Frost (part 1)

Remember to enter the Valentine's Giveaway! I will draw/announce two names sometime in early February, so you have up until the end of the day on January 31st to enter to win what I think are some fun Valentine goods.

(By the way, I've been really enjoying the comments on that post! I need to respond to them soon.)

Now for pictures. Recently we had several days of dense fog and below freezing temperatures that created a layer of frost on everything. I was a little slow to get out there with my camera, but I ended up with LOTS of pictures right before everything melted. I narrowed them down, but they'll still be in two posts.

Some of these were taken at home, some at work.

Sorry I don't have a lot of captions. There's not much to say yet.

These are some of my favs. I always like photographing delicate smatterings of leaves or flowers. They look like jewelry for trees.

One frustration I was having with these photos was with the difficulty in capturing what I saw. There were so many pretty scenes, but these photos don't really depict them all that well.


I'll post part 2 some other day. Have a great Friday night!

Valentine's Giveaway

[2/1/13: This giveaway is now closed--I'll be announcing the winners soon!]
The other day I had a work assignment to create a Valentine's card for one of my coworkers to send out. Going through all of the adorable Valentine graphics got me feeling festive and heart-tastic. I think the vibrant reds and soft pinks have magical powers.

I always get into the Valentine spirit in the weeks leading up to it, even though Valentine's Day itself isn't usually anything special for me. I often have big ideas for gifts and cards I want to send people in my life, and I quickly become overwhelmed and end up narrowing things down (or doing nothing at all). This year I decided I could use my blog for a Valentine outlet, so I put together two Valentine "stockings" to give to two of you!

This is what each package will contain, though I'm purposely hiding a couple of things, because surprises are fun! The contents of the packages are almost identical. Items are either Valentiney or just have Valentine colors on their packaging.

TO ENTER: All you have to do is comment here on this post! Tell me something you like about Valentine's Day, if anything. If you have trouble commenting or don't have an account to sign in with, you may email me at [email removed] and let me know you're entering. (If you have my personal email address, feel free to use that instead.)

♥ You'll just be entered once, even if you comment multiple times. :)

♥ I'm not going to mail anything internationally (sorry!), so you have to either live in the USA or have someone here that you want me to send it to.

♥ Most of the gift contents are girly, but guys may enter and just give away the stuff they don't want!

♥ In the coming weeks I will draw two names and announce the winners in my blog!

♥ Good luck and thanks for reading my blog! I wish I could send you all presents.

Just to clarify, friends, family an strangers are all welcome to enter!

San Felipe: Day 6

I had planned to post this earlier, but every evening this week I have felt so drained and unable to spend the energy editing and posting photos. It's fun, but it can be tedious and very time-consuming. Also, I think the time of year just isn't my most productive. I may just try to post on weekends for awhile, and any weekday posts will be a bonus.

Day 6 was Thanksgiving. After the normal morning routine of breakfast and chillaxing al aire libre, we finally headed to the beach!

At first we just relaxed in the sun for awhile. My dad took a walk to learn more about the area and my mom napped (she was still lethargic from being sick, though she felt a lot better). I went swimming a couple of times.

We all watched fish jumping out of the water (I couldn't catch a photo, sorry!), but otherwise there wasn't a lot of sea life at this point.

I had been wanting a photo of a sandpiper, so I was happy to see one!

The tide was starting to go out and reveal the rocks. We all started to do a little exploring in search of clams (an old pastime when visiting this area).

We didn't see many live clams, but we saw a lot of other fun stuff, and I have a bundle of photos for you. First, a cute hermit crab. There were lots of these, but of course they would tuck their little legs in most of the time.

Then came the exciting discovery when my dad decided to flip over a rock (still in search of clams) and we saw an octopus! You can get an idea of his size based on the clam shell, which was probably the size of a quarter.

I raced to take pictures, but these little guys are fast. So then it became a fun activity for my dad to repeatedly flip over rocks so I could take several photos before the octopus was out of sight again.

Almost every larger rock had one or two octopuses underneath.

A couple of them squirted their ink upon being discovered, and my dad's leg got hit one of the times! He says it didn't hurt (I was afraid it would sting). I guess it's just to cloud the water so predators are startled and confused. I don't know, I'm not a marine biologist!

I remember when my niece L and I saw a giant octopus in the Newport science center, and they told us that it could squeeze through a hole with the diameter of a tennis ball (or a baseball?). I bet these guys could get through a centimeter, and I guess it's why they can hide under rocks.

This is the narrowed-down selection of photos. :)

Okay, we're done with those.

My parents are very helpful in assisting me with photos. :) Here's my dad pointing at a little crab for size-comparison.

Then he was able to catch one. So cute! And pretty coloring. You could make a color pallet out of that.

I forget what these little fish are called, but they are super camouflagey. My parents recognized the type of fish but I'm blanking.

There he is again.

A little snail. It's hard to catch these out of their shell.

This rock had all kinds of life on it, including this adorably weird starfish! It seems to be missing an arm.

Now I forgot what that thing is called, too. It's kind of snail-like in that it has the hard shell and soft body and it slithers slowly over the rocks.

I guess that's all the photos I took that day. It was a great time at the beach. I think all Thanksgivings should be spent on the beach looking at cool sea life!

After going home and relaxing/showering, we went out to dinner at a place my parents had been to several times. I had a pork chop dinner with a pina colada, and we all had flan for dessert. My mom was feeling much better after resting, I think, and her appetite was completely back for dinner. It was a good day.

One more Mexico post will happen sometime in the next week (hopefully), and stay tuned, because I'm doing a
♥ Valentine's giveaway ♥! :) I'll post about it soon (maybe tomorrow).

San Felipe: Day 5

[Shrimp boat.]
Time to pick up where we left off with my Mexico trip. It's been awhile, so if you are new or need a refresher, please visit my other posts about this trip:

San Felipe: Day 1
San Felipe: Day 2
San Felipe: Day 3
San Felipe: Day 4
The homeowners nicely invited me to go up to their patio and take pictures of the hummingbirds on the feeder. I sat awhile and took several, but am just posting a few interesting ones here.

A blurry photo, but I couldn't resist posting a tongue picture.

The owners say they have counted up to 15 hummingbirds on and around their feeder (some hovering and waiting for their turn) at once! I only ever saw five at a time, which is still way more than at home where it's rare to even see two on the feeder at once.

The owners also said that their granddaughter (I think it was) actually PETTED a hummmingbird while it was on the feeder!! I wanted to try, but never really got a chance.

This was the ugliest hummingbird, but I think it's a young one that will eventually be pretty.

Chatty.

Ready for takeoff.

Later in the day I took photos of our accommodations, in case you're interested. Starting with the view from our back door.

The main area.

Other side of the main area. Through that doorway you can see another door, which was my parents' bedroom.

Which looked like this.

Or this, from the other side. And then through the door there you can see another door, which is the one that goes out to the outdoor hallway (which leads upstairs to the front of the house).

Here's the bathroom, and then some Mexican money. The exchange was 12 pesos to a US dollar while we were there.

The bills have a cut-out with clear plastic.

My mom found one of those desert pokey things still on her shoe from the day before. They follow you home no matter how hard you try to leave them in the desert.

My mom asked me to French braid her hair. Excellent posture, Mom! After dinner we played Yahtzee, where I finally had some good luck after losing badly to my dad a couple of days before. 1,777! (Now I'm paranoid someone will see a math error.)


My parents working in the kitchen. Me, lazily taking photos of other people working. And that was Wednesday!

2012 Books

Happy new year! Here's to clean slates! *clink* This morning I made an egg nog coffee cake that I'll share the recipe for later on. So good. I'm going to have a slow day and enjoy the sunshine (it's nice and sunny today, though pretty freezing too) and my last day off work for the holidays. I wish I could take another few months off.

I read 41 books this year. I tried to finish a 42nd so my grid would be even, but it didn't happen. I find I don't read well under pressure (which explains why I so rarely read from my school textbooks).

A few notes...

1. Yes, I tend to like lighter reads. But don't let the covers/titles fool you. They aren't always fluffy chick lit even if they are supposed to appear that way.

2. Actually, I feel most of the books pictured here give the wrong impression about my reading preferences, but I will stop myself from explaining all the reasons why.

3. Favorites from the year are highlighted in green:

The Sunday Philosophy Club (and others from the series I've read so far) by Alexander McCall Smith. These are the first non-Ladies' Detective books I've read by him and I was kind of afraid I wouldn't like reading about anyone else besides Precious Ramotswe, but I did!

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith - I don't know what to say about it, but it's good. I'm afraid to see the movie and ruin it.

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen - A fun mix of light magic with the more serious stuff told in a light-hearted way so it wasn't depressing. I'm looking forward to reading more of her books but keep running out of time before the library takes them back.

The Maid of Fairbourne Hall by Julie Klassen - Pride and Prejudice-esque. I guess I'm a little fascinated with that time period and social class, sometimes. Bonus points for being Christian fiction without being annoying in the way so many Christian fiction books are. It's sad that most wholesome books come at a sacrifice.

The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline B. Cooney - I'm not quite done with this series (four books) but was pleasantly surprised by it.

4. Least-favorites: Oh gosh...that list is too long, but the winners of said list would be The Sunday Wife by Cassandra King, House of Secrets by Tracie Peterson, and Summer in Tuscany by Elizabeth Adler. Don't get me started on why!

5. Most of these were audiobooks.

Does anything come to your mind as being a great or terrible read from this past year? I welcome recommendations!