Capture Your 365

Another week of photos to share!

shades of blue

ISO 800, 50mm, f/4.5, 1/160 sec

Day 201 – Shades of Blue: Just a few books from our book collection that just happen to have blue covers. Have you read any of these?

urban art

ISO 800, 50mm, f/5.6, 1/200 sec

Day 202 – Urban Art: Living out where we do, we don’t really see a lot of what would be considered ‘urban art’. But my son has quite a collection of stickers on the back window of his truck.

action

ISO 800, 160mm, f/16, 1/500 sec

Day 205 – Action: The youth group at our church does a park tour through the summer. Rather than meeting at the church, they meet at different parks each week, play games, spend time in worship, and DT, our youth pastor, preaches a lesson to the kids. This past week, they were playing frisbee which gave me a great chance to capture an action shot! I put the camera on shutter priority because I wanted to make sure I was able to freeze the action in this shot. Can you see where the frisbee is?

progress

ISO 400, 28mm, f/5.0, 1/40 sec

Day 206 – Progress: A friend of mine brought me a whole bunch of fresh peaches! So I made attempted to make peach jam (it looks real syrupy, so we will probably use it on ice cream!), made 2 peach crisps, and still had extra peaches.

Question for you: What mode do you usually use to take pictures?

Capture Your 365

A week worth of photos for you this week!

cropped

ISO 400, 50mm, f/2.8, 1/10 sec

Day 194 – Cropped: Each month, on the Capture Your 365 photo challenge, we are encouraged to take a self portrait. For this photo prompt, I put the self timer on and decided to take a picture of just my hands knitting a dish cloth.

old and new

ISO 400, 50mm, f/2.8, 1/25 sec

Day 195 – Old and New: School supplies are showing up in the stores. I picked up a few boxes of crayons. Believe me, they are not for us! We have a big plastic drawer full of old crayons. I will be saving these new boxes to take with us to Mexico.

I spy

ISO 400, 50mm, f/2.8, 1/8 sec

Day 196 – I Spy: My daughter has discovered Sherlock Holmes.

dry

ISO 400, 55mm, f/8.0, 1/50 sec

Day 197 – Dry: Things are usually pretty dry here in the California Central Valley during the summer. It is very rare for us to see any rain for months until the fall.

starts with s

ISO 800, 50mm, f/5.6, 1/13 sec

Day 198 – Starts with S: I couldn’t resist the strawberries at the farmer’s market. You know what that means…

a source of happiness

ISO 800, 48mm, f/5.6, 1/13 sec

Day 199 – A Source of Happiness: One more batch of strawberry jam! I hope to sell a few more jars, but we will be keeping some for all those PB&J sandwiches we like to eat.

two scoops

ISO 800, 50mm, f/5.6, 1/8 sec

Day 200 – Two Scoops: I just love ice cream, no matter what the season.

Question for you: What is your favorite thing to photograph in the summer?

Capture Your 365

Time to share a few of my Capture Your 365 photos from last week with you…

one flower

ISO 400, 50mm, f/3.5, 1/100 sec

Day 189 – One Flower: You know what this one flower means, fresh zucchini!

an ordinary moment

ISO 400, 50mm, f/3.5, 1/50 sec

Day 191 – An Ordinary Moment: This is my kitchen, meals are prepared here usually three times a day. It doesn’t always look this neat and organized, people do live here and we do make messes.

on the street

ISO 400, 50mm, f/4.5, 1/80 sec

Day 192 – On The Street: This is the street where we live. That is my son’s truck in the driveway of our home. It is a pretty quiet street and we are so thankful to live here!

stacks

ISO 400, 50mm, f/2.8, 1/10 sec

Day 193 – Stacks: Here is a stack of flannel baby blanket and wash cloth sets I have made recently. As you know, I have been making items and selling them to earn money for our Compassion trip to Mexico in January. See a set here you would like? Be sure to visit my Facebook page and see what else I have for sale!

Questions for you: What did you photograph this past week? What would you consider an ordinary moment in your home?

Taming the Fabric Scraps

You know you have too many fabric scraps when they start to overflow the five tubs (yes, I did say five tubs!) that are already filled with scraps. Summer is the perfect time for me to tackle some of these projects that kind of get neglected during the school year. So I poured myself a big glass of iced coffee and got to work.

organizing fabric scraps

I spent most of the afternoon going through all of the fabric I had in these tubs, deciding which fabric I wanted to keep and which fabric I wanted to give away. For the fabric I was keeping, I organized it by colors. I figured this would be an easy way to find and use up some of the scrap fabric I have.

fabric scraps organized

After a couple of hours, I ended up with five bags of fabric to give away, and hopefully a more organized system of keeping and using up some of my scrap fabrics. I was also able to reduce the five tubs down to three tubs. One tub has scraps of batting, one tub has scraps of fleece, and one tub has scraps of flannel. Now to go find some ideas on Pinterest to use up some of these scraps of fabric!

Questions for you: How do you organize your scrap fabrics? And what types of projects do you like to do to use up your scrap fabric?

BBQ Chicken Salad

I love summer! But after a week of almost 110 degree temperatures, I even get a little tired of it being so hot. And on these days, cooking in the kitchen is the last thing I want to be doing. Recently, I picked up Christy Jordan’s Southern Plate magazine at Target. You will remember me mentioning her a couple of weeks ago as one of the Compassion Bloggers that went to Nicaragua.

Anyway, one of the recipes she has in the magazine is a Chopped Bacon-Veggie Salad with Creamy Bacon Dressing. I decided to change her recipe up a bit and here is what I came up with:

• one rotisserie chicken, shredded and chopped
• bag of romaine lettuce
• bunch of broccoli, chopped
• a couple of roma tomatoes, seeded and diced
• about a cup of grated cheddar cheese
• one package of bacon, cooked and crumbled
• avocado, chopped
• bbq sauce
• ranch dressing

Once you have shredded and chopped all of the chicken, mix in a little bit of bbq sauce (not too much, just enough to coat the chicken). Mix the lettuce, broccoli, and tomatoes in a large bowl. Set out the rest of the ingredients in separate bowls. You can mix everything together at this point, but I thought it might keep better in the fridge for leftovers if we kept a lot of the ingredients separate. Have everyone assemble their own plate and enjoy!

This salad does have a lot of possibilities! I was even thinking you could add some of the following: grilled corn and/or thawed frozen corn kernals, black beans, chopped red onions, and/or chopped green onions.

Questions for you: What is your favorite ingredient in a salad? What do you like to eat on these hot days of summer?