2012-01-31

I spent a lot of time on Pinterest today, so I thought it deserved to be today's photo. I discovered Pinterest a few months ago, and I have been absolutely addicted ever since. So much to see and oogle! I already wrote about it on my regular blog, if you're interested. I'm not losing hours and hours to it daily like I was in the beginning, but I do still visit most every day. It is so inspiring!

2012-01-30

This is not really the photo I intended to take. I was trying to show that we did get *something* done with the lighting in our house this weekend. After living here for two years with no light in the dining room (long story, don't ask), we finally put something up. This fixture actually came out of one of the bedrooms (no, I can't explain the lighting choices the previous owners made!); we swapped it for a ceiling fan before we moved in (see, we *can* change out light fixtures). What you can't see in the photo is the large white circle around the fixture hole on the beige ceiling. There used to be a medallion up there (again, don't ask), but they didn't paint under it. I kept meaning to paint, but didn't, and I didn't want to hang a light until I painted, so 2+ years later, still no paint and no light. After the kitchen light fiasco yesterday, we decided that we've had enough darkness, so we put this up. I can always paint later (yeah, right). So, I was trying to get a shot of this light up in the room, white ceiling circle and all, and the camera really dimmed the exposure because of the bright bulbs. I did get a shot exposed the way I intended, but looking at them later, I really liked how this one looked. Don't you just love "happy accidents"?

2012-01-29

This light has become the bane of our existence. First, who puts track lighting in the kitchen?! It is completely useless. We've wanted to change it out since we moved in. We were just about ready to have recessed can lights put in, and then the whole "the company is shutting down, so poof goes your job" thing happened. ::sigh:: As you can see, we now have two bulbs out, and for the life of us, we cannot figure out how to get them out!! I already hate it, I can't change the bulbs, let's just replace it with an inexpensive fixture until I get another job. Yeah, we can't figure out how to get it down. It *should* be coming down; we've changed light fixtures before. But it's holding firm, and we don't want to permanently damage something that is even more expensive to repair. Really don't want to call an electrician for something like this (would rather just put in the can lights if we're going to have to pay the "visit fee" for the electrician, but can't afford it). Guess I'll just live in a dark kitchen. ::grumble grumble::

2012-01-28

We visited Ikea for the first time today. It was really interesting! The place is simply huge, and most of it is not my style, but they do have a few things I liked, including one really nice kitchen (yeah, keep dreaming!). And yes, we ate at the restaurant, too. I was looking for a particular type of storage unit. They had one that was too big, and one that was too small, but no "goldilocks" one. Guess I'll keep looking. I did find a nice small dining table for our kitchen, though....

2012-01-27

The flame of the oil lamp at our table at Cracker Barrel.

2012-01-26

Well, I made it almost 4 weeks before I missed a day. And, as you can see, I did at least *think* about taking a photo that day. Sadly, after this, I don't think it crossed my mind again. Less than 30 minutes after I tweeted this, I literally could not keep my eyes open, so I went to bed. Oh well!

2012-01-25

Daddy's home! Time to nap.

2012-01-24

I have no idea what she was looking at, but she looked very regal doing it.

2012-01-23

I don't know why Star feels she needs to drown her toys. She's the only one of our four cats who puts her toys in the water bowl (occasionally the food bowl, but usually the water bowl).

2012-01-22

I was really fascinated by the contrast between these leafless trees and the gray sky behind them. I probably took 20 shots, trying to get the camera to see what I was seeing. Never quite worked out, but this shot wasn't too bad.

2012-01-21

What a lovely day, don't you think? I don't know what possessed us to get out in this, but we did. When I took this picture, I couldn't wait to get home! Craziness.

2012-01-20

Cleo looks *very* enthused with whatever we are watching.

2012-01-19

We still haven't taken down all of our Christmas decorations. These are on the back porch, though, so only a few neighbors know they are still up. Actually, we never took them down after putting them up last year, but we did turn them off and leave them off until December. I really loved the lens flare on this bulb in the bottom right. It wasn't intentional, but as my father says, I'd rather be lucky than good.

2012-01-18

Bengal is "helping" DH manage his fantasy baseball team and league.

2012-01-17

Yeah, that's pretty much the same face I made when I saw this. Luke's first non-smiley face report of first grade came home from school today. Apparently he was talking and playing instead of paying attention during both reading and music. This seems to happen around Christmas, give or take a couple of weeks, based on last year's and this year's behavior. I don't know if it's spending so much time inside due to the cold and rain, or the lack of soccer, or just general burnout. Probably some of each. Hopefully this will be the only one for the year.

2012-01-16

I don't know why this particular pose of Tigger's struck me as so funny, but as soon as I saw her, I ran to get the camera. She tunneled under the light top blanket and spent a good 10 minutes arranging herself. She looks both regal and ridiculous at the same time!

2012-01-15

I love this picture! It beautifully captures their relationship as it stands today. It also demonstrates that if there is any sort of screen anywhere in Luke's vicinity, he can't *not* look at it! ::sigh:: All DH was doing was checking the weather forecast.

2012-01-14

Finally playing with one of my Christmas gifts tonight. We had an absolute blast on LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4, and this one is proving to be just as fun! If it weren't for the Traveler's Tales LEGO games, I'm not sure I would play any games at all. DH and I play together after Luke goes to bed. Luke does play the Star Wars LEGO games, but he's not allowed to play the Harry Potter ones until he reads the books. I know, I'm such a mean mom!

2012-01-13

Not sure this captured the mood I was after. There were at least 25 birds sitting in this tree on this wet and dreary Friday the 13th. Definitely reminded me of Hitchcock in some ways; there were plenty of other birds in the other two trees not shown in the photo. Still not as eerie, though, as the day several years ago my whole lawn was covered in large black birds!

2012-01-12

Ta-da! All fixed. The general contractor came back today to fix our steps. He filled the empty space underneath with concrete (about 100 lbs/45 kg worth), plus patched all of the cracks, so it should be good for another 20-30 years. One brick did crumble, so we have a single "odd" replacement brick. Not to worry, we'll be painting the steps again in the spring (I *hate* the gray; we investigated just replacing the steps outright, but it's out of our budget for now). At least we should be able to use our front door again in a few days for the first time in a month!

2012-01-11

So, *this* happened when DH went to hang the Christmas garland around the front door back in December. This is the top level/platform of our front porch. We had a general contractor come take a look, and he thinks the steps are original to our mid-1960s house. They built it up with dirt underneath the bricks, and after 50-ish years, it has simply settled. The settling also caused some cracks between the bricks, which further increased the settling, and with the focused pressure from the ladder legs, it just finally gave way. But tomorrow, things will be better!

2012-01-10

Tigger, enjoying the KittyTV channel.

2012-01-09

These raindrops clinging to the tips of the pine needles looked like perfect little jewels when backlit by the street light this morning. I never did get exactly the shot I wanted, since I had to hand-hold it and the light was so low, but I think it did okay.

2012-01-08

This painting was on the wall right next to our table at lunch today. I was fascinated by the dimensionality of the paint. It was so textural, it was all I could do not to reach out and touch it. So, I photographed it instead with the macro setting on my point and shoot camera.

2012-01-07

I really need to start taking down the Christmas decorations, but I wanted to photograph our cards before I did. My grandmother used to put the Christmas cards she received in the slats of her blinds, and I absolutely loved the idea. It worked great at our old house, since there were windows with blinds on each side of our fireplace. There are no blinds in the den at our new house (yes, I still call it that, even though we've been here over 2 years), and at first I had no idea how I would display our cards. But these slatted doors separate the den and the hall, and they open into the den (though I took the photo with the doors closed), so I can still display our Christmas cards and see them while the den! Yes, it takes very little to make me happy.

2012-01-06

Luke had to have a full audiology workup after failing the hearing screening at the pediatrician's office in November. This is the same facility where he was in speech therapy in 2007. It was so strange to be back there after so many years! The waiting room is really nice, though, and I've always loved this wall. The part of the wall with the moon on it is slightly recessed and slightly convex, which lends it a wonderful dimensional quality.

2012-01-05

Something about how graceful Luke's hand looks holding the pencil really struck me tonight. (His handwriting, on the other hand....) I actually like the lighting in this picture, but with no overhead light in the dining room (yes, still!), it's really dark in there, which made holding still enough for this photo tricky. I think I managed okay, though.

2012-01-04

It was a beautiful sunny day today, and the light on my glass butterfly caught my eye. There are two glass shelves over the sink in the kitchen, and I have various glass items on them, slowly building a beautiful sparkling collection. I bought this at the Butterfly House at Callaway Gardens when we visited the Fantasy in Lights in 2010.

2012-01-03

Grrr, vicious faucet!

2012-01-02

Not a great photo, I know, but I was admiring all of my books today. These are the built-in bookshelves in our den; there is another one on the other side of the doorway (far right of picture) that is about half this size, and there are cabinets underneath both of them that store paperbacks (stacked 2 deep) and DVD/Blu-ray movies. I originally thought I would have a mix of "pretties" and books on these shelves, but we needed somewhere to put the books when we moved in (at the end of 2009, remember?), and now that they're up there, I can't stand to take them down! LOL What can I say? They make me happy.

2012-01-01

I've been trying to get a cooking/recipe blog off the ground (obviously haven't gotten very far with that yet), so I've been trying to take photos of food as I make it. Who wants a recipe with no picture, right? I didn't really intend for this to be my first Photo of the Day for 2012, but given that I didn't take pictures of anything but food today, this will have to do. These are the absolutely fantastic Swedish Meatballs I discovered on Pinterest. A decadent way to start the new year, for sure, but so so yummy! They were also the last of the Christmas week leftovers. January 2 will be back to the reality of both work and cooking!

Project 365 - 2012 Edition

Welcome to my second time doing Project 365. (Wait, 2012 is a Leap Year; maybe that should be Project 366?) I never did recap my experience with it last time, and it's been 3 years now. Obviously, though, if I'm willing to do it again, it can't have been too bad. I learned how to do all sorts of nifty things with my camera last time, and using it became nearly second nature. I'm on my 3rd new (or borrowed) camera since then, and I miss having that level of knowledge and control. Plus, as of Thanksgiving 2011, I now have a hand-me-down DSLR (thanks, Dad!), and I really need to learn to use it. No time like the present, so off we go! Hope you enjoy.