More Color and Photography Club

The garden is starting to get colorful. 

Last night was the last week for the photography class we’ve been having.  Our group got smaller and smaller every lesson but those that stuck it out until the end were very sad to see our “girl’s night out” come to an end.  We had a list of 36 questions to answer some photography related and some totally off the wall.  We learned a lot about each other and had so many laughs.  We all could see the growth in our photography and knowledge about our camera that we discussed for awhile how it was hard to give that up when there’s always so much more to learn. 

So….. we decided to continue our group as a Photography Club.  We’ll decide what subject we’re going to learn about, actually practice shooting different things with real live models and focus on subjects/techniques that we need practice with.  We will meet once a month and without a doubt it will be a great time, we’re a totally fun group.  If you’re interested in joining the Photography Club send me an e-mail and I’ll get you the details of where our first meeting is and the subject.  Everyone is welcome, there are no rules for what type of camera you need, if it takes photos you’re in.

connie.hemmer@gmail.com

So many babies so little dirt

My sister Gayle supplies me with annuals, she is the baby plant maker during the early months of spring.  The seeds are planted and need gentle care until they sprout out of the dirt, then she babies them until the can be put into their toddler beds.   I asked her to grow me a couple Zinna's and she plants me about 4 flats, they are already in their toddler beds.  I seen the other day in the store there were green Zinna seeds and I almost bought them for her to plant..... she already has them planted. 

I'm not sure what is next after the toddler bed but there is something before they can be moved to the greenhouse and then into the selling house.   If your looking for big healthy plants this spring take a drive to Gayle's and check out her children, they are grown with so much love.

Oh I can't wait, seeing these little toddlers and some of the infants makes me happy - HAPPY TUESDAY

Jump Rope Jingles - Then and Now

When I was a little girl we had jump rope jingles like "teddy bear, teddy bear turn around, teddy bear, teddy bear touch the ground, one, two, three..."  Now the kids sing jingles like "Elly had a boyfriend they sat up in a tree, the doctor said - boy, girl, twins, triplets...."   Things sure have changed, at least they still jump rope the same way we did.

Dads Hands

My dad's birthday was this weekend along with lots of other family members.  Happy Birthday Everyone  We had a brunch for him and then it turned into a lupper.  What a fun day, it's a good thing dad still likes to celebrate his day with us. 

I talk about my mom's hands a lot since I seem to have to look at them everyday on the ends of my arms but I guess I never looked at my dad's.  But these are my dad's hands and they haven't ever changed, they look the same as I remember as a child.  He's now 83 and you would never know it. 

Sneak Peak

These two boys were so fun to capture

Big brother has a huge smile and sparkly eyes that melts your heart

And little brother was not so happy in the upright position but could hang upside down until his head turns red. 

First Flowers

Not much to blog about lately, not that my life is boring.  My life beyond boring, it's packed with eventful fun times that I just can't begin to tell you or you would be so jealous of what happens here at my house. 

Seriously I cannot tell you how exciting the grocery shopping was tonight, or the cold sandwich romatic dinner with had together, come on, give me a break, we had tomato, lettuce and ranch dressing.... ON A BAGEL!! Then movie night at the neighbors and we all stayed awake.  See I told you, now don't hate me because of our exciting life. 

Happy Birthday John

Growing Season

It's the growing season, it won't be too long and I'll have flowers blooming.  Everynight I walk around the gardens and see what's up and what's grown since the day before.  Spring makes me happy when the gardens start to change.

Forgotten Photo

Not sure why I posted the same photo on Saturday's sneak peak.... who knows why I do what I do.  Since I did, Miss K gets another post with the forgotten pic. 

Gotta love those catchlights in her eyes.

Growing Grandchildren

The grandkids were here this weekend and thank goodness Lynn takes after me and picks up my camera when I play with them otherwise I wouldn't have any photos of me with them.  Garrett likes to sit in the toy box to play no matter what is in there.  He sits on top of the mound of toys and slowly whips out the toys until it's only him left.  Elly decided to sit in the box and I put Miss Mally in with her, well Gar-Man couldn't have them girls taking over his toy box so he sits right on top of them.  Poor Mally got sat on but she didn't seem to mind.  Our grandchildren are growing up, it may be time for a bigger toy box! 

I love these kid-o's.

Sneak Peak

Spent my morning with a beautiful little girl, her eyes could melt my heart.  She is a ham in front of the camera but doesn't like to look at the one taking the photos so to capture her actually looking at me was a bit of a challenge, and she is a doll. 

Signs of Spring

The first signs of spring bring joy to everyone, no matter how many times we see pussywillows growing in the ditches we get excited about them.  They are one of the first signs that spring is here and of course I see them on my walks and know that I don't have enough photos of them so I need to see what different composition I can come up with this year. 

 

2nd fire of the season

The fire was really hot and fast with all these dried up flowers but we still enjoyed it.   The neighbors seen smoke and came down with their drinks..... summer is awesome.

Gardening Already

The past couple days have been so nice and I haven't had the time to enjoy them, but tonight I got to go outside and work in the garden.   This is very early for 60 degrees, actually the past two days were warmer than all last summer : ) 

While working in the garden I found my honeysuckle has green leaves already, like actually full grown leaves not buds, leaves.  The rest of the plant doesn't have anything but the two vines are full of leaves with pink highlights.  Now that's gonna be one sorry vine when we get our snow this weekend.

Gardens are all cleaned up.  There are coneflower seeds everywhere and if I have one seed it grows two plants so if you don't want all them to be thrown in the garbage you better call me when it's digging season.  Don't worry I have enough for all of you.

Shower games

We had a baby shower for my neice this last weekend and I love, kinda like, like, somewhat tolerate, okay I hate shower games.  I'm not good at them so I don't even try, but I love to watch others play them and this one was perfect.  Of course no one ever taste the stuff in the diaper, they say you can smell it and taste it but who ever does, it looks totally gross so why would you ever taste it.... to really, really know what it is, that's why.  Leave it up to Gayle to taste everyone of them and still get them wrong.

My family being silly makes me happy

Running Water - Step Back Monday

With every spring comes running water...... right through our basement.  We live in a very, very old home and it leaks, I don't just mean a little leak I mean "a river run through it".  Well with the melting snow and the rain we have been having the river is happening, and I couldn't be happier.  I love the sound a river makes and could sit there all day long and listen, I love to fall asleep to running water and since we don't live on a river spring time bring that dream to us right inside our house.  (this may be a stretch of a positive from a negative).

Here is the river that runs through our basement.

Okay so maybe John and I took a Jeep ride on Sunday and stopped to sit by the river and enjoy the beautiful day.  While we were enjoying the water there was a log (mature tree) that was floating down the river with a very large ice chunk right behind it, the log got hung up on another attached ice chunk so the back chunk hit it and snapped that log in two pieces, the log flew up in the air, splashed down into the water and kept on floating down the river.  The power that water has is incrediable. 

So now after the breaking of logs and my brain is thinking about how a person could get very hurt if they fell in the water we had a conversation

John - "hummm what do you think that is a skeleton of"?
Me - (not wanting to look but have to look but don't want to look) says nothing
John - "Look at the spine of that thing"
Me - (I looked) (shifted my eyes to him and waited for his answer)

John - "What is that"?
Me - (not wanting to say what I'm thinking and waiting for him to say what it was but he wasn't saying it)

John - (getting tired of me not saying anything)

Me - (wondering how long this could go on if I don't say anything) "isssss itttttt human"?

John - "No it's not human"

Me - "Oh good, then I have no idea what it is, let's go"
John - "What is that"?
Me - "As long as it's not human I don't care"

And no I did not take a picture of it!

Mallory and her Mommy

Mallory loves to stand right now and if you chose to hold help her she will stand all day long.  There is no crawling for this baby girl, she is gonna walk.

Morning Bird

This morning dove was perched outside our door this morning.  I took this photo right through the patio door.  I should have photoshopped the poop off the rocks but I forgot, and it's late so please ignore that birds poop on our rocks.  : )

Just One

You should always weigh yourself with the treat before eating it.

Long Winter

Winter has been too long, it's time to break out the nail polish and wear flip flops!!

Old Polaroids + Cute Boys

 Such cute little boys to test these old polaroids.

Helping a friend

I helped my good friend paint her kitchen tonight, drink a little wine, and offer Mother of the Bride advice.  Such exciting times and I get to share them with her!!  {Happy Tuesday}

 

We painted her kitchen green..... and no I didn't force her to paint it green. 

Horton Hears A Who

Mornings are getting lighter... just wait till next week when that all changes again, no photos before work for awhile.  Not too much of a step back Monday photo it kinda reminds me of the story Horton Hears A Who and that's a step back in time.

Photo Collage + Command Picture Hangers

I hung my photo collage today and didn't want a repeat of yesterday so I bought the Command Picture Hangers.  I'm telling you these things are the best, I couldn't have done it without them and still be married. 

Hanging 9 pictures on the wall with exact spacing you must get these.  If you bought any of the photo squares from my show throw away those nail in picture hangers and get the Command Picture Hangers, they're new and they're great.  If you didn't buy any of the photo squares from my show and you now want some because they look so cool on my laundry room wall just let me know and I'm sure we can work out a deal.

Here is the full view of the wall..... I'm telling you these are so cool and look fantastic on the wall.  My walls are eggplant purple but the laundry room was not the best place for natural light.

I scare myself sometimes, I am my mother

So today is a beautiful day and I scramble around to clean up the house so I can get outside and enjoy the sunshine.  I have a few pictures I want to hang up in the house so I put them on the table with their picture hooks, nails and the hammer so John gets the hint.  He tells me..... not today I'm cleaning the garage.  I don't need a man to hang pictures up I can do it myself.  I measure, mark and hammer those suckers on the first one and then realize.... hummm you should probably make sure that's the top!!  Nope it wasn't so I take it off, re-do it and all is well..... I don't need a man to do this.  I do the same thing with the 2nd one and I checked for the top first so I only had to do it once.  Now I take everything to the bathroom and pound the first nail in the wall and hang the pictures..... hummmm it feels funny.  Oh well, I hang the 2nd picture and realize just as Shannon and the kids walk in the house that I put the picture hangers on upside down.  I laugh and tell Shan not to tell her father.  They are on the wall and look good, he'll never know. 

Shan, I and the kids spend all afternoon outside, Garrett is soaked but he's happy.  I get lots of gardening done on the south side of the house that didn't get done in the fall.  I tried to get the kids to pick up the dead flowers for me but that lasted about 3 minutes. 

move forward a few hours..... John opens the bathroom window as I'm outside.

John - Honey your picture isn't hanging straight
Me - That's okay, I want it that way
John - I'll straighten it for you
Me - If you must

John - Hummmmm, could it have anything to do with the hook being on upside down?
Me - what I can't hear you

John and I decide to go for a Jeep ride in the evening to end this beautiful day so we go to a bar for some pizza.  It's a quiet bar with a couple of regulars that are talking with us and each other..... one guy says to the other guy...... hey how big does a hole have to be for a birdhouse?  I'm thinking about that and after the guy answers the question "depends on the bird"  I said OUT LOUD..... yes I can't believe it myself it just came out, it's one of those things that you thought you were just thinking but you actually said it..... I said..... I thought he was asking what size hole you needed to dig in the ground.... and that would depend on the post you were using...... yep I said it and everyone laughed at me.  I got really, really hot and begged John to take me home. 

I am my mother!!!   Two in one day..... poor John.

Here is photo from my cleaned up garden, no snow!!!

Garden Art

My garden art looks much better sitting in the sun than I do, even if her finish is flaking off.

We're flying into spring

In photography you are never suppose to cut off a person by their neck, wrist, ankle, elbow.... basically any part of the body that bends.

So what do I do tonight, broke all those rules but using the self timer and having to fly around to the other side of the camera and hop up on the stool, I used most of my 20 seconds to pull my legs into the criss-cross position.....my legs can no longer do as well as when I was in grade school. Then pretend like I'm doing something other than just sitting there, so I look like I'm trying to fly but my legs are jammed into a cricket position that I'll fall off my stool if I move one inch...... I know you don't have to say it I'll say it for you "I'm such a dork"


It's out of focus, I cut off my head and both hands but I still like it and it's all I got for tonight.

My body was not harmed in the making of this photo!

Getting difficult to POTD

That title sounds like something gross like a bodily function or something, don't worry it's not that bad.

I'm getting to the difficult time of year.... I've taken a photo of everything related to snow, sun, cold, frost that I could possible think of. Now we head to the season of brown dirty snow and below that is brown water and mud. There is nothing out there on a daily basis that begs for me to take it's photo. I walk around my house and think "who really wants to see that, or that, or that, or really not that, or yeah right I'm not showing you that, oops that's TMI (too much information).

Funny story for you, during my photo show I had one of my photos that I took for John and it's me in my teal polka dotted bra and blue jeans, it's a women's weekend so I thought it was safe.... really I have more clothes on than a swimsuit so don't freak out on me and stop reading.....
so this girl I know spots the photo and says....

Girl - OMG Connie, that's you?
Me - "Yep that's me"
Girl - "Can you do that for me"
Me - "Sure I can"
Girl - with a bit of panic in her voice "Not right now!!!"
Me - giggle, giggle, giggle

Okay back to the story - Well I spent so much time cleaning and judging everything that now my house has a layer of dust removed and still no POTD. So John is out in the garage washing my truck (yes again) and I light the lantern and decide..... this is it, take it or leave it. Boy it's going to be a long couple of weeks. Maybe I should change my rules.... ya' know I can do that, in case you forgot I am a rule breaker.

I should have cleaned the glass, oh well let's keep it real here, my house is lived in.

Longer Daylight Hours

I'm really noticing the longer daylight hours we have, and in a few weeks we change the clocks for even get longer daylight hours after work. I'll have to fight through the dark mornings again, and let me tell you I have to fight my body from lying in bed when it's dark outside.

Longer daylight hours makes for Happy Tuesday.

In like a Lamb

Warm day, sun shining..... beautiful start for March. Gotta love sun flare and the reflection on the snow.