ARE YOU READY TO SEE WHO WON? Don’t worry, I won’t keep you in suspense for TOO long.
And the winner is…
GIVEAWAY WINNER! + Random Photos
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Golden Hour Sisters Photoshoot
I’m SO excited to show you this photoshoot, guys! (Hmm, I seem to start all my posts this way, don’t I?) Anyway, Megan and I love doing impromptu photoshoots and we recently did two photoshoots at the golden hour. I have to say, they turned out GORGEOUS! I think these are my favorite of the sisters photoshoots so far!
Megan took all the pictures of me and I took all the pictures of her (well, obviously). Sometimes the “model” chose her own poses and sometimes the photographer did. All pictures in this post were edited by me, if they were edited at all.
I hope you guys have as much fun looking through these pictures as we did taking them!
We still have a beautiful tangled jungle of marigolds and zinnias which is perfect for photoshoots. Don’t you think?
I love the next one! Aren’t the marigolds gigantic?
Heh heh, I like this one too. XD
I told Megan to hold the marigold so it looks like she’s blowing a bubble, and then she PUT IT IN HER MOUTH. *Sigh* She said it tasted bad, but I didn’t feel real sorry for her. XD
I LOVE THIS PICTURE. IT’S SO FUNNY.
HA HA IS THIS NOT HILARIOUS? Megan thought of this – don’t blame me.
It looks like she’s yanking the flower out by the roots. O.o
Okay so Megan’s expression is just a tad odd, BUT THE LIGHTING. Ohhhh my goodness, I love it so much!
I loooove this next one! Doesn’t it look kind of Pinterest-y? (And maybe even aesthetic? Maybe?)
Oh look, I’m Ophelia. I actually love these photos though! I came up with the idea (although I’ve seen it before), and Megan arranged the flowers and took the pictures.
Here we have a classic, somewhat cliché picture. But it’s still pretty. 🙂
Wow my hair looks super long here. O.o
It was quite hard to get good, clear pictures of someone swinging, but I finally figured out that manual focus really helps for this because you can preset it.
Annnnd that’s all for today, folks! Which pictures were your favorite? Which photo idea was your favorite?
I hope you enjoyed these, dears, and thanks so much for reading!
***Allison***
P. S. Only a few more days to enter my giveaway! I’ll announce the winner November 1st. YAY I’m so excited!
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Bits & Pieces #1
Hello, my dears! Welcome to yet ANOTHER random photography post, where Allison dumps all the miscellaneous orphan photos that she couldn’t fit in any other post. XD I am waaay backed up with extra photos so I hope you’re ready for a lot of photography posts! 😀
Ahem. Let’s begin.
The Eclipse
I still haven’t shown you my pictures from the eclipse? Dear me, I AM behind. XD Anyway, I didn’t get any spectacular pictures, but I did get a few through welding glass to at least document what happened. The welding glass made everything look green, but I managed to edit out most of the color except that one green guy over there. XD As you can see, we weren’t in the path of totality.
I thought the eclipse looked really neat through clouds!
And here’s just a bonus picture I took that day. So pretty!
The Enormous Bonfire
We occasionally burn a heap of brush or extra wood piles and such on our farm, and I got these pictures from one of those times. Dad pushed the pile around with the telehandler which made the bonfire practically explode in a column of glittering orange sparks. It was breathtaking!
Bonus picture of the cows that watched the bonfire with us. XD There were a bit confused about what was happening, as cows usually seem to be.
There were actually a few bulls in the pasture, and one started sort of stomping and bellowing. O.o Thankfully nothing bad happened. Isn’t it funny how he has a heart on his forehead? You can’t see it too well in this picture, but he really does!
Megan’s Birthday Party
We had a lot of fun decorating the front porch and outside table for Megan’s party. Aren’t the colors pretty?
We used zinnias from our garden for some of the decorations, and I got some lovely pictures of the bouquets. ♥
Megan wanted to have doughnuts instead of cake, which was quite a good idea in my opinion. 😉 We made the doughnuts the previous day and I also made a little happy birthday banner for the top.
Yum, fresh lemonade!
Grandma brought Megan a beautiful rose from her house along with her gift.
We had a water balloon fight for one of the party games. It was so fun, AND I didn’t get very wet, which was good since it wasn’t that hot. XD
A bonus picture of the gorgeous spreading maple in our front yard…
Bonus picture #2 of an adorable fuzzy caterpillar we found before the party.
Isn’t it cute? 😛
Moving a Piano + Another Bonfire
One night we went to our grandparents’ house to help move their piano from the basement to their room. 🙂 It was quite hard work… well actually I didn’t do much but stay out of the way and document it for posterity, but it looked like hard work. When they finally brought it to my grandparents’ room, it wouldn’t fit through the door. But then they tried turning it on end and thankfully it just fit. Phew! The poor piano.
I also got some super neat pictures of the piano without its top on. I love them, especially after they were edited!
After we got the piano all figured out we had a bonfire and picnic. Fire is so fun to watch, isn’t it?
I got a really good picture of my grandpa smiling when he didn’t know I was taking a picture. I edited it a good bit, as you can tell, but isn’t it neat?
Freshly Picked
I took these photos for my sister’s photo contest, BIBPC. I think they turned out rather pretty!
Also isn’t this tomato HILARIOUS?! It looks like it’s sticking out its tongue at you.
The Rest of Them
THESE COOKIES ARE DELICIOUS! I took pictures of them because I wanted to submit the recipe to Olivia Bell’s wonderful magazine. Be sure to check it out (and make it) when the next issue comes out here soon! You can subscribe to her magazine through the contact form in this post.
Random picture of the details on one of my Sunday dresses…
I edited this one a LOT to get rid of the power lines crisscrossing it, but this is the view from one of our upstairs windows. 🙂
There we go! That was pretty much a whole bunch of mini posts smushed into one huge one. XD I hope you enjoyed! Which topic was your favorite?
***Allison***
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Pink Flowers and Little Sisters
The other day when we had our little Labor Day adventure I did a rather cute photoshoot with my little sister Carmen, if I do say so myself. 🙂 I just love how the pictures turned out, and I can’t wait to show you guys!
When I saw all the pretty pink smartweed flowers, I knew they were just begging to be in a photoshoot. Heh heh. I asked Carmen if I could take pictures of her and after a few tries she reluctantly agreed… and then once we got started she didn’t want to stop. XD If you love photography and have siblings, especially younger siblings, a photoshoot is a really fun thing to do with them!
Ahem. And now for the pictures (and there are a LOT). XD
“Oh, Carmen, you look creepy!”
*laughs* “Yeah, I meant to.”
I took a lot of pictures with Carmen in the background because I thought the lighting and bokeh made it look lovely. 🙂
Oh my goodness, isn’t the setting perfect for these? The lighting… the flowers… ahh!
Carmen found a hollow stump and wanted me to take pictures of her in it.
Okay, now these next few pictures are some of my favorites from the shoot!
“Allison, you should take a picture of me bending down, like I’m finding something on the ground.”
Ha ha, so she wanted me to take a picture of her on that long, horizontal limb in the last picture, and I agreed. But we had quite the struggle to get her up there. XD I hung my camera on a branch and tried boosting her up, then letting her climb on top of me, and after several tries and much laughter we finally succeeded. XD
I forget if Carmen or I had the idea for these next pictures… I think it was me. Anyway, they turned out so cute!
She was a bit uncertain of how to pose without jabbing herself on the barbed wire fence, but she figured it out. 😉
And we shall end with another of my favorites:
There we go! I hope you had as much fun looking through the pictures as I did taking them. 🙂 Which was your favorite (if you have one)? Have you ever done a photoshoot with a younger sibling? This one was quite fun and if I started to run out of ideas, Carmen gave me an ample supply. XD
Thanks for reading, my dears, and have a lovely day!
***Allison***
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Labor Day Adventures
This Labor Day we did something a different than an ordinary picnic or cook-out. Since Dad and the boys were out harvesting corn, Mom suggested that we girls pack a lunch and just go out and walk around the farm. So we did! It was quite fun.
We packed some sandwiches, mint tea, chips, and a couple other things which I can’t remember (XD), and took along backpacks filled with books and cameras.
This is my cucumber sandwich. Say hello. I didn’t want to waste the bread crusts after I cut out the sandwich, so I flattened them with a rolling pin, spread some cream cheese on, and rolled them up into roses. 😛
First we headed past a place we call “The Sycamores” because… there are a lot of huge sycamore trees by the creek. 
I found some lovely periwinkle morning glories along the path. Aren’t they charming?
We finally settled on a pretty, peaceful corner of the pasture filled with smartweed – a dainty little pink flower. We spread out a blanket, hung the hammock, and relaxed.
I did a really fun, cute photoshoot with my little sister here, but this post would be insanely long if I included all those photos oh wait it already is, so I’ll save it for later. Anyway, this was a great spot for taking pictures of little things. My favorite! 😀
The scenery was more scrubby here than the rest of our farm, but still pretty.
Trees are nice.
After we ate lunch and read for a while, we decided to move to a different spot. We crossed the barbwire fence (no easy feat in this pasture), walked over the field, up the hill, down a lane, and up another hill to a beautiful hidden spot behind a pasture. We’d never been there before, which is something rare since we’ve walked pretty much everywhere on our farm, and it was delightful to explore it.
Unfortunately I didn’t get many pictures with my camera because it ran out of battery, but Megan lent me hers.
HA HA cows are such funny creatures. XD
I had the idea to play mancala while we were there. (Have you ever played that? It’s really fun!) I dug out some holes in the dirt with a stick and used corn kernels for the marbles. It actually worked!
It’s really hard to see on camera, but Carmen and I built a great fort around this perfect square of trees. There were huge logs scattered everywhere (one pile was in a huge sinkhole O.o ). They made great walls but were exhausting to carry. We didn’t finish the fort, but we did make a good start.
Mom and Carmen and I also built this little campfire area in a pretty shaded nook. We stacked stones for a firepit, hauled in some rocks and stumps for chairs, and made benches from logs and rocks. 🙂 It was fun.
Mom also found this really odd-looking spider. O.o (She’s for you, Clara. 😉 )
In the evening our whole family came up and had a picnic with us, and a bonfire too.
So that’s what we did for Labor Day! It was great fun, even though the mosquitoes practically devoured me. I got over 40 mosquito bites (yes, I counted XD). O.o Anyway, the memories will last for much longer than the bites will, so it’s all good.
I hope you enjoyed this loooong post, my dears! Which was your favorite picture? Which was your least favorite? What did you do for Labor Day?
***Allison***
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My County Fair Entries for 2017
Hello, my friends! 😀
I know some of your were looking forward to seeing my fair entries and what prizes I won, so here you go! This is for you. 🙂
Here’s a picture of all my entries except the photos. It’s… kind of hard to tell what’s what, so let me show you a little more clearly…
A strange little octopus. 🙂
I like this one! Two little gnomes in a flower house. 🙂
Look how tiny he is!
A doughnut turtle! She’s so cute. 😀 (Also note you can find this and the previous three clay things at my Etsy shop.)
This is a lil’ hippo I made for my little sister’s birthday to hold trinkets and such. She said, “No, Allison, do you have to enter it? I need it to hold my things!” XD 😀
I also won a sweepstakes ribbon for ceramics, so that was really exciting!
I made this tissue paper flower from a DIY book.
These didn’t win a prize because I accidentally grabbed a falling-apart one from my collection. XD Oops.
I made this cute little elephant in a sewing class. It was rather hard to make, but I love how it turned out!
Just a bonus picture of a butterfly that was passing through. 😀
Here’s the picture of my friend Aria from the last post. Sadly, it didn’t win a prize. 
Oh well! I like it anyway. 🙂
Strangely enough, this won third prize, even though I think the portrait was a lot better. Perhaps they were judging by creativity?
Okay, now for the photos I entered. I entered this in “Abstract,” but it didn’t win a prize.
This was for “Action.” It also didn’t win a prize.
I entered this in “Close-Up,” and it won first prize!
“Architecture,” and no prize.
“Artistic,” and it won third prize! 😀
“People,” and no prize.
“Pets” – isn’t Clemmy so cute? Sadly, no prize.
“Landscape” – no prize.
“Rural _____,” with third prize!
“Wildlife,” and no prize.
“Humor,” and first prize! Heh heh, isn’t it funny? XD
And that’s all for this year! Altogether I believe I got 12 prize ribbons out of 21 things entered, plus one sweepstakes ribbon. Not too bad!
Well, I hope you enjoyed looking over a summary of the stuff I made and photos I took in a year’s time. 🙂 Do you like to enter things in your fair? Did you win any prizes?
Thanks for reading, my dears, and have a lovely day. ♥
***Allison***
P. S. Guys, please pray for the people in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and the ones possibly in the path of Hurricane Irma. I can’t even imagine how hard it must be. We’ll keep you in our thoughts and prayers, friends! ♥
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Amelia Island Part 2
Hello hello! I’m back with part two of my pictures from our vacation with friends. 😀 (See part one here.) I love these photos, and I hope you do too!
Let’s start with the crabbing photos. We went out to a marsh to catch blue crabs with some crab traps, chicken pieces for bait, and some coolers. It was SO much fun and we ended up catching quite a few crabs – around 8! They didn’t amount to much once we cooked them, but the few crumbs we had tasted good. XD
We drove around everywhere in golf carts, which allowed you to take in all the beautiful scenery. ♥ Isn’t it gorgeous?
Besides crabs, we also caught some various other water creatures like fish and shrimp. (But we didn’t keep them.)
We caught two of these fish, I believe, and the second made a weird grunting/clicking sound. O.o It was so odd and funny!
Doesn’t this look like a tropical angelfish or something? We were all amazed to catch it.
Shrimp look hilarious with their long antennae. XD
And of course, the crabs. Look how blue they are underneath – so pretty!
Now for more beach pictures. 🙂
Shore birds…
I absolutely LOVE these pictures of my little sister Carmen! (I seem to be saying “I love this picture” to almost every picture, huh? XD)
The sunset over the beach was gorgeous! Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of it at the peak, but I did get these.
Lastly, I took a bunch of pictures on the way home, especially of the enormously, voluminously puffy clouds (wow that was fun to say).
And that’s about it! I hope you enjoyed the huge conglomeration of photos, dears. 🙂 Do you have a favorite(s) or is it too overwhelming to pick?
Also, HAPPY (late) BIRTHDAY to my sister Megan! If you haven’t already done so, hop on over to her blog and send her a belated birthday note. 🙂 (By the way, she also posted the pictures that I took of her on the sister’s photoshoot here.)
***Allison***
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Books, Blooms, and Bales {Portrait Photography}
Megan and I did a super fun photoshoot of each other yesterday and got tons of great pictures! We had way too much fun figuring out creative ways to pose for each other. I’ve tried (and mostly failed) to narrow them down for you guys. Whoops.
Photo credits to my sister Megan. (And assistance credits to me. Heh heh.)
Okay, buckle up, ’cause this is going to be a loooong post.
We started in the barn, since haybales make awfully good props.
Next we went to the cotton seed barn… with a tiny spiderwebby window. O.o
These pictures are kind of dark but CUTE because, hey, it’s a bunny! 😀
Ooh, I love these pictures! We had a lot of fun with hair flips. 😛
Okay, if you actually looked at all those pictures… WOW. Congratulations, I give you the Most Patient Reader award.
I hope you enjoyed this post! Which pictures did you like best? Which one or two do you think I should use for my new profile picture?
Also, click here to see some of the pictures I took of Megan.
Thanks for reading!
***Allison***
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Amelia Island Part 1
We just got back from a lovely vacation with our friends at Amelia Island, Florida. Of course I took hundreds of pictures, and thusly I’m going to divide this into two posts, heh heh. Get ready for a huge photo dump!
Pictures from the drive there…
My siblings counted different kinds of trailers on the way there and back, keeping tally with a dry-erase marker on the window. They got a lot more than this till the trip was over. 🙂 (And yes, they did manage to get one truck honk in the end. XD)
Now we’re at the island! The trees at the resort are GORGEOUS, all old and gnarly, and covered in ferns and dripping with Spanish moss. It makes the whole place look really neat and mysterious.
And now for tons of beach pictures! You will be proud of me, guys: I managed not to ruin my camera this time like I have at pretty much every other beach vacation. XD
Going down the boardwalk…
Look what we found!
This beach is absolutely gorgeous. ♥
I love all the shells along the beach!
Isn’t this neat? You can’t see it too well in the picture, but I found a hollowed out shell that fit me perfectly as a ring, like it was made for me! Maybe it was. 🙂 Wow, my fingers look weirdly long in this picture. O.o Probably because they are.
Can you spot the pretty little purple cochina shell?
And the waves are wonderful too… (Can you tell I just really like the beach? XD)
It’s amazing how powerful water can be.
Isn’t this picture neat? I like how the wave is rolling. 🙂
And we’ll end with this cute little tree frog we found stuck to a window of the beach house. He’s all tucked into a little frog package. 😛
Whew! Done with the first part! I hope you enjoyed. But I have to say, I think the rest of the pictures are even better. 😉 I can’t wait to show you!
What is your favorite part of the beach? The waves? The sand? The shells?
Thanks for visiting and see you later, dear readers! 😀
***Allison***
Allison Marie 