Category Archives: Project 365

Evening Entertainment

December 11, 2013 Molly Leave a comment

When we went camping back in September, I took Reed and Lena out with me to do some long exposure night photography. It wasn’t quite dark enough for the stars, so we did some long exposures with the flashlight, where they could try to draw in the air. They had a blast.

I thought it would be fun to try that again. I had never done it inside, until last night when I realized there was really no reason why you couldn’t do it inside in a decent sized room with all the lights out. So, I set up my tripod and gave them a flashlight. I was making dinner while they did it, so I had to come in every 30 seconds to press the shutter. I actually could have given them the camera remote, as well, but I wanted to keep an eye on them, since the camera could be knocked over if they got too close and too wild.

The first ones in each set, with their name on them, are all of the images merged together.

Everyday Life, Photography, Project 365

500 Star Fails

December 11, 2013 Molly Leave a comment

This is my 500th (public) blog post. I feel like that requires a bit of celebration! And a dedicated post… which isn’t going to happen. Maybe I’ll celebrate my 503rd blog post instead.

My flashlight handwriting is AMAZING, thankyouverymuch.

Here’s Lena’s outfit from today. I need to get her to start an OOTD blog. That’s Outfit Of the Day, for those of you who don’t speak internet.

The dress and pants were from my mom, but I love that she dug out matching socks and wore her red sparkly shoes.

(Insert text about our day here. Copy/paste usual Tuesday.)

After Aaron got him, I insisted on going to the grocery store and taking the dogs out. Things that need to happen.

Things that actually needed to happen:

That was one of my test shots, but I love how it turned out. Can you connect the dots to find Orion? Taurus? Can you find the Pleiades? The Orion Nebula? The random plane trail? Sirius? Actually, I’m not sure if Sirius is in this one, so if anyone knows if that’s Sirius peeking out from the trees, that would be awesome. I actually know nothing about astronomy– thank you, Google.

The real reason I wanted to go out was to try out star trails. If you don’t know what star trails are, get ready to be amazed… and then go google it. I knew this would be more of a star fail, but you’ve got to start somewhere, right? I tried this with combining different shots in Lightroom.

The other method is to take one long exposure. I quickly tried this when I got home and I think I will try this again first. It’s just random branches, and you can tell I bumped the camera when I pressed the shutter, but you get the idea.

I’ll be back out later this week to try again!

Everyday Life, Photography, Project 365

Bubbles

December 9, 2013 Molly Leave a comment

I have a love/hate relationship with the age 2. He is often completely delightful– talking in full sentences, asking for kisses, and wanting to cuddle. He tells me “I funny, mama. I funny.” And he is! I’ve told him that so many times that he’s started to say it himself. Then, other moments, he will be freaking out about something silly. Here’s a meltdown from yesterday.

He wanted Lena’s toy horse, but when I handed it to him, he’d throw it down the stairs again. Then, yell and scream at me to get it for him.

This is how Lena did her homework today. In a tiara. Of course.

We are still at it with the advent calendar. Apparently I messed up the days, though, and today’s was a random act of kindness! Fortunately, it was an easy one.

Everyday Life, Photography, Project 365

A Fairy Princess Birthday

December 8, 2013 Molly 1 Comment

I wanted to do something special with Lena for her birthday, so I researched some events going on around her birthday. I found the Fairy Princess in Kansas City. Perfect! She had told me that she wanted a Princess birthday, so I knew she’d love this.

First, the kids get their picture taken with the fairy princess. This is Lena’s that I scanned. Then, they wave her magic wand, a box opens and they get to pick a bag– with a crown inside!

She needed to switch crowns and then got to go do crafts.

After she was done with crafts, she got to pick out a cupcake and we headed home. Telling me over and over again, “That was fun, mama! That was fun!”

Once home, we opened gifts– what we had gotten her and what my mom had sent. We got her a book, a coloring book and a set of princess themed legos, all at her request. My mom got her one of the recordable Hallmark books which she recorded herself reading, and a cute little outfit. She announced that each gift was “awesome!” and shared what she loved about each.

When she was free, I took her outside to snap the picture of her in the snow in my previous post and I took a couple of other quick shots of her.

For dinner, we had her big quest of chicken nuggets, french fries and cake. Our much-loved babysitter Amanda joined us for dinner and gave Lena a home-made hat and each of the kids a pack of Christmas stickers.

She loved this part.

My 6 year olds, all ready for bed.

Everyday Life, Photography, Project 365

Mooo

December 7, 2013 Molly 1 Comment

Our town has an “Old Fashioned” Christmas parade. It is entirely horse drawn. So fun! We’ve never gone before, and I’m so glad we went, even though it was the coldest day ever for the parade.

As much as I enjoyed the parade, my absolute favorite part was Gus’s reaction to seeing the horses. “MOOOO!” “Those are horses, buddy. Cows say ‘mooo’. Horses say ‘neigh!'” “MOOO!”

There’s a video here, but apparently WordPress doesn’t allow you to embed Instagram videos.

Gus was done by the end of the parade, but Reed, Lena and I still had a lot to accomplish!

We dropped Aaron and Gus off at home, then we headed to R&L’s school’s Holiday Shop. I have fond memories of doing this myself as a kid. You feel so grown up to be shopping without an adult!

I made them modest lists, hoping that they wouldn’t exceed the amount that the school gives them for the shop. I didn’t include myself on the lists. But, sweet Lena and her “Elf”, a girl who was probably in high school, got me something anyways (and still stayed within budget!). I can’t wait to see what it is and it’s so sweet that they thought to do that.

Next up was our random act of kindness for the day. Feeding the empty parking meters downtown to prevent someone from getting a ticket!

Reed insisted on bringing some of his own change to help and even let Lena put some of it in.

Today is Aaron’s birthday and by this point, Gus was taking a nap. So, to give Aaron some kid-free time, I took Reed and Lena to lunch and grocery shopping. Burgers, fries and giant ice cream sandwiches = happy kids.

(She insisted that I take a picture of her smiling like that!)