Hello, dears!

I’m back with another etcetera post today! If you’re new here, I use these posts to combine all the “orphan photos” and mini topics that aren’t quite big enough for their own post. It’s basically a virtual scrapbook of little moments from the past two months. 🙂

Enjoy this collection of summer adventures, memorable explorations, golden hour photos, etc.!

summer Bonfires

We shall start with some photos I took all the way back in July. The month before, some friends from church hosted a spontaneous bonfire which was so much fun that we decided to invite people to another one at our house!

This isn’t my usual editing style, but I thought a bonfire called for something a little more aesthetic. 😉

Maggie was overjoyed to be with so many humans at once! She just adores people.

Bonfires are one of my favorite things, particularly when they include friends, s’mores, and guitar music to sing along to by the campfire, like this one did. ❤

Everyone came on the late side so the bonfire mostly burned down before it got dark, which was good for s’mores but not as nice for watching. Ah well, the weather was plenty warm enough and the coals were still pretty.

The boys had a whole field on one side to run around in – I think they’re chasing a Frisbee here; maybe this is one of the several times it got stuck in a tree. XD

That’s it for that bonfire! We also had a bonfire event for the whole church in August, with more singing and lots more people (you can’t see them all here), and with hot dogs and chips instead of s’mores. I’m not sure what Jeff is doing with his hands here, but it looks menacing. :’D

Although the quality is terrible because of the darkness, I think this turned out neat. 🙂

Golden Hour photography

One evening after it had rained, I looked out the window and saw how gorgeous the light was and went to the balcony to take some pictures. Ahhhh!

I tried to get pictures of the water drops falling from the edge of the roof, illuminated by the sun, but it was tricky. You might be able to spot a few drops in this one, but I mostly kept this photo to show you guys the neat wooden trim under the eaves. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be acorns or not, but it sure looks like it to me! What do you think?

I’d been wanting to do at least a mini photoshoot with the gorgeous pink crepe myrtle in our yard for a while, but Megan is not a fan of either pink or crepe myrtles. XD She at last acquiesced to snapping a few pictures of me in a matching pink skirt before we left for a dance class one evening.

I had way too much fun making the petals rain on me. XD And, as I’d hoped, they made for a beautiful picture, even if my posing skills could be improved…

Sometimes our backyard is magical at golden hour. I love to just stand outside where it’s quiet and peaceful and sun-washed – and take pictures of it. 🙂

An… Interesting Mule ride

On the evening of Megan’s birthday, we took advantage of the clear weather and our grandparents visiting us to take a Mule ride (an ATV, not the animal) around the farm. It was lovely, but had a bit of a jarring conclusion… We’ll get to that. First, two frames I saved from a rather poor video. I love the way they look, possibly because they make the video play in my head.

I kept trying to save this frame, but it always turned out blurrier than it looked on the editing screen, so I just took a screen capture. 😛 HAHA, isn’t this picture the best? It describes Jeff pretty well – a big smile while driving past at high speed on our four-wheeler.

Oh yeah, this is when things had started to go wrong. To begin with, we had to pump up one of the tires on the Mule because it was leaking, and by this point in the journey we were getting low on air again, so Jeff had to follow behind in the four-wheeler with some extra air if we needed it.

Silhouettes against sunsets are some of the best things. 😀 I love how clear-cut this one is!

SO PRETTY. Our house looks so cozy and inviting with the string lights, doesn’t it? The air was starting to get chilly, but since I sat in the bed of the Mule, over the engine, which heated the floor, it felt like I was in a hot tub in winter. 😛

After a lovely evening, things began to go downhill… Dad decided to drive into the recently logged area by our lane that’s filled with stumps and broken trees. Well, we bumped and jounced around until we couldn’t go any further, after which we attempted to turn around… and hit a stump. We finally got turned around, only for clouds of steam/smoke to start rising from the hood. :’D At this point, Jeff had to tow us back with the four-wheeler.

When we stopped at the house, we noticed that the leaky tire had now gone completely flat (probably from banging into that stump) and was making a rut in the gravels. *facepalm* So the poor Mule, with a busted radiator, flat tire, and an already faulty transmission, was hauled away to the shop. It’s STILL not recovered since apparently it now has various flat tires and we’re waiting for the replacments to come. BAHAHA, it was a pretty hilarious end to the evening, but still… POOR MULE.

Creek Adventures

Now for some slightly simpler adventures. Well no, I almost forgot… something happened here too, that ties into the scavenger hunt clue I mentioned in the last post. 😉 Ahem.

One time when our cousins were down to visit, we took the Mule (this was before its aforementioned disintegration) and drove down to the creek. (As you can tell, that’s one of our favorite pastimes. 😉 )

We waded in the water for a bit, trying to skip the rocks and walk on the sand, until we paused for Megan to catch a tiny crayfish. Why is literally anything small cute??

As I mentioned, this stretch of the stream is quite sandy: one area of the shore was just a pile of fluffy sand! We joked that we could take a picture like this for Instagram and post about being at the beach. XD

After a while, we walked back one side of the creek and started wading in the other side where there’s a deep pool. My youngest sister, Carmen, decided to go swimming… with her normal clothes on. Because that’s just what my siblings do, heh. Also I’m not sure what this ferociously happy grimace is, but…

Maybe her expression means: OH NO I FORGOT TO TAKE OFF MY GLASSES. The stream kindly took them off for her, and they were lost in the muddy water. Cue a worried search by five girls, feeling around with their bare feet and fingers while trying not to crunch anything. Finally I found them and, praise God, they weren’t even scratched! We were quite relieved.

Or we were except that one of my cousins neglected to take her phone out of her pocket while she searched in the deep water. And her phone didn’t turn on. :[] So she and Megan sped up to the house where they put it in a bag of rice, and it finally recovered a day or a few days later. PHEW! All’s well that ends well, I suppose. And now you know the story behind the clue: “A rushing, gushing phone murderer with good eyesight.” :’D

Just a few more creek photos before we move on to the last category. We invited some friends over for supper more recently, and they came early enough to play in the hay barn and creek before the meal. 🙂 I went along and took pictures, especially of their cute little brother (but don’t tell him I called him that XD).

He wanted me to take a picture of him with this “rainbow puddle” he found. (You know, those oily-looking spots that are pretty gross but also beautiful to kids?) Unfortunately I accidentally switched my camera to black and white, so you can’t really see the puddle, but here’s a smile for your day anyway. 😀

We started building a dam but didn’t finish before we had to go back for supper. We did manage to find a big log and a huge rock, which my oldest brother manuevered to the building site, unfortunately splashing my youngest brother all over with mud. :’D

Etcetera

Now for all the really random pictures!

We got sent home after church one Sunday with a leftover bouquet from a wedding. IT WAS SO PRETTTTYYYY! And so yellow! Of course I could resist taking pictures of it. 😉

Here’s a little tip for product photography, flat-lays, etc.: buy a cheap white foamboard at Walmart or a dollar store and use it to bounce light onto your subject by holding it so it faces your light source with your subject sandwiched between. This instantly brightens your photos and evens out shadows! I didn’t change any settings or edit either of these pictures – I just propped up the foamboard for the second one.

Warning: snake ahead! I saw this little guy while I was hiding clues for Megan’s birthday scavenger hunt, and since I wasn’t sure what kind he was, I just killed him with a shovel. Goodbye, snake. I’m afraid I’m not too sad over your death.

Carmen and I found several butterfly-laden thistle bushes while out hunting for scavenger hunt locations. Yellow swallowtail butterflies on brilliant purple thistle flowers are just lovely sights, even if the butterfly is a bit tattered.

On sunny evenings, the sun streams through our west-facing bathroom window and diffuses through a white curtain to create PERFECT lighting! I just wish it was in a better location. XD I couldn’t resist capturing the pretty light somehow, so I took a picture of the small wicker shelf on the wall.

I absolutely LOVE the amount of clean whites and bright light in these pictures. Photos like this are somehow very peaceful and refreshing to me. Am I just weird, or do you like them too? XD

We’ll end with another photo taken from the upstairs balcony. AHHH, THE COLORS! This is one of my favorite color schemes, plus the gradient from blue-violet to a peachy pink contrasts so well with the dark, fluffy clouds.

Well. That was a long post. I hope you enjoyed all those adventures and photographs! Before you leave, I want to know…

Which picture or section was your favorite? Does the scavenger hunt clue make more sense now? And what was one adventure you had this summer?

Thanks so much for reading, dears, and have a lovely day!

***Allison***

P. S. Photos taken with my Nikon D3400 and either a 50mm or 35mm lens. Edited with picmonkey.com.