The PhotoHunt theme this week is “aftermath.” For more interpretations of the theme, go check out tnchick’s post.
(I admit that, once again, I struggled with this theme. I almost went with “afterbath” instead.)
(Be thankful I didn’t go with “afterbirth.”)
There is a certain magic for me about the beginning of a journey. Once I can leave behind the stress of packing and the anxiety that I may forget something crucial (Do I have the tickets? Wallet? Passport? Did I leave the stove on?), the excitement about the travel ahead is allowed free reign. I look forward to the new and varied experiences. Seeing new sights, or revisiting old sights with eyes that have changed. Hearing the sounds, smelling the smells, tasting the foods. I love the process of travel itself, that physical sense of forward motion.
The anticipation that I’m going to get somewhere feels a lot like hope.
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.
–Robert Louis Stevenson
Having come across this quote while poking around for inspiration for this week’s Photo Hunt theme of “hope,” I thought to offer up a photo that suggests the hopefulness of a journey’s beginning.
The train station photo above is another one that I took on our 2007 trip to Europe. Shown is our luggage on the platform of the train station in Saarbrücken, Germany, as we waited for the train to Paris.
May the new year bring you health, happiness, and when possible, flying babies.
“There’s a duck in the dishwasher,” she said with surprise.
Okay, so I posted this photo before, ages ago. But it just screamed out to me to be posted for the PhotoHunt theme of “squeaky.” Squeaky toy, squeaky clean.
It’s been another long crazy day, with little to show for it. However, I do have something to show for some of my recent days.
I made a few ornaments for some relatives again this year. (Not as many as last year, though.) I was all set last week to mail out a parcel full of fair trade chocolate to some people (Theo brand!), which I’d wrapped up in some re-usable gift bags from Wrapsacks. Then Phoebe came home from daycare with some ornaments she’d made with pipe cleaner and plastic beads. And then I was apparently overpowered by the desire to make some more ornaments. Perhaps due to my need to one-up my two-year-old daughter. I’ll show her!
And so it was that in the midst of feeling overloaded, I was up past 1 in the morning, scavenging and snipping and stitching. I cut some tree shapes from a bit of green felt (leftover from Theo’s Halloween carrot-top hat), and sewed on some glass beads, and some bits of chain on one:
Last night, once the little people were asleep, I sat down with my laptop and was greeted by a message telling me that my computer had not been backed up in 110 days. Gulp. Whereas I haven’t done huge amounts of work on my laptop in that time, there has been a fair amount. And what’s more, I have taken quite a few pictures. Theo is, in fact, only about 120 days old now, so losing those pictures would have been more than a little upsetting. Seeing as my laptop had been acting a bit screwy with the sound output the night before, I knew I shouldn’t wait any more.
While I waited for my backup to finish, I took a few pictures. I’d been saying I’ve wanted to try out some macro photography, and my little point and shoot Canon can only get me so far. (Or so close, as the case may be.) So John set me up to play with his Nikon SLR and a macro lens. Here are some of the results:
A couple of ornaments on our tree.
Some dolls from my grandmother’s collection that she would display at Christmas.
That last pair relates to something else I did recently. They are closeups of my pre-amplifier and microphone, which I used to make a recording.
I submitted a song to the 2008 Blogger Christmahanukwanzaakah Online Holiday Concert, which Neil of Citizen of the Month is so graciously hosting. I lost my voice last week when I had a cold, so I almost chickened out. But I mostly got my voice back, and I figured I would regret it if I didn’t send in a recording.
(The song I sang is Coventry Carol, and I have a post drafted about that song which I’ll probably share in a few days.)
This week’s PhotoHunt theme was “wide,” which didn’t give me a lot of specific ideas. I did, however, welcome the chance to dig through some of my more recent travel photos.
While I did find a few wide candidates to choose from, I also noticed that I tend to gravitate towards photos of the narrow. (I’m not sure what that says about my personality. Maybe it says more about my camera.)
This week’s PhotoHunt theme is “favorite,” which left me at a bit of a loss for interpretation. I’m not much good at picking favorites, in general. I’m more likely to give a list of 5 or 10 (or 100) of something, and say they are “among my favorites.”
Anyhow, I somewhat arbitrarily picked this recent photo (which I’d rated in my iPhoto Library as a “favorite”) as it seemed somewhat iconic of picking a favorite color. (Phoebe doesn’t have a favorite color right now. Sometimes she’ll pick one, like blue or purple, or sometimes she’ll say “I like all the colors.” A child after my own heart.)
My mother is out for a visit, so I haven’t had much time for blogging. But I did want to share some photos.
We went to get a Christmas tree yesterday from our local tree farm. The farm is actually about 2 miles down the road from us, and we pass it on the way to Phoebe’s daycare. Remarkably, though, this was the first year we’ve managed to go there for a tree. (We’ve been there for blueberry picking, though.) We don’t always get a tree, since we tend to travel for Christmas. And then the times when we have gotten a tree, we’ve gone too late for the tree farm. (They seem to close for the season about a week before Christmas.)
Anyhow, it was a lot of fun. We had our first snow of the season overnight, so things were looking particularly wintery and festive.
Finally, here’s the video I like to call “shaking the tree.” (Alternately, you may prefer to watch this YouTube of a different Shaking the Tree.)
This week’s PhotoHunt theme is “breakfast.”
These are pictures of Phoebe at breakfast this morning. She’s wearing my mother’s blue beret and eating frozen blueberries. (As in blueberries that are still frozen. She likes them that way. They’re like little blueberry popsicles.)
collecting tokens 