I know all I have posted are my daily pictures, Iwill write more and post more than just pictures, I promise! I think I have finally caught up with a few things and basketball season is over....now in March I will be teaching the 6-8 graders in Sunday School, maybe only for a short time. I just need some time to sit down and edit some more pictures...I have so many basketball pictures to do yet, and some every day shots that just didn't make the cut for my daily shots album but are still neat and usable....so much to do so little time!

February 27 B and her sister were practicing for special music for church tomorrow. I couldn't resist this shot....I love music and piano shots!

February 23 Nail Polish! These are the colors I was wearing...I love the glitter and different colors. They do coordinate with our school colors but I was wearing them more for fun.

February 24 Ice cream! A little snack before bed!

February 25 A bow on the bulletin board at church.

February 26 Hubby was doing some work at church and I snapped some pictures while I was waiting for him.

I ♥ Faces Photo Challenge

I doubled up with pictures again. I was inspired by the i heart faces (www.iheartfaces.com) challenge this week of "Hands On" fun and wanted to use it for my Project 365 picture as well. I just love Tater's chubby little hands and caught this one while he was napping. I added a little blur to it in Photoshop thinking it adds a little more of a dreamy look to it.

February 16 Don't know what these were exactly, but they were our half time entertainment at the basketball game.

February 17 Trying to play with light and shadows. Didn't exactly work, but it counted for my picture of the day.

February 18 The icicle that is forming on a small tree branch just outside my front door.

February 19 We went for a drive in the afternoon and came across a bunch of pheasants. We were on a quiet gravel road so we were able to stop and watch and I could take a bunch of pictures before hubby scared them off ;)

February 20 I was tagged to take a picture of myself on flickr just as I was....it's not the best picture of my but it was a quiet Saturday so I was more worried about being comfortable than fashionable lol and a bonus, I didn't break the camera when I took this pic!

February 21 Teddy snuggled up with me in bed. This is how he usually starts out the night and then he goes and curls up under the bed. He really thinks he is a little boy!

February 3-I wasn't feeling too inspired...was cold and depressed with all the snow we were getting...and are still getting.

February 4-I was playing with the night setting on my camera. It didn't work like I wanted it to, I've gotten a bit of advice from a friend on how to use it to get better pictures since then though.

February 5-Playing with some angles with my computer keyboard since I am here so often...an important part of my day :)

February 6-The day of the funeral for one of our church's founders and grandfather type to many. I also had to practice as I was scheduled to sing a solo for special music the next day in church. A friend played piano for me...inspired me to get this shot of the inside of the grand piano.

February 7-A little relaxing with some coloring. I bought the bag with the crayons at the Awana store for the kids...I decided to pull it out and have a little fun.

February 8-A cowboy hat that was used for VBS a couple of years ago on the barrel of one of hubby's guns on the gun rack.



February 9-Playing with the light box again, and the star filter for some fun!

February 10-A Valentine friend on the Awana store :)

February 11-Back to basics I guess...black and white and some things that are very important to me. My Bible and something I really enjoy...some typing work for our Pastor. It was late when we got home and with the busy day we had I didn't have alot of time to shoot any pictures...this was the best I came up with then, even though it's not the greatest.

February 12-Frosted trees in the school parking lot after the last home basketball game. We lost again....

February 13-Valentines Roses...K had to be gone all day at an Elders and Deacons meeting for church so I got my gift early! We talked after he gave me the roses for my birthday....he hinted that he might get me roses for Valentines and I asked for pink for a little something different for pictures....he did very well!

February 14-Candle on the table at our youth group's Valentines Banquet. We had a great "Evening in Paris" even with my "lovely" sinus cold at its worst.

February 15-K with one of the icicles on the house. This was just before he tried to pull it down and it shattered into a hundred pieces. We couldn't believe how long it was! He's standing on the deck railing here.

Sorry that it has been so long since I have written. It's been a stressful couple of weeks and I will write more about that along with posting my Project 365 pictures tomorrow hopefully, and if not tomorrow very soon I promise!

I'm fighting a "lovely" sinus cold and I'm having trouble keeping my eyes open so I'm off to bed for now.

Lots of love and hugs!

This is the lightbox that K set up for me. It's pretty simple but it works really well and it doubles as storage for everything that I use with it. He picked up a Rubbermaid type tote at the Dollar store, two brooding lights, and some tagboard. He cut the tagboard to size so it just fits from top to bottom (it curves in twoards the back of the tote). The only thing he really had to 'build" are the stands for the lights. He is still working on those, he said he wants to be able to adjust the height of the lights as well.



We went to our friend's quilt shop in town and bought a bunch of fabrics to use as backdrops and bought some other ones when we went to Wal Mart. I posted a picture of the fabrics earlier in the week. The tagboard can be used as a backdrop itself(keeps you from being able to see whatever is behind your lightbox) and also helps to hold the fabric that is being used as a backdrop.

We chose a frosted plastic because it helps to diffuse the light a little more, it's not such a direct light only look.

Pretty simple and cheap and more sturdy than a few ideas that he found out there. I like it, I've gotten some macro shots that I really like using it and I'm still thinking of new ideas to try!

January 28 Another shot of the roses :) I was playing with the macro lens that day.

January 29 K built me a lightbox and some fabrics to use as backdrops. We were playing with different fabric and light combinations that day.

January 30 The fabrics that we bought for backdrops. Lots of fun colors!

January 31 We had a potluck after church and then a group of us went sledding and ice skating at a local park! It was alot of fun! Here Tater is all bundled up and ready for some snow fun! He lasted about 15 minutes when he told his uncle..."I cold....I go home....hot chocolate!"

February 1 Playing with reflections in the light box. The subject here is a souvineir that one of my former daycare families brought back for me when they went to China. They told me that these are hand painted from the inside. Beautiful!

February 2 My Casey! Here he is in his favorite spot at night...right at my feet in bed! He may not be the brightest, but he is loving and loyal!!

January 26

January 27
K brought me roses for my birthday and I've been having alot of fun taking pictures with them! I had to laugh because as soon as I saw him with them he said look, time for pictures!

With January 26th picture I just learned how to use textures in Photoshop and I added a frosted window texture I got from Jo at Life's Perfect Pictures. I lowered the opacity and then added a solid red layer and a text layer and that was the result. I've never used textures before but seeing the pictures on i heart faces challenge for this week got me curious and wanting to try. It's not totally what I had in mind, but it's not bad for a first try I guess.

I had the morning off yesterday and edited a bunch of pictures and in the evening we went to the boys basketball game at the high school. JV won but the Varsity lost.

Today Mr. T and Tater were pretty tired and quiet so we didnt' do a whole lot, snuggled mostly. Mr. T liked being my assistant and plugging in and turning on the light on the piano to get my picture for today. He was pretty proud of himself, it was so cute!

Headed off to get ready for Awana soon. Tonight is Talent Night. The kids can sing a song, play an instrument, recite a verse, read a poem, just use their talents for the Lord. It's also bonus points for bringing your Bible and wearing crazy socks...putting both together since we missed last week. We may have to fit in another talent night since we schedule two to fit everyone in. It just depends on how many still want to do their talents.

January 22
I had such a busy day on Friday. I had many things going on at once and this was my desk as a result. I got everything caught up and in the afternoon we got ready and headed over to our friends' place to pick them up for the basketball game only to get a call from the boys saying it was cancelled due to the fog. So as long as we were in the car we went out for supper and K worked on a bit of remodeling in their bathroom with him while his wife and I made some bananna bars and played a couple games of Sequence.

January 23 This was pretty much my view for all of Saturday. I slept in a bit and then had some typing work to do. I got that done and then we headed for a soup dinner/silent auction for a local 8th grader who has lukemia. We headed right from there to the basketball games where we watched the JV boys who lost, the Varsity girls who won, and the Varsity boys who lost. We had a short music practice and went over PowerPoint and then it was finally home to bed!

January 24 After church we went to my Mom and Dad's for lunch and hung out with them until it was time to leave for the evening service. We got to chat with my brother on Skype for a while. It was good to see him, he was planning to come home for Christmas, but between the weather and his car problems it didn't happen. He says hopefully in a couple weeks he will be able to make it though. This is a macro of my Mom's Christmas cactus....I had alot of fun playing with my macro and some of her flowering plants at the house.

January 25 Today started out well, the kids were on time for school and I got Mr. T sent off on the bus for afternoon preschool and a half hour later I got the text message that school was letting out two hours early. The bus kids actually had to stay at the school for an extra hour because they didn't want to send the buses out with the blowing snow and bad visibility. They have already called a two hour late start for tomorrow. Hopefully we can make it and have a basketball game tomorrow night! Tonight's game was postponed, and it was a makeup game from last week! Tomorrow night's game is a make up game as well! I've gotten almost everything checked off of my to do list today...the only thing that I haven't gotten done is write to my sister in law in Kuwait, but tomorrow is a slow day kid wise, and even more so now that I have had the evening to get more things checked off that to do list, so I'm sure I can get that letter written and out in the mail! This is a picture of some of the cds in our 101 disc changer. I love the mixture of colors of cds and rainbow effects on the back of the discs! I added a bit of a motion blur to this in Photoshop as well.

January 21
This isn't exactly the shot that I was going for, but I do sort of like it. I did some color correction in Photoshop and then converted it to black and white. Maybe I'll give the shot I was looking for a try again tomorrow....we'll see if I remember haha!


I woke up a bit later than I planned, but I've still gotten quite a bit done. I pulled all the bedding except for the electric blanket off our bed and have it going in the washer and dryer now. School started as two hours late and I was going to have R from next door at 8, but Dad called and said that he was staying at Grandma's for a while, maybe the whole day since there is no morning preschool with the two hour late start. He said he'd have her call, but so far nothing at 10:30.

I don't have the other boys today, Mom is done working for the week, and so I kind of hope that Grandma does keep R! I'm playing with some more pictures and if things go well I may post some more this afternoon!

No ball games tonight, but we will meet with our Pastor to record his radio message for the week.

Hope you all have a great day!

January 20

January 20
Originally uploaded by H3IdI

This is much later than I had originally planned to post this, but we've been having internet issues. This little star toy was tossed aside and sort of forgotten about while the kids played around it. I took all the color out in Photoshop except for the star and its shadow.

The kids got out of school at 11 this morning. It counts for a day, so that helps, but it does seem as if the worst of the storm has missed us. So far not even a mention of a late start, but we'll see.

I have an idea for a picture for tomorrow, but it requires me getting up with K about 5 am so it's dark in the house. Hopefully that will happen!

Ok you can tell how shocked I was at that award because I completely forgot to list 7 things about myself that the award asks for!

Lets see....1. I really do not like raw tomatoes...very rarely will I eat one on a sandwich or something, but most of the time I will pick it off. However I love big chunks of cooked tomatoes in chili or things like that!

2. I love "different" colors of nail polish...not just the plain old pinks and reds. I love the deep blues, purples, greens, oranges, right now I'm wearing a sparkly silver. At one point one of my favorites was sparkly with some glow in the dark shapes, but that has long since dried up and I haven't been able to find any more. Sigh. Brandi I had to write this after reading your list and seeing what you wrote about your nail polish!

3. I have never lived totally on my own. I was 19 when I got married (12 happy years of marriage for K and I in 2009) and so I moved from living with my parents to living with the husband.

4. I LOVE music! Whether it's singing in church or one of the nursing homes when I am able, leading music in Awana or Sunday School, playing piano, or just listening to one of my cds music is a huge part of my life. Right now two favorites are Steven Curtis Chapman's Beauty Will Rise cd and Selah's You Deliver Me.

5. I had to wait until my 13th birthday to have my ears pierced the first time. Since then I've gone a little "crazy" and not only have my ears triple pierced on both sides, but I have an extra piercing above that on my right ear (partly for fun and partly to balance out the look since the trainee that did my first piercings got them a little crooked) and have the cartilege at the top of my right ear pierced. I used to have a second piercing up there as well but it has grown shut. K and I have discussed many times getting it repierced, but camera lenses and filters have since taken the place of that thought!

6. Our best friends inadvertantly started a collection of Precious Moments figurines for me....now I'm about as addicted to them as I am my pictures and camera!

7. And I admit it...I have lived a pretty sheltered Midwest life and have never seen the ocean! I really want to go at some point! I've had quite a few firsts in my life the last few years, including my first concert (Mercy Me, Aaron Shust, and Monk and Neagle) thanks to our best friends!

Well, there you go, seven random facts about me. And I pass this award along to the ladies that I mentioned alongside Brandi in my last post!

Wow! Brandi
at My Three Bubs gave me this award! I'm shocked! Thank you so much, Brandi! She wrote that she was enjoying my pictures...and that she had especially like this one....
(yep that's a macro shot of my eye...I just did some minimal lightening of shadows and things and then took out all the color except for the colored part of my eye in Photoshop)

I know I've written about it before, but just in case you have stopped over from Brandi's blog I'll write about it again. This year I have given myself a challenge. I want to learn more about my camera and taking pictures, composition and such, and also about Photoshop. My goal is to take at least one picture a day and in some of those try some new things, whether it be a new angle of the shot, using the little eye viewfinder instead of the larger digital screen, trying a different filter or something in Photoshop, but mostly just to get out there and use my camera! It's been alot of fun so far, and even help working through some things that have been going on in my life right now. Thank you so much Brandi, Jen, Dani, Steffi B., Rebecca Jo, Lisa, and anyone I may have missed unintentionally for all of your comments and encouragement with my pictures! I truly appreciate it and you all have helped me to keep picking up that camera on days when I've been discouraged with what I've shot and keep trying! I can't thank you enough for that!

Here is the picture for today...January 19
This plant sits on the railing of the deck in the back of our house. I love the contrast in colors and how soft the frost looks on the leaves.

School was cancelled today, not sure if it was foggier outside of town that had them concerned about buses and students coming in, but it really hasn't been too bad in town. It sounds like we may be in line for some freezing rain and mixed snow and ice the rest of the week so I don't know how much school we will get in. I really can't remember the last week that these kids have had a full week of school! We'll be going into June at this rate!

Still waiting to hear about the basketball game scheduled for tonight too. The last few they have played even with both schools being cancelled for the day so there is a chance we will play. If not we have been invited to a friend's surprise 50th birthday get together. She is a tax preparer and it is starting to get busy for her so it will be just a small gathering of friends, but it depends on the game and the weather if we will be going.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful day! Hugs!

January 18 This is my "baby". He is a picture of unconditional love to me! I love seeing his wagging tail and him running off to find his favorite toy when I get home!

We were supposed to go to the Honor Choir/Band concert tonight, but when we got there they had a sign posted that said they had moved it up to 4 pm so the kids could get home before the fog. No one called to tell us :(....so we had the evening free and I cleared off my desk and organized some things and got a start on the cards that I have gotten behind in making. It worked out ok, I was able to be there for a friend who I haven't seen in a while now, who I had sort of lost contact with after she found out some bad news. Hopefully she and the family will be able to heal now and they can grow together as a family.

January 17

I forgot my camera at church yesterday after the morning service. We had gone out to lunch with some friends and had to run earlier than we normally do. Whe we came back to get it we noticed that someone had left their Bible on the library table. The worn pages caught my eye and I started shooting. This is my favorite to come out of that. I was thinking of adding a friend's favorite Bible verse along the bottom in white lettering and doing the same with another picture and adding his wife's favorite verse and giving it to them for their anniversary this year. What do you think...is it too dark? I was thinking that the white lettering would "brighten" it up some too.

I did some very basic editing to this in Photoshop, some color correction and lightening of shadows.

January 16

January 16
Originally uploaded by H3IdI

Hubby enabled my addiction to pictures this morning. He came home from work and told me to get ready, we HAD to go out for a drive and get some pictures! Of course you know I agreed! We had another frost overnight. The only editing I did to this was a smart fix and taking out some shadows in Photoshop. The sky really was that blue....I loved the contrast of the white snow and frost on the tree with the blue sky!

It's been a busy weekend! We lost the basketball game last night but won by two tonight. Too bad tonight's game wasn't a conference game!

I got the house cleaned this morning while K was at work and got my PowerPoint all finished. We have to head to church to get the hymns set up and the announcements into the loop.

Might get some quilting time in tomorrow afternoon, depending on how both B and I feel. We're all set to put the batting on the quilt top. Can't wait to see it finished!

January 15

January 15
Originally uploaded by H3IdI

I grabbed the camera and just started shooting while the kids were playing. I was trying to use the eye piece rather than the digital screen and it ended up a bit blurry so I played with it a bit in Photoshop. It sort of made me think about surviving the curves in life and just staying on track. Not fully thought through, just sort of a glimmer of an idea.

January 14 This isn't one of my favorites...and not story behind it...but it's one I took today...I am keeping up with the picture a day...I took this one at church, it's a plastic poinsettia from one of the plants there. I took this with my macro lens and then played with it a bit in Photoshop. I have a few more pictures in mind...but it's been a busy day and I haven't had time to set them up.

B came over this morning and we worked on my quilt. I have the quilt top completely sewn together, the next step is the batting. I burnt myself on the iron just under the knuckle of my index finger on my right hand. It's kind of puffy looking and a little sore lol definately something that would happen to me haha!

R came at noon and left at 3 and soon after K came home we headed out for a Jr High basketball game. We got back home with enough time to eat and then headed out to church to record PM's radio message for the week.

I'm ready to head off to bed now, tomorrow brings a day full of kiddos and another varsity basketball game. Maybe even a stop at Wal Mart on the way home.

Ok...really off now, can't keep my eyes open any longer....hugs!