Hello, dears!
I hear tell it’s getting CLOSE TO CHRISTMAS. Do you think the rumors are true? XD Since it is still November, I thought I’d show you guys some last fall photos I haven’t posted yet before the advent countdown officially begins. I absolutely LOVE how some of these turned out, and I hope you will too!
Hello, dears!
Did you have a good Thanksgiving? I did! So far we’ve had one out of four celebrations, and for the rest we’re going to our old farm for the weekend for fun times and delicious food with friends and family. 🙂
Anyway, back to the post. About a month ago I got the chance to visit my dear friend, Aria, and see her family’s lovely farm. We had a wonderful time together, and this time we made sure to take PLENTY of pictures. XD Aria suggested doing a BFF Q&A to go along with them, and I agreed it sounded fun. And here we are! Get ready for some pretty fall photography and answers to a selection of you guys’ questions. 😉 After you’re done here, make sure and hop over to Aria’s blog to check out fifteen more questions and answers!
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.)
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
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.
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?
Guys, I have SO many extra photos. And that happens pretty much all the time. So I decided to make a new little series: these “Etcetera” posts will have random photography as well as recent life, thoughts… etc. XD (kind of like monthly wrap-ups, but different). I hope you enjoy reading them!
Now, where to begin? I have SO much to cover. Aha, Maggie is a good subject to start with.
I was trying to take a picture of Maggie’s eye but she kept MOVING. XD I did get this one good one, though:
I also got some other, less close-up shots of her. I just love all of Maggie’s expressions, hee hee. It looks like she’s saying, “Aww, you shouldn’t have,” don’t you think?
Such a pretty pup. ♥
It looks like she’s praying. 😛
Dad just finished combining (harvesting corn) for the year. WOOHOO! Now maybe we can jump in the grain bins…
Speaking of fields, Megan and I (and Maggie) did a little mini photoshoot in the soybean field while it was golden green and brown. Isn’t the lighting AMAZING?
If you guys like my photography/lifestyle posts, you should totally check out Emmaline Figura’s blogs, Lucillian Photography and Crystal Ice Studio! Her photography is AMAZING – she deserves so many more followers!
I love this picture, but it sure took a while to clone out the soybean that so rudely butted in front of Megan’s chin. XD Humph, I shouldn’t have said that. Now you’re all probably inspecting Megan’s chin…
Megan got a few pictures of me but most of them didn’t turn out or I had a weird expression, heh heh. This is probably the best one. Still have a weird expression. XD
Guess what? My younger brother and I were driving to piano lessons today, and when we got there we found that one of my car’s tires was completely flat. O.o But guess what again? My brother changed it himself, while I was having my lesson! I really want to learn stuff like that – I’m much better at art than mechanics. XD
The sunset did capture well on my camera, but it did make for some neat silhouettes and bokeh!
Singing hymns is one of my favorite things at our church. The congregation sings beautifully, and it’s glorious when we do an a capella verse. ♥ I like singing for things like that, but not enough to take voice lessons or anything. I usually just hum and whistle at home. 🙂
Do you guys have any special plans for Thanksgiving? We’re having three different celebrations because we have a rather large extended family. 😉 Are you traveling? We aren’t – most of our family lives quite close by. But if you are, here’s a tip: salty snacks like chips really take carsickness away. Well, I mean they help if you eat them. They won’t do much good just sitting there by your seat.
Dad and the kids always pick out a hanging flower basket for Mom for Mother’s Day, and it lasted all the way into late fall this year! Isn’t it pretty?
Ugh, I have to write a 15-30 page research paper for school. *Long sigh* At least we’re taking this week off for Thanksgiving!
We also have a rose bush (well more like a rose vine) by our door, and it’s a weird mix of knockout-type roses and “real” roses, as we like to call them. There are usually only a few “real” roses a year and this was one of them. ♥
To find the rose you must first get past the thorns. To find the rainbow you must first walk through the storm. Bad things make the good more beautiful. And always remember, my dear, there is beauty even in brokenness.
GUYS. LOOK AT THIS PHOTO! I just pressed the button and the moth behind just happened to fly in at the right moment. I LOVE IT WHEN THAT HAPPENS.
Pretty butterflies + pretty zinnias – my photobombing car = a mildly pretty picture.
We have one very old apple tree that usually produces nothing but food for worms. XD However, this year it actually grew real apples and they were DELICIOUS! I don’t know what kind they were, but they were stupendous. And I found this one extremely large apple – see? (The one on the right is a more normal-size one.)
It weighed 15 OUNCES. ALMOST A POUND.
These might be some of my favorite pictures ever! I just love the golden lighting so, so much, especially with the golden tones of the flowers. ♥
Sometimes I feel wise and knowledgeable, and then I wonder if that simply means I still have so much to learn. I guess that happens when you’re a teenager, huh? 😛
(Side note: I rather dislike the word “teenager” for some reason. Don’t exactly know why.)
And would you look at all that bokeh? AHHHHH.
This picture seems relaxing, like you can feel the sun and hear the breeze through the willow branches. 🙂 I can sort of remember planting this willow tree, even though it’s quite a good sized tree now – it’s a curly willow so it grew SUPER fast.
This isn’t really a garden, but it’s golden. Even dust is beautiful when the sun shines through it.
I think cameras can make anything beautiful. In fact, here’s a challenge: find three things you think are ugly and try to take a beautiful picture of them.
We also have two black and two English walnut trees in our yard. I strongly dislike the bitter taste of black walnuts, but English walnuts taste great! (They’re the kind you get in stores.) We don’t usually shell these though, because it’s a lot of work for not much result. Have you tried black walnuts?
This is rather random, but I wanted to take a picture of a begonia blossom from my grandmother’s hanging flower pot because I noticed the beautiful, intricate curlicues in the center of the blossoms. I love the little things like this. 🙂
I got a picture of my youngest brother pressure-washing one of the wagons. 🙂 His birthday was today, actually! The frame was supposed to be transparent but it’s showing up black here…? I hope it works once I publish the post, but I’m doubtful.
I like the way shadows look on this barn. 🙂
And now we have come to the end of this post. Wow, Allison, what a moving conclusion. *clap, clap*
ANYWAY, I hope you enjoyed reading this gathering of orphaned thoughts and photos. 😛 I know it was an enormous post, but I’m only half-sorry because phew, I now have a large chunk of my random photos squared away. XD I don’t think Etcetera posts will usually be this long, though, if I do them in the future. Which category/picture/random thingy was your favorite? Do you think Etcetera posts would make a good series or are they too random and scattered (because I would kind of agree with you on that XD)?
Have a wonderful day, dears, and thanks so much for reading. ♥
***Allison***
Heh heh. Aren’t my puns great? *Sigh* Yes, I know they’re awful. ANYWAY, I’m super excited to show you guys these fall pictures! I’ve been saving them up for a while now and I finally get to post them. 🙂
First I want to show you our beautiful ombre maple tree. 😀 Well actually the leaves are all fallen from it now, but this is how it used to look. Isn’t it lovely?
One of the other maples beside our lane was absolutely gorgeous this year! Especially with the sun shining through the leaves… ah, it was beautiful.
I LOVE these pumpkin pictures! 😀
And back to the tree again. This bokeh… OH MY GOODNESS! ♥
I really like the composition of the next one. (Wow, I’m doing a lot of portrait, vertical photos aren’t I? Here’s a question: Should I make them smaller so you can see them without scrolling, or do you like them full size as they are?)
Leaves can make even dusty black trucks pretty. 🙂
I promise I didn’t put the leaf there. Isn’t the position so neat and funny?
And of course we musn’t forget the classic holding-a-leaf-up picture, am I right?
Ooh, and then I got several adorable pictures of Maggie looking all dejected. 😛
HA HA Maggie looks like she’s havng an intent conversation with a leaf or something and the leaf just said something shocking. XD What would you caption this photo? (No winners this time – just for fun. 😉 )
Here’s a fun fall photography prompt: try to find fall leaves in a half-rainbow, from red to green. Arrange them in an ombre pattern and snap away! 🙂 I had a lot of fun with this, but it also took FOREVER to collect the leaves.
Huh, what do you know. I’m wearing the same skirt as in this post. (I promise I don’t wear it every Sunday. XD )
I rather like this edit.
And lastly, just a few edited photos. I spent SUCH a long time trying to capture a leaf falling. XD
And we end with a photo featuring a picturesque (?) four-wheeler? Okay…
P. S. GUYS. I JUST REALIZED SOMETHING ELSE. If you type this: :{), it looks like an emoji with a mustache. WHY IS THAT NOT A THING? Oh, right. Probably because it’s completely useless. True. BUT STILL. Okay, I’m actually done now.
EXTREME CUTENESS ALERT: If you are not able to cope with impossibly adorable animals, perhaps you should skip this post.
Okay, everyone’s still here. Good. BECAUSE THEY ARE TOO CUTE TO MISS, EEP! This is definitely my favorite bunny photoshoot I’ve ever done and it turned out gorgeous, if I do say so myself! 😀 Special thanks to my sister Megan who posed and calmed the bunnies throughout this traumatizing time of sitting on white foamboard and being bombarded by flowers and shot by cameras.
And now let’s just get to the pictures. I CAN’T WAIT ANY LONGER. (Actually I can wait long enough to give you a warning that there will probably be a lot of caps in this post. Obviously.)
Let’s start with the one and only Olaf. Olaf’s prop was a rosebud from our bush, and it was perfect! Also sorry for all the weird different shades of white in the backgrounds. The original pictures were rather bluish and they were hard to adjust properly since Olaf’s a different color of white. 
Anyway, just ignore that part and hopefully enjoy them anyway.
Wait. That… wasn’t a rabbit. Oh well.
I dub thee, Princess Olaf. (Yes, Olaf is a girl. We thought she was a boy and had already named her by the time we figured out that the seller had given us the wrong one. XD)
BWAHAHAHA isn’t this picture hilarious? Olaf kept winking for some reason.
AGAIN WITH THE WINK.
Ugh the white is so off on this one but I love it otherwise! Isn’t it so pretty?
And now for my dear fluffy Willow. She actually had recently gotten a trim when I took these pictures so she’s not as fluffy as normal. Also Willow gets more pictures because I didn’t need to edit them as much, heh heh. AND BECAUSE SHE’S FLUFFY.
Here we have a behind-the-scenes picture. My little sister Carmen also wanted to help (but just briefly), and poor Willow was a bit befuddled with all the chaos, I think. We chose marigolds because they’re pretty, but I think they may actually be poisonous to rabbits? I’m not sure. Anyway, we made sure she didn’t so much as nibble one, and she’s still alive to tell the story.
I’m pretty sure that’s an orange teardrop of stress on her cheek.
Good JOB, Willow! You stayed!
HA HA. I don’t even know what her expression is but it’s funny.
THIS. IS. HILARIOUS. It looks like she’s directing a plane coming in for landing or helping someone try to parallel park. “Okay a little to the right. Nope, your other right. There, you got it. Keep on a-coming, beep, beep, beep.”
We actually did get some good photos in the midst of all the funny ones, though! While it may look like she sat there innocently staring at me, she did not. She took every chance to meander away from where she was supposed to be in hopes of greener grass. (But this grass is pretty green, so…)
Ha ha, she looks like a scared little fluffy pancake. But a cute one. ♥
Aww, so sweet! That’s it, your getting the hang of it now, Willow!
Mmpf, maybe not. SOOOORRY.
Aww I love this one! Isn’t it so beautiful and adorable? You are a lovely Queen of Summer, Willow.
Next we have Diamond. I think she’s very noble-looking and handsomely beautiful, don’t you? I love the colors in these pictures!
Whoops, I think I over-edited this one…
Next we went to the soybean field, which is mostly featured in these pictures as a yellow glow.
I LOVE this one!
Ha ha, her dewlap. XD (A dewlap is the big floppy thingy around their neck that some adult female rabbits have. It’s normal, don’t worry. 😉 )
Now for Snickers. GUYS, HIS CHUBBY CHEEKS HELP ME. Is he not the cutest?
AHHH THIS PICTURE THOUGH.
I LOVE HIS SQUISHY FACE.
And lastly but not leastly, a picture of the three compadres, Diamond, Olaf, and Lily. They are similar breeds (Diamond’s a Silver Fox and the other two are New Zealands), but they’re different colors, which makes for a lovely group shot. (And again I have kind of a weird white balance thing going on. Sorry ’bout that!)
Lily: Let me just move up a little bit so you can see me better. Is this a good angle?
Olaf: Mmph. You’re squishing me.
In which three frightened rabbits cower under the… oh, it’s just a camera.
HA HA WHAT IS UP WITH THE WINKING AGAIN, OLAF?! XD It cracks me up.
And that’s about it! I took tons more photos than that but those were the best. What did you think, guys? Guys? Oh dear, perhaps that was a little too much cuteness for one post…
If anyone survived, which bunny’s shoot was your favorite?
Thanks so much for reading, my dears, and have a wonderful day!
***Allison***
P. S. OOPS. Nearly forgot about the Caption It contest! Here’s the photo:
And my favorite caption was by Zielle.
Maggie: Wait, wait, I think I got it! I can wink!
Allison: That’s blinking, Maggie.
HA HA IT’S PERFECT! Thanks, Zielle, and everyone else who participated! I loved reading your captions.
Guys, (or rather girls) I super excited to show you the things I bought for Black Friday! We went shopping late Thursday night and a little bit on Black Friday too. Did you go Black Friday shopping? Anyway, let me show you my goodies. 🙂
A cute backpack, a beautiful ESV Study Bible, and… (wait for it) a new camera! 😀 😀 😀 Woohoo!
The backpack: My old backpack has seen its better days, so I was really happy to find this pretty one at JCPenny. (And if you’re wondering why I need a backpack when I’m homeschooled – I use it to hold my co-op things. 😉 )
The Bible: Family Christian Bookstores had a 50% discount off of the whole line of ESV Study Bibles! My old Bible barely had any notes, so I really wanted a Study Bible. And I love this one! It’s beautiful and has lots of footnotes and cross-references and even a few illustrations. (Why why why didn’t I get any pictures of the inside? *facepalm*)
The cover is imprinted with swirly ivy designs that were quite fun to photograph…
And the camera! I’m really excited because it’s my first dSLR camera. 😀 It’s a Nikon d3400, and it came with two lenses – a standard lens and a zoom lens (I think). I might do a review of it later, but for now I’m still learning how to use it. 😉 There are several things I miss about my old camera (mostly ease-of-use), but I do like how this one has manual aperture and shutter speed options! I can’t wait to take some softened photos of a waterfall.
For the rest of the post I’m going to dump heaps and heaps of experimental photos on you, so take a deep breath and do some scrolling-finger exercises before we begin. XD
Oh my. That was a LOT of photos, wasn’t it? Yikes. Hee hee, I hope you enjoyed this post in spite of (or because of) that!
***Allison***
P. S. I always think of so many things to write for P. S.’s, but when it comes time to actually write them I can never remember what I was thinking… 😦 XD
*Sniff* Fall is almost over. 😦 All our trees have lost their leaves except for a few brave maples. My favorite of those is almost a neon yellow! So pretty! Of course I couldn’t resist taking pictures – and then showing them to you. 😉
***Allison***
P. S. I have some very exciting news I think you guys will like, but I have to collect a few more pictures of it before posting. 😀 Hee hee, aren’t I mysterious? Do you have any guesses? (But if you already know what it is (ahem, Megan, Clara, and Grace), don’t give it away por favor. 😉 )
The other day I went out to take some photos at “the golden hour” as we photographers call it. Heh heh. Maggie came along to protect me from sunburn or vicious groundhogs or something… or perhaps she was just bored. XD
We have a grand old maple in our front yard that’s usually the first to turn colors.
Even though the year is going down in flames, you could say, there were still some bright, spring-like greens around.
Maggie trotted faithfully along beside me and guarded me while I sat and took pictures. ♥ She was on the lookout for those vicious groundhogs, I suppose. XD
The sun turned my hair really a bright red. It’s a little bit reddish-goldish like this in real life, but not this bright! (Yes, I know, rather random pictures. But it was fun!)
It’s kind of awkward when you’re trying to photograph your hair (for some reason) so you hold a strand in front of your face and then your dog comes over to make sure you’re not paralyzed or something since you haven’t gotten up for the past 30 seconds or so… *Sigh* XD
You can see the gorgeous sky peeking through the grass in this one. That was probably one of the prettiest skies I’ve seen not counting sunsets!
I love this picture because 1.) look at the bokeh and 2.) look at the cute wittle spiderweb garland hung on the grass! The spiders must have been having a welcome party for autumn.
And lastly but not leastly, I shall leave you with an extremely hilarious picture of Maggie trying to chase down an itch. XD XD XD
BWAHAHAHAHA! Sooo funny!
So there you go. Photos from the golden hour on a golden day in the golden season. Gold is nice, don’t you think?
***Allison***
P. S. Sometimes I don’t like fall because it’s too beautiful. 😛 But seriously, do you ever have that feeling when something’s so beautiful you can’t stand it so you whip out your camera in a frantic attempt to save some of the beauty and capture it forever and that helps a little bit but it’s still just too much? Or is that just me…
Allison Marie 