Of Snow, Ice, Snowmen, Puddles… Etc.

March 19, 2017March 19, 2017 | Allison

Guys, buckle up for a TON of pictures! This may be one of my longest posts to date. XD

It snowed last Monday/Tuesday, and I just went photo-wild. XD I got a few neat pictures of the snow, but most of the pictures were actually of icicles or ice. So anyway, have a seat and take a peek, won’t you?

Phew, I don’t know where to start! Let’s see. I guess I’ll start with some pretty, icy pictures.

Ice:

tag (8) (1280x853) — The poor pussy willow buds got rather frozen. 😦

Next up…

Snow:

tag (25) (1280x853) — It didn’t snow very much, but it still looked pretty!

tag (24) (1280x853) — Heh heh, I drew this horribly deformed smiley face in the snow with water.

My three youngest siblings made this hilarious but cute snowman. XD After I took these pictures, they made him a “Snow Cool” sign.

tag (28) (1280x853) — They used icicles for the mohawk, a carrot for the nose (obviously), sunglasses for the… uh, sunglasses ( XD ) and a smear of dirt for the mouth.

After most of that snow had melted, what do you know? It snowed AGAIN! (And then melted super quickly but oh well.) The most amazing thing about this snow was the snowflakes. I mean, they weren’t even snowflakes, they were more like snowballs! They were the biggest flakes I have ever seen – a whole bunch of snowflakes bunched into a clump, some of which were quarter-sized or bigger. I tried frantically to get a good picture that showed how big they were, but I didn’t really get any. 😦 I did get some pretty pictures, though!

tag (3) — We have a nice view of this silo from our deck. 😀

tag (4) — There you can kind of see how hard it was snowing!

Ooh, yay! Now I get to show you the…

Icicles

After we finished gathering eggs, I ran back to the house to get my camera. I noticed the lovely icicles hanging from the chicken house roofs, and I just HAD to get some pictures. 😉 I’m so glad I did! It took quite a bit of patience and a high shutter speed setting to capture the drops falling, but I had SO much fun experimenting!

tag (13) (1280x853) — Woohoo, two at once!

These icicles are on our house, and I took this picture at sunset.

And that leads us to…

Water Drops

After I had taken quite a few icicle photos, I noticed that the drops sliding off of them were splashing into a puddle. I decided it would be fun to take pictures of that too! Instead of kneeling down in the wet snow, though, I got a (rather dirty) measuring pitcher from the chicken house, brought out something to sit on, and started taking pictures. This also took quite a bit of patience, like the icicles. I got a whole bunch of blurry or boring pictures for every good one. But again, it was so exciting when I DID get a good one! Hee hee!

(Note: I edited these pictures a good bit – they didn’t look like this straight from the camera. 😉 )

And now for my very favorite one. ♥ Ohhh my goodness I love it so much!

And last but not least, we have…

Everything Else

I took several not-so-snowy pictures that I wanted to include too.

Quite a few robins were hopping around this puddle, waiting for spring to come, I guess. 🙂

robin 1 — I love how you can see his reflection.

robin 2 — This was a fun one! I made everything black and white except for the robin’s pop of color.

I was pretty tickled to get this next picture. I saw two robins fighting in the puddle all of a sudden and quick pressed the button – and it actually worked! I love it when that happens. 🙂

tag (33) (1280x853) — This is neat, don’t you think?

tag (29) (1280x853) — I rather like this one too.

I shall end with this promise of spring. This poor little beauty was stuck face down in the snow when I rescued her, but she’s still so bright and cheery for all that! Daffodils are such incredibly hardy, resilient flowers that can spring back after even such cold trials as this snow. Sometimes it’s hard to be a daffodil, isn’t it? It is for me…

Aaaaannnd I’m finished! Maybe it wasn’t so wise to put all those pictures in one post, but I just wanted to try and see how it worked. XD What do you think? Was that way too much or did you heartily enjoy seeing all those photos at once? Or are you indifferent? XD

If you actually got through the whole thing, which category or picture was your favorite?

Thanks for reading (and persevering)!

***Allison***

Random Photography

March 3, 2017 | Allison

I absolutely love Clara’s random photography posts, so I thought I would try to do a similar kind since I have plenty of random photos anyway. 🙂 I hope you enjoy!

Random Topic #1: Spring

I was about to say that spring is on the way, but then again, it’s 29 degrees outside, so… XD But the daffodils are blooming and the grass is getting green, so you at least THINK spring is here until you go outside.

dsc_0424-1280x853 — Ohhhh pictures like this make me happy with the golden sunshine on the green, green grass. So pretty!

Random Topic #2: Bonfire Days

I already wrote a post about a huge bonfire we had recently, but there were a few extra bonfire-related photos I didn’t show.

The fire was so hot that we couldn’t get close enough to roast hot dogs, so my grandaddy though of an ingenious solution! He hauled out some long, hollow metal poles and stuck the roasting sticks in the end. That way you could move them around from a safe distance. XD My uncle and brother, not to be outdone, just got up close to the fire and shielded themselves by putting their jackets over their heads. It was quite the hilarious scene, but it worked!

Oh, and we also cooked potatoes, but the photo of that was terrible, so I decided to leave it out. 😉 But that’s a really fun thing to do at a bonfire: wrap a few potatoes in aluminum foil, poke some holes in them with a fork, and bury them in hot coals from the fire. Apparently we left ours in a bit too long, because they had a nice thick shell of blackened potato around the edges ( XD XD ), but they were quite tasty in the middle! Hee hee!

random-6-1280x853 — Isn’t this picture so funny? XD

Megan and I took pictures of each other taking pictures of each other. That was confusing. XD

Aww, Maggie dear!

Another fun thing we did was play with glow sticks. We started by tossing them around out in the field, and discovered that if the person carrying the glow stick ran far enough into the darkness, the glow stick really looked like it was floating when they waved it around. It was so weird. After that, we cracked some of them open and drew on our hands. XD Probably NOT the wisest idea, because there is actually a tube of glass inside glow sticks that cracks too when you break it. So yeah, maybe not a good thing to “try at home”… but it was fun while it lasted! XD And it looked really weird – like you were glowing from the inside out.

Random Topic #3: Eyes

If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you might have noticed that I really like photographing and drawing eyes. I think they’re fascinating, and extra beautiful up close! I had fun editing these photos.

random-2-1280x1023 — Ohhh my goodness I love this photo so much! This is my friend’s eye, which I edited to look bluer than it really is. (But it is still so beautiful in real life!)

Eh, the pictures of my eye aren’t nearly as pretty, but I like all the different rings of color. 🙂 My eyes are definitely brown from a distance, but colorful up close.

random-4-1280x955 — This is a fun angle! It makes my eyelashes look super long, hehe. O.o XD

Random Topic #4: A Beauteous Sunset

Even if you haven’t been following my blog for very long, you might know that I also have a weakness for sunsets. XD I love how they’re all different, but all glorious (well, most of them)! I took these pictures at my grandparent’s house. The sunset was quite unique that night – the clouds looked like a washboard or something!

random-5-1280x853 — I edited this one (as you can tell).

Random Topic #5: Yummy Lemon Pies

Mom found this delicious recipe in the latest edition of “The Magnolia Journal” magazine. I tried it out, and it was pretty yummy and VERY rich. 🙂 One thing that we noticed is it could use a little bit more lemon juice next time. I didn’t fill the 2/3 cups super full since I was squeezing real lemons and I wanted to have an extra lemon for garnish.

I am quite happy with how the editing turned out on these photos. They still aren’t anything extraordinary, but they sure are better than this: *shudder* I did lots of different things, but some of the main ones were cooling the temperature of the photo, boosting highlights, and using the fancy focus and miniature effects.

Random Topic #6: Party Food

While we’re on the topic of food… XD

This has been a while – my little sister’s birthday was the middle of January, heh heh. XD But anyway, better late than never, right? My mom always makes us a custom cake, and my sister chose a fox. Mom saw this great idea for a coconut fox cake on Pinterest, and it turned out adorable! She also made fox cupcakes, but I didn’t get pictures of those.

For my sister’s birthday supper she chose bananas as one of her sides. 😀 I had fun playing around with banana “tattoos” to make them more special 😛 It’s actually really simple: just poke holes in the peel with a toothpick, and soon the holes will darken by themselves. So fun!

random-4-1280x853 — Ugh, sorry about the bad lighting.

Random Topic #7: Uh… I’m Not Sure What to Call This…

Heh heh. I just had two lonely pictures leftover, which I took on the day of the rabbit photoshoot. So here they are!

random-3-1280x853 — Well that was rather anti-climatic. XD

Well, that’s about it, folks! So what do you think? Do you like this kind of post? What was your favorite random topic?

Thanks for reading!

***Allison***

Signs of Spring

February 25, 2017 | Allison

Ahh, it is SO nice outside. 🙂 I can’t believe how warm February has been! Today I went outside and snapped a few pictures of some spring things, including some gorgeous daffodils that have popped up lately.

I looove daffodils, don’t you?!

dsc_0377-1280x853 — This looks like it might be a double daffodil.

dsc_0381-1280x853 — AHH I absolutely love how my new camera makes the background blurry like this!

The sunshine feels (and looks) wonderful.

Pussywillows are such adorable plants. (If plants can be adorable… XD ) They’re so fuzzy! My grandma gave us a bouquet with pussy willow twigs awhile ago, and we left the twigs in the vase until it grew roots. Then we planted them, and, well, you can see that the experiment was successful. 🙂

Okay so maybe Maggie isn’t really a sign of spring, but she’s still a cute model. 😀

dsc_0400-1280x853 — BWAHAHAHAHA! This picture cracks me up. XD XD XD Maggie always makes this weird grimace when she scratches her ear. 😀

And on that hilarious note, I shall end this post. 🙂 I hope you enjoyed it! Which was your favorite picture?

Does it feel like spring where you live?

***Allison***

P. S. Bleh, my whole family (except Megan) either was sick, is sick, or is getting sick. 😦 I was sick already, but I think I’m getting over it now. Phew! It seems like practically everyone is getting sick all of a sudden, despite the spring-like weather.

Happy Easter! + Spring Photos

March 27, 2016March 27, 2016 | Allison

Happy Easter, everyone! Christ has risen!

I thought I’d show you a few Easter-y springy pictures too. 🙂 Spring is like the year’s resurrection – the old bare trees and brown grass come to life again. Christ’s resurrection is infinitely more amazing and wondrous than spring is or ever will be, but in the new birth of spring perhaps we have a miniscule, faint taste of the joy which we will experience at Christ’s return!

So with that, enjoy this humongous spring collage. 🙂 (Click on any photo to bring up an enlarged slideshow thingy of all of the photos.)

-Allison(cake, daffodils) 005 (1280x960)

Close-up of daffodil bud

My Grandma has these beautiful orange-centered daffodils!

-Allison(cake, daffodils) 006 (1280x960)

And these beautiful ones too!

-Allison(cake, daffodils) 003 (1280x960)

Comment “Spring Fever” if you see this!

I LOVE pussy willows!

-Allison(dew drops, hat, nature walk, bunnies, cottonpile) 036 (1280x960)

-Allison(dew drops, hat, nature walk, bunnies, cottonpile) 035 (1280x960)

Once again, HAPPY EASTER!

***Allison***

Sunset Skyline

March 21, 2016March 21, 2016 | Allison

Hello, hello! Today I’m back with some pretty pictures of a sunset and some birdies. I took these when we were at my grandparents’ house recently.

For once, the pictures I took of a sunset actually might have been prettier than the real thing! The ‘sunset’ setting on my camera made the colors more deep and fiery than they were in real life. First, this is a picture of the whole

And now for the others…

It looks like the sky’s on fire and the mountains are blue waves rushing to put it out… Which of those pictures was your favorite? I can’t decide!

This is a branch silhouetted against a glorious sunset background.

I think I took these next pictures toward the beginning of the sunset. I especially like the second one.

Ahh… I love sunsets. Thanks for taking a peep!

***Allison***

P. S. I have even MORE photos from my grandparents’ house of several different kinds of birds we saw there. (I already made this post with pictures of our farm as seen from my grandparents’ house.) Be looking for the bird post soon!