Week 48 in Pictures

One more week down!  Have I mentioned how happy I am to be almost done with my third year of taking a photo a day?  :)  I think it is starting to show in my photos.

Here's what last week looked like ...

{Sunday}

Alex drew this picture of me and him.  I don't know when he's ever seen me dressed like this, but I must look like a princess to him.  Or Lady Gaga.  :)

{Monday}

Doug put the outside lights up over the weekend so I captured some bokeh from the ones on our snowball bush.

{Tuesday}

Woke up to a dusting of snow today.  It melted pretty quickly though.

{Wednesday}

I bought a little craft kit on clearance and made one of the poinsettias with Nick's help. {ahem}

{Thursday}

We belong to the coolest credit union.  They sent Alex a birthday card with a $10 Barnes & Noble gift card inside!

{Friday}

I woke up early enough to see the gorgeous sunrise.

{Saturday}

I took this for the Scavenger Hunt's "purple" prompt.  I bought some artificial flowers a while back to decorate for fall.  Along with the purple flowers are some burgundy and olive green ones.  They match some fabric that I bought which was supposed to be made into a table runner, but that hasn't happened yet.  Hopefully I'll have that ready for next fall.  :)

Lastly, my favorite photo from November ...


Well, I best get back to my children's ministries prep work.  Hope you have a wonderful week!
     

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Week 52 Summary

Hello!  And welcome to my last weekly summary of 2011's Project 365!  I've really enjoyed participating in a second year of Project 365.  Well, mostly.  Some days I just didn't feel like picking up my camera, but I did anyway.  And I'm glad I did.  I look forward to putting all my weekly collages into a photo book to see how much my photography has grown over the past two years.  

I do plan to continue to take pictures every day in 2012, but I won't be posting a photo a day or making a weekly summary collage like I have been.  Instead I'm planning to participate in Tracey's Be Inspired challenge, and Sarah and Gina's P366 Rewind, and Life with My 3 Boybarians' P52 challenge.  They are each providing weekly prompts to help spark creativity, which I could certainly use a little of right now.   :)  In the meantime, here's how this past week looked like in pictures ...

25 - Nick was so excited to get an Angry Bird in his Christmas stocking.

26 - Baby Christy (even though she is 2 now and is not really a baby anymore, I will probably still refer to her as Baby Christy for a while)  :)

27 - Fun with slow shutter speeds and Christmas tree lights - thanks to Sarah for the cool idea.  Tracey picked this as one of her Top 5 this week!  Thanks, Tracey!

28 - Keira in the snow

29 - Honey stole my slipper again!

30 - My photo made the front cover of my county's 2012 Visitor's Guide!

31 - Our new Wii remotes are getting a lot of use this week.

Thank you to everyone who visited my blog this year and to everyone who left some comment love!  Your words are always so encouraging!  I wish you all the best in 2012!!!


Happy New Year!!!

     

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Photos of the Day: December 27, 28 & 29

The kids and I are enjoying the break from the normal school routine.  However, my plans to get lots of stuff accomplished this week are just not happening.  :)  We are having fun ... sleeping in late, playing with the new Wii games and a few other non-electronic games we got for Christmas.  We even spent some time at a friend's house today which allowed the boys to burn off some energy with their boys.  And they really needed to get out of the house for a while and interact with someone other than their siblings.  But Christmas break is almost over and my to-do list is still just as long.  Oh well, there's always January, right?  :) 

Anyway, time to catch up on my photos of the day ...

{December 27}

Thanks to Sarah at Naptime Momtog for this cool idea.  Christmas tree lights + a show shutter speed + a moving camera = this cool photo.  And since the tree will probably be coming down tomorrow, I needed to play with it one more time.  :)

{December 28}

The kids were so excited to get a little snow yesterday.  We went for a walk and took a few pictures.  The fresh air did us all good.  Keira was my usual willing model.

{December 29}

Even though Honey got several new toys for Christmas, she still loves to steal my slippers right off my feet to chew on.  Although I really could use a new pair.  These ones have seen better days.  They're just so comfy.  But the question is, should I throw them away or give them to her?  :)

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Wild & Wonderful Wednesday #7

Welcome back to another Wild & Wonderful Wednesday!  I'm glad you are here!

One of our family traditions during the Christmas season is to visit the Hartwood Acres light display.  We were able to go last Thursday, which turned out to be a great night to go.  It wasn't busy at all, which is great with three not-so-patient kids and one not-so-patient husband.  :)

Usually Doug drives but this year he still wasn't feeling well (getting over bronchitis) so he asked me to drive.  I wondered how I was going to be able to photograph the lights and drive, but it worked out pretty well.  I just stopped when I wanted to photograph something.  And my pictures turned out better this year than in previous years when Doug was driving.  I think because I waited until I was completely done clicking before driving away.  :)  Here are some of the displays ...

Of course, I had to photograph the train for Alex.  Another train was my photo of the day on December 8.

Since this is a drive-thru display and you are not allowed to get out of your car (except for an emergency restroom stop), I couldn't get very creative with my photos.  Except to capture a little light bokeh.

These candy canes are right before The Twelve Days of Christmas display.  So we always have to sing the song on the way through.  Which then makes the kids have to sing the song for several days afterward.  Which then makes mom have to look for some earplugs.  :)

Last year or maybe the year before when we went to see the lights I had such a nasty headache that this tunnel made me want to vomit.  I had to cover my eyes until we were through it.  The kids had a good time reminding me of that fact.  How they remember stuff like that I'll never know.  :)

This globe was a new display this year.  I wish I had gotten a better photo of it but we had a bus full of senior citizens behind us so I couldn't stop for too long.

This tunnel is at the end of the park.

And I know I shared this photo for Scavenger Hunt Sunday but I really like it.  This mansion is always so pretty all lit up.  As I was looking through my photos for the hunt, I thought this would look cool with one of my moon photos in the sky.  All I did was add it as a layer and place it where I wanted it.  Since both photos had a black background, it blended right in.  Too bad the moon wasn't really right there in the sky that night.  :)


Okay, now it is your turn!  Link up your Wild & Wonderful photos below.  
Just a few things first ...

1.  Grab my button for your post and link up below (or at least use a text link) so others can find out about Wild & Wonderful Wednesday.  (I reserve the right to delete links that don't follow this one simple rule.  K?  Thanks.).

2.  Link up your post URL (or Flickr photo URL), not your blog URL.

3.  Photos must be yours please.

4.  Try to visit and comment on a few other linker uppers (mine too please!).  We know how much everyone loves comments!  

5.  You have until Saturday at midnight to link up!

<center><a href="http://kimberlysperspective.blogspot.com/"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfwwyaMEvjZkk1W2QvexI3Mq6nMxsLltPDHIZ9MGgTqe6vRUdZBrqjZkUU5MSlwqcNCqKkln6_IfbLazBDkdcnTctpPuYXZ1vFqN06YX7wkpoTJiIkvHB0dH7VlNb3nMGT-3GxFBHjrk0Q/s1600/Wild-and-wonderful-wednesda.jpg"/></a></center>

Also linking up with these beautiful ladies:

            

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Photo of the Day: December 11

I bought a set of lights to decorate a bush in our front yard.  Doug and the kids put them up today.  I love all white lights but there's just something about the colorful LED lights that I really enjoy.

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Week 49 Summary

4 - Teaching Mel how to shoot in Manual

6 - Snowman decoration at Santa Shop

5 - The birthday boy taking a train ride at the mall

7 - My husband bought me flowers - Tracey chose this as one of her Top 5 picks this week!  Thanks, Tracey!

9 - Bought this pretty Christmas lantern
8 - Went to see the light display at Hartwood Acres - an annual family tradition
10 - I'm curly again!  :)

    

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Shoot & Edit ... Edited

I almost forgot to post my edits for Shoot & Edit!  I have found myself so busy with the boys' school lately, that things that used to be routine are now being forgotten.  I don't like that!  But I am blessed to be able to help with their school, so other things will have to wait.  For now.

Since it is late, I'm just going to post my edits with little explanation.  Especially since I didn't really do much to them anyway.  :)

{sooc}

{edit}

Increased exposure to lighten it up a little.

{sooc}

{edit}

Increased blacks.

And since I never got around to posting my Thanksgiving edit last week, here it is too.

{sooc}

{edit}

Increased clarity, vibrance, and saturation.


To see more great Holiday/Christmas edits and to read a great tutorial on Lightroom 3 by Cedar, head over to Ashley's.

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Photo of the Day: December 8

We fulfilled another family tradition this evening by going to see the lights at a local display.  They were very nice and there were some changes this year, which made them even better.  And I drove instead of Doug, which is one reason why I think I got better pictures.  He wasn't driving away while I was still shooting.  :)  This train was one of Alex's favorite displays.

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I'm Still Here!

It has been a few crazy, busy, fun days!  Lots of things keeping me busy lately.  And today is another jam-packed day, so I'll be quick.  :)  I at least wanted to get my last few photos of the day posted.

{November 30}

Just playing around trying to get the starburst effect with our Christmas tree lights.

{December 1}

Melissa and Laura - when we met Mel in person for the first time at the airport.  She's here for a week-long visit from Baton Rouge.  She and Laura have been online friends for 6 years and they finally got to meet in person.  How cool is that?!

{December 2}

Myself and Mel at Girls' Night at Laura's house.  Laura asks us to bring some games to play, but since my games are either geared towards 6 year olds or Scrabble (which isn't much fun with a large group since only 4 can play), I picked up some silly glasses at the Dollar Store to bring along.  They were a huge hit!  Best 6 bucks I ever spent!  We had a blast making fools of ourselves.  And we photographed it for all the world to see.  :)


That's all I have time for today.  Busy day again today with a Ladies' Christmas Luncheon, then Alex's 6th birthday party, then Doug and I are taking Keira to the symphony this evening.  I'll probably come home from church tomorrow and sleep all afternoon!  :)


Have a great weekend!

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