YES YES YES – SNOW!

January 24, 2016February 14, 2016 | Allison

YES YES YES YES YES YES! It finally snowed here! 😀 And it snowed like two feet – which is pretty much for us. The snow is so pretty and white and smooth and sparkling and clean and cold and bright and icy and beautiful and… okay, I’ve run out of adjectives. XD

What’s that you say? Oh. Of course I took pictures – how else would I survive looking at all of that pretty snow? XD What? You’d like to see them? Perfect! I was just getting ready to show you… (I took so many pictures I wanted to show you that I had to make a bunch of them into collages. 🙂 )

First, some pictures of just snow.

Now, onto snowy birds! A lovely cardinal pair came to our birdfeeder in the snow, and I took some pretty pictures of them. I especially like the first collage. The female:

And the male: (Along with a picture of several fellow birdseed eaters)

And some miscellaneous landscape, house, and deck snow pictures…

Look how much snow we got – this is a beforeish and after picture of a little picnic table we got.

I did a really fun mini photoshoot with my sister. (For this collage and the next, you can click on a photo to enlarge it.)

I also built a snow cave. (Well, I actually built two, but this is the only one I took a picture of.) I love building snow caves!

Straight, stately, snowy silos. 😀

Ahhh! Snow looks so pretty on evergreens and rose bushes, doesn’t it?

My dad just got a snow-blower recently, and he actually got to use it! It wouldn’t have been too surprising if he didn’t get to use it this winter, but he did!

Phew! Last collage. Another rare thing that happened is that our pond froze over! We slid around on it a little bit before it snowed, and then shoveled paths through the snow.

Wow – that was a LOT of snowy pictures! I think somewhere around a gajillion – does that sound right? Are you frozen yet? Tired of snow? What were a few of your favorite pictures or collages – if you aren’t too tired of this post yet. 😀

***Allison***

Room Makeover!

January 8, 2016January 8, 2016 | Allison

For Christmas, Megan and I asked for some home décor items and Hobby Lobby gift cards (I ♥ Hobby Lobby!)so we could redecorate our room. (We share a bedroom.) We decided to theme it with birds. We did get some décor items and several Hobby Lobby gift cards, so we did redecorate our room! And so I shall show you a tour of our newly decorated room. Do come in!

One of my favorite new decorations are these beautiful birds-on-a-wire wall decals that I got from Hobby Lobby.

It came with a few mirrored birds as well as a bunch of bird silhouettes. (Ack! ‘Silhouette’ is really hard to spell. XD) It was fun to take pictures of the mirrored birds.

Since there were so many of the silhouettes, I scattered a few around the room in different places.

You know how wall decals come in a sticker sheet? I found a way to get double the amount of stickers, at least as long as there is an outline around the sticker. You just peel of the real sticker, in my case the bird silhouette, and cut around the remaining outline on the sticker sheet. Here is a picture where I first took off the silhouette sticker of the cut out bird, then the bird out of the sticker sheet, and peeled off the thin black outline.

The downside is that the outlines are hard to apply because they are so flimsy, but once you get them up, they look nice:

Here are some more pretty decals I got at Hobby Lobby. We put these in one corner of our “book nook.”

We have started collecting bird figurines for our shelf. We also made these neat clay transfers. You basically print out a picture (it works best to use a laser printer), smooth it out onto a sheet of clay, and bake it between two ceramic tiles.

-Allison(Jinx & bunnies, room) 034 (1280x960) — My parents gave me the bird jewelry holder for Christmas, and the bird picture for a long-ago birthday present. 🙂

-Allison(Jinx & bunnies, room) 026 (1280x960) — My collection: I got the pretty peacock candle holder for a birthday, and I made the stuffed owl, the transferred bluebird, and the clay swan. For the clay swan, I transferred a swan image onto a polymer clay oval, traced over the lines with thin logs of purple clay, and added clay embellishments and flowers.

And I guess we’re done now. I hope you enjoyed it! Do you like Hobby Lobby? (Hint: the answer is YES! XP)

***Allison***

2015, Award, News + Lots of Photos!

December 31, 2015December 31, 2015 | Allison

Happy New Year! Okay, get ready for a long post, because today I will be reviewing my 2015 bloggy year, doing an award, and telling you one of my New Year’s resolutions. Ready? First up, my blog year – it was a great year, and a HUGE year, at least compared to last year. Taking into account the fact that I only blogged 7 months last year instead of 12 this year, still, the stats increased A LOT. And thanks to all of you, I now have almost 60 followers! SQUEEEE! 😀 😀 Here are the yearly stats for this year and last year:

Last year (in orange)

This year (in orange)

And here is the little WordPress year in review thingy they sent me:

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,500 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 58 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Now for the award. I don’t usually do awards, but I decided to do this one because it wasn’t just random questions, and I thought it was interesting to see when other people did this. So… I was nominated by Genna and Mercer Creative. Thank you so much!

1. Thank the person that nominated you
2. Start a blog post and answer the questions below
3. Add 1-3 of your Favorite\Best blog photos
4. Nominate up to ten people

1. How long have you had a blog?
I started this blog in May of 2014, so I’ve had it for about a year and a half.

2. Why did you start blogging?
I kind of forget, but I think it was probably because my sister started with her school program, and it made me want to start a blog too.

3. Do you like photography?
I love photography! 😀

4. Did you start your blog on your own?
Yep. Well, my sister and mom helped me.

5. Why do you like these photos so much?
It was kind of hard to choose just 3 of my favorites, so since it’s a review of 2015 anyway, I’m just going to do some of my favorite photo pictures and posts from 2015. XD

I think one of my all time favorite posts was this dandelion post. Here’s a picture from it:

I just love how crystal clear and beautiful the pictures turned out. I also love this Lily (The Flower) post – I love dewdrops!

A few of my favorite bunny posts are this funny bunny post, these two Lily (the rabbit) posts here and here,

and this Christmas post from the bunnies. Because they are just so CUTE!

My favorite other pet post might be this Joy the kitten post. I like the angle of this photo, and Joy was just adorable!

Here are some other pictures I really like that I took in 2015, and a few from 2014, which are captioned “2014.”

Whew! That was a lot of pictures! I nominate Hayley from Flourishing By Restful Falls for the award.

OK. Now for one of my New Years’ Resolution (the news part of the title). I want to start an Etsy shop! I’m going to be selling things I make online there, including polymer clay animals and other polymer clay things, and maybe stuffed animals like this one. But I need more ideas! I would greatly appreciate any suggestions with what you would like me to make that you would buy. If you need some ideas from what I’ve already made, click on the category “My Creations” on my category cloud on my blog sidebar. Thank you!

So, that’s it! Thanks so much for a great bloggy year, readers!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

***Allison***

P. S. See you next year!

Photos From of Old: Entry #1

December 10, 2015January 6, 2016 | Allison

My sister Megan did a post about stories from of old that she had wrote when she was little, and I think I’m going to do a series about photos that I either took before I had a blog (*gasp!*), or photos that never made it into posts. This first entry was way back when we had a litter of adorable kittens to play with in the chicken house. And the first picture is a random bluebird. I also edited two of the pictures on PicMonkey just for fun.

And the edited ones:

Which picture was your favorite? Would you like me to continue this series or not?

***Allison***

Creation Series: Day 7

October 24, 2015October 24, 2015 | Allison

After all that he had done, God rested. Not that he needed the rest – he NEVER needs rest – but to set an example for us, to show us how we should set aside a day of rest, a day to worship him.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. ²And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. ³So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

Here’s a nice little (uh… big) collage of most of the pictures. In fact, I think I got all the pictures that I used on there except for two. If you’re up for a challenge, which two pictures from the series didn’t I include in this collage?

I had a lot of fun making this series and I hope you had a lot of fun reading it. Thanks for following along!

***Allison***

Creation Series: Day 5

October 22, 2015October 19, 2015 | Allison

²⁰And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” ²¹So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. ²²And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” ²³And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

I think my favorite creation on this day is birds. There is so much variety and beauty in them. See you tomorrow for a very exciting part of creation!

***Allison***

Spring Birdies

April 27, 2015June 18, 2015 | Allison

My dad called and told us there were some baby killdeer for us to see. I brought my camera, of course, and took some pictures. My sister and I even got to hold one of the fluffy little babies. So cute!

Here is the mother killdeer with her baby:

And here is the baby up close.

I also got pictures of a robin eating a worm!

***Allison***

Fall Walks

November 6, 2014February 14, 2016 | Allison

Here are some pictures from recent nature walks around our farm:

I thought this mullein looked pretty with the dewdrops on it.

We saw a lot of gorgeous bluebirds in one spot where we walked. I ♥ bluebirds!

This is sort of a random picture.A little brown moth sitting on a little brown leaf

Spider!

We also found some salamanders under logs and such in the woods.

Awww, isn’t he cute? (Sorry for the not-so-good picture, but I wanted you to see him☺)

We also found good-smelling things, not just good-looking ones. This is pineapple weed and it smells deliciously fruity.

Does anyone know what this is called? I call it peppermint weed because it smells really minty! I know it looks really ugly, but it smells sooo good. I wish I could send you the smell!