it to my photography. I have been saying for years that I want to learn how to shoot in manual, well, I'm going to make it one of my goals for this year and hopefully it will stick.