Valentine Notecards

I'm NOT good at keeping up with this blog. But I wanted to let you know I added some new notecards to my Etsy shop!

Click/tap images to get to my Etsy shop!

Click/tap images to get to my Etsy shop!

I designed two styles, with four colors/images for each style, so please go have a look! More details and pictures are on the listing. I know Valentine's Day is a month away, but it'll come quickly. It's nice to have time to fill out cards and address the envelopes at your leisure, thinking about your friends and family and what they mean to you. Maybe add a pretty sticker to the envelope, and possibly purchase some candy or a Starbucks card to send along with it. ;) You'll definitely brighten someone's day!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year's! I want to post photos from that (and still more from my October trip), but I know better than to promise! Have a wonderful evening. :)

Valentine's Day!

I wanted to say more about Valentine's Day because I have a lot of happy feelings for it! But I've been busy as I prepare for a little road trip I'm taking. I'm posting this on Friday night so you might see it before V-day is almost over. I hope you have a wonderful holiday weekend, possibly thinking about the presidents ;) and/or having fun times with your loved ones.

♥

Christmas Party

The day after Christmas, my parents hosted a party for friends and relatives. It was a combination gathering for Christmas, my dad's retirement, an introduction for my sister's new husband, and an open house to visit with people we don't get to see very often. (Especially since my sisters and I have moved to other states.) It was a nice time, and I'm happy so many people stopped by during a busy time of year! I got to see some relatives and friends I haven't seen in forevs. Thanks to my mom and dad for being great hosts, as always. We grew up having lots of gatherings and dinners with friends and family. Lots of happy times that contributed to my own hostessing habits.

These photos will mostly be of interest to those in attendance, but hopefully they are somewhat enjoyable even if these are strangers to you. I didn't manage to get permission from everyone pictured, so if you see your photo and you don't want it here in public, please let me know and I can take it down.

Christmas day

Here are several photos of the scene on Christmas morning and then a few in the day. I feel like they really capture the general spirit of things. It was a happy day! I'm sooooo so so happy I got to spend it with my nieces so I could watch their enthusiasm over the gifts. :) :) Let's do it over again!

I don't know if you can tell, but she's into Minnie.

I just realized this might be the only photo of my sister's dog, Asher! Huh. Unless he snuck in some others. I probably should've made an effort to get a better picture. Also featuring K's zebra PJs!

E and her mama.

And my mom! Who hopefully doesn't mind I'm picturing her in her robe. I feel like this picture is so very Christmas morningy.

E couldn't wait to wear her "homet" for her new scooter.

K, looking at a photo of her new bike waiting at home.

I got E this Sophia (sp?) wooden "paper" doll. Really my mom helped pick it out--I had no idea who Sophia was.

Dad, just taking it all in with Rocky staying out of the way.

Later in the day we did a lot of quiet relaxing.

I was glad to have my laptop for some quiet game playing on some of the days.

Meanwhile, E played with stuffed animals in the entry way.

I think my dad was showing my sister and her husband some trip photos. What looks like a dog and Barbie in Santa hats is on TV. :P Wth?

More playing. Some of these were dog toys.

E's cute while doing pretty much anything. Including drinking sparkling cider from a bottle.

It was just a small extra gift I got for each girl, but they seemed to like them!

I still find it so cute when kids play on the computer, even though it's normal for them.

But N's been practicing since she was 1 and a half! :) She used to hop up and pretend to do what she saw her mom and sisters do.

Hey, sorry I still need to catch up on comment responses! I appreciate the comments I've received, but I easily fall behind. Maybe tomorrow I can work on it. Later!

Christmas pix

I feel so behind on posting photos here! At least I haven't really taken any in January (typically a very slow month, and sort of a photography break for me), it's just all of the Christmas ones that I have left to edit. If you're like me, you're ready for spring and not necessarily in the mood to look at Christmas pictures, even though it was only a few weeks ago (which seems impossible). BUT! Too bad so sad, I'm posting them anyway. Here is the first set of what I like to call Christmas Vacation Assortment.

And by "assortment" I mean randomness. I just took pictures when the mood struck, so there's variety here, but I also missed photographing certain activities because I was enjoying my nieces instead of holding the camera. So here are some Starbucks mugs my mom is apparently collecting. Or at least inadvertently collecting. I like them. Poor New Mexico only gets one for the entire state.

I think it was the first night my sister's family arrived when we sat around the fire pit for awhile.

Rocky joined us.

N loves her Hello Kitty sleeping mask!

There are definitely a lot more photos of little E than any of the other girls. She's 3...I can't help but take pictures of her all the time! The other girls had their moments of way more pictures back when they were about this age, too! (Like that time I took a thousand pictures of N, for instance.)

Anyway, E loved this little display right at a perfect height for her to admire, and even though we told her not to pick the stuff up, she couldn't help herself.

E being silly, dancing around to a musical stuffed animal.

More dancing.

My parents actually had a real tree again! We grew up always having real trees, but when I was an adult they bought a fake and had it for years. I guess they got rid of it so I was thrilled to have the real thing again. I know it's a hassle, but it's just better!

E wasn't as cooperative for this picture, but I loved that N was happily posing with her sister. Right afterwards, though, E wriggled away and N had hurt feelings.

We spent a lot of time in this "Christmas room" (the livingroom) because I looooove the couch in here and it was all nice and festive.

E, watching Polar Express in the trailer where some of us slept. She lays so cutely.

My parents got Shari's Berries!

And truffles. And I got to have one. :)

On Christmas Eve I didn't get a chance to do portraits with E (I did them with the other girls--photos to come), but I wanted to make sure and get a picture of her in her dress. She had already opened her Christmas Eve present of slippers, so I thought the combo outfit was cute. And then she's just putting on shoes in the other picture, and she put them on the right feet! Some kids are cute enough that even putting on shoes is photo-worthy.

I'll just keep posting these in sections until I'm done! I don't know how many posts it'll take. Check back for more tomorrow!

I also took a lot of video, because my new camera does video and I had to try it out. I don't know if you're interested in those, but I may post one or five later.

2014 in Review

I decided I will just post two photos or videos per month for this review. It's tricky, but a good way to be concise. Here's a bit about 2014:

Christmas 2014

[An awesome card my sister sent my parents.]
I'm in northern California staying with my parents. I've had a wonderful Christmas break and there are lots of pictures I'd like to post here sometime. I'm going through them today since my sister's family has started their 2-day trip home, and now it's just my parents and me (I leave tomorrow).

It was so much fun to spend several days with my parents and sister's family! My nieces and I did Christmasy things like crafts, cookie decorating and looking at lights. Then we had several friends and relatives over and I got to see people I hadn't seen in years. We had a full week. If you follow me on Instagram, you saw a little of it.

Now it's a lot quieter here and I miss my nieces already! :( :( They are so cute and funny and special bonus: they like me! I am trying to not think about it already being over because it'll make me too sad. I'll see them again in a few months, hopefully!

I don't even know where to start with the photos, so here are just a few that initially caught my eye. I'll post more as I work on them.

One morning it was really foggy, so one niece and I went out looking for good photo subjects.

My sister's due in early April!

My nieces looking all cute for our party. It was chilly, but I dragged them outside for a few quick photos. Soon they will have another sister!

Little girls fascinated with the light-up angels in my parents' window.

Sisters being kind of goofy after the party.

Little E (age 3) "putting on makeup." She was basically waving a coaster in front of her face, because she's adorable.

I hope you all had a nice Christmas. I can't believe it's already time to start compiling my end-of-the-year posts!

Pre-Christmas

(Just an old photo I found. It was taken in December of 2008 when we strung up some lights in our office, and had a nice sunset one night.)

I have neglected this blog, and part of the reason is that I haven't been taking bloggable photos. But I know I can post even without pictures, so here I am.

Thanksgiving was great! I went to the Seattle area (like last year) and every day was different, but I think I got to experience a nice balance of activities. It snowed a little, and was generally FREEZING for most of my visit, but that made it fun and memorable. I really hated leaving to go back to normal life after the nice 5-day break.

But normal life hasn't been so bad! Last Friday I got some good news and it seems to have given me a jolt of Christmas spirit. I was feeling overwhelmed by all I wanted to accomplish this month, but now I'm feeling much more on top of things. I've shopped, baked, hung lights, sent a bit of mail, wrapped gifts and lots of other little things. I LOVED Christmas when I was a kid (like most kids), but then I started feeling stressed and sometimes bummed about it for part of my adulthood. In the past few years, I've been getting some of my childhood excitement. I can point to some possible reasons, but I don't really know why. Life just has its phases with things, I guess.

Anyway, I am glad that Christmas gives us an excuse to do special things for people. It gives me the push to step slightly out of my comfort zone and contact old friends or try new projects. Sometimes I think Christmas is dragged on too long when I see stores decorating before Halloween. But then as the day approaches, it feels like there's never enough time to do everything I'd like to do. (Like go to the Festival of Lights at The Grotto in Portland. I just learned of that this year, but I don't really have the time/energy to go. How cool does that sound?)

I have several more things to accomplish in the next two weeks, but I am trying to enjoy each step of the process instead of just dwelling on the list or wishing it would all be over.

And oh yeah, I just remembered I've taken some pictures and wanted to share some recipes with you! I'll try and get to that this week. We'll see, chickadee.

I'll leave you with one of my favorite Christmas songs:


We listened to a lot of Mannheim Steamroller when I was younger, so it has a lot of good memories attached. But the choir version of this song is great, too.

Ocean/flowers

There's nothing earth-shattering to tell you, but I had a few photos I thought I'd upload while I felt like it.

This past weekend I had four glorious days off (yes, my work gives us two days off for Independence Day)! I spent them hanging out with friends, playing lots of games, watching Parks & Recreation, staying up late, sleeping in, going to two arcades (??), eating strawberry shortcake, going to the coast, and even seeing a movie, which I so rarely do. (That's three theater movies this year--probably a new record since my early 20s.)

We're having a bit of a heatwave here in the PNW, so since my place has no air conditioning, it's good to get out during the hottest hours. My friend Dan and I headed to Lincoln City where the weather was perfect. There was a bit of fog coming in, which created a nice effect in my photos.

Oh yeah, and I took a couple of photos of this flower the other day. Might as well throw them in this post.

The only issues with our Lincoln City trip were slow service at a restaurant (and we were pretty dang hungry by that point) and lots of traffic on both drives. The way home took us quite awhile, probably because it was Sunday after a holiday weekend. I hadn't thought of that--I've never had traffic problems between Salem and Lincoln City (probably because I don't go enough).

The movie we saw was the latest X-Men movie, which is totally not the type of movie I would choose to see, but it was alright! It had a couple of special effects. One or two action/fight scenes. The story was fairly easy to follow, though I had a bunch of questions afterwards, like why must superheroes always wear capes? It seems a little impractical.

Dan sweetly brought me some roses, so I took a few photos tonight before they wilt too much. Not sure if I mentioned that it's hot here lately. :]

Going back to work today was pretty difficult, and I felt really overwhelmed at first. But I powered through with some whining and caffeine. And now we only have three more days to go!


Other favorite parts of my weekend:

• Playing Catchphrase with Dan, Jon and Mariel. So fun and funny!
• Sleeping in. That deserves another mention, since it's one of my favorite things.
• Seeing beavers swimming around.
• And a deer!
• And herons flying around.
• Iced tea!
• Sunshine.
• My new glasses arriving in the mail.
• The dishes being done.

Tada!