Back to School

It was a long-awaited day at our house... the first day back to school for Laina. For Evie and Mylie, going to school is a dragged out process of slow integration which won't be completed until nearing the end of September. But nonetheless, today was a day for celebration in both Laina's and my eyes. She couldn't wait to see all her friends after the summer break, and I couldn't wait to not have to drag all 3 kids in tow every time I need to run errands.

I wanted to start the year off having my house clean and organized with everything the kids would need for school laid out the night before. Surprise, surprise, that didn't happen. Instead, the house was like a mess tornado due to the unfinished floor tiling that my husband was working on in two of our bathrooms and our laundry room. So not only was my house not clean and well-organized, but we were living without two toilets, one shower/ bath and our clothes washer or dryer. Despite being disorganized, we made it to school EARLY. That will probably be the only time this year.

So here they are, at the start of their school year:

(Mittens the not-so-much-a Kitten decided to make a guest appearance at the last moment here)

It's February!

It's going to be all pretty random here... just dictated by the pictures I have taken lately.

Kids love crafts... I love crafts... but I hate DOING crafts with kids. Especially with multiple kids. I don't know how teachers don't just completely blow their tops at school while doing arts and crafts. It's messy, it's frustrating, and you need about 8 arms in order to keep on top of all the demands for help. But here was a relatively successful craft time with the kids... it was a rock painting kit that they got for Christmas. Soon after this, they abandoned craft time and left me exhausted and with a giant mess.

Another thing my kids like to do? Build "fairy houses" all around the yard. These are usually contructed after foraging through the recycling bin and leave our yard dotted with what appear to be small piles of garbage. Pretty sure all our neighbors think we are bringing down the property value in the neighborhood!

Week 3 sisters project:

Seems like it has been a crazy cold/ flu season for us already and it isn't even over yet!! Last week Laina was sick and she ended up getting a cracked corner of her lips... the crack then got infected with Impetigo which is contagious so she couldn't go to school even though she was feeling better. So I had extra kids hanging around home last week, and then now, all 5 of us have colds. Hoping that is it for us this year! This was when Laina was home from school, but it was of the good side of her face that didn't have the skin infection on it. I like this picture because you can see Laina's brown freckle on her blue eye.

This isn't really a pretty picture, but it is a hopeful one!! Spring is on it's way, the first of my flowering bulbs are up! These are snowdrops just peeping out of the ground.

We went for a fun walk the other day with some friends at nature trail that ends up along the beach. First on the walk we saw a blue heron at the side of a river. I've mentioned before my irrational fear of these big birds here.

Some friend pictures :)

This one was going to be for the weekly sisters project but Evie wouldn't cooperate, so they did it with friends instead.

She is a photographer's daughter... makes me laugh because she sat down on this rock and smiled until I took her picture... and smiled so nicely! My kids would never do that willingly!

A completely un-photoshopped picture of the horizon... I thought the sky looked amazing!

Evie has been doing a little dance class for preschoolers while I do a dance exercise class at the same time. She absolutely loves it and gets so excited when it is time for "mine dancing" (she substitutes the word mine for the word my ALL.THE.TIME.) Here are some from today:

And all the fun of dancing caused her to do this:

I also did a pinterest project today that I have been wanting to try for awhile... tinting mason jars. Here is the link where I found the how to and here is the link where I found how to make my own modge podge. I don't love how they turned out, but I think it was because I used bright food coloring instead of pastel food coloring. But anyways, the kids think they are pretty and I think they will find their way into an upcoming party, so stay tuned for that!

Pictures... words will follow

I have a whole bunch of pictures bugging me that I need to blog, but everytime I come to blog them, I get overwhelmed (because January does that to me... makes me a big wet noodle that just wants to crawl in to bed and not get out again until Spring!). So I am going to just blog some random pictures and hopefully that will give me the momentum to come back and talk about them. Otherwise this will be a visual blog post, hehe :)

A Year Has Passed

I have been thinking about my growth (or lack of it) in the photography arena over the past couple of days and I decided that to kick start my progress, I would try reading through my beginner's photography course that I took exactly 1 year ago. While shooting in manual has become like second nature, it is still interesting to read through it and remember WHY you choose certain settings etc. It is mainly creative composition and editing that I am hoping to improve on this year, but I took some pictures today focusing on using the techniques I was taught in my "Rock Your Camera 101" class (now it is called Shooting 101) over at Clickinmoms

Evelyn was my model since the other two girls are in school all day, and it was kinda fun! Here are a few:







And one from our walk yesterday...

Week 1

So this year I am playing around with doing a Project 52 instead of the Project 365. I hope to still blog in between and get lots of practice with my photography but I haven't gotten a great start to the year. I have lots of things to say and actually a good number of pictures too but somehow can't make myself do a long post. It has been an epically bad week and am just barely putting one foot in front of another. Which is too bad really because if I had to go back and reminisce about the year gone past, I would say that overall, it was a great year for me and my family. But especially for me. I may not have grown as much as I had hoped with my photography, but I exceeded even my expectations in sewing and in some of the other areas that interest me. My mental health was overall very good too and I think that I am in a comfortable spot where I can sit back and start to plan for and enjoy my life and not always be in crisis mode. That being said, I am in crisis mode right now and only the mandatory activities in our life are getting done. It is an ominous way to start off the year, but hopefully it can only go up from here.

The plan is to take a picture of the three of my girls together each week for 52 weeks... so here is week 1.