An Unplanned Summer Day Trip

July 19, 2013

My husband decided to take the day off today, so we got Kelsey up a little earlier than usual and made our way to this location:

No, we didn’t travel to Philadelphia. We went to the Jelly Belly Factory! We have been there quite a few times, but it is still a fun destination with a free tour and a free bag of Jelly Bellys at the end of the tour.

Then we headed here for lunch:

We don’t have a Chick-fil-a very close to our home, so we made sure to stop here for lunch today. Their chicken sandwiches are so good and I just love their fries.

Before heading home we stopped here (Barnes & Nobles):

The closest book store to us is over 30 minutes away. My one big unrealistic dream would be to have a room with floor to ceiling bookshelves completely filled with books. Maybe one day! The only thing we bought here was a Sherlock Holmes book for Kelsey. If I had unlimited funds, I would have bought a lot of books today!

Question for you: Where do you like to go on day trips?

Priorities and a Day on the River

June 28, 2013

Every now and then, because of my volunteer work with Compassion, we have conference calls scheduled to discuss various things that I am involved in. During the school year, it is usually pretty easy for me to plan on ‘attending’ these calls since we really should be home making sure school and house work are getting done.

But during the summer, things come up. Like the one day opportunity to save $10 per person to go on a river rafting trip with your daughter and a couple of her friends. The conference call can be rescheduled, but you don’t always have the chance to save money on a day trip like this. Or do you have the opportunity to put your family first like this.

We all had a great time on the trip (a little sore and sunburned though!), but most importantly, I want my daughter to know that she is more important to me than even the ministry that is near and dear to my heart. I don’t ever want her to resent the time I put into helping other people realize the difference they can make by investing into the life of a child living in extreme poverty.

Question for you: How do you balance family and ministry time?

Capture Your 365

June 26, 2013

So, I have learned that it is a good idea to format a memory card rather than delete photos from them. However, it is a good idea to check to see what is on that memory card before you format it, otherwise you only have two photos to share for the week! Oh well…

ISO 400, 50mm, f/4.0, 1/250 sec

Day 167 – Something Masculine: For Father’s Day, my husband just wanted to spend a quiet afternoon at home after church. One of his favorite things to do in the summer time is to BBQ using his charcoal BBQ. So we made sure to plan BBQ hamburgers for our lunch/dinner for that day. Why lunch/dinner? You see, on Sundays, we usually find ourselves eating lunch around 3pm. By 5 or 6pm, no one is hungry for dinner. So on Sundays, we just plan on eating a late lunch/early dinner. If we do find ourselves hungry later in the day, we can always pop some popcorn or make something yummy for dessert.

ISO 400, 50mm, f/4.0, 1/80 sec

Day 168 – Splash: Taking some creative license on this one! We don’t have a pool of any kind at our home. And rather than try to create some ‘splash’ using water of some form, I thought it would be fun to take a picture of pouring rice krispies into the melted marshmallows while making rice krispie treats. Certainly not the same effect as water splashing, but it was worth it later while we were enjoying the rice krispie treats!

Question for you: What do you like to take pictures of during the summer?

Capture Your 365

June 5, 2013

Kind of a slow week for me on the photo prompts, but I will be sharing a couple of extra photos with you this week!

ISO 100, 50mm, f/4.0, 1/6 sec

Day 146 – In The Kitchen: Our pastor’s son recently got married down in Southern California and they had a reception with our church family after their honeymoon. For the reception, the groom requested homemade chocolate chip cookies. So I baked a couple of batches of my favorite recipe from America’s Test Kitchen (it is worth getting the trial membership for this recipe!)

ISO 400, 200mm, f/5.6, 1/80 sec

Day 149 – Smiles: Trying to get these two to cooperate for this picture was hilarious! They kept giggling and squirming. Not the sharpest image (shutter speed was too slow for the focal length), but I love how it captures the sweet relationship my children have for each other.

ISO 400, 200mm, f/5.6, 1/25 sec

Day 150 – Butterflies: There is no butterfly in this picture, but these flowers do attract hummingbirds quite often. Maybe I will be able to capture a butterfly or hummingbird picture one of these days.

So at the beginning of this post, I mentioned that I would have a couple of extra photos for you this week. Here is the first one:

ISO 400, 50mm, f/5.0, 1/50 sec

Remember the wedding reception I was baking the chocolate chip cookies for? This is the bride and groom. While I have never photographed a wedding (and I am not sure if I will want to!), I did have fun taking pictures at this reception.

ISO 100, 120mm, f/7.1, 10 sec

Remember this photo that I posted a few weeks ago from our photography field trip to San Francisco? I entered it into the Arts & Crafts contest at our local town festival last weekend. I ended up winning a first place ribbon and Best of Show! So exciting!

Ready to join in the fun? Be sure to visit Capture Your 365 to print out this month’s photo prompt list. Be sure to let me know if you are participating so I can visit your blog.

Capture Your 365

May 22, 2013

Time for another week of photos to share with you from the Capture Your 365 photo challenge!

ISO 200, 60mm, f/4.5, 1/200 sec

Day 131 – A New Focus On Me: Most definitely not one I will be printing out to hang on my wall, but this was a fun one to do with a reflection of me in the glass surrounding the bobcat at the San Francisco Zoo. Do you see him up in the top left corner?

ISO 100, 50mm, f/4.5, 1/20 sec

Day 132 – A Mother’s Gift: my 2 kids, they are such a blessing to me!

ISO 100, 50mm, f/4.5, 1/4 sec

Day 135 – Be Active: So I am out on my walk one day last week and I pass by the house with the amazing garden growing in their front yard (yes, you read that correctly. They have their whole front yard filled with a vegetable garden!). The owner of the house is out front talking to another neighbor and I mention to her that I love her yard. She asks me if I would like some Swiss chard. I don’t believe I have ever had Swiss chard before, so I accept her offer. I had enough Swiss chard to share with two friends, plus enough for us to try with dinner that night. I was able to cut it all up, but Kelsey ended up cooking it for me. After cooking it in some olive oil and garlic, we all decided it had a spinach-like texture and wasn’t too bad.

ISO 100, 50mm, f/4.5, 1/4 sec

Day 136 – Peaceful Moment: This is one of the two quilts I needed to finish for the quilt raffle I am doing to earn money for my Compassion trip to Mexico. I poured myself a glass of iced coffee, put in season one of Downton Abbey, and started hand stitching the binding. Some people might consider this work, but I really enjoy the simplicity of hand work like this.

ISO 100, 32mm, f/5.6, 1/800 sec

Day 137 – Walk: Kelsey and one of her friends spent a lot of time in our backyard ‘decorating’ our brick walkway, What all do you see in the picture?

Are you participating in the Capture Your 365 challenge yet? Let me know in the comments so I can see your photos!