7/365

So I decided to play around a little bit tonight with food coloring. I chose blue only because the theme over at 365project.com is blue this week and I thought I might as well try my hand at entering a theme photo. I love the way food coloring disperses when it is added to water so I thought I would try and get a shot of it. I do like the pattern in the photo I used, but I'm not totally satisfied with it. The focus isn't what I wanted it to be, but I was too tired to play too much. I will definitely be trying this again during daylight hours!

January 6 - Rainbow Bright

Ana is such a silly little monkey! Yesterday she dressed herself in a summer dress, an apron, a play silk cape, her stripey Christmas tights, and sneakers. She completed the look with a marimba mallet "magic wand" and transformed herself into the "bwah ha ha lady" which I believe to be the equivalent of a villain (I think she looked more like Rainbow Bright or Punky Brewster, but what do I know?). She then climbed up onto the kids table in the kitchen (or her stage as she called it) and proceeded to throw her arms up in the air yelling "bwah ha ha ha!!!" and something about finding "the power" over and over again then jumping wildly (I guess she found the power). She was just too funny! So I got out the camera. This girl just oozes sass, can you tell?

Day 5 - Toss Up

So, after I got the littles in bed tonight, I challenged Ian to a game of Toss Up, a dice game he received for Christmas. Neither of us had played before, but it was pretty easy to figure out, and we had a really fun time! The basic idea is that there are 10 dice with red, yellow and green faces on them. The goal is to earn points based on the number of greens you roll (1 point per green) and to be the first to get over 100 points. On your turn, the 10 dice are rolled, and you have the choice to take those points rolled and end your turn or to set the greens aside and roll the remaining dice to try for more points. You can keep rolling as long as you want, and should you roll 10 greens, you can start again by rolling all ten again, thereby adding to your score, there is no limit. The catch though is that if on any roll, you don't get any greens, and you roll one or more reds, your turn is over and you lose the points you were accumulating on that turn. I only explain the rules to the game so you will better understand this picture:

He had wracked up 49 points and had decided to risk rolling that last dice to try for 50.
Ooops.
He was devastated!

While I would love to use that picture for my 365 project, I promised Ian I wouldn't, so I won't.

So here's the one I will actually use, even though I don't love it. I had to break out the flash, and set the camera to auto to get the shot (I really need to read that flash manual!); and it ended up overexposed anyways. I'll probably try this again in natural light, maybe with real numbered dice and in black and white? We'll see.



One thing's for sure, there will be more Toss Up competitions for us!

Day 4 - Bewwies

Ana is a berry-holic. Strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, you name the berry and she'll eat a pint in a sitting if you let her! Today we had some raspberries at lunch time, and she, Stevie and Cooper when through an entire pint between them in about 5 minutes flat. The conversation went a little like this:

Stevie - "My want bewwies!"
Ana - "Me too, me too! I like razzbewwies!"
Cooper - "Dat, daaat!!" (this is his most common word lately; he uses it for anything he wants; anything from food, to toys, to at bedtime he'll pull on my shirt yelling, "ont dat, daaat!" which is his oh so subtle code that he want's to nurse!)

So I divvy out some berries between the three of them, saving a few (read 5!) for myself. They absolutely devour them!

Ana - "Oh, look mummy! Dey have hairs on them!"
Me - "Yes they do Ana, isn't that cool?"
Ana - "Yup.....oh, and look mummy we can stick our little thumbs in them! Dey like puppets! Take a picture!"

So I did. I took a picture of her puppet raspberries; then I wondered if I could take a close enough shot to do the "hairs" justice. So I laid my three remaining raspberries on a piece of white paper and shot away, while Stevie and Ana circled me waiting for me to be done so they could grab the "bewwies". Don't worry, I handed them over when I was done with them!

Anyways, here's my impromptu shot of Ana, Stevie and Cooper's favorite bewwies:

And of course here's a picture of Ana enjoying her bewwies; as puppets, and as food!

365 Project - Day 3

Cooper took his first steps shortly before his first birthday, but he still preferred to crawl; it's much faster you know! Well, over the past week, he has decided that walking is pretty cool after all, and now spends more time walking than crawling. I love new walkers; the look of determination mixed with absolute pride on their face; the way they look like they are walking a tight rope with arms out extended sometimes stopping to weeble and catch their balance. I know too soon these shaky steps will become a sturdy run, so for now, I'm going to enjoy every unbalanced step!

365 Project - Day 2

I've been taking pictures for years, but have not ever delved deep into the technical aspects of it. While I'm quite happy with many of the images I have captured over the years, I admit that I've largely kept my camera set to "auto" mode. I started a New York Institute of Photography course years ago, but got busy, set it aside and never went back to it. I really want to learn more about how to really use my camera in it's manual mode so with this 365 project I have set the dial to manual and will be shooting away! Well, I encountered some technical difficulties today. I've been having some problems with my cards and have been losing pictures on and off which is so frustrating! Anyways, it got much worse today and I was losing about every third image I took. I think I was able to sort that out, but while I was dealing with it, my lens started to malfunction; it turns out, the focusing ring is jammed. Luckily I do have another lens but at the closer end of the zoom range the maximum f-stop I can get is only 6.3, and doesn't lend itself well to the subjects and lighting I was dealing with. I had to ramp up the film speed which brings up other issues. Anyways, I'm not thrilled with the quality of the pictures I was able to get today, but I do like the way Cooper is crouched watching Ana play in the one I've decided to share. Shortly after the picture was taken he moved in to steal some of her peg dolls I made to go with her dollhouse and took off with them. He loves her peg dolls!

New Year, New Challenge

It's hard to believe we have put another year behind us! Our family leaves 2010 and looks on to 2011 with mixed emotions. There were many fond memories made in moments with our children, and good times spent with friends and family, but the year is largely overshadowed with the devastating loss of Greg's dad in August. The kids continue to work through the loss in their own ways, as do Greg and I. We've made it through the first Thanksgiving and Christmas, and know that 2011 will hold it's own difficult milestones, but I look forward to the blessings that 2011 will hold as well!

I did an exquisitely poor job at blogging in 2010, managing a whopping 14 posts the entire year! That's really pitiful, and I do hope that I will be able to do far better in 2011. The state of my year's pictures is almost as pitiful, most still sitting in their raw format just waiting to be converted to jpegs and shared. I've had an intense desire to get things in order over the past couple months, and am looking forward to being a more organized me this year. Today, I have been working through last year's pictures and organizing them into their monthly folders. I'm feeling good about the progress I'm making! In fact, I've already downloaded the pictures I took this morning, converted them, and placed them into the new 2011 folder, hooray me!

This is all in preparation for something I've decided to take on this year after being inspired by a dear high school friend (thanks Amanda!) who is doing the same. The challenge I've chosen to face is the 365 project, where you document a year of your life by taking a photo a day. Now, I cannot promise that you will see a picture every day here on this blog, but I do promise that I am going to do my darndest to TAKE at least one picture every day. I also cannot promise that there won't be more than one picture a day, because it just so happens that I'm pretty crappy at making decisions and will likely not be able to choose just one! Anyways, on with it!

Today was crazy. We woke up to a shredded poopy Cooper diaper courtesy of the dog. We then discovered that poor Ian was suffering from conjunctivitis and croup. Then, just to keep us on our toes, he threw up this afternoon on the freshly groomed dog who he was cuddling with, and into the torn living room chair (yes, into, meaning the guts of the chair....it was not salvageable). However, between bathing the dog, again; steam cleaning floors and ditching living room furniture, I was able to steal a moment away to build blocks with Cooper this morning. We hadn't had the blocks down in a while and I was amazed at how well he can stack!

At one point he steadily stacked six blocks with his pudgy little hand.



And he was so proud of himself!



Of course we couldn't get through the moment without a little sibling rivalry...



Because Ana wanted to show her skills too!



There you go, 1 day down, 364 left to go!