Etcetera #3

June 24, 2018 | Allison

Hello, dears!

I’ve been half dreading this post and half eagerly anticipating it, because it is SO much work to sort through over six months of photographs and edit and organize the best ones for a post. O.o But it’s always so satisfying to know I’m “up to date” once I finish Etcetera posts, so yay! 🙂

Anyway, today I have for you quite a lot of pictures about quite a lot of things. I’ll attempt to organize this post a bit more than I have previously so it’s not overwhelming. XD I hope you enjoy browsing through the sunsets, farm landscapes, portraits, etc!

~ Skies ~

When it hasn’t been raining (which is rarely XD), there have been some beautiful sunsets, clouds, and other skyscapes recently.

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Ahhh, big, fluffy cumulus clouds just make me happy when I see them. 😀

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Isn’t this gorgeous? Sun rays through clouds also make me happy. 🙂

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We’ve gotten so many rainbows recently (and so much rain too)! I don’t think I even noticed this one was a double rainbow until I edited the picture. O.o XD What a beautiful promise a rainbow is. ❤

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I love how calm and soft this picture is!

The moon looks HUGE beside the miniscule airplane and tiny cloud, doesn’t it?

Does this count as “skies”? I don’t know. But this strange, neat limb broke off one day and it was sad. 😦 Now there’s just a stump left.

I actually combined a couple of pictures to make this one, because I wanted more birds in it. 😛

I thought it was so neat how you can faintly see the entire moon!

Sunsets + reflections? OH YES!

A e s t h e t i c. ❤

~ Pets ~

This spring there were buttercups EVERYWHERE! It was so pretty! One day Maggie was conveniently laying in a highly-concentrated area of flowers which went perfectly with her sunny, buttercup personality. 😀

BUNNIESSSS! My brothers built new rabbit pens for them, and the next two pictures are when we first put them in. I love how Basil’s ears are always one up and one down. XD

OLAF IS JUST WEIRD. XD

And here’s Lavender! SHE IS ADORABLE. And she’s also grown since I took this picture.

Well this isn’t exactly a pet, but… WARNING, SNAKE AHEAD! We found this black snake one morning while we were cleaning out the raised beds. I don’t particularly like snakes, but it was so neat to get such close-up photographs! It didn’t slither away for quite a while; it just posed. 😛 I got a bunch of good pictures, but I’ll be considerate and only show you guys two. XD

~ Flowers ~

This was a looong time ago, but here’s a pretty picture of blossoms on our what we thought was an apple tree but is actually a pear tree.

In early spring, there were violets EVERYWHERE! There was one row beside a small, white shed in our backyard that was overflowing with blooms. ❤

Such a cute, tiny flower! (Actually it’s a weed, but it’s still cute.)

I LOVE THIS PICTURE! It’s just so CUTE!

Ahh, this is so creamy and gorgeous!

~ Farm Landscapes ~

We always pass this on the way to my grandparents’ house and I always want to get a picture of it. This time Mom kindly stopped to let me take some, and I’m SO glad she did! I just love the scenery here, and the rolling hills that seem almost too perfect to be natural. The tractor baling hay adds a nice touch too. 😉

Dad planted corn or soybeans in most of the pastures this year, and it looks GREAT! He got the crops in a little late because of the immense amount of rain we got, but now that they’re in they’re looking gorgeous. I took this picture a while ago; the corn is a lot bigger now.

The cows are gone now. *sniff*

~ People ~

Carmen got absolutely SOAKED (on purpose) one day when it was raining, which made for some pretty neat pictures.

Carmen wondered if I wanted to take a picture of her glasses, and I said, “Sure!”

I took this picture after we finished unloading the tractor-trailer load of our house belongings, and I was all sweaty and dusty. And then I had heaps of fun editing it later. XD I don’t know why I like taking pictures of eyes so much, but I DO!

Carmen wanted me to take a picture of her swinging. 🙂

It was a BIT scary to balance my camera on a fence post on a windy day, which is maybe why I have a slightly strange expression… XD

Oh look, it’s me leaning up agains the fence again! What do you know. XD Carmen took this picture for me, because a friend wanted a photo of the dress I got.

~ Etcetera ~

Okay, this is really random, but… did you know you can use a mixture of about half coconut oil and half baking soda to repair worn wood? If you scrub the mixture into scratches or places where the varnish doesn’t look good, it will magically look like new after you wipe it away with soap and water! Trust me, it is amazing. O.o I don’t know exactly how it works, but I think the oil stains and darkens the wood and the baking soda kind of sands it down a little. However it does it, IT WORKS. We’ve used this a lot to “refinish” worn furniture, floors, and trim lately.

We don’t have a huge garden this year, but we are growing a few things in the raised beds behind the big house. One of those things are (or were) radishes! I thought these baby radishes that we thinned out were so cute, hee hee.

GUYS. I FOUND A FIVE LEAF CLOVER. AND MEGAN FOUND A SIX LEAF ONE. We found a lot of mutant clovers around the Cedar House, actually. XD And no, I did not photoshop an extra leaf on. Promise.

This almost looks abstract if you unfocus your eyes.

I love photographing water drops. 😀 Don’t they look like crystal?

Phew, that was a TON of pictures! Not nearly all the good ones, though. *sniff* This post was a great (but hard) exercise in only keeping the best of the best, or else the most interesting. Hopefully I succeeded. 🙂

So, which category was your favorite? Have you ever found a more-than-four-leaf clover? Have you tried the coconut oil trick?

Thank you so much for reading this lengthy epistle, dears, and please have a lovely day!

***Allison***

Cuteness Overload + A Mysterious Tale

May 28, 2018May 28, 2018 | Allison

Hello, dears!

Before reading this post, BEWARE. Extreme cuteness ahead. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Heh heh, anyway, these little fuzzballs grew SO much since my last baby bunny post, and as anticipated, THEY GOT EVEN MORE ADORABLE.

Megan and I did a photoshoot of the bunnies a while ago and it turned out ADORABLE.

We were going to put them on grass, but they started eating it and baby rabbits aren’t supposed to eat greens for a few weeks. Just to be safe, we took them to a gravelly spot in front of the big house. I LOVE THIS PICTURE.

THE FRONT VIEW IS JUST SO…

The siblings behaved very well around each other, heh heh.

OKAY I LOVE THIS PICTURE. I can’t believe I got a photo of one of them yawning! AHHHH IT’S SO CUTE.

This little one was always sleepy. You could pretty much put her anywhere and she’d just start falling asleep on the spot. XD ❤

OH MY, TRIPLE CUTENESS.

Since they insisted on finding weeds even in the pebbles and nibbling them, we decided to go inside. And we lined them up on the floor and AHHHH I’M MELTING.

I couldn’t decide which version is better, so here are both. 🙂 Which one is your favorite?

They are just so sleepy and cuddly! ❤

I love all the variety of colors!

The peonies were blooming and this one made a great prop… until the bunnies started eating it. XD

They love licking each other… and you. ❤ It’s adorable.

GUYS. Look at that pile of sleeping fluff. LOOK AT IT!

SEE? AREN’T THEY THE CUTEST EVER?

But now that the photoshoot is over, I have a story to tell you. *deep breath*

A Mysterious Tragedy

One afternoon Megan came in from feeding the rabbits and said, “I can’t find the baby bunnies. They’re not in their cage, and I saw a black snake go into the garage [where we kept the bunnies].” We tried not to panic and decided maybe they had just hopped out of the cage (Megan said it had a hole) and were hiding. So we went to look, in the rain.

We all kind of held our breath and tiptoed through the door, hoping we wouldn’t see a snake eating… well anyway, we opened the door and saw nothing. No snake, no bunnies. The cage was empty except for Willow, who appeared calm enough. The top had been skewed so there was a hole just big enough for baby bunnies to squeeze through.

We swept the flashlight under the shelves and stuff in the dimness until HURRAH! I FOUND A BABY BUNNY! The little silver one! We caught her and continued our search, much cheered.

Well, we opened cabinets and peered in holes and generally went over the whole garage about three times. No baby bunnies. No black snake. They disappeared without a trace. Except… then Logan remembered that the door to the garage had been open a little while ago and our dog was around. Maggie is a hunter, and the cage was right in plain sight.

Maybe she nosed the cage and enough for the bunnies to get out, and came back later… then again, maybe she made the hole and the bunnies got out and escaped outside through a space by the garage door! So we looked outside, a bit half-heartedly through the drizzling rain, and then, just as we were about to give up hope…

Nothing happened. *sigh* They were just nowhere to be found. And it was still raining.

We went back, and decided to take Willow and Lavender (the silver one) into our basement so nothing would happen to them. And we still don’t know what happened to the rest. Was it the snake? Was it Maggie? Did the babies escape and someday we’ll see an spotted rabbit hopping out of the woods? Who knows. Only God, I suppose.

And that, my friends, is that mysterious, tragic end of all but one of the remaining baby bunnies. *bows head sadly*

__________________

Since that’s kind of an awful note to end on, let me give you some good news. Carmen is keeping Lavender, the one bunny left! She’s getting so big and is SO cute and tame and sweet. Since she’s the only baby for us to handle now, she is extra well-loved and I think she’ll be a wonderful pet even when she grows up. And now, let me end this post with a hilarious picture of our one and only baby bunny:

ISN’T THAT ADORABLE?! She just stayed there quietly, for quite a few minutes. XD

Well I hope you enjoyed the photoshoot, if not the story. At least we had enough time to get a good dose of cuteness before they disappeared… Which photo was your favorite?OH, and before you go, I have two announcements.

#1: I FINISHED SCHOOL! FOREVER! I AM SO EXCITED. It feels kind of unreal, actually. O.o I feel like I learned a lot, especially in my last year, but it’s so good to be done. And so, so STRANGE. When are you guys getting done for the year (or forever)?

#2: This will probably be the last post for a couple of weeks because we’re moving into the big house! YAAAY! It’s going to be a considerable process to clean basically the whole big house (it is a BIG house), go up and pack and load up our old house in a week or less, and then come down and move in, amongst other (exciting!) plans, but I CAN’T WAIT.

Anyway, I just wanted to tell you so my disappearance online and on email won’t be as mysterious as the baby bunnies’. Even though I’m done with school, I’m still keeping busy, don’t you worry. And get ready for some exciting stuff when I come back!

NOW, you are finally released from this post. XD Thank you ever so much for reading, dears, and please have a lovely day!

***Allison***

Expeditions & Discoveries {Spring Walks}

May 15, 2018May 15, 2018 | Allison

Hello, dears!

We’ve been going on exploratory walks around our farm almost every Sunday lately and it is SO much fun! Also I’ve taken SO many pictures! XD I seriously have way too many post ideas to keep up, so I’m going to combine a few walks into one post. Enjoy the virtual sunshine! 😀

On the first walk, we explored the woods beside Dad’s shop. Fern fiddleheads were unrolling everywhere and bright little violets popped up by tree roots covered in moss… ahh, I loved it. ❤ There were also carpets of mayapple plants, which I’d never seen before. Interesting.

This was about a month ago, when leaves and buds were just starting to come out.

Aren’t fiddleheads adorable? 😀

HA HA for some reason this just looks really funny to me. XD It’s like the tree has a tiny nose. Maybe I should draw a face around it. 😛

I LOVE MOSS. ❤

Ooh, I really like this picture, particularly the lighting! The violet is a little blurry, but I love the golden light. I don’t exactly know how I got this one, but I do know I didn’t edit it.

The roots are so neat, don’t you think?

As you can see, the leaves were DEFINITELY not out yet.

While walking back we saw a deep puddle that was literally TEEMING with tadpoles! There were hundreds if not a thousand. O.o I have never seen so many tadpoles in one place in my life!

The puddle nearly dried up a while ago and left a lot of dead tadpoles in the sun, but it rained just in time to save the rest. 😛 I should go check them again… last time I saw them they looked pretty much like this:

Next we have the walk in which we went down to our bigger stream and Carmen, Jeff, and Megan all swam even though they had regular clothes on and it wasn’t exactly hot. XD

HA HA I love this. XD

They seemed to be having a pretty good time, but I decided against joining them. 😛

Wow, that was a short walk. Anyway, the next one is at our smaller pond. We got a canoe at the auction after we bought the new farm, but it kinda leaked. So Dad and the boys patched it up, we got oars, and ta-daa!

This woods had some lovely beeches, and everything was SO GREEN!

This tree was huge and gorgeous. ❤ We came back to this spot for my birthday and had a dessert picnic with chocolate pecan pie. 😀 Yep, it was DELICIOUS. And then Carmen and I worked on a fairy house in these roots because I’d told her I would. 🙂 It was fun, but got dark really quickly. (Also I don’t have any pictures of that night, sorry. )

We also want to make a fairy house here sometime. 🙂

Now, onto the next walk! This is the most recent. Last Sunday, in fact. I think these flowers are called phlox, but whatever they are, they certainly made the side of the trail pretty! ❤

I brought my sketchbook and some drawing utensils along but didn’t end up using them that much. I did get a little sketch done, though. (Also this picture was super hard to get, but I like how it turned out.)

I’m fascinated with reflections and light and water, together or separate. 😀

Mom and Carmen and I (and later Dad) wandered along the smaller creek that we call Little Runny. The air was hot and muggy, so the shade and water felt amazing.

Mom found a few tulip-tree blooms and wanted me to take a picture of it for our house. I was quite happy to oblige, of course! 😀 Tulip-tree flowers are strange: green and orange and lily-shaped, with maple-like leaves. Certainly unique.

Carmen wanted to show me a “swimming hole” she’d found, which wasn’t actually quite deep enough to swim in. XD

While we were there, I saw a little water strider and the ripples it made looked neat, so obviously I had to take a picture. 😛

Ooh, I love this one!

This stretch of Little Runny has sand instead of rocks! The riverbed is a mixture of sand and mud, which feels so good to bare feet. There are also random sandbars scattered like tiny beaches by the creek. The first time I saw them I was really surprised that they weren’t manmade.

Anyway, Carmen and I decided to try and build a sandcastle on one of the “beaches.” I think it turned out pretty cute for only having our hands to work with. (Thanks to my mom for taking this picture!)

(Heh heh, once I started using this filter it was hard to stop. Oops.) I love this picture too! Isn’t it so cute and aesthetic? It looks like a summer beach photo instead of a spring creek photo. 😛

Maggie also came along with us. She loves to wade in the streams and puddles, even though she never swims in deep ponds and stuff. Isn’t she so cute?

And now let me end with this cool, refreshing picture. 😀 I love the colors in this one!

And there you have a small sampling of my many spring pictures. Going outside at this time of the year is quite dangerous for me if I intend the pictures for my blog because I JUST CAN’T. KEEP. UP. But you know, I think that’s rather a good problem to have. 😉

Do you always take an excessive amount of pictures in spring too? Which is your most photographed season? And do you have a favorite or favorites of these pictures? I’d love to hear!

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

***Allison***

Bunny News {A Fuzzy Announcement}

May 6, 2018May 15, 2018 | Allison

GUYSSSSSS WILLOW HAD BABIESSSSSS!

My rabbit had EIGHT babies, in fact! Well, she had eight babies but then one died. 😦 Anyway, the remaining fuzzballs are absolutely adorable, and getting cuter every day. 😀

I will show you picture in a moment, don’t worry, but before we meet them I wanted to show you guys this pretty mini-photoshoot of Willow, the fluffy mother.

LOOK AT THAT FLUFF.

I think this shot looks quite glamorous. 😛 It looks like she has white eyeliner on, doesn’t it?

Awwww she’s just so adorable and FLUZZY.

I think she needs brushing, though…

Hee hee, gotta love those ear tufts, right? Also she kind of looks fierce in this one.

❤ ❤ ❤

Alright. HERE WE GO. This is all eight of them the day they were born. Pretty pink. 😛

Okay, I guess they aren’t QUITE as cute when they’re first born, but still… I love seeing all the different patterns and how many there are and EEP, it’s so exciting!

Their fur grows super fast, though! This is just a few days after they were born.

This is about how they looked last time I saw them (which was yesterday). LOOK AT THAT CUTE LITTLE NOSE.

They always snuggle together and it’s just adorable. ❤

This is one of my favorite babies. 🙂 I think it’s going to get grayer as it grows up, because we had another one like this in a past litter.

We haven’t named them all yet, but we named this one Bo because Carmen thought he looked like a cow (he did more when he was little), and of course bovine means cow. 😛

This one is also ADORABLE, and really uniquely colored!

I think this guy might be the biggest, though he doesn’t look like it here.

Kind of blurry but too cuddly to delete. ❤

It’s hard to get a picture where you can see all of them clearly, but you can MOSTLY tell who’s who in this one. There’s a lovely variety of patterns!

AHHH, I absolutely LOVE having baby bunnies, especially when they get a few weeks older. ❤ My little sister Carmen is going to keep one to replace Diamond, her previous rabbit, but she hasn’t chosen which one for sure. She’s thinking either the solid brown-gray rabbit or the black/silver one.

Which one do YOU think she should keep? Don’t you think the babies have an extremely squishable mother? XD And if you have any baby bunny name suggestions, I’d love to hear them!

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

***Allison***

P. S. Ugh, I AM SO ANNOYED AT MYSELF. A little more than a month ago (*facepalm* ) Bekah from Questionable Tortoise Couture interviewed me, which was extremely fun, and I didn’t remember to link it UNTIL NOW. -_- But NO MORE. Click here to read the post! Once again, Bekah, I am incredibly sorry I haven’t linked it before – I kept remembering in between posts and then forgetting once I actually made them. Anyway, I’ll stop apologizing now and let you guys get on with your day. XD I hope it’s a great one!

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***

Bubbles, Selfies, and Strange Goings-On

March 8, 2018 | Allison

Hello, dears!

I was originally going to post a “Moving On” episode, but I’ve been doing a lot of complicated, less lifestyle-ish posts lately and I felt in the mood for a good ol’ photography post – one of my favorite kinds to read AND write. 🙂 So I’ll save the moving post for a later date, and hopefully you enjoy these various portrait photoshoots in the meantime! 😀

Bubbles

One day when the sun was setting and it was lovely and golden outside, I asked my littlest sister Carmen if she wanted to do a bubble photoshoot with me. She agreed somewhat reluctantly, but started having fun once we commenced, as usual. XD

It was fun, but VERY difficult. The hardest part was getting the bubbles in focus. I could have used a higher f-stop, but I wanted the nice blurred background and… anyway, these are only a fraction of the photos I actually took. XD

Another difficulty was that the bubble wand handle was broken and we kept having to fish the rest of it out with a, um, small scissors. Why didn’t we use a tweezers? You know, I’m not really sure. XD Maybe we couldn’t find it, I forget. Anyway, it worked… sort of. 😛

I can’t believe I got a picture of a bubble popping! I wasn’t even trying, which is probably how I got it. XD

After Carmen got too cold and went in, I attempted to take pictures of just bubbles by myself. IT WAS EXTRAORDINARILY HARD. The wind always blew the wrong way at the wrong time, just as I clicked the button, of course. *sigh* Oh well, out of perhaps at least a hundred, I DID get a few good ones. Two, in fact. *weak smile* I do love the color, though! (They aren’t edited.)

Selfies

Guys, I practically NEVER take selfies (although I do use the self-timer occasionally). Why? Probably mostly because it’s such a stereotypical teenager thing to do, and thus I don’t (XD). Anyway, the other day I found a charming patch of speedwell, a weed with adorable tiny blue flowers, and decided hey, why not. 😛

Oooops, didn’t exactly point my camera at the right spot… but it works! XD

An edited one just for fun…

Hee hee. XD This might be my favorite.

Strange Goings-On

My sister Megan and her friend MacRae do very strange things together. Trust me on this – VERY strange. Like taking rocks for a walk or racing earthworms. I don’t know if Megan wants me to tell the reason behind these pictures yet or not, so for now let’s just say it’s another of their interesting ideas which they wanted me to photograph. Heh.

That blob of fur in MacRae’s lap is my rabbit Willow. XD

BAHAHA, poor Willow is a little alarmed at their antics…

GOOD JOB, WILLOW. Escape is obviously the best option here. I don’t know what Megan’s doing here… contemplating the taste of a spoonful of mayonnaise? XD

And then Willow, who was obviously the star of the show, got some headshots…

What do you say, does Willow look good in a mustache? True, she kind of already has one… XD

Since you never really saw her eyes, I had to include one last one so you can tell that she is actually a living creature. Hee hee.

And that’s it for today! I have another sisters photoshoot but it’s pretty long, so I’ll save it for its own post. 🙂 I hope you enjoyed these! Which was your favorite photoshoot, and which was your favorite picture? Do you feel sorry for Willow? XD

***Allison***

P. S. Speaking of bunnies, I have some sad news… Diamond and Lily are gone. 😦 Lily was got really sick so we had to put her down, and I don’t know what happened to Diamond – maybe she just died of old age or something. *sad sigh* I’m really glad we still have the other four bunnies, though, and hopefully we can have baby bunnies again soon! But… RIP Lily and Diamond. 😦

~ 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***

~ 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***

Out to Pasture

November 28, 2017 | Allison

Hello, dears? How goes life? I’ll bet you’re all having so much fun starting school again after Thanksgiving break, am I right? Ha. *sigh*

Anyway, a friend recently brought some of her cows to one of our pastures and they are SO CUTE. So much cuter than the boring ol’ Holstein cows in our barns. XD So the other day Megan and I decided to go do a little photoshoot of them, because how could we not? (Note: I did edit all these pictures (some more than others), which is unusual for me. But the lighting was kind of gray and gross, so they needed touching up. XD)

I shall start with the most adorable of the cows. ♥ We call her Rainbow because that’s the name in her ear tag, but I don’t know what her real name is (or if she has one).

SO ADORABLE! I love her eyes! ♥

Doesn’t she look so sweet?

I was trying to get a picture of her tongue out, and I… sort of did?

This enormous guy is the one bull in the pasture. Don’t worry, we didn’t get trampled on or anything like that; he actually seems pretty calm. But we stayed outside the fence anyway. XD

He is HUGE compared to the cows.

I love all the different variations in color and patterns. 🙂 (AND THE BOKEH in the background.)

Look at the marking on her forehead! ♥

This might be the one my cousin called “Einstein” because of her fuzzy white hair. XD

The spotted sisters. XD (Actually I don’t know that they’re sisters, but it’s, um… prosaic license, heh heh?)

Rainbow again. ♥ Her coloring and big, dark eyes remind me of my rabbit, Lily. XD

And this other random cow who was similar to Rainbow but not as pretty…

“HEY, careful with your words, there, person-with-the-black-clicking-thing. I happen to know my face is beautiful, and that you should really be focusing on ME, not those boring dried weeds.”

“There. Better. Although that fence…”

Sorry, cow, you’ll have to make do with barbed wire in your face. Or you could have just BACKED UP A BIT, ahem?

“*glares* Hmph. All the other cows were crowding around to see what you were doing, so how could I not? Peer pressure is a hard thing, you know. Especially if you’re a cow.”

Mmm, I suppose so. What with stampeding and all that…

“There, finally you’re sounding more reasona- HEY. YOU DID IT AGAIN.”

Well maybe sisters and red plaid shirts are more… shall we say, photogenic than angry cows?

“I AM NOT ANGRY. I mean… On the contrary, I am quite calm. See? NOW GET THAT GREEN STUFF OUT OF MY FACE.”

It’s vetch, my dear bovine. V-E-T-C-H. You know what, I think I’ll just end this conversation right here since you obviously won’t listen to anything I say anyway. Sheesh, cows can be so stubborn…

“WAIT-”

Goodbye.

****************

Heh heh, cow conversations are fun to write. XD I hope you enjoyed reading it and the rest of the post! Which cow or picture was your favorite?

Oh, and before you go, check out the two interviews I did recently! Rebecca did one with me and Buttercup did the other. Both girls’ questions were great and fun to answer, and I think you guys would have fun reading them too. 😉

***Allison***

P. S. I updated my sidebar a bit. What think thee?

Allison Marie

Photography, Artsy Things, & Lifestyle Inspiration

Pets

Etcetera #3

~ Skies ~

~ Pets ~

~ Flowers ~

~ Farm Landscapes ~

~ People ~

~ Etcetera ~

Cuteness Overload + A Mysterious Tale

Expeditions & Discoveries {Spring Walks}

Bunny News {A Fuzzy Announcement}

Moving On {Part 2}

Bubbles, Selfies, and Strange Goings-On

Bubbles

Selfies

Strange Goings-On

~ Winter Stroll ~

~ Etcetera #2 ~

Flowers + Butterflies

Fall Forests & Fields

Etcetera

Out to Pasture

~ Skies ~

~ Pets ~

~ Flowers ~

~ Farm Landscapes ~

~ People ~

~ Etcetera ~

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Bubbles

Selfies

Strange Goings-On

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Flowers + Butterflies

Fall Forests & Fields

Etcetera

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