day 31...

well here we are the last day of december, the last day of our photo-a-day and the last day of 2009! i took about 5 photos this morning of my cactus, but none of them focused on what i wanted without being fuzzy, so tonight when i looked at them, i had to resort to this! here's looking at you, HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! hey ruth, hey nathalie, are you up for a 365 photo-a-day!!!

day 30...

the girls had a grand old time jumping on the mattress this morning before i had a chance to put it back up on the hidabed.

day 29...

yesterday i didn't have time to upload my photo, because the girls came over for a pyjama party. their parents were having an adult party, their first in a long long time! i took some photos of the apple tree's shadow on the snow on the cabana roof, but there was the clothes line right in my line of view and there was no way i was going out since it was soooooooooooooo cold. so instead, here is the pot of boiling water that i had just put the spaghetti in for dinner.

day 28...

well i've had 8 photos in a row that were indoor shots, so i figured it was time i got outside again. here is a white on white shot!

day 27...

ruth gave us the challenge today and it was 'silver'. so i went around the house and took everything i could find that was silver, and chose the first photo i took of my pandora barcelet on my bureau. i love that it reflects on the black, so it could have been one for that 'reflection' challenge last weekend too. nathalie took this cute little ornament and ruth took a new bracelet.

day 26...

nathalie gave us the challenge today of 'aftermath' and again i was torn between the mess from the opening of the gifts or the mess of chips after losing my shirt in our poker game!!! just kidding we were playing rumoli and i lost about $1. anyway the mess in the basement won, so here it is. it's not that messy either, because justin made sure all the screwed up paper went into that huge red bag, and i could not take the photo while it really looked a mess with all the gifts and toys because they left before midnight and it was a challenge for today! grrr... ;) you check out nathalie's here and ruth's here.

day 25...

well it's finally christmas day and it turned out to be a pretty darned good day, only one child meltdown right at dinner time, but we will just chalk that up to tiredness and hunger! i only forgot to get one thing and reg said no one would even notice, but just as we were about to sit down, justin asked 'where are the crackers', i just knew he would notice! oh dear...! we took a lot of photos and i am torn between 2 for today's photo, so i will post both, but the official one will be this one of st. patrick's church since we are afterall celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ!



and here is the other one of the kids before we opened any presents! i think that that is the trick, take the official family photo then , and everyone co-operates!!!

day 24...

'twas the night before christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. the stockings were hung by the chimney ..... well you know the rest! everything is ready and we had a nice quiet evening watching a movie in front of the fire. the calm before the storm, as they say!

day 23...

today was my birthday and i was spoiled rotten by all my friends and family! last night my gal pals took me out for an italian yummy dinner and spoiled me with gifts and a scrapbook album that they made me that i will treasure forever. they also had these balloons on our table which i thought appropo to use for my photo today!

day 22...

i went back to my flowers today, because as i was passing them this morning i loved how the light was coming through the window on the, heavenly smelling, center of the lily.

day 21...

not up to par today after being hit hard yesterday afternoon with a 24 hour thing! i was in and out of bed all day, so i just took a photo of the flowers i received on saturday night.

day 20...

it was my turn today to give the challenge and it was 'ice'! i had the idea for it last week, when i saw the pretty patterns of ice on the window in the office, but of course by this morning it was gone! we went for a drive this afternoon and went by the river where i took one of my shots for our june challenge and captured all this ice. can't wait to see what ruth and nathalie come up with!!!

day 19...

ruth gave us a challenge today of 'reflection' and since i had just changed my header to the perfect reflection shot, i had to put my thinking cap on! i always take many photos so that i have a few to choose from and this morning was no exception. i took a shot of a window relecting in some glassed watercolors, then a ruth shot with my camera in a mirror, then a window reflected in a mirror and finally the shot i chose was of a reflected prism on my hand from some crystals hanging in our kitchen window.



that's out there eh ruth! ;) you can check our nathalie's beauty here and ruth's here!

day 18...

well i tried again this morning to get my little juncos, but not a good one in the bunch, so i turned my attention to this silly, but smart squirrel who comes to visit everyday and tries to eat whatever bird food we have out there. today he decided to have his way with the cage of suet seeds that i put out for the woodpeckers, who incidentally have not found it yet, and he fought with it til it fell to the ground where he scooped it out and ate to his heart's content!

day 17...

i took oodles of photos of the little juncos that come right on the gallery to feed, but i can't seem to get a decent photo of them since they are gray and white, but mostly gray so their eyes don't show up clearly. so since i was wrapping presents this morning and this photo will be in my december album, i figured i would use it here too!

day 16...

i hate it when i have a lot of photos that i like that i can choose from one day, like today, and then there are some days i just don't have any idea of what to take even! well i have a photo of that helicopter that crashed this morning when they had just hoisted it up onto the flatbed to haul it away, or there is the one of the st. james hotel downtown that is so quaint and with their christmas lights, even more so, and others. i finally decided on this one taken inside of our world trade center.



if i had a mac i could straighten out those lights, but on here i have no idea how to do it!

day 15...

i know, i'm a week late (due to the snowstorm last wednesday), and by the time i remembered i had my camera in my purse, carine had already left to go back to work, but we finally got together to celebrate ruth's birthday today. so here are ruth and julie after lunch for my photo today! :)

day 14...

i see that ruth and i were on the same wavelength again today! i took this shot practically as soon as i got up and at 'em this morning, because the backyard looked so pretty with that fresh coat of snow.

day 12 and 13...

busy, busy weekend so i didn't even have time to post my photos!

nathalie had sunday's challenge and it was for a 'lot of something the same' and that worked very well for me since we had our annual cookie bake yesterday and made oodles of yummy cookies.



i had the first challenge on saturday and i figured that since we are always behind the camera, it would be fun to see us for a change and warned ruth that a camera could not be in front of her face for this shot, ;)! elki wanted very much to pose with me, could anyone refuse her!!! ;)



take a look at nathalie's photos here and ruth's here!

day 11...

friday, the last day of the this week and tomorrow and sunday we have challenges! i needed some green and red in my collection, since i have a lot of creams, so this is my newest painting that is one of elki's christmas presents btw, so shhhhhhhhhh!



i had trouble finding just the right stuff to use for tinkerbell's gossimer wings and thought of using some glitter dust which i used on my xmas cards, but it was messy and just kept coming off so i ended up using stickles which i think turned out fine.

day 10...

since i was up at 6 a.m. this morning because reg was hacking away, he has a doozie of a cold, and i was just hot and wide awake, i got up and figured since it was still dark, i would try and take my photo of the day. i saw this on 'write, click, scrapbook' and thought i would try it. it's not perfect, but since i am a completely automatic kinda photo taker, this was a challenge and it kinda worked!

day 9...

what a miserable day, a doozie first of the season snowstorm, freezing cold, mammogram (not cancelled), luncheon date cancelled, grrrr... and babysitting the girls cancelled as well! i snapped these birds having a feast in the storm and figured it would be a good shot to show how miserable it is out there!

day 8...

unlike ruth's snatch a nut and fly away bird, mine decided to take the sun this afternoon on the gallery under the bird feeder where he had just gobbled up all the seeds that the other birds had pushed out.

day 7...

since i did not venture out of the house today, i took a shot of my little oriental tea pot collection that i have. lisa gave me the little blue one one mother's day and the brown one comes from my sister who bought it in hong kong. the flowered one in the back i bought a few weeks ago at a church bazaar just because i loved it and it has two cups to match, tea for two! :) it looked much better on sunday, when the sun was shining in on it, but this is the best i could do on this dull day!

day 6...

tarts, tarts, and more tarts! i baked 4 dozen tarts today, half lemon (my mother's recipe) and half sugar pie (a friend's delicious recipe) filling, yum! they are now in the freezer, ready for whenever, plus there was enough sugar pie filling for a pie for tonight's dessert, yum!

day 5...

i made a batch of cheese straws today, but they will not last very long, because it is mrs. fortin's recipe and reg gobbles them up, you would think they were chips or something!!! ;) we will have to make several batches next sunday which is our cookie bake to keep everyone satisfied!



if you look carefully you will see that there is a piece missing on one of them and that's reg steeling bits while they were cooling.

day 4...

i put the christmas tree up the other day, but just got the lights on it since that takes me a whole hour. today i trimmed the tree and here is one of my boxes of cloisonée ornaments that i have collected over the years with the sun shining in the basement window onto them.

day 3...

what a crappy rainy day, even though it's quite mild out there! i love to see the reflection of the apple tree in the pool that i see outside my kitchen window, so today that is what i decided to take for my photo-a-day, since for my dec. album, i took my christmas cards assembly line and i'd rather noone see them til they received them! kwim! ;) if you click it bigger (ruth helped me with my problem with that, thanks ruth) you can see that it had started raining when i snapped the shot so it's a bit fuzzy, but that's life right, it's not always perfect)

day 2...

i realized this morning when i was taking my first shot for my album that i had already taken a shot of my front door wreath for last year's photo-a-day and there would be a few others that would be duplicates along the way. so some of my photos will be for the photo-a-day and others will be for both the photo-a-day and the album.

the birds were flitting around this morning while i was eating breakfast and i have moved my feeder up onto the gallery so that i can watch them up close and personal, so i got this shot of these 2 little chickadees feeding and i didn't even crop it.

day 1...december!

if you read ruth's blog you already know that we are doing another photo-a-day for the christmasy month of december and nathalie is joining us, yeah! :)

i am doing an album for december and it will be a 'countdown to christmas'! i thought of it when i was getting the grandkids advent boxes that i made at the end of last year filled for them the other day. the photos i take for this month will actually be going into this album and will be filled with all the fixings for a festive and happy holiday!

now i did not intend to continue the october close-ups, but when i uploaded my shots that i took this morning of the lights that i had just put up, it had started snowing and there was this beautiful snowflake on the light that disappeared in the matter of seconds and hopefully my photo enlarges so you can really see the delicateness of it! (note to oneself: next time, focus in on it and not just the light!)