I had lunch with the man of my dreams!

Today I had lunch with the man of my dreams.

I sat side by side with a man who absolutely sets my heart aflutter.

Let me see if I can begin to do him justice.

He is stocky yet athletic and tends to dress a bit grunge. Remember that? He has the most incredibly blue eyes you have ever seen.  Looking into them is a dream, I can hardly keep myself contained when I peer into those glassy blues  with such innocence and love.  Not to mention he has flawless skin with a smattering of freckles across his cheeks that only serve to add to his sunny countenance.

The two of us have a bit of a language barrier.  I have to listen hard to understand what he wants to portray to me but words do not have to pass between us for kindred hearts to speak.  He is an open book and a man after God’s own heart.  The humblest of the humble, a true member of the kingdom of Christ.

We ate the simplest of meals but my joy has rarely been so complete.  He requested pb&j and couldn’t be persuaded otherwise.  I ate the same and watched in wonder as he licked his fingers, finishing every morsel.  No meal with this man would be complete without a glass of juice and a swipe of the hands down the front of his recently clean-ish shirt.

Who is it?

Certainly not the ONLY man of my dreams.

None other than…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 My man, aka Bubba. 

No his eyes aren’t quite that blue but I had fun editing since I rarely have time for such extravagance!

Portraits of Fun-Lookin Back on the Past Year

These are a few of my favorite things!

Here is Thing One and his look alike pumpkin…

Here is Thing One’s Portrait of his baby sister (now one year old-my how the time flies) and I on her 1 week birthday…

Here are three of my favorite things; leaves, the color green and my little buddy “Bubba”…

And here is one of my favorite pictures of Thing Two. He and his older brother got these headlamps for their birthday and while Grammy and Papa were visiting he disappeared. No one could find him anywhere, we were calling and looking, trying not to panic. Finally after a good half hour his Grammy found him asleep with the headlamp on under the guest bed! Gotta love the boy…

Bokey or Bokoo, it’s Bokeh

Well I was sitting here, sipping an overly sweet cup of coffee and eating a handful of chocolate chips, feeling sorry for myself having woke up early this morning to dogs barking and my two middle boys screaming at eachother and throwing cars.  Ugh!  I “wandered” over to check out some photo tips at Pioneer Woman and Mizz Booshay had published a challenge.  Hey, maybe I’ll give it a shot said I!  So, crawling out of my funk here is my attempt at capturing fall with bokeh using my little point and shoot camera. 

So what is bokeh you ask?  Beats me!  Okay so I don’t know the technical explination but I like what Jennifer said, “bokeh is that fuzzy dreaminess” in the background.

In my opinion, fall is the best season of all and it is more than just changing leaves, although I love that too, it is about texture…

and harvesting strange ears of crossbred corn (Oops!)…

and the wonder in a childs eyes (does this one count-only a little bokeh)…

and of course the colors…

All pics are straight out of my little point and shoot camera except the one of Bubba, I cropped it to eliminate a nice shot of his runny nose, guess that’s fall too maybe I should have left it! That was fun, thanks for the challenge, I’m temporarily out of my funk!

I Heart Faces

 

Here we go!  I had a really hard time picking my favorites for this weeks photo challenge topics.  I finally settled on two that make me laugh, hope you get a kick out of my pic picks! 🙂

Since I’ve recently heard that Motocross is an official sport in the Olympics now I figured I couldn’t go wrong with the following picture!

 

Though I had a hard time deciding since pets are definitely one of my favorite subjects and bless me I have plenty to pick from (pets that is) I just couldn’t help but enter this picture of one of my favorite “pets” Bubba (alias).

For the record, my two year old insists on calling his grammys “Bubba” so I thought it only fitting that he go by his very own favorite alias on this blog!  No I’m not THAT much of a hick, though some might beg to differ. 🙂

Be sure to head on over to www.iheartfaces.com to check out all of the beautiful entries this week!

The Fate of the Green Tomato

I do have four beautiful children but the Bubba being at the ripe precocious age of two is such a fun subject when I can observe him at “work”.  I had another rare opportunity this week to catch some of that spirit on camera.

Garden Scavenger Hunt

In my garden this week I found a few volunteers so I though it would be fun to show you and see if you can identify the impostors.

Maybe this isn’t a scavenger hunt. I don’t know what to call it but the object is to look at my garden pictures and find which thing does not belong.

One of these things is not like the other.

1. Here is my mint patch, can you find the impostor and identify it?

 

2. The first picture below is a sweet pepper and the second is a volunteer in the pepper row, can you identify it?

 

3. I have ten red onion plants with another stray plant in that row too, can you tell what the second picture is?

4.  In this picture you might see leaves of another plant happily growing in the shade of my cucumber.

5. Here in the cilantro is a happy imposter that I promptly pulled out after taking this picture.

6. Below is the corn field and a plant that I purposely put between rows to save room, can you identify it? 

7.You may see yet another inter-cropper in this picture.

8. Here is one more plant I intercropped at the other end of the corn field can you name it?

Happy hunting!  I will mail seeds to anyone who can correctly identify all of these plants by Monday 7/13/09.  If you get all eight correct I will email you to get your address.  Have fun 🙂

Pink

I’ve been known on occasion to exclaim emphatically that I hate something someone in close proximity absolutely adores.  The color pink has often been the victim of my scrutiny so I thought it would be a good idea to come clean on the issue and give you a little peek into a true color of my daily existence.  Some days! 🙂Ha ha, just kidding- sorta!

I just love her little bald noggin!

Can you believe someone would do this to her little girl’s toes?

That’s better!  Here she is going “green” with a fresh “Pinocchio nose”, what a fab fashion accessory.

Mom must have gone crazy, I think the sun is getting to her!

Oh dear, definitely the sun!

Speaking of sun, the poppies are doing quite well and in such a beautiful shade!

Okay, I had to sneak in a little orange but PeeWee is DONE! I can’t resist taking pictures of her mad faces!

Even though I’m not as opposed to pink as I like people to think, if you plan to bring me flowers, these are my favorite kind.  WEEDS! Yellow, sunny, happy, WEEDS!  Thank you thing 1, you light up my life!

Photography for Goofs 1

I’ ve mentioned before that I’m not entirely sure where this Blog Schmog came from or even where it will go “Cotton Eyed Joe!”  Uh oh, sorry!  Have I also mentioned that I often think in songs- the good the bad AND the ugly.  At any rate, this week I’ve had several people ask me what I do to get the pictures I take and if it’s my camera or some technique I have.  So begins the Photography for Goofs tutorial and let me remind you I’m NO photo genius!

My famous technique and my number one advice is PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!  For each good picture I take there are at least three terrible takes of the same pic.  Sometimes I can even up that to 10-1, not in my favor.  What I’ve done since going digital (some of you might remember FILM cameras) is “just keep clicking, just keep clicking!”  Thanks Dori.

To illustrate…

I’m using “portrait” setting with a slower shutter speed so any movement is blurred…

“STOP MOVING Thing 1!”

That’s better…

Here is my favorite

The last two are pretty good, I can leave well enough alone or I can open with Photoshop Elements 6.0 and do some fancy dancy editing of which I have no idea what I’m doing!

Another amazing tool I’ve found is my camera’s manual!  Funny as it sounds the need to read every word occasionally comes in handy.  Most of the time it is a huge hindrance like the time I couldn’t make mac n’ cheese because I didn’t remember how much water to boil the noodles in.  Would it have been that much of a tragedy to boil noodles in 4 qts instead of 2 qts.  We all know that would have sufficed but I couldn’t wrap my brain around it and so I made quesadilla’s until I could find the directions!  Yeah, I’ve been known to be that bad of a cook!  Can you guess I’m a first born type A kind of gal?

I take all my pictures with a rinky little point and shoot camera.  Actually I really like it and for a mom on the go my dream camera is not practical and if I had one it would probably result in mass mutany or at least less picture taking.  Now that I think of it, that’s probably a sad testament that the Rebel is what my dreams are made of.  Sigh! Okay so that was extreme I’ll just revise that to say “the camera that I think I would really like to have someday but truly I don’t loose any sleep over.”   As it is my trusty little point and shoot Canon can hang on my arm and with a flick of my wrist I can grab that baby like a quick draw cowboy and “just start clicking, just start clicking.”  Oh boy, I’ve lost half of you now since I got that song stuck in your head.  I’m just terrible!

One more quick tip and then I’ve got to get my fanny off this computer.

Whenever possible shoot without the flash.  Now some hardcore photo pros like my friend Christina – ha, she is going to laugh that I called her “hardcore”- would possibly disagree but in the right lighting I seem to get the best results when I turn off the darn auto flash!

What’s the right lighting you ask?  This one I did learn from Christina and maybe we can talk her into a tutorial (hint hint!)… overcast day, morning sun or some shade (without really bright back light).  For example…

Here is Thing 2 with the flash

Here he is again without the flash…not perfect, the sun was too bright through the window and overexposed parts of the picture but overall I’m much happier with the result

Hopefully these tips are helpful, they are certainly not professional I’m just a goofy mamma trying to get good pics of my busy wriggly kids so this is a lay-woman’s tutorial for all the photo goofs out there!