Hey friends! Long time no see! I haven’t been posting on here very often because of an exciting new development: I’m attempting to simplify my digital presence (wow that sounds fancy) by combining most of my social media and WordPress content into one Substack account.
That means, going forward, I may not be very active on this blog. I know that sounds sad and like the end of an era, but really it’s just a continuation of this blog, but on a new platform. Nowadays Substack seems to be the place for long-form written content, while WordPress… well, the blogging community here just isn’t what it was 5-10 years ago. And I miss that.
If you’ve been a long time reader, thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting a blog that has literally changed my life for the better. I hope you’ll subscribe (for free!) to the new version of this blog right here on Substack, where I can not only share my photography and writing, but shorter notes, small poems, and chats with you guys in the comments. And I may still pop back on here once in a while, as WordPress is still a great place to share certain types of informational posts.
Anyway! I thought I would close this chapter of my blog with a crowd favorite: a massive miscellaneous photo dump collected over many months. Enjoy! 🙂
I’m back with the second half of my vacation pictures from our recent trip to OBX. Today’s post will feel sort of like an “Etcetera” collection since it features all the random photos that didn’t fit into the last one.
Read on for Jeep duckies, beach flowers, good eats, and a proud pigeon. Enjoy this random collection!
Last Saturday evening I decided to wander around our farm and take some pictures, and I’m so glad I did! The woods and fields looked so peaceful and gorgeous in the golden light. ❤ Since the lighting was perfect, I focused on adjusting the settings in the moment to capture beauty without having to edit it later.
I absolutely love how the photos turned out, but instead of just saying that after every photo, I’m going to share some of my favorite music interspersed throughout with a link to a YouTube video for each of them. 🙂 I mostly listen to Christian music, but I also have a few pop, country, classical/instrumental, and folk songs on my playlist. Pretty much whatever strikes my fancy. XD They’re all clean, though; you don’t have to worry about that. 😉
Now, I hope you enjoy the photoshoot and maybe even find some new music to add to your collection!
Today I have even more spring photos for you! Are you shocked? I thought not. But spring is my favorite season and it’s just so photogenic… *sighs happily*
I went through the past few weeks of photography and picked my favorites from several different mini shoots to combine into one post. I love these photos, and I hope you do too!
Is it a bit dismal outside where you live too? This winter has been pretty warm for us, but SO cloudy and rainy. If you’re in need of some sunlight, I have just the post for you! 😀
I took these two sets of pictures with my Canadian cousins way back in October, at the 50th anniversary celebration, and just haven’t gotten around to posting this second part till now – oops! I LOVE both photoshoots, though, and I hope you guys will too!
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!
I’m back with another random photos post and BOY did I need to make one! I found over a hundred miscellaneous photos I wanted to use today. :O Heh heh, but don’t worry, I cut it down to about half that amount with much labor. 😛 Sit back, relax, and start scrolling! Continue reading →
I’m SO excited to post this photoshoot, because I think it’s one of my favorites ever! The evening was certainly wonderful. ❤ Plus, the lighting was so perfect I didn’t have to edit most of these at all! Definitely a bonus. Continue reading →
It’s been AGES since I made the last “Moving On” post, but I wanted to wait until I could finish up this mini-series. And now I can! We are all moved in to the big house now, except for one room of unpacked boxes… yeah, that might take us a while. XD But now, enjoy this account of the most recent phase in our moving process! I can’t go over every single part in detail, so I’m just going to highlight some major chunks: packing and unpacking the house, packing up Dad’s shop, and taking down the old log cabin. Enjoy!
Packing the House
Packing up our old house was exhausting and kind of sad. I can’t remember the rooms ever being empty, since we moved there when I was one. However, it WAS exciting to finally be ready to move into the big house! One day while we were packing I saw this box which used to hold bittersweet vine found on our farm, and I had to get a picture. Moving really is…
Often when I got up in the mornings, I would step between this curtain and the window…
and look out at this view, to see what the weather was like, and wonder what would happen today.
The last evening at our old house was gorgeous. It was sad to think I’ll never see these views from the upstairs windows anymore. I’ll miss them. *sigh*
Some of our family as well as people from church helped us pack up, which was wonderful! Dad got a (not the most beautiful) trailer for our semi, to load up all our stuff. We fit practically our whole house into one trailer. It was strange to see all our familiar furniture stacked together in an unfamiliar place like that.
And then we left. We can come back again, of course, but it will never be the same since the house and the farm are no longer ours. *sigh*
Goodbye, old farm. ❤
Unpacking House Stuff
The semi trailer got to our new farm a couple days later, and since my Dad and brothers weren’t available to unpack as soon as we hoped, the girls decided to start in ourselves! We got probably 2/3 of the semi trailer unpacked with just my mom, my grandmother, us three girls. 😀 It was great. I didn’t get too many pictures of this, but I got a ton of videos! I want to make a fast-motion video of us unloading the trailer. 🙂 Here’s a picture of Logan helping us, at least:
It took us two days, I believe, to get to this: AN EMPTY TRAILER!
After we unpacked our dining room table + chairs, we sat down to the first “official” meal in the big house, with delicious food that some of our friends from church kindly brought us. ❤
HA HA, here’s one last bonus picture for this section. XD Gram was like, “Allison, where’s your camera? You need a picture of this!” And I hurried off to get it. 😛
In case you’re wondering, the package is a fridge. One of many, sadly. Dear me, the first fridge we got from Lowes wasn’t the right kind, the second one didn’t work, the third one leaked, the fourth was the wrong kind AGAIN, and we’re still waiting for Lowes to bring the fifth one and HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE RIGHT THIS TIME. Goodness gracious, WHAT ON EARTH IS WRONG WITH LOWES?
Packing the Shop
Once we got the house stuff moved, we went back to our old farm and packed up Dad’s entire shop (which he uses for fixing farm machinery). Let me tell you, that was a job! Over 40 years, the shop had accumulated enough nuts, bolts, screws, paint, ratchets, wrenches, etc. to seriously open their own hardware shop. XD Only it would be an extremely dusty hardware shop.
For some reason I think this looks really neat…
As you can see, Dad has SO many tools in all different sizes, particularly wrenches. I really like this picture. 😀
The best part of packing was having pizza for lunch. 😛
Taking Down the Log Cabin
Remember this old, fallen-down log cabin in our backyard?
Well just a few weeks ago, we took it down the rest of the way. I was hoping to find some more neat old letters or other interesting artifacts, but sadly we mostly found… a lot of junk. It was a bigger project to take it down than I expected, but it’s nice not to have to stare at it from half the windows now. 🙂
First, Dad and the boys pushed it over with the telehandler. Next we all clambered up on the roof with a couple of hammers and started extracting the nails so we could peel off the metal. The tar paper under the metal was covered with dead ladybugs and stinkbugs. O.o That was nice.
After we dragged away the roof skeleton, we had to pick out all the leftover boards and junk. That took quite a while.
Thankfully we had the skidloader to help!
Like I said, we didn’t find many valuable old things, but we did find some interesting junk! Including…
Apologies for the awful picture. I was trying to make the junk look at least a BIT prettier but I think I made it worse…?
a rather sad-looking work boot
3-5 fire hoses
a crushed dog kennel
two rusty lawn chairs
a bent-up bike
two very nice terracotta flower pots
a rusty metal flamingo that Megan REALLY wants to restore XD
a blue plastic kiddie pool (which Carmen was EXTREMELY excited about XD)
a large, enormously thick slab of slate
an antique water pump
We are keeping the second half of the aforementioned items. Also some of the century-old heart pine wood.
It was finally cleared away about supper time. We were planning to make a patio around the chimney, but it’s not in the best shape so we might take the chimney down later after all.
And there you have it! A VERY abbreviated account of some moving-related things that we did recently. We are all enjoying living in the big house immensely. It’s just so huge and beautiful! Maybe once we get it decorated I can give you guys a tour. 😉
What was your favorite section of this post? Do you think Megan should fix up the flamingo? Ever have troubles like we did with our fridge? And what is your favorite kind of pizza?
If you’re in need of some sunlight, I have just the post for you! 😀
Allison Marie 