One big knitting family.

I'm feeling under the weather, but I wanted to get at least one blog post in before January comes to a close. I've been keeping a fairly hectic pace this week between work and Girl Scouts, so I must have worn down my resistance and caught myself a cold. It was only a matter of time, since I always seem to get sick in the months of February and November. forgot that the blog celebrated its 5th(!) anniversary on Friday (January 27th). I even knew it was coming up and was planning to do something special to celebrate it, but it slipped my mind in the midst of everything else that was going on. Oh well.

After spending a couple of years nearly forgotten and untouched, my Knifty Knitters have been getting a real workout. I had planned on making a hat and scarf for myself, but as soon as Lauren saw me knitting, she was immediately hooked (Pun intended) and wanted to make something too. So we jointly set out to make her a scarf.



Here's the finished product. The yarn we used was super pretty and soft.



After the scarf was completed, we went to the store to pick out yarn for her next project. There she saw a knitting board (A long loom), and immediately wanted it so she could make a blanket. She finished it that same evening, and even managed to take time out to teach Daddy how to knit too. You know what they say about knitting - I family who knits together stays together and never lacks for a scarf. 



And on that note, I'm going to make like Marcus and get some rest.

Queen of the Hillside.

In the midst of what seems to be the warmest winter on record, we finally got a significant amount of snow (If you call 4 - 6 inches significant). Lauren has been dying to go sled riding, which is challenging when there's no snow on the ground, but today she got her wish.

 

She started by doing runs down our hillside with Daddy...







But then quickly graduated to doing solo runs.

 

Just the same, Daddy was there to scoop her up at bottom.



Note the sporty kint owl hat - a gift from Cousin Noreen.

 

Unfortunately, I could not join in the sledding because I've been experiencing some back trouble over the past couple of days, so I made Mark take a photo of me so it looked like I was participating. Mark refers to this as my "Hoth Leia" outfit.



Lastly, today was my turn to pick the daily challenge topic:  Words of wisdom. A few months ago, I picked up a small collection of vintage stamps to display in my stamp carousel. They must of come from an attorney's office because some of them print words such as "SUIT FILED," "JUDGEMENT" and "GARISHMENT." But amid all those ominous phrases was this little gem. At first I thought it meant that happiness comes from within (Just like when it's an "inside job," someone working from inside the organization commits a crime), but now I think it's meant to be taken literally as you should be happy to be working inside and not outside. If you worked in an attorney's office, I guess I could see where you'd be trying to look on the bright side of things like that.

I've got Chinese in my pocket.

 

--Melissa "Alanis Morrisette" Corbelli, upon leaving Szechuan Taste and discovering that her Chinese takeout container was in her coat pocket.

I've been terrible about posting the daily challenge photos here. Truth is that I feel kinda lame just repeating what I write on Flickr, but I guess those four or five of you who read this regularly probably don't care about that.

Anyway, today's challenge was "Oriental." Now one of my New Year's Resolutions was to pack my lunch more often, and I've been doing pretty well with it thus far. However, once I saw today's challenge, I decided to forgo my leftover spaghetti and convince Mel C to go for Chinese so that I could get a picture.

I tried numerous shots of tea cups, egg rolls, lanterns and my teriyaki chicken, but most of those came out sub-par. This statue of buddha that greets you whether you eat in or take out was the clear winner (Special thanks to Mel C for moving the bottle of hand sanitizer out of the shot and the owner of the restaurant for leaving his post behind the counter so he wouldn't be in the photo.).

Put your feet up...the world is at your fingertips.

So today was my big debut at choosing the daily photo challenge. The group maintains a huge spreadsheet of every topic chosen over the last two years, but since I wanted to come up with something that hadn't been done before, I had to really rack my brain for a new concept. It wasn't easy because they've pretty much covered everything. In the end, I decided on "trend."

Because I had a hair appointment that lasted over two hours and then afterwards we went to dinner over Mel C's house, I didn't have a whole lot of time to brainstorm my own photo. When I was fooling around with my camera settings last week, I took a photo of Lauren playing on the iPad, so I decided to do it again, only this time putting a little bit more thought into the shot.



So while it would have been fun to do a photo about 80's style big hair, reality television, or coffee houses, I went with the rise of tablet computing. In the last two years, tablet computing has become mainstream, with the iPad leading the charge. And for the children of today, touchscreen technology is the blackboard of tomorrow.

Oh, and you can play a lot of really bitchin games on it.

Lucky in love.

This is going to be a looong, dark winter. Lots of moody, low lit shots to come in the next several weeks.

Anyway, today's challenge was "four," and although it's a pretty broad topic, all I could come up with is "four of a kind." At first, I wasn't entirely pleased with this because four aces seems so cliche. However, once I started to post process, I thought, "That heart could really use an arrow through it!" and I immediately stopped what I was doing and ran off to re-shoot. I think it gives it a nice little twist.

Feminine mystique.

 

Since I finished the 25 Days of Christmas, I've been in a bit of a photography slump. Responsibilities have picked up again, so I've been spending my down time as down as possible rather than expending more energy. And as much as I enjoy it, photography expends a lot of it.

Today's challenge was "feminine." When I saw it, I thought well gee, I'm a woman. This one should be easy. However, it wasn't. I guess I don't own a lot of feminine things. Girly things, yes. But when I think of feminine I think of something a little more sophisticated.

Thankfully, I remembered that I had these vintage paper dolls. You can't get more feminine than these gals. As models, they were great to work with. They held their poses through shot after shot with nary a complaint. Unfortunately they had quite a few scars and blemishes (folds) here and there, but nothing a little Photoshop couldn't handle. Just like real cover girls.

As a side note, I'm excited because I got to volunteer to pick Saturday's topic each week for the daily challenge group. Over 600 photographers at the mercy of my whims - lol! I figure that this should guarantee that I will participate in at least 52 challenges this year, as it would be silly for me to choose the topic and not participate. I think this shot may have restored a little bit of my mojo, so hopefully there will be more in the coming days!

Undercover.

 

Today's challenge was "cover." What immediately came to mind was making a clubhouse or fort by draping a blanket over a table. I think every kid has tried that a least once.



It's also good for hide and seek. Almost.



Been working on my annual photo calendar. This year, I had a lot of photos to choose from. These are the ones that made the cut. Not necessarily all favs or best shots, just the ones that I thought fit best for that particular month. One thing is for certain - it was a colorful year!

Back to work and school and cookie sales and homework and commuting in the snow and all sorts of other responsible stuff tomorrow.

In with the new...old.

 

Today's challenge was "In With the New." I've told this story so many times, but I don't think I've ever written it down here. This is my "new" stove. When we remodeled our kitchen at the end of last year, we wanted to get a vintage stove. Mark found this 1952 Hotpoint on Craigslist. The place where we picked it up was right out of American Pickers. Warehouse after warehouse filled with junk. The owner of the establishment was an adorable little old man. We found him in a wood paneled office sitting in his Archie Bunker chair and watching an old Fred Astaire musical. Oh, and he had a life sized bronze statue of a chimpanzee sitting on top of his file cabinet.

Anyway, the original owner had died shortly after purchasing the stove, so it sat brand new in storage until we adopted it. Even so, Mark had to do a little bit of rewiring to resurrect it because it sat unused for almost 60 years. Now, it works like it just came right off the assembly line. It even has "push button technology!"




Today was spent organizing, crafting, removing the spirit of Christmas from the house, and just general lounging around in order to recuperate from our late night New Year's Eve festivities. This was my second choice for "in with the new," as Lauren decided to give herself a fresh rainbow manicure with her new nail polish.