Hello, dears!

Yikes. I haven’t done an “etcetera” post in three months – my computer is about to burst with random photos! I went through these again and again and eventually couldn’t bear to narrow them down anymore, so prepare for the biggest photo dump I’ve posted on here in a while. O.o This may require a cup of hot something or a snack, if you’re that kind of person. 😉

Anyway, I’m rather excited about this mish-mashed collection of cute pups, jelly beans, self portraits, foggy photography, tangled plants, adventures, and aesthetic pictures. 🙂 I’ll keep my captions to a minimum so you can just scroll and enjoy.

(Also happy Valentine’s day; I almost forgot. XD) Let’s do this!

l a n d s c a p e    p h o t o g r a p h y

Let’s start off with some foggy photography – one of my favorite kinds. *heart eyes*

Other than the fact that I LOVE THIS PICTURE, you might want to know that Jeff’s not carrying a walking stick, it’s a little measuring thingy to see how far it was to the mailbox and back (about a mile).

I can’t take a picture of this view without thinking of the snowy version from this post. Good times.

A sliver of the stunning view from my aunt’s house.

Normally, pictures like this of winter woods are rather lack-luster, but this lighting transformed it!

It can’t be an etcetera post without a sunset picture, right? XD Surprisingly, this is the only one. I couldn’t capture it’s beauty by photograph, as usual, but I did manage to include a star! Can you spot it?

I loooove waking up to a morning like this out the hall window: clear sunshine over a minty fresh frost, especially the glittery roof that sparkles when I walk by.

I took this photo in December, ironically because I visualized this soft, aesthetic edit to highlight the springy feel of the tree and sky. XD

I’ve discovered I love editing sky pictures this way – deep, rich blues contrasting with white, puffy clouds. *stares at it happily*

Does this photo have a lonely feeling to you too? I like it.

s e l f    p o r t r a i t s

Now for pointing the camera in the other direction. 🙂 I was trying to get a new profile picture the other day, as I mentioned in my last post, but I’m not sure if I succeeded. Have a few outtakes.

I really like this one, hee hee.

Eventually I gave up and decided I would try one last time and that would be IT. And what do you know, it was almost the best of that day. I actually look normal and my head isn’t too cropped off. XD It’s still plenty close for a profile picture, but I might make it work.

Then another day, I felt like taking one of those dramatic self-portraits where you can only see half their face, you know? Voila.

Heh heh, so this isn’t really a self portrait, but I was preparing an art class lesson the other day and accidentally dyed my hands brilliant shades of pink and purple. XD (And the floor of the classroom, too, but don’t worry, it came off. O.o) The colors almost glowed in real life, but sadly the picture just looks like smudged fingers. *sigh*

Another not so-self-portrait. We got out old calendars at one of our Christmas celebrations and AHHH, THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE COUSIN PHOTOS EVER. It was before Carmen was born, I think, so I was probably… eight?? I don’t know, but WE’RE ALL SO CUTE. THOSE SMILES. *melts*

f u r r y    t h i n g s

BAHAHAHA, this picture cracks me up. :’D It’s even funnier if you’ve seen my brother with our cat Tom in real life – let’s just say that Tom is not Jeff’s biggest fan. *shakes head* I snapped this when Tom was co-opted into a Sunday-evening game night. XD

NOW FOR CUTER THINGS. Like Sadie, my cousins’ new adorableeee golden retriever puppy!

They brought her to a Christmas celebration where she did not lack for attention. She is one of the sweetest puppies I think I have EVER seen – she’s not even that hyper, and she’s so pretty and cuddly.

I mean… *heart eyes*

I could have taken picture of this little fluff forever, but we’ll stop with this one for now.

Our yellow lab, Maggie, is significantly… stouter, shall we say? XD But despite her barrel-like appearance, she still managed to jump through the hoop! 😛

I don’t know what this guy’s name was – he just appeared and stayed around our house for a while until the owner took him back. Look at those mournful eyes…

Warning: the next photo may be startling. XD Yes, this is a real, live bat. We found it while cleaning out our garage. My sisters and I especially thought he was rather cute, although he doesn’t look as appealing in a photo. He was much more adorable in real life, though, and it was SO NEAT to see a bat up close! (And don’t worry, he flew off or otherwise disappeared soon after this.)

n a t u r e    p h o t o g r a p h y

Ahh, back into my comfort zone. 🙂 Nature photography is so appealing and easy to me: the subjects don’t often move about. They just… are, waiting for someone to notice and capture their beauty.

I had so much fun photographing these blue berries I noticed on the side of a field. I kinda forgot how enjoyable it was to take close-ups like this with beautiful lighting and a bokeh background. ❤

The beautiful morning sun made even a thorny-looking stick into a pretty picture!

Winter aesthetic. 🙂 🙂

One morning, there were a bunch of cardinal pairs in the redbud outside our dining room window! I couldn’t get a good picture of the whole tree, but at least you can see a speck of red here. 🙂

I often go for nature shots like this one, with a dramatic composition, shallow depth of field, and a sharp, small focus point. They look elegant and simple, and I appreciate that. *nods*

I found a couple more photos I forgot to include in my winter palette post. I like the composition of this one too; how the leaf and twigs look almost like flat graphics floating on the background.

Ooh, I surprisingly LOVE this one. The rich colors and slightly melancholy, lonely mood and blurred background make this dead weed quite interesting to me.

Ahh, I love this one too! The water looks almost fake, and so do those starry sparkles! But they’re both real, I assure you. I took this at our pond one sunny day.

Here’s a more colorful version. The shininess and rippled effect reminds me of the corrugated metal toolboxes on trucks; you know what I mean?

s m a l l    a d v e n t u r e s

The first adventure is basically a continuation of this post: a collection of photos from when our Canadian cousins visited us. Megan and I gave them a little tour of our room, after which we decided to add some ambience by rearranging one of my plants!

It was quite the ordeal, as you can see from the previous picture. XD My friend Aria gave me this pothos-like plant a couple of years ago, and ever since it has made it its mission to take over our room. O.o So I let it! ISN’T IT HUGE? *pats leaves proudly*

Later that day, we played Chopped, which I actually posted about eons ago. Click here for a sample of my…. ahem, less-experienced blogging days. :[]

The basic idea is to invent dishes using two ingredients the judges choose for each round. Whoever’s creation is the worst gets “chopped,” until the game ends and one person wins! My cousin Abigail won this game. It was so much fun. 🙂

That evening (which was New Year’s Eve), we stayed up til’ midnight playing games, looking at old pictures, and having indoor s’mores at the fireplace. ❤

That’s it for one mini adventure. I just have two photos from the next one, but this was the highlight of our walk: I found the STRANGEST tree! It was hard to photograph, but it looked like one tree grew right across the stream and straight up on the other side, like a “U”!

You can see the two trunks a little better here. I wish I had a better picture of it, but you just have to be there, I guess. I was fascinated. 😀 It’s now one of my favorite places on our farm.

On another walk (or maybe the same one??), we happened upon this old junk dumping ground in the woods. I think there used to be a house in the pasture above it, and they must have chucked garbage here instead of carting it away. O.o Dad dug up this old metal washbasin from which sprouted a few saplings…

And we found a couple old shoes (along with various other things). I took a picture of the logo so we could look up what year it was from, but we never did…

e t c e t e r a

Yay, my favorite category! 😀 And this right here is one of my favorite photos in the post, I think! It’s so aesthetic and cozy and unique. 🙂 I saw my little sister’s embroidery box lying on the floor and took some pictures so I could edit it the way I saw it in my mind. It looks like days gone by.

My friend Laura sent me some jelly beans for Christmas, which I THOROUGHLY enjoyed, hee hee. It’s so fun to taste a new flavor with each bite. 😀 Also they’re so prettyyyy.

As you can tell, I used filters on a lot of the photos in this post. I usually prefer the authentic look of editing things more naturally, but recently I’ve been drawn to this richer, more nostalgic custom filter that helps brings out the interest and story of the subject the way I see it in my mind (even in just jelly beans). *sigh* But is it worth trading what the subject really looks like?? I CAN’T DECIDE. What are your thoughts? And do you prefer this natural edit or the aesthetic edit?

While you’re thinking about it, here’s another aesthetic edit of a little ladybug who accompanied my painting one evening. 🙂

And another ladybug! Even though we have a kind of gross amount of ladybugs every winter here, I still think they’re a bit cute and interesting to look at.

Oh my, I just realized how puffy Jeff’s hair is in this photo. O.o But, still on the filter conversation, I also love how this black and white filter lends a sense of importance and… and story to a picture.

I kept almost deleting this when I was sorting these photos, but I couldn’t quite do it, even though it’s a picture of not much. I think it’s because it feels summery to me; the dirty mirror and the sunglow and the sparkly bokeh to the right reminds me of summer Mule rides (UTV, not animal), which hold so many fond memories.

On an entirely different note, here’s an excavator! XD My Dad rented one to start clearing some brushy land for a field, and he and my brothers are having SO much fun with it. 😛

It’s pretty interesting to watch him “pull weeds,” as my mom says. It does look like that!

HA! I ordered a box of white oil pastels from Amazon, and it came in SUCH efficient packaging, see? :’D Oh dear, I really should wait and order more than one thing at a time, when possible.

I’ll end with a simple, cozy picture featuring squares of morning light and one of our old, leaky windows.

And that, my friends, FINALLY concludes this post. I hope you enjoyed that onslaught of miscellaneous photos and that they could brighten your day somehow. 🙂 I’d love to hear from you in the comments! Here are a few questions if you need some ideas:

Favorite category/photo? What do you think of presets vs. #nofilter? Does uncohesive photography bother your or seem more interesting? And what is your favorite flavor of jellybeans? 🙂

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

***Allison***

P. S. Photos taken with my Nikon D3400 and edited with picmonkey.com.