reject pictures for the Christmas card

The day we got our tree last weekend, I took a billion pictures hoping for something usable for our Christmas card.  I did actually find one mediocre picture that will appear on the card, but I was tempted to scrap the whole idea of a lovely picture of my littles smiling, and just make a funny card with any of these pictures.  But since they ultimately did NOT make the cut, I'm sharing my reject pictures here for your own enjoyment.

Yep, Fletcher checking out angel anatomy and his various faces didn't make the cut.  Neither did Rowan driving and Brian sitting in her seat for the ride.  Fletcher was seriously worried.  But she did just fine.  Mostly because she couldn't reach the pedal.

Do you send out a Christmas/holiday card with a picture?  Do you find it as difficult as I do?  Please say yes.

some exuses

Hey guys.  I have some excuses for not being around here as much as usual. 
1.  I've been playing catch up ever since my trip to Arizona last weekend.  Laundry, cleaning, meals, and just hanging out with the littles, who are quite clingy since I left.
2.  I took a million pictures of Karen's little family, so I've been spending a million hours editing them for her. 

They're a gorgeous family, no?
3.  I've been systematically making Halloween shirts for every kid I know.  Actually, I wish that I were making them for *every* kid I know.  But I just don't have enough hours in the day!  And if I didn't include your children, just know that I didn't include my own, either.  I'm a great mom, I know!

There's really no end in sight.  I have a few of these shirts to finish, trips to the post office, more laundry, and this will be the first weekend I spend with my husband in 3 weeks.  So you know there will be an adventure there.  A busy, but happy life!  I'm not complaining, trust me.

Does this time of year start a whirlwind of busy-ness for you like it does for me?

and there's more

More pictures of my children.  I'm so very sorry, but I can't NOT share pictures of Rowan's birthday celebrations.  Her grandmothers would be appalled.  APPALLED.  Plus I have not a one other picture to share with you, since as I explained in my last post, I have no babysitter here yet.  Hence I spend every. waking. hour. with my littles.  But!  I have condensed the insane amount of pictures into (mostly) collages for your viewing pleasure!  We (I) aim to please here at My Trash and Treasure.  Always thinking of our (my) lovely readers. 

Here we go.  This would be the present portion of Rowan's birthday celebration.  We love our Radio Flyer products around here.  And Dr. Seuss.  And bubbles.  And we apparently feel mediocre about Candy Land.  But we played anyway.

And here is the cake I did not bake from scratch, but very lovingly decorated myself.  It's a bit shaky, but hey, it's a flowering vine, so it kind of blends in.

And Rowan didn't seem to mind. 

After blowing out the candle, she'd say, "Again!" So we re-lit the candle and sang Happy Birthday about 3 times.  Anything for the birthday girl!

And the next day while she was still dressed up after church, I took the opportunity to do a little 2 year old photo shoot.

She was adorably herself in all the photos, including breaking out into a dance, and rolling around a bit in the grass.  But I think this one is my favorite!

{super cute vintage sailor dress nabbed at fuzzymama}

Thanks for hanging in there, friends. 

rainbows + roses

Not to go all Mary Sunshine on you, but we live in a preeetty pastoral area.  So when I go to take pictures, I have a lot of this to choose from:

And oh my goodness.  We had no idea when we moved into this house a little over a month ago how much bloomage would be happening! 

There are about 10 rosebushes in full bloom.  And the iris is just charging out all over the yard!

I gather up long stalks of iris and thorny bunches of roses and our house is quickly adorned.

Which is good since I haven't hung one picture or piece of art in this house.  Of course along with all the pastoral scenery surrounding us, we find a lot of these:

We hear cattle lowing while we play in our yard, which stops the littles dead in their tracks.  Rowan gets wide eyes and says, "scared!"  Yep.  She may be a city girl like her mama.

{Quick message to my regulars: I'll be on a blogging hiatus until next Tuesday!  See you then!}

i go both ways

Well, now that you've seen that provocative title, you will be disappointed with this post that just has a couple pictures of flowers.  Sorry, I can be a stinker like that!

But I really do go both ways.  When it comes to black and white photos and color photos.  I will go to edit a picture, and have a really tough time trying to figure out which one looks better. Take this tulip plant.  Of course color looks great- it's a vibrant flower!  But I think the black and white is really beautiful, too.

Which version do you prefer? 

doors

Something just for fun.  One day I will master Photoshop, Blogger and Lightroom, and then my life will be complete.  But for now, here are half the doors, instead of the whole doors!  The bottom part of the doors ain't that great, anyway.  The bottom half of doors is overrated.  Top half of doors for President!!



friday facts: find the sweet spot

Sometimes photographing inside can be a challenge.  I don't have a super-fancy camera, and I don't have any super fancy lenses.  For the record, I have a Nikon D3000.  Don't get me wrong, it was bought at a great expense to us and it has taken great family photos for us, too.  But I'm saving my pennies for the next camera for my bag.  And I'm going to be taking some classes, too.  (p.s. can I practice on you or your family?  thanks in advance) 

Ok, back to taking pictures inside.  There's not much I can do at night without better lenses/camera, but during the day I have found that my house has some sweet spots.  I particularly like the light that comes in the afternoon on the west side of our house, but the morning light might work better in your home depending upon how your house sits, or if you have trees that cast shade on your home.  Phew, run on sentence!  We have a lot of windows on the west side too, which helps.  But I have recently found a new favorite sweet spot.  You've already seen this picture I took of Fletcher, but let's look again.  What's great about this flash-free (of course!!!) photo is that it looks like he's being lit from below and above, just like in a photo studio.

You can see why the light is so great in this picture of Rowan.

{wearing mama's vintage top}

See the light that is cast from the window onto the floor?  That's doing the job of lighting from below.  The light from the window is lighting up her face, and the light bounces off the floor to light her from below.  Free studio lights!  But proceed with caution.  It's hard to get a baby to stay where you want.

So you don't want the subject to actually get into the light that is being cast onto the floor.  Obviously.  You might end up with a really ugly foot in your picture.  And a dog body coming out of your baby's head.  Not to mention the rainbow on the baby's face.  If you have a photo editing program, you can try and fix this, but why bother?  Scoot that baby back, pull that foot out of the frame, shoo the dog away.

Here's another I took the other day in the same spot.

I probably should have gotten lower in this picture so she didn't have this big head-little body problem.  The dreaded lollipop head.  Ah, hell.  Let's throw in one more from the sweet spot.

{Rowan: all teeth and eyes}

I would like to insert here that I am not sharing this knowledge with you because I have an extensive knowledge of photography.  I am just learning from trial and error, and when I find something that works for me, why not share it with you?  This trick will work with any camera, really.  Trust me.  Find your sweet spot.

i heart faces: from a distance

I know.  I have that stupid song in my head now, too.  Sorry 'bout that.  Here's Rowan, from a distance.  Shooting through our deck posts provided me with a lot of shots of Rowan out of focus and lots of really sharp in focus deck posts.  What can I say?  I'm awesome.

i heart faces: picture of the month

*UPDATE: nevermind on the voting, they did it differently this time and chose 100 to vote for- not mine!

This week's i heart faces is People's Choice. Which means YOU can go vote for it.  Just to clarify, it is NOT a cutest kids contest or something like that.  I think some of you thought that was the case the last time I did this. It was really hard to go through my gabillion pictures and pick just one, but I of course picked one of my own kids.  Of course.  Here's Fletcher, laughing at the big fountain faces in Millenium Park in Chicago.  If you're liking my photo and want to vote for it, or just want to see some really awesome pictures, then click on the link above.

Summer weather, splashing in the fountain, hanging out dowtown all equals pure joy for our family.  And the joy is written all over Fletcher's face here.  That's why I picked this one.

i heart faces: shadows

I'm kinda late on this one, but we had a fabulous day out in the sun all day yesterday.  I raked out gardens, we picked up doggie poop (fun!) and the kids basked in warmth.  And then the topper was a really fun impromptu cook-out with the neighbors.  Complete with margaritas, of course.  Hello, Spring!  We love you so.

Papa likes to pick up donuts on the weekend much to my ass's dismay.  This is Fletcher.  Doing the "donut staredown."  Uh, in kind of shadow.  Just go with it, ok?



i heart faces: best of march

This week's i heart faces challenge is best of March.  So here is one of my personal favorites.  It was thisclose to another one with Fletcher, but how can I pass up these icy-blue eyes?  Besides, Fletch was in last week's i heart faces.  Let's keep it even.  Or I'll sure hear about it later.



You Capture: vibrance

Multiple choice.  I'm up at 5 am because:
a. the baby woke up at 4:30 am
b. I caught the kid's colds and can't sleep with this scratchy scratchy throat
c. someone (not naming names) was snoring. right. next. to. my. ears.
d. all of the above.

If you chose d then *ding, ding, ding* you get the prize!  I don't really have a prize, so don't bother me about it, people. 

Anyway.  You Capture.  Vibrance.  These are from the weekend when sleep and health were in abundance.  Those were the days.

{a little bit of a vibrant blue sky}

{This man is the epitome of vibrance.  Seriously, he reminds me more than anyone else in this world to enjoy life and wring every last drop of joy out of it.  I really, really heart you, B.  Even when you snore.}

{my vibrant boy}

{my vibrant-eyed girl}

{spring!  spring is vibrant!  come back to us, spring.}

Next week's You Capture is fun.  I'll have to wait until we're all back to healthy.  Cause the only fun around here right now is blowing noses.  And who wants to see pictures of that?

I heart faces: slice of life

I just got Lightroom thanks to our friend, Andrew!  I have been using it ALL weekend on all sort of photos.  I love it.  But my conclusion is that eventually, I will want Photoshop, too.  Cause I just do.  So I thought I'd enter another photo challenge this week with all my overflow of edited photos.  Click on the button if you'd like to see more.

This week's theme is slice of life.  Since we live within walking distance of 3 parks and about 5 playgrounds, a slice of life around here includes a walk to a park.  Even if the weather is just remotely "nice."  Nice is relative around here.  Here is the boy communing with nature:

He was literally talking to the tree.  Letting it know it had sap.  And it was sticky.  And he's not to touch it, but he'd really really like to.  We call him Mother Nature's son around here.

You Capture: youth

This week's You Capture is youth.  Which is perfect since we spent our weekend with our friend's gorgeous newborn, Lucy.  I have a gabillion pictures I could put up here, so I will try and restrain myself.  Here are a few:

"Show me a day when the world wasn't new." ~ Sister Barbara Hance 

{I loved her hair swirlies}

{*yawn*}

{baby blues!}

{hanging out}

{sleeping like... uh, a baby!}

Next week's theme is vibrance.  I'll be marinating on that for a little while this week.