Pictures of the week so far...

Yep, I was playing with the camera. I'm working very hard to make sure that I take at least one picture with our Nikon D40 every day. A couple of days ago, the kids were outside playing and I got some great pictures of my son. He figured out how to climb the tree out front and now all he asks is if he can go out and climb the tree.




And check out this Sunset a few days ago... I walked out the door to come somewhere and looked up to see this. I ran back in and got the camera and snapped a few photos. We don't get clouds with coloring like this often enough. (or maybe I just miss it).

So, I'm challenging myself to be sure to take at least one photo a day with this camera so that I can get the hang of what to do in different situations. I just keep finding out how much I DON'T know about this camera. Fun for me. Practice makes perfect!

Here's my kitty too!

Did someone say Winter??

So, did someone say that this was Winter??? I just went back and looked at the highs and lows for temperature between Christmas and New Year's Day... The High temp on Christmas was 64 degrees... the low was 40. Now, fast forward to New Year's Day. The high temp was 64, the low was 39. Today (well, yesterday by now), it was a balmy 78 degrees... Yep, 78 degrees. And that's for the 3rd of January!!! Geeze... it's very hard to get in the Christmas spirit with the temperatures being what they have been. Of course, we did have a couple of very cold fronts come through between the first part of November and Thanksgiving, but now we just bounce between 50s and high 70s for highs. There is a saying here (as with what I'm sure are a hundred other places)... "If you don't like the Texas weather, just wait 5 minutes. It will change." Yeah, right... It doesn't tend to change that quickly most of the time, but we have been known to go from 70+ degree weather to 40+ degree weather in a matter of hours in an afternoon.

So, where is Winter???

Winter is simply a "season" on the calendar for us for the most part. We usually have a couple of weeks in February where we get ice, but aside from that, it's usually pretty warm here. My kids were dressed in SHORTS today!!! And a couple of days ago, they just had hoodies on when they went outside rather than be bundled up!

The thing I like about Winter is that it's cool and everyone bundles up. I get to wear fleece stuff and velour stuff and slippers and cuddle on the couch under a blanket. I enjoy the cool weather for the most part. I don't really like Ice, Snow, etc and for that I'm thankful for wear we live... Yep, North Texas. We only really experience Ice and the yuck for a couple of weeks in February... although, we did have an ice storm the week before Thanksgiving, but it was very short-lived.

I love the Winter Holidays... Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's. It's so filled with family and rememberances and traditions.

What don't I like about Winter? Well, ice. 'nuff said...

I guess that's just par for the course. I don't really have a season I like more than any other... Until we get to summer and it's 100+ for days and days in a row... It's not Summer's fault, but dang that's hot and bothersome!

Happy New Year!

So, yesterday was New Year's Day, 2009. I was hoping to actually get to scrapbooking on the project I am working on for our church. However, I spent most of my day building out my scrapping area and sorting and stuff. Not quite the productive time I had hoped to spend. It's okay though because now I can actually reach my scrapbooking stuff (yeah, crap was piled up in front of it all and I couldn't hardly even see it). My wonderful hubby built me a bench that my plastic storage drawers will eventually reside under. The nice thing is that now, for the first time since I got it, I have my scraprack up on the bench and I don't have to disassemble it everytime I clear out my scrapping area so we can eat (yeah, former scrapping area was the dining room table).

So, I just got done looking at a bunch of photos on line from our church events and ordering them. I have several events worth of pictures in hand, but I finally got a link to some albums from one of our church members who is a really good photographer. So, I had to order some to fill in. So, now that that is done, and my scrapbooking stuff is almost sorted, I have pulled out my pics for my project and I can start to put some pictures on pages... I have already cropped and rounded corners... Now it's matting time and then layouts! So, at least I am not starting completely from scratch.

I guess spending the day yesterday and most of today organizing should make it a little easier to really get going on my scrapbooking. I keep looking at the forums on some of my favorite scrapbooking sites and keep eyeing the idea of jumping in on some challenges... But then I realize I am probably better off sticking to one and if that ends up going well perhaps I can jump in on some monthly ones or weekly ones later on. Right now, I'm concentrating on the Journalling/blogging challenge from Scrapbook.com. (Shameless plug, I know).

So, hubby just went to get the kiddos from daycare and I suspect they'll be wired when they get home. I guess I should really get these pictures matted and make some real, demonstrable progress on this book!

I'll be back later, probably when I take a break.