Hello, dears!
I hope you all had a wonderful, joyous Easter – I sure did! We spent the weekend at my grandparents’ house, where I took a bunch of photos of their adorable new St. Bernard puppy, Pebbles. She’s so happy and cute and rambunctious.
I think you guys are going to love these pictures! Puppies are hard to resist, and St. Bernard puppies are certainly no exception. ❤
So, ready to meet Pebbles?
Hello, dears!
A couple of weeks ago, we went to a gorgeous park near where we live to celebrate a friend’s birthday. It was kind of like an arboretum, with elaborate gardens and landscaping, as well as more natural looking areas. Everything was in full bloom and full life and ahh, it was gorgeous! The perfect place for picnicking and exploring.
About half the photos I’m going to show you guys today are nature photos – blossoming trees, waterfalls, etc. The other half is not as beautiful but WAY more amusing photos of my friends jumping rope. And this isn’t your ordinary kind of jump rope, guys. XD XD
Ahem, now that you’re prepared, let’s get to it!
Hello, dears!
SPRING IS FINALLY HERE! The world is looking green and pink and yellow and lovely around here, and I’m so happy about it. The redbud in front of our house is in full bloom, so of course I took a heap of photos. 😉 I hope you enjoy this explosion of pink, along with a few pictures of me playing around with the lacy shadows and trying not to squint too much in the bright sun. 😛
There’s not a whole lot to say by way of captions, so I decided to let the photos speak for themselves, and weave in a springy poem I wrote instead. (I got this idea partly from Clara’s lovely post here!)
I hope you guys enjoy reading this as much as I thoroughly enjoyed making it. 🙂
Hello, dears!
I often have people ask me how they can improve they’re photography or if I have any tips for them. So today I thought I’d make a post on one very important tip that often gets overlooked.
It goes along with two other big photography tips:
There are plenty of blog posts and articles about the first two, but I haven’t seen many or perhaps any about the third, so I thought I’d address that point today. 🙂
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Hello, dears!
I’ve loved purple basically my whole life, so I was thrilled to see a little “meadow” of purple henbit pop up in one of our fields. Henbit is rather an ugly weed up close, but from the right perspective it can be stunning – so of course, I set off with my camera to find and capture that right perspective. 😉
My little sister and I went to explore it one morning, but sadly I can’t find the pictures from that day. 😦 At least I still have these pictures (which are probably better anyway) from more recently to show you guys! This will be a short and sweet post, but I hope you enjoy all this sun-soaked purple as I have. 🙂
Hello, dears!
It’s about time for another Etcetera post, don’t you think? Today I’m going to reveal the winners of my 5,000 followers giveaway (ARE YOU EXCITED?), and then we’ll proceed as normal with miscellaneous photography of cute pets, pretty macro shots, and more. Sound good? Alrighty then – onward we go!
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Hello, dears!
It is now March, that agonizing month when the sun shines brighter, things start growing, and spring finally seems around the corner… until we get a big snow at the end of the month. -_- Heh heh. Who knows whether the snow will happen this year, but for now, I’m just enjoying the signs of spring while they last! Enjoy these sunny pictures, my friends!
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Hello, dears!
We’ve been going on exploratory walks around our farm almost every Sunday lately and it is SO much fun! Also I’ve taken SO many pictures! XD I seriously have way too many post ideas to keep up, so I’m going to combine a few walks into one post. Enjoy the virtual sunshine! 😀
On the first walk, we explored the woods beside Dad’s shop. Fern fiddleheads were unrolling everywhere and bright little violets popped up by tree roots covered in moss… ahh, I loved it. ❤ There were also carpets of mayapple plants, which I’d never seen before. Interesting.
This was about a month ago, when leaves and buds were just starting to come out.
Aren’t fiddleheads adorable? 😀
HA HA for some reason this just looks really funny to me. XD It’s like the tree has a tiny nose. Maybe I should draw a face around it. 😛
I LOVE MOSS. ❤
Ooh, I really like this picture, particularly the lighting! The violet is a little blurry, but I love the golden light. I don’t exactly know how I got this one, but I do know I didn’t edit it.
The roots are so neat, don’t you think?
As you can see, the leaves were DEFINITELY not out yet.
While walking back we saw a deep puddle that was literally TEEMING with tadpoles! There were hundreds if not a thousand. O.o I have never seen so many tadpoles in one place in my life!
The puddle nearly dried up a while ago and left a lot of dead tadpoles in the sun, but it rained just in time to save the rest. 😛 I should go check them again… last time I saw them they looked pretty much like this:
Next we have the walk in which we went down to our bigger stream and Carmen, Jeff, and Megan all swam even though they had regular clothes on and it wasn’t exactly hot. XD
HA HA I love this. XD
They seemed to be having a pretty good time, but I decided against joining them. 😛
Wow, that was a short walk. Anyway, the next one is at our smaller pond. We got a canoe at the auction after we bought the new farm, but it kinda leaked. So Dad and the boys patched it up, we got oars, and ta-daa!
This woods had some lovely beeches, and everything was SO GREEN!
This tree was huge and gorgeous. ❤ We came back to this spot for my birthday and had a dessert picnic with chocolate pecan pie. 😀 Yep, it was DELICIOUS. And then Carmen and I worked on a fairy house in these roots because I’d told her I would. 🙂 It was fun, but got dark really quickly. (Also I don’t have any pictures of that night, sorry. 
)
We also want to make a fairy house here sometime. 🙂
Now, onto the next walk! This is the most recent. Last Sunday, in fact. I think these flowers are called phlox, but whatever they are, they certainly made the side of the trail pretty! ❤
I brought my sketchbook and some drawing utensils along but didn’t end up using them that much. I did get a little sketch done, though. (Also this picture was super hard to get, but I like how it turned out.)
I’m fascinated with reflections and light and water, together or separate. 😀
Mom and Carmen and I (and later Dad) wandered along the smaller creek that we call Little Runny. The air was hot and muggy, so the shade and water felt amazing.
Mom found a few tulip-tree blooms and wanted me to take a picture of it for our house. I was quite happy to oblige, of course! 😀 Tulip-tree flowers are strange: green and orange and lily-shaped, with maple-like leaves. Certainly unique.
Carmen wanted to show me a “swimming hole” she’d found, which wasn’t actually quite deep enough to swim in. XD
While we were there, I saw a little water strider and the ripples it made looked neat, so obviously I had to take a picture. 😛
Ooh, I love this one!
This stretch of Little Runny has sand instead of rocks! The riverbed is a mixture of sand and mud, which feels so good to bare feet. There are also random sandbars scattered like tiny beaches by the creek. The first time I saw them I was really surprised that they weren’t manmade.
Anyway, Carmen and I decided to try and build a sandcastle on one of the “beaches.” I think it turned out pretty cute for only having our hands to work with. (Thanks to my mom for taking this picture!)
(Heh heh, once I started using this filter it was hard to stop. Oops.) I love this picture too! Isn’t it so cute and aesthetic? It looks like a summer beach photo instead of a spring creek photo. 😛
Maggie also came along with us. She loves to wade in the streams and puddles, even though she never swims in deep ponds and stuff. Isn’t she so cute?
And now let me end with this cool, refreshing picture. 😀 I love the colors in this one!
And there you have a small sampling of my many spring pictures. Going outside at this time of the year is quite dangerous for me if I intend the pictures for my blog because I JUST CAN’T. KEEP. UP. But you know, I think that’s rather a good problem to have. 😉
Do you always take an excessive amount of pictures in spring too? Which is your most photographed season? And do you have a favorite or favorites of these pictures? I’d love to hear!
Thanks so much for reading, dears, and have a lovely day! ❤
***Allison***
Hello, dears! I was hoping to do a “Recent Art” post or maybe a post about the old letters, but unfortunately I don’t have enough time (or Wi-Fi) for either. But don’t worry, hopefully those will be next! Until then, I have some more spring-y pictures for you! I absolutely LOVE this photoshoot and I hope you will too. 🙂
There are a ton of redbuds at our new farm and the surrounding country. Sometimes the side of the woods looks pink with all the blossoms! We also have two gorgeous redbuds in the yard of the big house and the one especially just looked perfect this year… maybe it usually does? But this is the first year I’ve seen it, and it’s gorgeous. ❤
AHHH IT’S SO PRETTY.
I got a few pictures with my macro lens. This one is one of my favorites from the whole shoot!
It’s neat to see how complex the tiny blooms are close up.
The look kind of like slippers with huge bows on top or something. XD
There were absolutely a ton of bees buzzing around the blossoms, which was a bit, um, scary, especially when I used my macro lens and stuck my camera inches away from my subject. O.o But no worries, I didn’t get stung. 🙂 I think they were too focused on the nectar.
Their wings are so delicate!
Heh heh, this guy looked a lot less delicate than the rest of the bees.
You can see the pollen sac super well in this one.
I don’t know why there’s a spot in the middle of its “fur,” but I thought it was interesting.
I love how you can see the bee getting ready to land in this one!
The 50mm lens I have makes such amazing bokeh. ❤
I tried to crop this, but it ruined the nice composition, so I didn’t after all. Oh well. 🙂
And we’ll end with these two pictures. I don’t know WHAT happened with this photo, but I think it looks kind of neat? Too bad I didn’t get a clearer picture of the bird, though.
Ahh, so pretty, don’t you think? ❤ I can’t WAIT to move in!
And that’s all for now! Thanks for reading, dears, and I hope you enjoyed the photos! Do you have redbuds or other blooming trees where you live? What’s your favorite part about spring?
***Allison***
P. S. Speaking of photography, you guys should check out Kalea’s blog! She has some beautiful spring photography on there as well as a review of the macro lens I used for part of this post. 🙂 (Also if you’d like to see my macro lens review, click here.)
Allison Marie 