in the waning light

being one who takes almost all of my pictures with natural light... the changing of the season is sure having an effect on my daily life! it's getting kind of hard to sneak in a natural light picture when the girls get home from school. by late afternoon so much of the light is already gone. guess it makes for a good reason to learn how to use my flash better... today i played around with the lensbaby and the creative aperture disks again. i gave the heart a try today with torrey. thought the irony of her grumpy face and the hearts sort of flying away worked. i did get a bunch of her smiling too here.

we have theis amazing japanese maple in our backyard that turns the most vibrant shade of red in the fall... then gets even brighter when it's wet with rain. i completely missed getting a picture of it since it dropped all of its leaves suddenly one day. well, by golly, i wasn't going to miss it this year! so the past couple of days i ran the girls out there for a few shots by the red tree. there are a few more shots of emma here.

this was one of those i-missed-the-opportunity-to-use-natural-light moments. so i grabbed my flash {nikon sb600}, used my on camera flash in commander mode... and did my best.

on a scrappy note... my very favorite scrapbook store is making bunches of cards for service members on veteran's day this year. they asked if i'd write up a blog post for them... which you can see here. if you're in the area & would like to come by the store to make cards for soldiers on veteran's day, there's a bit more info here. we hope to see you there!

i also have a new layout up on the ella blog along with my fabulous ella friends. the super cute tami morrison wrote the post up. while you're over at ella, check out stacy julian & lain ehmann's latest book "20 simple secrets of happy scrapbookers".

the last full day

the last full day

i'm not exactly sure where this past school year went, but it is now 2 hours of school away from being finished. yowza! i'm pretty sure the reason time is going by so fast has nothing to do with me getting any older... that couldn't be it. lol. but really, it has been a wonderful whirlwind school year at our new school. the staff & parents have just taken us in and made us feel so welcome. the girls love the school & all of their new friends. and i have to say i'm going to miss this year's teachers terribly next year. i had lunch today with the girls and their friends, and watched the end of year awards assembly. so so much fun! i even ran a quick errand for emma's teacher for next year. i ran to get some pictures developed for her last minute, and since she was nice enough to trust me with her camera... i made sure to leave a few little "presents" on it for her to find later! we'll see if she ever trusts me with it again! lol

yesterday i was laid up with a migraine, and only got a couple of pictures. i did get these from laying on the couch just before i turned the expander in torrey's mouth. this little gizmo is fondly called "the key to the castle" at our house. i get to use it to crank the expander each day. i got such a kick out of torrey's expressions. what a goof!


i also snapped these quick pics of a butterfly on our flowers which i thought was a cool find. the bottom one has the butterfly and a bee about to land. what are the chances?


a couple of side notes from today. i made my first hairdo video for a friend that asked. but since emma went to all of the trouble of video taping, and torrey did such a great job as the hair model, i wanted to share it here, too. :)



**one last note, i was the guest designer on

create well, create often

this week. a fun blog run by the very sweet, not to mention talented, jen evans. check out her site if you get a chance!**

hope you're having a fabulous week!