Triptych

The last theme for November was "triptych." I have pictures of A leaping and dancing after "The Nutcracker" ballet I was going to use for this. I planned on doing a side-by-side collage of the images to create my triptych (even though it is not a painting). I don't have the software to do this easily (I have a couple programs that should work, and easily, but I always seem to struggle locating the pictures I want and ... well, I won't go into the details). So, for my final (late) November post, here are the three pictures I was going to use.

Challenging Shot

I didn't have a good idea going into this one. I was thinking maybe something with water droplets, or maybe a series of jumps. In the end, I opted for the following pictures. What is more challenging than capturing three little kids (ages 2, 3, and 4) looking in the same direction at the same time? Especially on Black Friday. At the fourth store (5th if you count the restaurant). Over an hour into the last store - a suit store (I think you are getting my idea here).

Specific Body Part

Better late than never right? Well, that will be the case for this and the next two posts. They will comprise my final three days of the November daily photo challenge. I am mostly late on my posts, not my picture taking, but it is a little of both.

This one didn't turn out exactly as I envisioned, but I still like it overall. 

Current Mood

While this picture was taken much earlier than now, the mood still is accurate. I am tired. With that being said, here is my picture - and good night!

Funny

I have struggled with this one. I tried getting a picture of S laughing hysterically while I tickled her. The problem was - it is hard to take a picture while tickling a squirming 2 year old. Then, I got in my head too much. I started overthinking what was funny, and not just to me, but to the general masses. But the time has come that I just need to move on. Here are some photos that are funny to me.

This girl cracks me up. Every day. I love her to bits!

Watching A try and drive S down the hill of our driveway, with a pretend tree, was pretty funny to see. Thank you AutoAwesome for a partial capture. 

We were watching a friend's son, and S and him just helped themselves to a snack and sat down nonchalantly in front of the refrigerator to eat. 

With Loved Ones

I was totally going to do a "selfie" pic with my girls, or maybe a whole family shot. Then, A drew all of us today on the sidewalk. So, without further adieu, here I am with loved ones (that's me on the right ;-) :

To-Do

I don't write down most of my to-do lists. The majority of them are floating through my head. What I do get down on "paper" are usually entered into my phone. I use the Listonic app because it has a web interface, a mobile interface/app, and I can share lists with people.

We had some of our neighbors over for dinner tonight. Earlier this afternoon we realized we needed to do a quick store run for just a couple things. I added them to a list, and my husband ran to the store.

Hair

We went to Disney On Ice Rockin' Ever After yesterday. They had a Rapunzel scene, and I was hoping that they would have a scene with her extra-long hair (they did last year at a different Disney On Ice show). They didn't, unfortunately.

This is me. My last haircut was just about one year ago. I am horrible at getting regular cuts. Some of it is just me. But, some of it is because they (hairstylists) always want to give me an easy, versatile cut. I appreciate it most of the time, but sometimes, I just want them to say - here is a look I think would look good on you and it is fashionable right now. Go for it and have fun! Sure, maybe I would actually need to get my haircut on a more frequent basis, but for the right cut it would be worth it.

I am not sure if my hair will be long enough to donate to Locks of Love again by the time I get it cut, but depending on the style I end up going with, maybe I will have just enough to donate to those in need.

Expression

OK, so S does this facial expression that just cracks me up. It is this look when she is trying to have a serious conversation. I haven't caught it on camera prior to now, and I tried to for this photo challenge. And of course, she didn't do it that much when I was ready to take a picture. I wish I could capture it because it is just so sweet. I was able to get a few facial expressions from the girls that I love, so I will share those instead.

Red

It has been a long day. The traffic on the way to bring my oldest daughter to preschool was way worse than normal. I wanted to take a picture of all the taillights I had been staring at for about a half hour. I decided not to due to sheer laziness to be honest - I didn't want to take the time to blur out any license plate numbers. The slow traffic had me "seeing red," but that isn't something I could really photograph. After 40+ minutes of sitting in traffic my daughter just had enough, too About to take a sip of something to drink, she decides to lose all of her breakfast all over her clothes and seat. Poor kid gets carsick from time to time. It has been a long time since her last episode, but all the stop-and-go finally got to her. We pulled off the road to clean up, got back in the car, and promptly turned around towards home. As my general plan for the day was derailed, so was any thought of my photo challenge. Fast-forward to bedtime. Red. What is red? A points out that the mouth on the monkey on my silly (yet, oh so comfortable) pajama pants is red. Yes, it is red. But, not really what I am looking for. We get through the bedtime rituals, and I still am stumped. The overall day called for a relaxing evening drink. We decided on wine... oh! I could do a picture of red wine! Alas, we opted for a white (a moscato, sweetness in a bottle). While I was grabbing the bottle from the fridge, I noticed this picture hanging up from May of this year. The red hand is mine, the purple hand is A's, and the yellow hand is S's. I am glad I have this to show how little their hands were in mine.

Favorite Space

One of my favorite spaces in our house right now is our new reading nook at the top of our stairs. When we looked at our house, the previous owners had two small desks as well as other office-type furniture and stuff in this location (keep in mind this was in addition to a complete office set-up on the main floor (which we now use as our dining room). It seemed as it served its purpose, but it just seemed cluttered and unnecessary to us. We weren't sure what to do with this space initially. Our internet had to be hooked up in this location, so we were tied to having to do some sort of at least mini-office set-up. We originally thought of a small desk. Then, after discussing with a friend, we decided that an office armoire might be the perfect fit. I was hesitant at first that the piece would just seem too big for the space. I decided to go looking for the perfect piece of furniture. The first store I went to had the perfect piece. It has a pull-out desk for working on the computer, a spot for the printer, router, time machine, and other utilitarian items ... with doors to be able to hide it all! It seemed too easy. The first store, and here is the piece of furniture that is just perfect for our space. Now to move on to seating. We debated between one versus two chairs, and a table. We opted for one chair, an ottoman, and a laptop table. Our friend helped us hang some family photos - and now we have the perfect reading nook (we do still need to add a lamp, but all in good time). 

Another favorite space of mine, that I wasn't planning on posting about (so the pictures don't show the full space) is our new kids play area. We went to play outside in the cold sunshine yesterday, and I love that they have a place to play and use their imaginations (though A didn't seem to want to do anything on it for more than 5 seconds at each location yesterday - maybe because it was cold?). 

Toy

Before I get into today's post for "Toy" I will give the answers to the movies from yesterday's post. The first one was "Mary Poppins," the second one was "Home Alone," and the third one was "Say Anything."

I'm kind of phoning this one in. I snapped a picture of S playing with some blocks today, not with this post in mind (thinking I would get back around to taking a different picture), but I did not take any others. She really enjoyed playing with the blocks today. And even though she still loved knocking the tower down, she has finally progressed to allowing the full tower to be built before knocking it down.

This is her fake takeout of the tower. She went to push it over, decided to hug it instead, and then pushed it over from the other side.

Good-bye tower!

Inspired By Film

The girls and I had fun staging these photos. I had to go with some more simple ones that we could do as it was a busy day, and I didn't plan ahead. I think they turned out fairly well. The pictures were inspired by three different films. I will wait to post the names of the movies until my next post to see if you can figure them out. 

Movie #1

Movie #2

The picture above and the picture below are the same. I just converted to B&W above since I didn't have the accurate colors from the movie below.

Movie #3

Affection

I thought this one was going to be easy. And, it really was easy, just not as easy as I expected. Mainly because of timing. Sweet little hand holds, a pat on the back, kisses on the head, and even snuggles to the cat. These are just a few signs of affection I have seen over the last two days (this was supposed to be yesterday's theme). However, I broke the rule - always be ready with the camera. So, here is what I was able to catch. Still pretty sweet moments ... 

Clothing

We've all heard of boyfriend jeans. And boyfriend shirts. But these pants are what I always steal. I love them. They are so comfortable... and they have pockets! I have many pairs of sweatpants, but this pair of my husband's beats them all hands down. In fact, immediately after taking this picture, I changed out of my jeans and into these.

Pride

I had a hard time figuring out what to do with today's challenge of "pride." I started thinking of how three of the four states I have lived in have now approved gay marriage. I didn't have a good idea of a picture I could take to go with it. I could have taken a picture of one of our rainbow flags we have left over from a gay pride parade a couple years ago, but it didn't feel inspired to me. It just felt too staged. Later in the day, I was attempting at redecorating our dining room table. I am overall happy with the end result, and I felt pretty proud of finally getting it (almost) done. Since it isn't quite done, I didn't want to use that as my photo either. Three opportunities came up later in the evening for me. The first was at dinner: A was making a creation with her dough while we waited for a table. When she was done, she proudly showed it off to us.

The next two opportunities arose when we were getting ready for bed. While reading the bedtime story A noticed some of her sight words in her book. She very excitedly (and proudly) showed them to us. It was a very exciting moment!

The final moment was when S was pretending to tuck me in. She brought me a couple blankets and some stuffed animals. She was so proud that she got me tucked in! She would get a huge smile on her face, and then do it over again. 

Art

A drew a picture of me earlier in the week. I was tempted to use it for my "self" photo/post earlier in the week, but decided not to. I decided to use it for today's theme: art. 

Comforting

People can be comforted in many ways; by a friend, by a family member, or maybe even from a pet. It can be as simple as a touch and an understanding look, to a hand hold, or a fierce hug.

Being a parent to two young ones means I get to practice the art of comforting a lot. My girls love hugs and/or kisses when they are hurt or upset.

Over Four Inches Of Ridiculousness

Ridiculous. That is the word of the day. 

Over four inches of junk mail. Now, to be fair, we are horrible at getting the mail. This is not one day's worth. This is possibly 5 days worth; I am not really sure. I know there are ways to opt-out of some mail programs, but I just haven't gotten around to doing that. And, it always seems I get suckered into looking at catalogs I didn't even know existed. Though, I do always find it amusing when I get a catalog in my name for a store I have never even heard of. Ridiculous.

Self

I missed a day on the photo challenge. "Self" was supposed to be yesterday's theme. I tried. I did. But, every picture looked like I had just pulled an all-nighter. My eyes looked all red, and I looked very tired. Not sure why my eyes looked so red; they didn't look that red in person. I then tried to take a picture of my reflection in my daughter's eyes. They didn't turn out, either. Too dark. By that time I decided to throw in the towel for the day. So here we are.

I never liked tea. I still can't really drink the bag tea (sometimes I can do the apple cinnamon spice kind, but I usually would rather just have water or something else). My husband really got into tea, though. For Christmas last year I decided to get him a Breville loose leaf tea maker. It has been wonderful; super easy-to-use and he enjoys it. An added bonus? I actually like tea! I can't say I love all flavors, but so many I have tried are really good. My favorite tea is the combination of the maharaja chai/samurai chai blend from Teavana. Perfect amount of spice and flavor. The only downside is we go through it way too fast! So, here I am, staring into my quickly disappearing mug of tea.

Nature/Outdoors

Normally, I would be excited about this theme/inspiration. I love taking outdoor and nature shots. Today, however, was not a day for me to get out and explore. Homework and studying called. All I had time for was to take a picture from one of our decks.