raindrops & roses

we've had record levels of rainfall in the past few weeks here in washington... which is really saying something! i mean this is washington, and rain is like my pile of dirty laundry that is so often present that you really appreciate it when it's not. that being said, yesterday it poured all day, and after work i got cozy under a warm blanket & enjoyed a good book. (i supposed i should have spent some time with that looming laundry pile, but what fun would that be?)

and the rains water the roses of life, of which i have many. my roses seem to be growning up entirely too fast these days. torrey was so excited to finally become a 5th grade buddy to a sweet little kindergartner. it's amazing to see how big all of the 5th graders looked next to their kinder-buddies. not to mention just how proud they were to be of a help to each of the little ones who needed them. 

on saturday torrey and i stumbled across a vintage show by following some signs we saw. we were spending a little mommy-daughter time talking and driving. she found a cute skirt made from a vintage tablecloth, and i found this cute little frame. we shared a piece of homemade pumpkin pie, and stacked up a few precious memories for the future.

i'm sitting here in my "coffee corner" chair in my living room, next to my handsome husband. my handsome husband who is currently state side, and at home. this man who has always stood strongly by my side through thick and thin. so for the moment, i think i am going to shut down my computer and spend a little time with the man of my dreams. the man sitting next to me. :)

if i were a bug my name would be: BEE hind

has it really been almost two weeks since i've updated the blog?! really? i don't even have a great excuse... i could definitely use the i was battling off sickness last week and pumping vitamin c and airborne like there was no tomorrow... but mostly the yuckies just made me tired. which, i might add, is far better than feeling really seriously crummy. i'm back to *mostly* normal now. all excuses aside, the real deal is that i just got behind, and it felt a little daunting to try to catch up. but it's 9:18pm and i'm feeling quite awake as i listen to the frogs croaking a springtime song outside.

i'll do my best to sum up my life in pictures from the past few weeks. on saturday the girls and i went for a bike ride with my mom, my niece and nephew. it was a nice short ride, and a fun one for our first ride of the season. we've gotta get our bums back in shape for some longer rides! after the ride, the girls and i headed for the daffodil fields. it was getting close to the end of their bloom, and we hadn't gotten up to see them yet this year. (you've gotta time it right because they mow them all down toward the end to harvest the bulbs.)

it doesn't matter how many times i've wandered through the acres and acres of flowers, it always amazes and overwhelms me. what an amazing display of creation for us to enjoy. there are a few more pictures here. we also drove through the fields filled with the white blanket of thousands of snow geese. they were taking off and it looked almost like someone was shaking out a great white blanket. it's truly an amazing sight to see.

ella publishing is running several weeks of tv scrapbook challenges... if you're in need of some inspiration, check out the ella blog for details and join in the fun (and have a chance to win a fabulous ella ebook)!

sunday after church a friend of ours came and mowed my lawn while his wife and i visited & the kids played. we have a pretty crazy big hilly yard that is no easy beast to mow. and i credit stan being an amazing man and having wonderful friends that do so much to help us when he's away. so THANK YOU gabe for supporting the troops!

thursday emma started dance lessons for the first time ever. i picked a package of ballet/tap lessons up at the school auction recently since our love of classic musicals has spurred her into wanting to tap dance like fred astaire and gene kelly. though she has not quite reached astaire level in one lesson (hee hee) she has quite enjoyed tapping her way through the house everyday since.

last year on st patrick's day i was feeling extra motivated and made quite a crazy green dinner for us. although (shockingly) i still have some green food coloring left from last year, i was not feeling 100% and couldn't muster the energy to massacre our dinner. all i managed to get done was a couple of three leaf clover hairdos for the girls in the morning. while i wasn't earning any super-fun mom awards this year... at least i kept them safe from pinching for the day. :)

no really, thank you chinese food! you fed my little sweeties when i was feeling too crummy to make dinner.

while clicking through flickr last week i stumbled across a picture that inspired me to take some shots of me & my wedding ring in honor of the amazing man who gave it to me so many years ago. i am the luckiest girl in the world to have landed such an incredible man. i know i don't tell him enough just how proud i am of him, and just what an honor it is to have him by my side... even when that means he's a million miles away. he's the man of my dreams, and quite possibly most wonderful man in the world.

emma and i stopped by a little blue schoolhouse on our way to a benefit dinner the other night. it's right on our way to church, and i've always wanted to stop to utilize the pretty blue walls. well, with a little extra time on our hands, we stopped by and took a bunch of pictures just for fun. :)

just like her mom & dad, torrey got an eye exam the other day and was told she'd need a new set of stronger glasses. so off to costco to pick out some new frames and replace the lenses in another pair. after picking up the new set of glasses we took a bunch of pictures (here and here) for daddy to see the new specs. i think they're pretty dang cute!

another fun surprise this week was my march ck. i've been dying to show this layout to my dear friend donna struggling her way through breast cancer, who inspired it. she has the most beautiful heart and contagiously inspiring spirit of anyone i've ever met. (see her adorable self here & read about her here and here) since we took these pictures, she's finished chemo and grown back about 1/2" of hair! she's kickin' cancer in the you-know-what! {love you donna!}

this week my mailbox was also graced with a beautiful new handmade necklace i ordered from the darling janna wilson. i {heart} her... besides being a super talented scrapping genius, {lucky for me} she's also a crazy crafty jewelry maker! i'm pretty sure i'm gonna need one of these babies in every color! i'm so in love with this little beauty. check out her way cute necklaces here!

and last, but not least, is this little pair. and by little i mean ginormous golden eagles. i was sitting in my living room enjoying a nice hot cup of coffee when these two bad boys landed in the tree across our yard. they are seriously amazing creatures, and the picture doesn't nearly do them justice. we see a lot of bald eagles in our area, but rarely get a good long look at golden eagles. after this little eagle chat, the meeting ended in something that would have been more suited for the likes of animal planet... if you know what i mean. yes, spring is in the air!

i hope you have a wonderful week filled and overflowing with blessings.

xo
noel

long distance love & life

i've mentioned it before, but it bears mentioning again... i am married to the most amazing man on the planet. this past sunday was valentine's day. he spent it flying over who-knows-where and i spent it with my brother and my girls in colorado.  we've spent so many "big" days apart now, that these little ones just don't seem like that big of a deal anymore. rather than valentine's days we have deployment days and homecomings. these days are filled with their own special tendernesses that we would never have experienced had we not fallen head first into this life. (the picture above was taken the day before stan left on his last deployment.) 

this year for valentine's day i didn't get chocolate of flowers, which is a-ok with me. (i'm not a big flowers girl anyway, i could think of a lot of things i'd rather spend the $50 on!) instead of the traditional gifties, my amazing man wrote me (and both of the girls) a poem. one for each of us. they were sweet and thoughtful, way out of his comfort zone and practically perfect in every way. and man-o-man you can't beat that. 

anyway, i did up a few digital pages for an ella publishing and sweet shoppe designs product review. check out the other pages here along with a freebie download from sweet shoppe! 

 

like i said, we spent valentine's day with my brother in colorado. the girls had a long weekend with president's day, so it worked out perfectly. we went skiing in breckenridge for a couple days where we were hooked up with 12 inches of fresh powder during our trip. this being our third time skiing (ever) it was our first time on fresh powder. wow, is it ever nice! it sure makes falling a lot more comfortable too.

we also met a former coworker of my brother's who was kind enough to let us all stay at his cabin, and the girls found a new adopted grandpa. there are a few more skiing pictures here. we also got to meet up with my friend liz hicks and her family for lunch before we headed home on tuesday.

 

 

i am always amazed at how much traveling takes out of you. tuesday after we got home, the girls and i just lounged around the rest of the day. of course, after spending a day lounging, i was seriously lacking photo inspiration... so i did a quick scout for something to take a picture of tuesday evening. my collection of multi-colored extra fine point sharpies were a handy choice.

as for the rest of the week, we've been enjoying watching the trees start to bud and bloom. it's so much different from our super snowy year last year, to see the trees coming to life in february. there are a few more shots of our pretty little flowering cherry here.

20 years from now

now well into the second month of my second year of project 365 i've seen a definite pattern develop. not that it took me two years and two months to figure that out, but i digress... my daily pictures tend to be face shots of {shock} my girls. while i have loads of reasons for that, not the least of which being that they're easy & accessible targets... er, i mean subjects. but after reading an email from noell hyman of paperclipping.com, i got to thinking about what kinds of photos will i want to see 20 years from now? what will my girls want to see 20 years from now? what childhood photos do i cherish most? it's those real life moments that are so fun to look back on, and the memories they bring with them.

but another thing that i (personally) really enjoy is watching my kids grow in photographs. it's one of the reasons i take so many face shots. when the girls were babies, i took them to sears to have their pictures taken ever single month of their first year. why? beside the fact that i'm slightly obsessed with pictures?? they grow and change so quickly, it seems like if you blink it's gone. you think you'll remember the each little piece of them forever, but sadly you don't. or at least  you can't conjure it up at any given moment. i sometimes joke that if you put all the pictures i've taken of the girls in a big stack and flipped through them, you'd see their lives in slow-mo (like a cartoon flip book). and so it goes with the face shots. taking pictures every day shows those subtle changes that i might have otherwise missed. magic moments of tiny change... at least they're easier to take than big changes, i think!

we had a couple days of fabulous sunshine here in the northwest. (my apologies to the east coasters who are socked in with snow right now!) don't worry, we're back to rain now, but on the sunny days i got a chance to try "panning" again. it's a very cool way of keeping your subject in motion in focus while the background is blurred. 

i'm definitely not an expert, and i took hundreds of shots, and only had a handful turn out clear. but i'll give you the basics, if you want to give it a try. have your subject or find one that is moving in a consistent motion. they don't have to be going a million miles an hour, just moving predictable way. set your camera to shutter priority. you'll want your shutter speed to be on the slower side around 1/20 to 1/25. (the top pictures was a 1/25 of a sec at f9, and the bottom image was at 1/20 of a sec at f25.) now, i was holding my camera, but you may have better luck with a monopod. but for the pod-less, i'll tell you how i did it. focus on your subject, then follow them with your camera (keeping them in the frame) as they move. click your shutter at some point while you're following them in camera... making sure to continue to follow them after you press the shutter. it'll take some practice, but the end result is something like these.  i'm sure there are zillions of applications for panning, but i've tried it with bike (and now scooter) riding. it's a good place to start since it's a generally consistent motion to follow.

 

as for the rest of these... just snippets and samplings of daily life. nothing too exciting, but again part of the memories that hopefully will turn out to be the treasured ones 20 years from now.

we're heading back to colorado to visit my brother over the girls' midwinter break this weekend. that leaves us trying to tie up all of our loose ends before we leave on friday. so yesterday the girls made their valentine cards for their classmates thanks to a super-cute and FREE digital goodie from paislee press. they're now ready to spread the valentine's love!

hobbies, obessions and love

i sometimes sit and think of just how blessed we are to live in a country where we are afforded the time and luxury of having hobbies. there are places, and there have been times when people have and weren't afforded this fabulous slice of goodness. lucky us!

 

sometimes i forget just how blessed i am. sometimes i forget the million little blessings that fill my daily life. one of the things i've been trying to reflect on this year are those little things. i guess they're really not so little, but i'm often looking out over the horizon at the next big thing, that i forget to see the everyday little things. so today, i am thankful for hobbies, cameras, love notes, skype, computers, hot coffee and free time.

 

of course,  two of my biggest blessings stare me right in the face every single day. they sometimes remind me of their blessing status with sweet little notes i find on the kitchen counter, a little snuggle,  a flying wwf-worthy tackle and sometimes even the sweet sound of sibling bickering. they're all little moments to treasure because they won't always be mine to have. in a few short years, they will no longer be daily realities, but fond memories. and today (and everyday) they are on my "i'm so thankful for that" list.

and a giveaway

want one more thing to be thankful for today? be thankful for ella publishing! they're offering a bundle of cha goodies to a lucky winner. leave a comment here on my blog, then hop on over to ella and comment here. want even more chances to win? visit the other fabulous ella friends' blogs! see all of the details here.

ch-ch-ch-changes & winners (well, really just one winner)

so what do you think? i did a little changin' to the ol' blog. i really liked the black background, but was itching for some change... so at least for now, i'm sporting the clean, crisp color white, along with a new header. i'm definitely not an html expert, but i can google-question my way through simple changes. tell me what you think! is the bright new look great, or awful?

 supplies: patterned paper: Paislee Press - Midwinter’s Flight Kit, oscraps.com (blue-grey), Paislee Press - Chasing the Sun Kit (white pattern); frames:Paislee Press - Chasing the Sun and Apothecary Frames; font: Arial

thank you, thank you for all of the fabulous eBook ideas! they'll be tossed around by the fab ladies at ella for sure. now, without further ado, the winner of ella publishing's a year in the life eBook! and the winner is...

Veronica said...

Love that you can look back a year ago! It gets me "emotional" as well!
A great new book would be one that would incorporate how to use those "not so great photos" into a layout! Also including great, simple, easy photo editing tips all packed into one place!!

January 16, 2010 8:52 AM

congratulations veronica! shoot me an email, and i'll get you hooked up!

now to finish off today's post of randomness - onto 365 shots from the past few days. with emma being the more willing of the girls to have her picture taken these days, she seems to have taken the picture of the day slots by storm lately. being a mom who tries to be fair, i drug torrey out for her turn. {hee hee} we messed around and laughed a lot, and ended up with these fun shots to show for it.

we spent part of the weekend with my friend and fellow navy wife leila and her sweet little one, eva. we took the girls bowling friday night, then met up with trish (another fab navy wife) and her little one, isla, on saturday so the girls could paint some cute little pottery pieces for their deployed daddies for valentine's day. i'm sure stan won't mind getting a few packages of love in the mail in the next few weeks! {lots of painting pictures here}

on our way home from oak harbor we stopped by deception pass, an amazingly beautiful bridge over turbulent blue waters. it took the shot above of the girls reading the history of the pass and posted a bunch more here. we'd stopped by the same stop the night before just before it was completely dark, and i got the super lucky shot below. i was sans tripod, so i propped the camera on a pillar (with the car still running on the side of the road) pressed the shutter and got lucky!

the water reflects the sky beautifully for just a short bit of time each night... but i've never been able to get it on film (most likely because i'm always shooting out of a moving car window - passenger side, of course). but this time i stopped, propped and rolled! there are a few other just for fun night shots here if you're interested.

one more fun thing to check out... i found this very cool site with ceramic rings. they've got all kinds of other bands for men and women too. check out their beautifully simple style here.

before i pain anyone further with the length and random-ness of this post, i am going say goodnight! let me know what you think about the new design... suggestions are welcome, too!