Honeybees & Spring Blossoms

April 16, 2018April 16, 2018 | Allison

Hello, dears! I was hoping to do a “Recent Art” post or maybe a post about the old letters, but unfortunately I don’t have enough time (or Wi-Fi) for either. But don’t worry, hopefully those will be next! Until then, I have some more spring-y pictures for you! I absolutely LOVE this photoshoot and I hope you will too. 🙂

There are a ton of redbuds at our new farm and the surrounding country. Sometimes the side of the woods looks pink with all the blossoms! We also have two gorgeous redbuds in the yard of the big house and the one especially just looked perfect this year… maybe it usually does? But this is the first year I’ve seen it, and it’s gorgeous. ❤

AHHH IT’S SO PRETTY.

I got a few pictures with my macro lens. This one is one of my favorites from the whole shoot!

It’s neat to see how complex the tiny blooms are close up.

The look kind of like slippers with huge bows on top or something. XD

There were absolutely a ton of bees buzzing around the blossoms, which was a bit, um, scary, especially when I used my macro lens and stuck my camera inches away from my subject. O.o But no worries, I didn’t get stung. 🙂 I think they were too focused on the nectar.

Their wings are so delicate!

Heh heh, this guy looked a lot less delicate than the rest of the bees.

You can see the pollen sac super well in this one.

I don’t know why there’s a spot in the middle of its “fur,” but I thought it was interesting.

I love how you can see the bee getting ready to land in this one!

The 50mm lens I have makes such amazing bokeh. ❤

I tried to crop this, but it ruined the nice composition, so I didn’t after all. Oh well. 🙂

And we’ll end with these two pictures. I don’t know WHAT happened with this photo, but I think it looks kind of neat? Too bad I didn’t get a clearer picture of the bird, though.

Ahh, so pretty, don’t you think? ❤ I can’t WAIT to move in!

And that’s all for now! Thanks for reading, dears, and I hope you enjoyed the photos! Do you have redbuds or other blooming trees where you live? What’s your favorite part about spring?

***Allison***

P. S. Speaking of photography, you guys should check out Kalea’s blog! She has some beautiful spring photography on there as well as a review of the macro lens I used for part of this post. 🙂 (Also if you’d like to see my macro lens review, click here.)

Sun Rays & Spring Days

April 7, 2018 | Allison

Hello, dears!

I hope you had a great Easter! I sure did. 🙂 We had a great time going to our old church again and seeing friends, as well as having family celebrations.

Once Easter is past, it seems like it really ought to be spring, heh heh. So today I’ve compiled some recent farm photography from various rambles – mostly springy ones, but a few from the last bits of winter too. I hope you enjoy “walking” around the farm with me!

I love how the soft light polishes the smooth gnarls of this twisted tree.❤

If you peer into the woods here, you’re bound to see drifts of pale leaves on small trees all over the place. We didn’t have beeches at home, so it’s fun to see leaves here even in winter!

There’s a little island of trees in the pasture behind the Cedar House, some of which are pines laden with cones. I think pine cones are just so satisfying and pretty to take pictures of and hold. 😛

I love finding bright spots of color among the gray!

Another common tree here that isn’t common at home is the sweet gum tree. The seed pods always have bad hair days, heh heh. XD

Plush cushions of velvety green moss make me happy. 🙂

Now we get to the wintry part, but it’s just a few pictures. 😉 Quite a while ago, the smaller pond was frozen enough to walk on, so of course we did so, hee hee. Don’t you love finding things frozen into the ice, like this oak leaf? Such a cold bed for the bright little thing to be sleeping in.

The ice crystals were GORGEOUS. I love the delicate, fleeting strength of ice.

Jellyfish bubbles floating, frozen…

Isn’t the crystallized texture so fine and pretty? At the bottom left I think it looks like an ice feather.

The very top of the ice melted, but it was still solid underneath, don’t worry. 😉 The reflections… ❤

Alright, enough of the cold. How’s this for a warmer picture? That little ridge is a cow path. It always amazes me how straight and narrow the paths are, especially for such big, clumsy animals. XD

AHHH THE LIGHT. How could anyone not love golden hour? Hmm… maybe everyone does.

It looks like the foxtail head is floating. 😛

Okay, we’re switching topics again. XD Now we’re walking down to the big pond, which is NOT frozen, as you may notice.

The deep sapphire blue water contrasts so nicely with the pale cattails, don’t you think?

Here’s a different kind of blue. For some reason there are SO many vultures floating around, and even though I don’t particularly like the birds themselves, I like to watch them glide (or wobble, on windy days XD).

The fields are neon green on sunny days and it looks like SPRING, YAY. Except there are still no leaves on the trees…

This really reminds me of the default header on… the Hemingway theme, is it?

SO. PRETTY.

And here’s the big house… which is still being worked on. *sigh* The moving date is getting pushed further and further away, and right now it would be great if we could even move in before my birthday in the beginning of May.

Goodness, this post is all over the place… here’s a random photo of those strange cedar apples again! O.o

Next I have a few pictures of our smaller creek, which we have nicknamed “Little Runny.” 😛 I absolutely love it! The twisted roots of overhanging trees, tiny sandbar beaches, mossy stones, and clear bubbling rivulets weave together an enchanted atmosphere. ❤

I really want to make this into a fairy house. Isn’t it perfect?

Look, it’s a little rainbow lens flare!

Water fascinates me. Always moving, always changing, always twisting and rippling under the light. I think water and light together are especially beautiful and interesting to watch.

We found several pools along the creek that are pretty heavily populated with minnows and crayfish. (What do YOU call them? Crayfish? Crawfish? Crawdads?) We didn’t have a net, so we made do with a colander and metal strainer bought from Dollar General. XD

HA HA, it looks like he’s raising his claws in surrender. XD

My cousin kindly allowed me to take a picture of her, splendidly modelling the colander as a hat. 😛

And last but not least I have a handful of black and white edits that I quite like for different. 🙂 This one is pond ripples, but I think they look like tiny sand dunes too.

❤

I really like this one too! I always find pictures of hands, by themselves or holding something, appealing; I don’t quite know why.

I love how the round clusters of sycamore seeds hang from the branches like ornaments.

Apparently I think trees look really good in black and white. 🙂

And I saved one of my favorites for last. ❤ The vultures and cows together look so rural and free.

I hope you enjoyed this longish, scattered post, dears! Which picture was your favorite? Which was your LEAST favorite? Are you ready for spring?

Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful warm day!

***Allison***

Moving On {Part 2}

March 13, 2018March 13, 2018 | Allison

It has been way too long since my last “Moving On” post, and we’ve had quite a few adventures since Part 1! So, shall I catch you guys up on the news? Alrighty then. 🙂

Let’s see, where did I leave off? Oh yes, right before our cousins came to help us paint. Well… they actually didn’t paint much, but my aunt did. XD The kids played Dutch Blitz when we weren’t needed. We’ve all been playing Dutch Blitz a TON lately, and it’s so much fun! Have you played? Not many people have that I know, of but sadly it’s pretty hard to explain without showing you… Trust me, though, it’s great. XD

So now the Cedar House is all painted and furnished and it looks GREAT! We still have a few things to fix up before it debuts as an Airbnb, but it’s come a long way. (For instance, we replaced that carpet in the picture above after I took the photo.) Would you guys like to see a tour of the house once it’s finished?

Another thing we’ve been doing is learning to use the rebaling machinery. Part of what we do at the new farm is sell hay and straw, as well as make people’s large, unmanageable bales into smaller ones. Dad runs the machinery, the boys usually get the haybales prepared, and the girls usually stack them on a trailer. It’s hard work, lifting hundreds of 40-pound bales, but it’s good for us. 😉

The hay pictures are all in black and white because the light and surroundings usually weren’t the prettiest. XD I think they look really neat in B&W, though!

I guess Logan did help stack that time… maybe because I was taking pictures. XD

A few weeks ago we semi-officially moved down to our new place. We still have to go back to our old farm to pack up stuff and work once in a while, but we’re mainly down here now. 🙂

Since we’re mostly going to be down here, we brought all the live things we have to care for: namely, pets and plants. 😛 I really loved how the plants looked in the back of my car for some reason. XD Does it looks Pinterest-y to you?

They looked so pretty against the cedar siding. 🙂

We also brought the bunnies up! Most of the bunnies stayed huddled together at the back of the truck, but Basil was hilarious – she hopped up on a cat crate (with no cat inside) we put there and stayed on top almost the whole time. What made it funny was it was really windy up there, and her fur got blown about every which way, like she was under one of those super strong hand dryers that ripple your skin. XD She didn’t seem to mind, though. Maybe she liked the fresh air.

We also brought the cats down, but that was a little more… um, interesting. They were RATHER scared, and once Jinx decided he simply couldn’t wait to use the litter box till we arrived, so… yeah. He didn’t wait. IT WAS BAD. XD XD Ah well, we survived, and the cats are safely in the Cedar House now. 🙂 Maggie, our yellow lab, is quite enjoying the new space too, I think!

Dad had to stop to check on a vehicle at one point and I got some more lovely pictures of mountains at the overlook. ❤ You could see everything SO clearly!

Finally we arrived at the pineapple gates. I don’t know why there are pineapples at the farm entrance, but it’s pretty funny. Especially because one of the pineapples is literally yellow and green with lichen, and in exactly the right places! XD

In case you’re wondering if we have animals at our new farm, we don’t. Except for pets, of course. 😉 We’ll probably get chickens later (just not 24,000 like we used to have!), but for now the only livestock are the cows in the leased pastures. They’re not ours, but they are pretty cute. 😉 They also look lovely in the golden hour! Then again, what doesn’t?

When we first started staying in the Cedar House we didn’t have many forms of entertainment, so Mom thought of Four Square! We laid out the pattern in masking tape on the basement floor, and we’ve been having a lot of fun playing it as a family. 🙂

Another fun thing to do here is go fishing! We haven’t caught fish every time, but once we caught nearly a dozen in one day! That was fun. I’ll have more pictures from fishing in a later post.

Ooh, and one super fun surprise we found was a box of really old letters! Part of the big farmhouse was built in the 1850s, and I believe the farm itself is even older. We found some letters from the 1880s! Isn’t that amazing? This letter is one of my favorites, although it’s from 1922, so not quite as old. But LOOK AT THE HANDWRITING. (I blocked out part of the address.)

Isn’t that amazing?! We haven’t read it yet because it’s in German, but we should really translate it sometime. 🙂

Now I shall end this post with a sunset over the pond. ❤ I love sunsets in general, and reflected sunsets are twice the beauty!

Phew, that was a lot to cover in one post. I hope I didn’t leave anything important out… XD Oh well, I can always tuck it in later if need be. I hope you enjoyed the update and the pictures, and tell me…

Have you had interesting experiences traveling with pets? Have you played Dutch Blitz or Four Square? And would you be interested in a post with more about the Cedar House when it’s finished, or about more old letters and other interesting artifacts we’ve found?

Stay tuned for more posts like this in the future, because we still have the big house to finish fixing up. Man, it’s taking a while. There’s just soooo much to paint and work on. Ah well, it’s going to be incredible when it’s finished, and I can’t wait to move in!

Well, thanks for reading and I hope you have a lovely day, dears!

***Allison***

~ goodbye ~

February 26, 2018February 26, 2018 | Allison

goodbye…

hiding in the hollow tree that somehow still lives on, half-destroyed;

green truck rides through buzzing goldenrod and tangled berry brambles;

skipping up to Gram’s to get flour because we ran out… again;

sunsets leaking burning lava over the mountain ridges;

creaming corn days, warm cardboard boxes dripping with the smell of pizza for lunch;

treasure hunts for crystals by the side of the thorn-ringed pond;

building forts and holes and towers in a barn full of fuzzy cotton seeds;

climbing the hill to get fresh eggs, crossing the road to get fresh milk;

family gathered around a crackling bonfire by the creek overhung with mint;

the farm rolling out from under you at the top of the tallest hill;

art parties, tables laden with shared supplies and traded ideas;

walking under the majestic, white-boned sycamores under a clear blue sky;

church potlucks that are feasts, where we know each face at the tables;

the succulent sound of cows tearing off mouthfuls of grass in the pasture;

selling rusty metal parts and cow bones and broken bottles for pinecones at the island;

playing with friends in the grain bins, jumping off the ladder into the yellow corn;

capture-the-flag games and ATC trades after church;

finding litters of soft, tumbling barn kittens and watching them grow;

sledding down Gram’s hill with cousins and sipping hot chocolate afterward;

firefly-catching contests; flashing bits of flying gold captured in hands and jars;

club meetings: crooked stairs, dusty seats, shouts and laughter pounding the low rafters;

rambling nature walks all over the farm with friends;

eating picnic suppers on the flat roof outside our bedroom on a calm summer evening;

everyone gathered at the last chicken house, talking and laughing, relieved to be done…

goodbye.

new is a crackly word, an uncomfortable word –

it takes breaking in, like a fresh pair of shoes.

the old is familiar. it may be torn and falling to pieces, but it is love that made it so.

you know, don’t you?

when what we’re used to becomes what used to be,

the touch of change is sharp, its hold is slippery,

but oh, how can I bear to let go?

I know.

so,

goodbye, old farm, goodbye, old friends. goodbye, old life.

I’ll miss you.

I already do.

❤

***Allison***

~ Winter Stroll ~

February 3, 2018February 3, 2018 | Allison

Hello, dears!

*sigh* I’m getting rather tired of the freezing weather we’ve had here lately. Winter is kind of boring and cold and hard to photograph, am I right? But I DID get a few good non-snow winter photos here recently that I thought I’d show you! Winter is hard for photography, but not impossible.

One recent Sunday we took a family walk after church to explore our new farm a bit. Well, it was more like a walk/drive/ride combined because we took the truck and the fourwheeler too.

I love this picture because of the pink and purple shirts. XD Jeff’s shirt used to be more blue but it got kind of faded.

♥

Maggie adores going on rides with us. 😀 She’s so cute and happy and smiley!

For some reason what looked like a bunch of old tuna cans were nailed up to the wall in one of the sheds? We were puzzled. It’s kind of funny though.

I love this picture for its rustic character and texture. (Don’t worry, this isn’t the house we’re moving into or anything. XD XD It’s just an old shed.)

More rust, and more neat-ness in an abstract kind of way! This stuff went under the concrete they poured in Dad’s “new” shop.

Isn’t the bark on this tree super strange? It’s all flaky and weird – even on the twigs. It kind of looks like lichen, except completely covering the whole thing.

The kids wandered down to the pond while Mom and Dad drove around another part of the farm. Jeff was trying to convince Maggie to take a swim, but she only likes water she can wade in, not swim in, for some reason.

This is Carmen and her prize feather. XD

I absolutely LOVE the pattern the sky and clouds make on the water! It looks so neat, don’t you agree? It would make a neat painting too.

I love the cattails all around the pond!

The light was gorgeous. ♥The boys went crazy with the fourwheeler – spinning around doing burn outs and driving through puddles and over tiny trees and stuff. -_- Boys, boys… *shakes head* XD Ah well, it is pretty fun to drive.

For some reason I really like this picture too. Probably because it’s winter and I’m eager for green and sunshine like this. Ahhh, so pretty!

LOOK AT THE LIGHTING! *happy sigh* It was sooo gorgeous up there, but really hard to capture too. It didn’t look quite like this, but you can imagine how pretty the sun looked on the golden grass.

The fun thing about moving to a new farm is that we now have hundreds of acres to explore for the first time, and I LOVE it. The sun was out and it was such a lovely day for winter and we got to wander down paths we’d never been too… ahh, it was great. 🙂 *happy sigh* Walks like these are some of my favorite things!

The lighting here was SO pretty again, and again so hard to capture! I also didn’t want to tell them to stop walking because I wanted to get a candid picture, so most of them turned out blurry. XD At least this one is alright!

I have no idea what kind of tree produces these strange flower thingies.

HEH HEH. Megan and I were doing photos like in movies when the characters are barely holding onto the edge of the cliff, and then she actually almost fell into the water. XD XD A sturdy fallen tree over a creek is basically irresistible to young boys (and girls). Heh heh, see here? Maggie doesn’t mind wading. Her expression… XD

I love the smooth, curved edges on this ice!

OH I LOVE THIS PHOTO. For some reason I just find it really neat. 😉 I saw this little exposed knob on a tree and had to stop for a picture! Also it really reminds me of an avocado seed somehow? Don’t exactly know why… XD

Oh, funny story. I often randomly spot hawks when we drive somewhere or go on walks. I don’t know why I see them so much more than the rest of my family, but I do, and it’s gotten to be a sort of joke. I’m always like, “HAWK” when I see one, and Megan groans. XD She gets annoyed because I say, “It’s really strange how I always see hawks,” almost every time I see one. Well that’s what she says, but I don’t say it every time… *shakes head* XD

ANYWAY. I found a hawk that day too (it’s in the tree if you look close), so I took a picture for Megan as evidence. 😛

And I shall end on that note. I hope you enjoyed coming along with us on our winter stroll and seeing for yourself that there ARE things to photograph in winter after all, if you look close enough. 🙂

What was your favorite picture? What was your least favorite? (I want to know! Don’t worry about hurting my feelings – as long as you’re not intentionally mean or rude you won’t. Constructive criticism really helps!)

Do you enjoy winter (or spring or summer or fall) strolls? Do fourwheelers look fun, and have you driven one?

***Allison***

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. 😛

DSC_2159 (1280x856)

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

snow 18 (856x1280)

Dripping icicles are great fun to take pictures of. 🙂

DSC_2141 (1280x856) snow 17 (1280x1280)

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

snow 15 (1117x1280)

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

snow 13 (1280x901) snow 14 (1280x1280)

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!

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***