Scavenger Hunt Sunday

It's time again for Scavenger Hunt Sunday!!

This week's items:

Emotion

From a Flower's Point of View

Natural Frame

Letters

&

Bliss

Ok, before I share, I have to say that I loved this week's items!  I just connected with several of the themes, and am really excited to share... so here I go!

1.  Emotion

Seriously, how do you not look at a new daddy and his little girl without becoming an emotional mess!  This family is especially special to me, as the momma and daddy are two of my bff's from college.  They truly are wonderful people, and I feel blessed to be a part of their lives!!

2.  From a Flower's Point of View

This week I had three photo sessions, which kept me quite busy!  The good thing is that I got to spend A LOT of time in the great outdoors enjoying our usually cool weather.  Dave and I went to a park that we LOVE and got some really great shots about an hour before sunset.  I want to be there right now! :)

3.  Natural Frame

Say hello to Mr. Ralphie!  I love to take a "regular" snapshot to something special by using what's around me to frame that shot.  In this shot I squatted wayyy down and used the side of our deck to frame the shot.  I think it adds a ton of drama and makes the photo.

4.  Letters

I shared this photo from a recent family shoot, but added a little something special in Photoshop.  I really like text on photos, as long as it's not overdone.  I like this because it's simple, yet conveys the message of what family is all about.

5.  Bliss

Ok, I have to say that I love this little girl.  I met her momma through my mother in law, and I have done her photos several times now.  She is just the sweetest, happiest little girl.  Her and I had so much fun walking around the park... I forgot that I was "doing a job".

Ok, I'm off for a fun filled family day!  Happy Father's Day to all the daddy's out there (both human and animal of course)!  I know I'm so thankful for mine... he's just about the hardest working that I know!

Have a great day celebrating!

Happy Sunday All!

My Best Shot

It's time that I pick my photo for the "Your Best Shot" challenge over at The Paper Mama blog!

This was sooo tough for me!  I love so many photos of my sweet springers.  It was seriously almost impossible to choose.  I can tell you already that I'll probably change my mind later, but this is the shot I keep coming back to as a favorite over and over.  

I chose this shot of my Ferd Man because it is just so him.  He's in his favorite spot at the end of the bed just chillin out.  If I'm looking for Ferdy, 99% of the time I'll find him right here!  I love his expression too!  He's the most laid back dog I've ever had, and it shows here.

Because I can't leave out my other favorites, I'll share my runners up too!

I love Ralphie's expression & the dreaminess of the snowfall.

This is my hubbie's fav.  I love it so much too (it's framed in my living room)!!!

I love Ralphie's careless expression here!  He's like, "I'm a mess, and I know it!"

This isn't the best quality shot, but I love Ferdy's puppy dog eyes.  It was taken on Christmas Eve, and it's almost like he's telling Santa, "I promise, I've been a good boy."

It's awfully hard to choose one photo, but I think I've chosen my favorite.  Like I said, this one was a toughie... big time!  Oh well, I had fun digging through old photos at least! :)

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

It's Sunday, so that means it's time for...

This weeks items:

Long Exposure

Shapes

Green

Fruit

Childhood Memory

Long Exposure

On one random day this week, I decided to bust out the super wide angle lens.  I was playing around in the house (on a day when it was just toooo hot to go outside) and I was laying on the floor shooting around when the fan caught my eye.  I love how you can't see the individual blades at all.

Shapes

I've realized that I really like to photograph things on my kitchen's windowsill.  I love the contrast of the shape of the soap bottle next to the shape of the window panes.

Green

Green is one of my favorite colors, second only to pink. :)  I thought and thought and realized that I had green inspiration all around me!  I love the tones of this shot, plus it shows off one of my most favorite pairs of tennis shoes!  I love me my Pumas!

I'm also entering this photo into The Paper Mama's weekly challenge.  The theme this week is GREEN!

Fruit

If you follow my blog at all, you know I'm participating in the 30 Day Shred with many other lovely lady bloggers.  With that being said, fruit is easy to come by in my house now-a-days.  My current favorite, sweet juicy strawberries out of a bright and colorful bowl!

Childhood Memory

One of the things I think back on as a tot out on the farm is how much time I spent outside playing with my springer spaniels pups.  I've had a springer pretty much as long as I remember, and I believe that's why I love dogs so much today!  I do have to admit though, my dogs (Ferdy featured in the pic) are wayyyy more spoiled now than they were out on the farm. :)

Here's to another great week of photos ahead!  Hope yours is a happy one too!

Real quick before I go...

Head over to The Paper Mama if you have a moment.  One of my photos earned third place this week in the family challenge!  Yayzers!

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

It's time again for another Scavenger Hunt Sunday post!  I missed last week because of all the holiday weekend festivities, but I'm back this week!

This week's items:

Hot, Hot, Hot

Finding Form

Front Page of the News

Chore

&

Beads

I actually thought a few of these were quite challenging, especially finding form.  I like a good challenge though, and had a good time searching around this week.

Hot, Hot, Hot

Ok, not the most creative choice for this item.  But, in my defense, I loved the lensbaby shot & it gave a different feel to the typical fire picture.

Finding Form

This one was a challenge, but I'm really happy with the end result.  This is the base of one of my lamps, and with the edit I feel that you get a sense of depth that you don't always get in a photograph.

Front Page of the News

This is horrible, but the hubbie and I get no paper copies of anything news related.  I get my daily buzz from my iPad, and I usually read while I'm getting ready in the mornings.  I'm queen of multi-tasking!

Chore

Who doesn't think that dishes are a never-ending chore?!?  I took a shot of my handy dandy new sprayer that we installed this week because it makes the chore of washing dishes just a little bit easier.

Beads

This shot is of the hangy beads from my bedside lamp.  I love this lamp for many reasons.  1.  It's purty  2.  It's just the right size for a reading lamp  3.  It was one of the first things the hubbie and I bought as a newlywed couple

Well, that's it for another Scavenger Hunt Sunday.  I'm so excited to have time back to participate in these challenges!  

And (real quick, I promise)... if anyone is wondering, I've made it through 3 days already in the 30 Day Shred program.  The first day was torture, but I'm feeling pretty good today.  I'll be back later this week to share week 1 progress!

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

I'm realllyyy excited to do this post because it means that I actually have some "me" time.  Last summer I participated in all kind of photography challenges and loved it!  Unfortunately during the school year I just don't have any extra time to dedicate to photo challenges.  School is not quite over, but it's winding down, so that means I get to do more photo challenges... yay!!  My goal is participate in at least one challenge per week, so here's me meeting my goal in week one.

One of my favorite challenges to participate in is Sunday Scavenger Hunt with Ashley Sisk.  Ashley's photo blog was one of the first blogs I discovered when I started photo blogging a little over a year ago.  She's a great photographer and always inspires me to try new and different techniques in my own photography.  

This week the items on the scavenger hunt are:

My Passion

Sound of Music

Inner Beauty

Ethereal

Sharp  

One of the most fun things about the weekly scavenger hunt is that you get to interpret the themes each week.  Sometimes I go literal and sometimes I get really creative in my interpretation.

Anyways... I'll stop blabbing and share my photos for this week!!

"My Passion"

I love this candid shot because it involves so many things that I'm passionate about all in one photo.  My husband, my pups, photography (of course), and my home.

"Sound of Music"

This one is more literal.  In this photo I have my iPhone which also serves as my iPod, my iPad which I use all the time to play music around the house, and of course my trusty iMac which has been known to blare a few tunes now and then.

"Inner Beauty"

This is a shot of all the goodies I use on a daily basis to doll myself up.  I like to think that these items help make my outside look as lovely as the inside.  HeHe.

"Ethereal"

This shot was taken with my Lensbaby Composer lens, which I LOVE!  It really doesn't matter what you shoot with a Lensbaby, the results always come out ethereal and dreamy!

"Sharp"

I love this shot of a little crystal clock that sits above my kitchen sink.  I love this shot because with the help of my trusty Lensbaby, only a tiny bit is in sharp and in focus, while the rest has a nice dreamy blur to it.  I just love looking at this photo because the sharpness, blur, and tones are perfect!

I hope you enjoyed my scavenger hunt shares as much as I enjoyed putting them together.  If you want to see more entries, head over to Ashley's blog for the link up.

Happy Sunday All!  

Chestnut {Project 64}

By now I'm sure you know that I'm participating in Project 64.  I think it's one of the most fun photo project/challenges that I've done yet.  It's such an original idea!

This week's inspiration color is Chestnut

You can understand my excitement when this little beauty arrived at my house today...

Not only was this a WONDERFUL Christmas preset that had been backordered, but it also fit perfectly into this week's color theme.

Yay for my new Kelly Moore B-Hobo bag!  She is a beauty, isn't she?

Ok, one more Yay! for project 64!  3 weeks down, 61 to go!

Shoot and Edit-Good Morning Edits

It's edit day, yay!

Today my link up is going over to Ashley's lovely photo blog!

On to the goodies...

My original "Good Morning" shot SOOC:

I really did love this shot because it was so simple, yet so Ralphie.  He and Ferdy are snuggle bugs, and this sweet photo tells their story perfectly.

And now my edited version of my "Good Morning" shot:

Ahhh... I do love me a nice puppy nose shot!

My edit wasn't much, but the little bit I did really gave the photo the feeling I was looking for.  So, on to the steps...

Because I loved the original so much, I knew I didn't want to do anything drastic when I edited.  Just like Ashley talked about in her tutorial, I also do the basic fixes first.  I believe I did a little bit of a fill light bump because I like my pictures to be a bit brighter than some.  Everything else looked pretty good, so I exported then to Photoshop.  

Once I was in Photoshop, I used my new favorite "trick".  I duplicated the background layer and ran a high pass filter.  I set it to soft light blending and pulled down the opacity to about 80.  I really liked how it accentuated Ralphie's sweet little pup nose!

After the high pass filtering, I ran an action called "Oleander" from the Wallflower set made by LilyBlue.  I have admired her photoblog for a long time, and I love her actions equally as much.  They give a nice subtle dreaminess to photos, which is exactly the feel I wanted for this photo.  Afterall, most mornings most of us are a bit foggy and sleepy, right?

Ok, I did more more little step.  Like I said before, I really wanted to draw attention to Ralph's sweet puppy nose, so I decided to try running the high pass filter again.  I flattened my edits that I had done thus far, duplicated the background, and ran the high pass filter again on soft light blending mode.  This time I drug the opacity down to around 30, since I had already ran it once earlier in the edit.

That was it for Mr. Ralphie.  It's not a huge difference, but one that I'm really happy with!

I hope everyone's having happy days today!

Homemade Goodness

I'm so proud of myself...  Last night I (and my hubbie of course) made homemade potato soup for the first time!  That may not be a big deal for most, but the hubby and I are making an effort to cook more and eat less junk.  We both lead extremely busy day to day lives with us both teaching/coaching.  It's been a hard three years, but now we are forcing ourselves to take more time!

Last night was the first time we tried a family soup recipe.  It was actually quite simple, and it was realllllyyyyy yummy!

I'm getting hungry just looking at it!

The soup was pretty easy to make with a list of simple, easy to find ingredients (I'm not a "fancy" girl)

Ingredients:

Shredded Carrots

Finely Chopped White Onion

Finely Chopped Green Onion

Reduced Fat Cream Cheese

Chicken Broth

Shredded Hash Brown Potatoes

Cheddar Cheese

Chopped Turkey Bacon

I'm pretty proud of the hubs and I making a effort to do more for ourselves, and not only did I make the food, it is really good!

Yum, yum... time for lunch!

(I'm linking up this post to Simplicity's "Food" Photo Challenge)

Shoot and Edit Wk 2-Good Morning

It's time again to shoot & edit!  That means today we're linking up our SOOC (straight out of camera) shot over at Jill's blog, http://fnaphotography.blogspot.com and on Thursday we'll link up our edited shot over at Ashley's blog, www.ashleysisk.com

Week two's theme for shoot and edit is "Good Morning"

Today was the perfect day to capture my shots for "good morning" because we have the day off in remembrance of Martin Luther King Jr.  When I woke up this morning, the first thing I did was grab my camera!

Now before I show you my picture, I need to fill those in that don't know a little bit about my "family".  My husband and I do not have any children yet, but we do have two extremely spoiled springer spaniels (as featured in my blog header).  Now, our pups do not think they are really dogs.  I know for a fact that they believe themselves to be humans along with the rest of us.  For this reason, they do things that most normal dogs don't get to do, like cozy up in bed in the mornings.  

As you can see, our pups have no problem being adorable come the early morning.  They love to say hello with a cuddle and kiss.  I always laugh when people ask if our "hunting" dogs stay outside because there is nothing more they'd rather do than stay in bed all day with mom and dad.

I know... it's a bit ridiculous, but I'm a sucker for cute pups!!

Make sure you head over to Jill's blog and check out the other submissions for this week's challenge!