What little girls are made of.

Sugar.



Spice.



and everything nice.

I'm disappointed that I didn't have more updates for February. Part of the problem is that Mark and I have been sick all week. One of my symptoms is conjunctivitis, and I didn't want to spread bacteria all over the eye cup of my camera which would ultimately result in re-infecting myself (And would also be all around gross - eww.). So I unfortunately haven't been taking any photos as of late.

Also, as you can see above, I've been pretty busy managing the cookie sale for our troop. Everything has been going fairly smoothly thus far, although there was a minor hiccup with our Do-si-do count which was quickly resolved with a little creative reallocation from our surplus, or what I like to call "fuzzy math." Our troop sold 71 cases, and believe it or not, we were able to fit the majority of them in just the Sebring.

As I've mentioned in previous years, for some reason March is usually a challenging month for me, and if this week is any indication, I can tell that this year will be no different. Yippee. :P

The end.

Busy week photography wise, although I didn't take a whole lot of photos. I did however teach myself a few new skills, did a lot of reading and a little purchasing.



Here's a demonstration of one of my new acquired skills - vignetting. It's kind of addictive, so now I'm going to be vignetting everything.



And here's one just for fun. Lauren and I had all her Zhu Zhu pets running around all at once in the family room. Man, can those little things go!



Lastly, here's one that I'm particularly proud of. I find that I take my best photos when I have no expectations on myself. What usually happens is that I have an idea, a vision in my mind of what kind of photo I want to take. When I try to go about doing it, I end up getting so frustrated because I can't execute it for various reasons - lack of resources, knowledge, time, talent. The list goes on and on.

Then there are those moments when I don't even plan on taking photos. The idea hits me. I pick up my camera. I shoot. Done. That's what happened here. In recent weeks I've been getting frustrated because I don't think I've been stretching myself enough and as a result, I'm not showing the improvement that I want to see in my photos.

While this one isn't high art, a breathtaking landscape or a beautiful portrait, it demonstrates to me that I am making progress. I set out to get every one of those pieces airborne and frozen in time, and I accomplished it through deliberate actions and not by accident. My only regret is that I wish that all the pieces could have been in focus, but because of low light I had to shoot at wide aperture to get a high enough shutter speed to freeze the action. Hopefully some of my recent purchases will assist with some of my lighting challenges so I can let my creativity flag fly.

Edited to add: After I re-read this post, I thought that the title maybe misleading, so just to be clear, the blog is not ending. So y'all come back now, y'hear? - lol!

Valentine's Day preparations.

Valentine's Day is a holiday that usually gets only cursory acknowledgment here at our house, but now that Lauren is in school, we're required to be more participatory.




This is the first year that she will be participating in the time honored tradition of exchanging valentines to her classmates.




We even made a valentine box. It all reminds me too well of Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown."





I thought for sure that she was going to tire of writing her name 20+ times, but she completed them without complaint.



Lastly, I'd like to thank our cousin Noreen for sending us a Valentine's Day care package that contained a box of candy hearts that served as last minute inspiration for the new blog banner. I don't think I've ever done black before, but I like how it turned out. Thanks, Noreen!

In the car.

It's the story of my life. I had so many good ideas for this challenge (A few of which involved the backseat - hee.), but neither the time nor resources to execute them. Here's how it goes:

1.) Leave five minutes early from work (and speed down the highway) in the hope that I can get home in time to take advantage of what's left of the golden hour of sunset.

2.) Make necessary stop at Target. Had awesome plan to have fish sticks for dinner (Lauren has been wanting to try them), but forgot that the nearest Target did not have a frozen food section. Now I have no plan for dinner, and it's already almost 5 p.m.

3.) Finish shopping, race to my parents house to pick up Lauren.

4.) Arrive home. Let Daisy out, and run inside to get camera (Sorry, Marcus - you have to wait just a couple more minutes...) and preheat oven for the meatloaf that I just decided to make.

5.) Spend ten minutes snapping photos while Lauren and Daisy play outside. Lauren eventually asks, "Mom, when are you going to put the car away?"

6.) Settle for what few photos I could manage, run inside to get Marcus out of his crate before his bladder bursts.

7.) Take Marcus outside. Go back inside house, and, without removing coat or boots, prepare meatloaf.

8.) Round-up child and dogs, then finally remove coat and boots. Start preparing the remainder of dinner (parmesan couscous and peas).



Both the meatloaf and the photos turned out satifactory, so I guess we can call this challenge a success.

Love.

Home.

This one was actually kind of difficult for me. I have so many photos of the interior and exterior of our home, it was hard to come up with some new ideas! (Photographer's note: The photo above has purple fringing around the mailbox, which a bad thing. This is the first time that I've ever noticed it in one of my photos. I'll have to research how to make sure it doesn't happen again.).



Like our family portrait, represented by toothbrushes.



Saturday morning pancakes.



Relaxing at home, in stripey socks (Yes, in a few ways Lauren actually does take after her mother.).

I remembered. Finally.

Today is the fourth anniversary of blog! I forgot to commemorate it the last two years, but I made sure that I paid close attention to the calendar this year.

Wow, four years and we're still going strong. Okay, maybe not strong, but we're still going alright. And by the looks of it, we may reach double digits in posting this month. Those are practically 2007 numbers.

I'd like to have posted a nice family photo of the three of us, but that's impossible without someone having a meltdown (either me or Lauren). Instead, I offer something almost as good.

But first, some background information. Lauren isn't very forthcoming when it comes to providing information about her private life. Here's an example conversation:

Me: So Lauren, who did you sit by at lunch today?
Lauren: Nobody.
Me: Okay. Well, who did you play with at recess?
Lauren: Nobody.
Me: Did you have art class today?
Lauren: You should know!!!!
Me: If I knew, I wouldn't be asking. What did you do in art class.
Lauren: Nothing.

And so on and so forth. I don't know what's going on a that school, but it certainly doesn't seem like we're getting our tax dollars worth.

So one morning, Mark pondered how Lauren would handle those "stupid" questions that I ask when I interview candidates for job positions in my department.

This is the result.



Otherwise, not much new to report. We had a parent/teacher conference this evening, and Lauren is doing beautifully, scoring 100% on her assessments. I'm busy trying to figure out the logistics of how to fit 70+ cases of Girl Scout Cookies into a Mini Cooper. And Mark continues to battle wits with Marcus, who continues to chew on the corners of our baseboards.

Stripes.

Yesterday's assignment was an easy one: stripes. Or so I thought. I had this brilliant idea for a shot of Lauren wearing my oversized rainbow-striped sweater. Unfortunately, my ability to bribe her for model time had run out, and she ended up having a meltdown over wearing the sweater. As a result, I probably inflicted a scar on her small psyche, and now she'll grow up with phobia of things with stripes.

So I had to go with Plan B. After she calmed down, she started heckling me about it. How I suffer for my art.



Sometimes inspiration comes upon me unexpectedly. I found these cute striped gloves when I was getting my coat out of the closet. I had purchased them for Lauren a couple of months ago and had forgotten all about them. Although they were supposed to be child size, they're too big for her, but fit me perfectly. I thought it would be fun to hold an orange instead of a snowball. It's easy to think about Florida when it's only fifteen degrees outside.



Of course, there are also lots of stripes around our home.






Lastly, a bonus shot of Lauren with her new haircut. Today's Daily Shoot assignment was Celebrate the pretty things in life. Make a photograph of the most beautiful thing you see today. And I could think of nothing more beautiful that our new table and chairs set. ;)

Monochromatic.

I found another photo challenge site called "The Daily Shoot." It's very slick - you upload to one of the photo sharing sites, tweet the link to the photo using Twitter and then your photo magically appears on the site for all to see.



Can there really ever be enough photos of Daisy looking out the window? I don't think so.

Sideview.