What's New With The Carter Family

We get some amazing sunrise and sunsets in Washington.  This morning, after taking the dog out, I ran back outside with my camera and got this shot of the sky.  It was beautiful - shades of orange with bright streaks of light....just gorgeous!  

I am lucky enough to know, and count as a friend, one pretty awesome photographer :)   Heidi Lawson, of Wishful Thinking Photography  .  I absolutely LOVE her style, and I think she captures my children in the most amazing way.  Just look at some of the shots she took of Finley, to celebrate her being 6 months old.....these are my favorite ones....    

Sometimes there are some really pretty sunsets where I live. The sky lights up with the usual colors of reds and oranges and is oh so pretty to look at. On this day, there was something different going on. The whole sky/land had this bluish-green glow to it...it was crazy colored...and when you looked up at the sky it was this bright color of blue that had no business being in the sky at sunset. It was bizzare I tell you! It lasted for only 15 or so minutes, but it was the most unusual lighting situation I have ever seen. I tried to capture it with my camera, though I was a little late by the time I snapped this shot....and it really doesn't do it any justice. I don't know if that kind of sunset will ever happen again, but it was definitely an amazing sight to behold!

I like changing around my desktop wallpaper. Often. Most of the time it will be a recent photo I took of Jem, or maybe of our family. It's almost always a photo of a loved one. I have lots of those kinds of photos. This time though, I wanted to try something different . I still wanted to use one of my pictures, I just wanted it to be people free. Goodness knows I have hundreds of tulip photos from our yearly trek to the tulip fields.... and beautiful scenery photos from our many outings. I found this fairly recent picture in my 2011 folder, from Valentine's Day. This was the bouquet of flowers Brandon had sent to me when he was away in Japan in February. Aren't they pretty? It was a complete surprise - it really meant a lot to me to receive them :) But uh...what on earth was I thinking, photographing these beautiful roses....on my ugly, green, bumpy carpet mat? HIDEOUS! I had to do something about it. So I opened up my picture in PSE 8 and went to town. Some careful sele...

Day 26: Bromance.... Ummm yeah. I don't think so. My boys don't really have any 'bros' that they're 'mancing with. How about another snow picture instead? Okidoki. I love this picture! I took it from my deck, when the snow was falling. It was early evening, which is why it looks so dark and gloomy. The eerie look is one of the reasons I love this picture so much. It has this almost bluish tinge to it, but honestly, that is exactly how it looked outside when I took this shot. I opened the picture up in PSE8 to try and remove the blue tinge, to get a cleaner shot, but it just didn't have the same impact on me without the blue/gray coloring. So I left it as is :)

Day 25: When you love them the most... I have a great picture book that talks about this. It's called Little Raccoon's Big Question . See, little Raccoon keeps asking his mommy WHEN does she love him the most? Is it when he's eating his breakfast? When he's brushing his teeth? When he's swimming clear across the pond? When? Her answer....is Right Now. Because it's always Right Now. She loves him all the time. I feel this way about my little guy. There isn't a moment in the day when I don't love him the most . So for today's assignment I could have photographed anything :) I chose to post a collage of pictures that I took this past week, when we had a couple of days of snow and Jem got the day off school because of it.

Day 24: Where...did you first meet, fall in love, get married... Okay. It's getting kind of late. Let's see...almost 9pm. I've been putting this photography prompt off all day. When I saw the topic I thought 'huh'. I've been trying to get motivated to take some sort of picture, any picture , that represented some kind of where . I contemplated not doing today's prompt. I mean, what am I supposed to photograph? It just wasn't clicking for me. And then I saw this. Our magnet. I like collecting magnets. I always want one from every state or country we visit, as a reminder of where we've been. When I saw this particular magnet, from the state of Texas, it reminded me of where we lived when we were first married. The Lone Star State. The wide, open, lots of cows everywhere, politest people on this earth, best night skies you've ever seen, state of Texas. And then it hit me. I always associate 'us' with Texas. It's where we were married, wh...

Day 23: Facebook...find your favorite FB photo of your loved one... There are no words to adequately describe my feelings about this outfit. All I can say is this: Pam, what were you THINKING ??? This photo still remains one of my very favorite of my husband, and has been (on occassion) his Facebook Profile Picture. Gotta love that Brandon smile...but babe...you seriously needed a haircut! You're looking a little shaggy there!

Day 22: Face (A Portrait) This is a picture I took 3 days ago, when my niece and her family came over to our house to visit. It had been a few months since I'd taken any pictures of my beautiful River, and so I begged and pleaded with her to let me take some shots! Oh alright, there was no begging, no pleading. She was quite a willing model for her Aunt Cathy. Such a good girl :) However, once I saw the pictures on my computer screen, it absolutely blew me away when I saw how much OLDER she looks! Can you believe that this is my 11-year-old niece? Wowsers!

Day 20: When they are here....what is life like when they are around? One of the best things about Brandon being home (especially after a 2 week long business trip) is that I feel safe at night. I absolutely HATE sleeping by myself....there is nothing like having a big, strong, cuddly cutie pie sleeping next to you to make you feel warm and secure. I'm very glad he is back, and I'm super glad to have my protector back at my side.

Day 19: When they're gone... This is so relevant to me right now....because Brandon has been gone on a business trip to Japan for the last 2 weeks. Actually, his plane should be touching down in Sea-tac in about oh, 5 minutes :) So technically, he is still away! I'd better hurry and post my picture! When Brandon is gone, the tv logs less hours than usual. It has this nice black, "OFF", look to it. I kinda like it like that, it looks peaceful :) This picture was taken at 8:30am this morning with some light coming in through windows....but the downstairs is usually very dark so I had to bump up my ISO to 800 and my aperture was 1.8 and shutter speed was 1/80 sec .

Day 18: Going Out: take a picture when you're out on a date...take your point and shoot, just get a shot of the two of you. This picture was taken on our "10th Anniversary", when we celebrated by going on a cruise to the Caribbean. I made it a point to take both of my cameras with me, but whenever we went on a water type excursion I only carried my point-and-shoot. Sure, it doesn't take as great pictures as my dSLR, but it's more important to get a picture - any picture . This shot reminds me of the wonderful & relaxing time we had on that vacation, and I'm so glad I had my little point-and-shoot camera with me on this outing!

Day 17: Staying In....what do you do when you're at home together? Brandon usually puts Jem to bed. It's something that he's done since Jem was a baby. I don't mess with their system. They have a whole "jumping hugs, prayer, cuddle" routine that's pretty much set. I just come in at the end, give a kiss & cuddle, and say goodnight. That is, unless Brandon is gone. Then I step in for bedtime duty. With me it's pretty simple: I say "get your jammies on, do your peeps and poops (and yes I use those words still LOL), brush your teeth, get into bed and start your reading". When his reading is done I come to his room for a kiss, a cuddle and to pray. Jem's prayers are pretty similar from one night to another. And while I do believe that a person's prayer is private conversation between them and God, I am going to share Jem's with you. Mostly because I want to have a record of what he would say at this age. It usually goes something...

Day 16: Together (self-portrait)....use your self timer if you have to.... Yes, I had to. Use the self-timer, that is. Since B is still in Japan and I had no one to take our picture, I set the camera on the tripod, set the timer and ran back to Jem. After about 10 tries, we managed to get one in focus :) It's not the nicest picture, but hey, it's a picture. And it's of us, together. And that's all I have to say about that. P.S. We took this photo late last night (hence the ugly indoor lighting), but I was too tired to put it up here straight away. That might happen occassionaly - even though my intentions are good and I want to post every day....sometimes....well sometimes I might not . Rest assured, I will eventually get the day's picture up here :)

Day 15: Kiss...photograph your loved one's lips, or your loved one kissing.... Since poor Jem is still not feeling well, I decided to go with an old photo instead of taking a new one today. This picture is from a looooong time ago - June of 2005 to be exact. It was taken on one of our trips to Idaho, to visit Mom & Dad and The Skinners. It is one of my absolute favorite pictures that I've ever taken - with my dinky old Pentax no less. I love the sweetness and innocence of this kiss, between two cousins (aged 3 & 5) who rarely saw one another but loved each other so very much! I processed this picture in PSE8 using a new (FREE) action by Florabella (called "Action Mixer" - it allows you to mix different actions together for a customized look). You can download it by "liking" this Florabella Collection page on FB. I mixed 3 Pioneer Woman actions to get the final result: Boost 10% (boosts the contrast and color a little), Seventies 75% (gives it tha...

Day 14: Jewelery....wedding bands.... The top band is the one I wear now.....the band on the bottom is the one I was married with :) I don't like big showy rings, I always just wanted a band. At the time, the simple white gold band was all we could afford.....but years later I was very excited to be able to add some shiny stones (in the form of a new wedding band) to my finger!

Day 13: Their Routines...document what it is they do on a regular basis... Jem has a routine that he always follows when he gets home from school. We call it doing his "Jobs". He unpacks his backpack and gives me his daily folder, then unloads his lunchbox. He goes upstairs and gets into his PJ's and puts his clothes away, and then....well then he practices his Piano lesson for the week. Jem has been taking piano since September, and he really loves it. It's not really a chore to have him practice - he does it willingly and happily. I love listening to him play - and he quite likes having an audience ;) At the moment he is practicing 2 songs - the Star Wars Theme Song (his favorite) & This Is Your Land.

Day 12: The Eyes.... I can't decide what I love more - my son's beautiful chocolate brown eyes.... ....or the long pretty eyelashes that adorn them. P.S. Jem is a little pale in these pictures. We had spent the previous day and night at the walk-in clinic and the ER. Jem was not feeling well at all, and although he is doing much better today (when I took these pictures), he is still not looking like his usual self. These pictures were taken in his room, with Jem sitting by his window, using a 50mm lens with aperture set at 3.5 , shutter speed of 1/125 , and ISO of 400 .

Day 11: Dreams... Today I was supposed to photograph something that represented the dreams of my loved one... and while I was prepared to get my camera out later in the day and do just that - something surprising happened :) So let's just say that this post is now no longer about dreams. Sorry. I decided to just go with the flow, and document my 'surprise' instead. What is it, you ask? Hmmm.... well, let's start at the beginning. My husband is away on a business trip. Gone for what, 7 days already? And he'll be gone a while more. He won't be here on Valentine's day, which makes me sadder than sad. Don't ask me why. It's not like we ever celebrate "valentine's day" anyway. But the fact that I CAN'T even if I decided I WANTED TO makes me feel bad. Boy, I really miss my Brandon. This week has gone by very slowly for us. Thank goodness I've been busy, because I imagine it would have been much worse. I'm thankful for my great fam...

Day 10: Spaces Since I feel like I've adequately photographed Jem's favorite "space" (his little tv nook upstairs with the grey mini couch), I decided to be a little liberal with the topic today. I'm posting a picture of my beautiful niece Piper, in a "space" she sat and played in for the very first time today. My front deck. And yes, that is sun you see...rare as it may be, we've been having a few wonderful days of sunshine! Piper really enjoyed being outside, and found the deck super fascinating! She even let me take a few pictures, though this one here {the very first one I took} shows you the 'look' she's giving me for bringing out my camera :)