Various and Sundry Sisters Photoshoots

January 28, 2018 | Allison

Heyyy, guys!

Megan and I (and my little sister Carmen) have been doing quite a few photoshoots recently, so I thought I’d combine them all into one post for you today! I shall go in roughly chronological order because that’s how I uploaded the pictures. 😉 Also, Megan took all the pictures of me except the “selfie” ones, using my Nikon D3400. Alright, onwards and… upwards? XD

I did this photoshoot back in December when I went to the “island” (a patch of trees in a field) to collect greenery for wreaths. For some reason I decided to do a photoshoot of myself while I was there? I’m trying to get better at “selfies” because GOODNESS they are hard, especially without a tripod. Thus I only have two of those pictures to show you. XD

(This caption thingy is NOT cooperating so I guess I’ll have to use it instead of deleting it.) Thankfully these two pictures turned out alright at least!

Ooh, I love this next photoshoot! Megan and I went down to the pond at our new farm one day (see more in this post) and it was absolutely breathtaking! The snow on the trees, the crystal-clear reflections… ahh, isn’t it beautiful? The perfect backdrop. 🙂

HEH HEH. And then we have this. XD Here’s an at using the self-timer, but it failed so hard it actually worked. XD I turned around just at the wrong time and IT CRACKS ME UP.

Here’s another little “selfie” photoshoot. When no one else is available to take pictures of, at least I have myself. 😛 It… still didn’t work out the best. It was really hard to stay in focus with self-timer, not to mention getting to the right place at the right time! Morale of the story: SELFIES ARE HARD. Find a sibling if possible. XD

Anyway. I was trying to go for one of those stock photo, Pinterest-y pictures but it turned out blurry. -_- Other than that I think it looks kinda neat, though. I do kind of blend in with the fence post… XD

AHA! An in-focus picture! Way to go, Allison. And I even jumped at the right time! Wow. *shakes head in wonder*

This doesn’t exactly fit since it’s just a hand (in case you thought it was a face…?), but oh well, it was in the same photoshoot. AND IT’S NOT BLURRY. SO. Plus you can see how crooked my fingers are. XD This perspective makes them look shorter than they are, though.

Ooh yes, this photoshoot was probably the most successful in terms of quantity. 🙂 We went for a walk at our new farm and found that the smaller pond was frozen enough to walk on! It was soooo fun, and I’ll have more pictures in a later post. This time Carmen obliged me and we did a little photoshoot. 😀 I love how you can see her reflection in the shallow puddles of water on the ice!

Once we start she always gets really into it and has all sorts of ideas about how she should pose and stuff. 😉

Look at this strange ring of bubbles!

Okay, hold on here, guys – only one more photoshoot to go after this. I hope it isn’t getting too long. Anyway, Megan and I did this one when we were rebaling at the new farm. We had to stack I think over 300 40-pound bales in a semi trailer which was rather hard work… except when it wasn’t. Then we took pictures. 😉 I thought the walls of the trailer would make a neat background and I think it did! How about you?

HA HA. We sometimes wear masks if the hay is too dusty, and it was that day. It kind of looks like a party hat, eh? An awfully strange one, to be sure.

OKAY. LAST ONE. This is a related photoshoot because we did it that same day. I think. It was snowing

I love the contrast in these pictures!

Heh heh, I was trying to look at the snow on my hood which resulted in me crossing my eyes. XD

I had the idea of doing some of those rather cliché but pretty snow-blowing pictures. 😛

BAHAHA THIS IS HILARIOUS. I look like I’m singing a very solemn song to the snow. XD

YAY, YOU MADE IT THROUGH! What do you say – are you getting tired of sisters photoshoots yet? Do you like shooting and seeing portrait photography or other photography better? Also, what was your favorite of these photoshoots?

Have a beautiful day, beautiful person. 🙂 Thanks so much for reading!

***Allison***

~ Etcetera #2 ~

January 24, 2018January 26, 2018 | Allison

Good gracious, guys, my unposted pictures are backed up all the way to October. XD So as you can see, it’s high time for another random photography/thoughts/etc. post! Enjoy the bits and pieces. 🙂 (And warning: this is going to be a VERY long post.)

Flowers + Butterflies

I love this next picture! The flower and colors are so incredibly bright and cheery. 🙂

At the new farm we’re kind of in the middle of nowhere and at the end of the line, so it’s really hard to get Internet. You can get it, but it’s quite expensive past a certain monthly amount of data – and we already used that up, halfway through the month! O.o And even worse, the things that use it up the fastest are watching videos online and BLOGGING. HELP. XD Thankfully after you use up the data you still have Internet… it’s just really, REALLY slow. Like barely-moving slow. -_- Hooray.

I was excited to be able to get decent pictures of a monarch butterfly because they’re pretty rare around here!

I just finished reading Emma for school. Anyone else read it? I don’t know if I like it or not. It’s definitely very well-written, but it’s also rather boring – life in the 17th century seems to consist of going to dinner parties and getting married?

A bunch of other butterflies and moths and bugs came to the zinnia patch as well. 😀

Guess what? You know how I mentioned we might turn the Cedar House into an Airbnb? Well if we do, and we probably will, my parents are thinking they’ll let me be in charge of it! I am SO excited. That means I’ll get to decorate it, clean it, and add all sorts of fun touches for the customers – eek! 🙂

I think I found a new favorite word – to say, at least: verisimiltudinous. ISN’T IT GREAT? XD

Carmen got a cat laser toy for her birthday and Tom (one of our cats) LOVES it. Mom says she feels sorry for him because there’s not actually anything to catch. XD

Fall Forests & Fields

I took these pictures at my grandparents’ woods which are lovely and gold in the autumn. And the light… ♥

Ahh, mushrooms. I love taking pictures of them and drawing them, but I don’t like eating them, heh heh. I used to absolutely despise them but I don’t mind them as much now – at least raw is okay.

Speaking of food, I’m not a picky eater, but I think two of my least favorite foods are black walnuts and goat cheese. They both taste so pungent and strange, and I think goat cheese tastes like goats smell. SORRY. BUT IT DOES.

This one kind of looks like an art prompt, doesn’t it?

I took this picture when we were having a Nature Study on hickory trees with our friends and went to search for hickory nuts afterward. I LOVE the lighting. 🙂

I rather like how you can see two pictures at once here.

Etcetera

Bittersweet berries are beautiful! There’s a huge vine of it up the hill from our (current) house.

My friend and I randomly did a photoshoot after church one day when I had my camera along anyway. I won’t put the pictures of her on here in case she doesn’t want me to, but here’s one of the pictures she took of me. 🙂

The maple tree outside our church is AMAZING in the fall!

Ooh yes, I really like this one. I edited it quite a lot to make the chopper and wagon into silhouettes, but I love how it turned out!

Here’s a kind of similar picture. I took this right before we went on the nature walk: one of us spotted a deer on the hill and it walked right along the top so you could see its silhouette. Doesn’t it look neat?

My siblings put colored lights around the trampoline a while back and they look AMAZING at night! And as bokeh and light painting photos. 🙂

I’ve also been reading a phenomenal book called Extreme Devotion. It’s a daily devotional, but I’m just reading it as a normal book because it’s composed of many short, very inspiring stories from Voice of the Martrys. One of my favorite quotes from it so far is this:

God, I do not ask You to make my life easy; I do ask You to make me strong.

– From a Jewish child, in a note found in the rubble of a Jewish ghetto in Poland after it was bombed by the Nazis

AHH THIS PICTURE. Doesn’t it look so warm and bright and sunny? ♥ It makes me happy just to look at it. Actually lots of things make me happy just to look at them. 😛

Have you ever exploded Ivory soap? If you haven’t you should – it is SO fun! All you have to do is take a bar of Ivory soap (only the Ivory brand will work) and microwave it for a while until you see it start puffing up like a marshmallow. It’s so weird and neat. I did this one day with Carmen when she was bored. 😉

And now let us end with a picture of three of our adorable bunnies. 😀 ♥ I haven’t posted much about them lately, huh? Probably because we don’t take many pictures of them in the winter when it’s cold and gray. Hopefully I can do another photoshoot soon, when it warms up. 🙂

And there you have it! One long and random post. XD I finally cleaned up at least SOME of the leftover pictures, which feels great. I still have plenty left, though, so be on the lookout for another Etcetera post soon!

Which picture or topic was your favorite? Do you have the same problem of taking too many photos to keep up with? Are you enjoying winter or ready for it to be over?

***Allison***

~ s n o w y ~

January 19, 2018 | Allison

Eeeeek, I’m so excited to show you guys these pictures! 😀 It snowed 6 or 7 inches while we were up at the new farm, and it was GORGEOUS. ♥ Good thing I brought my camera, heh heh. I also brought the macro extension tube set I got for Christmas and it worked splendidly for taking pictures of individual snowflakes! Sooo pretty.

Anyway, I guess I’ll let you see for yourselves now, huh?

I love this little snowdrift sculpture on the roof. 😛

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Isn’t this neat? It’s kind of hard to tell, but it’s snow on a wooden staircase.

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Dripping icicles are great fun to take pictures of. 🙂

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I think this one’s neat too. ♥ It kind of looks vintage to me – does it to you?

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There were some cute birds by the hay rebaling barn and I got some… okay pictures. They wouldn’t let me get too close, and I was only wearing tennis shoes in the snow so I didn’t WANT to get too close or my feet would get completely soaked. XD

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Ohhhh for some reason I love this picture. ♥ REMEMBER THOSE DOUGHNUTS?

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Snow + Cows = Photogenicness. Sadly I took this out the car window so it isn’t as photogenic as it could be.

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I quite like how you can see the snow falling so clearly in these pictures!

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The falling snow… the wooden fences… the covered trees… ahh, I think I can safely say snow looks even prettier down there than up here, and that’s saying something. XD

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Alright, now for my favorite part – the close-ups!

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Look, you can see the invidual snowflake(s)!

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Snowflakes are incredibly beautiful. ♥

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And now for my pride and joy… ta-daa!

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Isn’t it so beautifully delicate? I just LOVE zooming in and being able to see the intricacy of each snowflake. ♥ So far this is definitely my favorite part about that lens set. I’ll hopefully do a review of them once I take more photos with them and figure them out a bit more, but they’re quite neat so far!

One thing I will say – you have to use manual focus which is difficult when taking such close-up pictures. Even a tiny movement can make the subject blurry. But other than that, I love them!

I hope you enjoyed these pictures, dears. 😀 Which ones were your favorites? Did you get snow where you live too?

***Allison***

P. S. Guys, if you love photography too, you should definitely check out Roxanne’s photography challenge! I probably won’t be doing it since, as I keep saying, we’re pretty busy with the move, but it looks super neat and I’ll bet it will be great fun!

The Art Lab, Episode 38: Spaghetti Mountains

January 13, 2018November 12, 2018 | Allison

Hey, guys! How’s life? Mine’s good, and currently smells like pizza baking in the oven. (It’s movie night with homemade pizza. 😉 ) Wait, that was the timer… HOLD ON.

Okay, we’re good. Ha, that was an interesting coincidence. ANYWAY, less food and more art now, eh?

Oh wait, I forgot about the title. XD Maybe we’re not done with food yet… Today I want to show you how to draw “spaghetti mountains,” what I decided to call this certain doodling technique. 😛 I think it looks so neat in the end, and it’s quite fun and relaxing to draw.

Art Inspiration:

{via}

Isn’t this gorgeous? I love it! I made a similar piece using this as inspiration, and also made you guys a little tutorial if you’d like to try it yourself. 🙂

Materials Needed:

Paper, an ATC, canvas, etc.
Black pens or markers (I used varying sizes of Micron pens + a black brush pen)
A white gel pen (optional)
Some time

1. Draw some jagged lines for mountain ridges with your thickest pen (I made the lines thicker later). Make some ridges in the background and foreground.

2. Take your second thickest pen and start filling the first mountain with “spaghetti.” XD Draw some curvy lines that all start and end at the same point, and follow each other closely. Like so.

3. Add more spaghetti in a different direction, and connecting to the noodles you already drew.

4. Keep adding more spaghetti in all different directions until you fill the whole mountain ridge.

5. Now for the ridge behind it. Use a slightly thinner pen to show perspective, because things (like spaghetti) look smaller when farther away.

6. Keep it up! After you finish that ridge, move onto the one behind, using a thinner pen each time and making the lines close together. Doesn’t it look so neat thus far?

7. Add a sun behind the last ridge. I left a white space, but you wouldn’t have to. 😉

8. Next we’re going to make the “rays” of the sun. Using your thickest pen, fill in the space above the sun with rows of dots or ovals.

9. Make the dots in each new row bigger than the last…

10. Ta-daa! You’ve filled the whole page!

11. You can definitely leave it like that, but I added a bit more embellishment with a white gel pen. First I colored in the sun black, (weird, I’ve never seen a black sun before, have you? XD), and then rimmed it with dainty white dots.

12. And lastly, I added some white circles to the black dots, just to break things up a bit.

13. Ta-daa! You’re finished!

What do you think? I think… strange but neat. 🙂 I hope you get a chance to try this, because it’s quite fun and I love the end result.

Thanks for reading, dears! Now go make some art. 😉 Oh, and if you DO make art inspired by this post, we’d love to see it! Check out this page to see how you can help us fill our gallery.

Have a great day, guys! I hope I haven’t made you too hungry… XD

***Allison***

Moving On {Part 1}

January 8, 2018January 10, 2018 | Allison

Heyyy there, guys!

Wow, I haven’t had this long of a post gap for a long time. Okay, a week really isn’t “a long post gap.” XD But like I said, posting is going to be somewhat irregular because we’re moving! Before we do, there’s a good bit of work to be done in both the houses and the new farm in general, and that’s what we’re doing right now. Going down there for a couple of days a week keeps us pretty busy, phew!

Anyway, I thought I’d make a series of posts showing our process, with pictures that we can look back on as a sort of “before-and-after” of the whole project. Today I’ll be sharing our work on this house so far, which we call the Cedar House:Isn’t it cute? This is the second house on the farm, and the one we will use as a guest house (and possibly an Airbnb later!). We’re fixing it up first so we can stay there while we fix up the main house, which will need more big-picture repair, like the roof and ceilings.

But before we get to the renovations, I wanted to show you these pretty pictures from the drive there. I love mountains. ♥

This one is probably over-edited, but I like it. 🙂

The walls were marked up pretty badly and in definite need of a fresh coat of paint. Heh heh.It looks so much better now! We painted it “Intense White” from Benjamin Moore, but the name is rather misleading because it’s more like a nice, light gray. My grandmother (in the picture below) is super good at painting and she comes up and helps us often. 🙂 I rather like this picture. ♥Oh, and speaking of painting, we painted this popcorn ceiling (you can kind of see it in that picture) in an upstairs bedroom, and the next day, it was coming down. The popcorn texture was just peeling off the ceiling, so we had to scrape it all off and sand it down. AND THEN IT HAPPENED AGAIN in the living room. It was awful, especially the fact that plaster dust gets seriously everywhere. The house was coated in it after we were done, and we had to clean hard and long to get rid of it. Woohoo.

The dust doesn’t just get on the house, it gets on YOU. See? Poor Megan. XDMoral of the story: NEVER PUT UP POPCORN CEILINGS.

I, thankfully, didn’t have to sand because I was… um, very busily employed in doing other things. XD But don’t worry, I was working. My little sister Carmen and I cleaned out the kitchen and arranged and organized the few utensils and glasses and such that we had.

It’s so funny, but we both love organizing – and cleaning too, when we’re in the mood. That day we were so much in the mood that we went on to other parts of the house and cleaned windows and swept the deck and all sorts of things. It was quite satisfying. 😛We got creative and decided to decorate a jar and tin can with painter’s tape. XDIsn’t this next picture so cute? I just find it amusing that my seven-year-old sister would do this in her free time. :’)Strangely enough, there are ladybugs all over the house, especially in the corners of the walls. But hey, I’m not complaining – I’d much rather have ladybugs than flies or spiders or stinkbugs. *shrugs*One evening when we were getting a bedroom ready to be painted, we found these strange round stickers on the wall. We all wondered what they were there for, because they were scattered all over the room and kind of blended in with the paint – they didn’t really seem to serve a purpose. But then one of the kids (I think it was me 😛 ) thought to turn off the lights and it was beautiful! The stickers were glow-in-the-dark, and it felt like standing in space because there were so many “stars” on the walls.

It was REALLY hard to get a good picture of, which is probably why I didn’t. Heh. It was much more impressive in real life, believe me. 😉Since we (the kids) thought they were so neat, we peeled off all the stickers and put them on a basement wall in the main house. 🙂

Speaking of stars, you can see so many here! Even though we live out in the country at our current farm (well obviously XD), you can see seriously like five times more stars here! It’s less like individual pinpricks and more like a whole pot of silver glitter spilled across the sky. I love it. 🙂 And yes, I did take a picture, but it’s even worse than the one of the fake stars, so I’ll save it for… uh, never. XD

How ’bout a picture of frost crystals instead to end the post? Guys, it is SO cold at both farms. How’s the weather where you live?Well, that’s about it for this part. I have several more pictures and adventures for later, so stay tuned! 😉

Has you or your family ever renovated a house? Or maybe repainted a room or bedroom? I’m excited to decorate our new bedroom in the main house – and don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll post about that when we do. XD

Well, see you later, dears, and thanks for reading! Have a lovely day, and stay warm. 😉

***Allison***

~ Hello, 2018 ~

January 1, 2018 | Allison

It is 2018. IT IS 2018!

Surprisingly, it feels right to say that. I’m usually amazed that the next year has come so fast, and I sort of am this year as well, but it doesn’t feel as weird as usual. 2018 doesn’t seem that strange to type or write, it feels good.

But before I delve into this new year, I wanted to recap the last. So here you go! 2017 in review.

Guys this has been quite the year…

~ Highlights of 2017 ~

We bought a new farm.
I started a new Etsy shop.
I reached over 3,000 followers on my blog.
I started my last year of school!
I took hundreds (probably over a thousand) photos, and better learned how to use my DSLR. You can find a lot of my favorite pictures from this year here, here, and here.)
I made so much art.
I (and my friends, of course) deepened friendships both in real life and through blogging. ♥ I especially enjoyed getting to know my blogging friends better – you guys are the BEST, and I love emailing/commenting/writing to you and reading your amazing posts!
My siblings and I raised and sold adorable baby bunnies.
My family went on trips to Assateague, Chincoteague, and Amelia Island. 😀
I played piano for church!
We went camping with family.
We creamed 150 quarts of corn. O.o
We watched the solar eclipse!
And so many more memories. ♥

I learned a lot this year, and I feel like God grew me as well (although not in size – I think I’m about done growing now XD). More and more often I found myself stepping back from the moment and seeing the big picture and the small blessings, and realizing that almost every worry loses its urgency and importance in light of eternity.

Ahem. Anyway, before we move on to the goals/resolutions, we must have the obligatory stats, right? XD

~ 2017 Stats ~

Views: 50,174
Visitors: 16,171
Likes: 10,656
Comments: 8,958
Total Posts (over all years): 456

~ Popular Posts from 2017 ~

Thoughts on… {Beauty} – I was blown away by how popular this got! (At least popular for my blog.) I’m hoping to do more “Thoughts on…” posts next year. 🙂
Books, Blooms, and Bales {Portrait Photography} – Oh yes, I love this post too! That was a great photoshoot. 🙂
Poems – I started writing some poetry this year, and I’m amazed at what kind comments you left me and how much you seem to like it. 😛
Drawings and Such + Why It’s Okay to Make Bad Art – I love this post, so I’m glad you guys do too!

So those are some of you guys’ favorite posts… here are some of my favorite posts. Actually these are just the posts with some of my favorite photos from 2017 in them. 😉

~ Best Photography Posts of 2017 ~

Summer 2017: basically summer memories + a selection of summer’s best pictures.

Bunnies in Autumn: One of my very favorite photoshoots of the entire year! EEEE THEY’RE SO CUTE!

My County Fair Entries for 2017: The end of this post has some of my favorite pictures from 2017 and maybe a few from 2016 too.

Pink Flowers and Little Sisters: This photoshoot with my youngest sister was SO fun and the pictures turned out great!

Golden Hour Sisters Photoshoot: A similar photoshoot, but with Megan and I. I adore the lighting. ♥

~ Resolutions ~

And now for last year’s goals… Let’s see how I did.

Meet at least one more of my blogger friends. Sort of not really? I got to video chat with one of my friends, which was SO fun, and I saw pictures/videos of many others, but sadly I did not meet any in real life. Oh well, there’s always next year!
Grow my Etsy shop. If I was talking about my clay Etsy shop… not exactly. If you’re talking about my new art Etsy shop, yes! (Since I have two sales compared to zero when I started. XD) I think this year was sort of a practice run and I’m looking forward to digging deeper into this business in the coming year.
Start a Bible journal and keep it going throughout the year. Check! So far I’m in 1 Samuel, and I’ve hand lettered my favorite verse from all the chapters I’ve read so far. I cannot WAIT to see all the journals when I’m done, and I’m definitely going to continue this goal into 2018.

So what is my New Year’s resolution for 2018? Well, it ties in to one of the most important things I’ve learned this year: I can’t do it.

You know on Disney movies how they’re always like, “Believe in yourself”? That’s true, to a point… but only to a point. I’m not saying self-doubt is good or you should hate yourself – not at all! That’s way too far in the other direction.

BUT. The thing is, I’m a pretty poor thing to believe in. I’m broken and fallen and weak, and so are we all. But even though I know that, sometimes I forget, and think that I know best instead of God.

Considering moving and selling the farm and other things that are out of my control has shown me that I just can’t do this on my own. I’m not big enough, not strong enough to change the weather or the timing of plans or… well, anything.

But see, this is not depressing or sad for me – it’s a relief. Because even though I can’t do it, God can – and he will. Why would I want to believe in myself and my weakness, when I can believe in God and his strength? I wouldn’t. I don’t.

So one of my “New Year’s resolutions” is to believe less in myself and more in God. I’ll have to put it into practice to even complete it, because I certainly can’t do that on my own!

So yeah. Those are my thoughts (and some pictures) from this past year.

I can’t wait to see what God will do next year. Eeep, it’s so exciting just thinking about it! Happy New Year’s, guys. I hope it’s the best one so far.

Bring it on, 2018. I can’t do this… but God can.

***Allison***