Monthly Archives: January 2012
Project 52 | Week 4 | Homemade
It’s Week 4 of Project 52 with The Bloom Forum. This week’s theme–homemade–was a challenge for me. In my house, we don’t do homemade much. I have been known to make things for the house in the past, but since we are here such a short time, I don’t have much motivation to do those types of things. And as far as making homemade things to eat, those who know me know that I don’t do that much either. I’ve been getting better lately, but just didn’t feel much like taking pictures of food. One thing we are good at is making messes. As the boys have gotten older, the messes have gotten bigger as well. On this particular day, they had made their play room into a Cars racetrack and were acting out scenes from Cars 2.
Lightning and friends have been a part of our lives for the past three years. The boys discovered the first movie when they were two. They watched it over and over and over again. There was a time when I could repeat lines from the movie by heart. While I’m not a huge fan of the second movie, it’s more “advanced themes,” otherwise know as spies, secret agents, and good guys and bad guys, the boys love it. As you can see, they had quite a variety of scenes set up! I fun playing around with my processing on these and even pulled out my Lensbaby for a few as well. I love how the Lensbaby can create motion where there isn’t any.
Now zoom on over to visit Melinda Meredith Photography and see what she’s captured for homemade and make sure to follow the circle all the way around to see the work of all the fabulous ladies in our group!
See you next week when our theme will be “On the Shelf”!
Snow Day
Snow………finally lots of snow!
After a long while of waiting, it seems the snow has finally arrived here in New England! I took my Lens Baby out this morning to play for a few minutes. The little ones have been waiting patiently to go outside to play. More pictures to follow later!
Project 52 | Week 3 | Refreshing
It’s hard to believe we are already on week three of Project 52 with The Bloom Forum! This year is already moving along quite fast. Our word this week is “refreshing,” and I knew as soon as I saw it that the only thing refreshing in these parts would be some lovely white stuff on the ground. Being short timers here, we want to be able to experience all the beauty winter can offer.
Moving from Hawaii to Massachusetts required a lot of adjustment on our part. We were used to sunshine, beaches, palm trees, and always beautiful weather. Instead of “slippahs,” we now have to wear boots and snow pants instead of swimsuits. Warm days have been replaced with frigid nights and mornings in single digit temps.
While it has been a big change, we were all a little excited about the possibility of snow and being able to do winter things for a change. We had an early snow in October, but other than that, everyone has talked about how this has been the most mild winter they can remember in a long time. Really? I don’t want mild! We are here just one year, and it would be fun to be able to play in snow and sled all day! Bring on a blizzard! Make up the hot chocolate! We did, finally, get snow this week on Tuesday. The boys were so excited that they just had to play in it before school and help shovel the driveway. Luckily, it hadn’t all melted while they were in school, and we were able to play a bit after school as well. We have a perfect little hill in the back yard just big enough for them to slide down and climb back up on their own. They had so much fun racing and having snowball fights, which actually are simply them chucking handfuls of snow at one another. The crazy thing is the temps got up into the 50′s that day! So, after about 20 minutes of sledding, the hill had turned to mush and we headed in.
Despite how short lived is was, it was still “snow” refreshing to finally see some of the white stuff on the ground!
While the boys were in school, I had a chance to sneak off on my own to a local horticultural center and park and walk around and take pictures–alone. That in and of itself was refreshing. To simply be able to focus on taking pictures without the distractions of little ones running around was so relaxing. It was a beautiful day all around!
Please head over to visit Melinda Meredith Photography and see what she’s captured for refreshing.
See you next week when our theme will be “Homemade”!
Project 52 | Week 2 | Newness
It’s week two of Project 52 with The Bloom Forum and our theme this week is Newness.
When the boys were babies and meeting all of their developmental milestones, I used to get so worried when one was behind the other. Whether it was sitting up, crawling, walking or talking, one always seemed to be ahead of the other. A friend of mine who also has twins told me, “just wait until they start school and one can multiply and the other can’t.” It was nice to have that insight from another mom of twins. Since the boys are the only children we have, I didn’t have the experience of having two children at different developmental ages to draw from. Instead, I was a first time mom times two.
Now that they are getting older and they look nothing alike, it’s getting easier to see them simply as individuals instead of twins. I often joke that they are simply brothers with the same birthday because they could not be any more different. The latest surge in development from one comes in the form of handwriting. I’ve tried really hard not to push things on the boys, and until recently neither showed any interest in writing anything at all. I believe for the most part that kids will learn something when they are ready. For example, when they were two, they both knew the entire alphabet in sign language before they knew their colors. I think developmentally their brains can grow only so much at a time and in these early years it’s best to let them do things in their own time.
For one of the boys, this interest in handwriting and writing words and numbers seems to have literally sprung up over night. I love watching him focus on this new skill. He’s so focused and intent on getting things right. I asked him tonight what it was he liked about being able to write. His answer was that he wanted to be able to write letters to people. Such a sweet answer.
It’s so hard for me to believe that in a few short months the boys will be starting kindergarten. These first years have absolutely flown by. While I have my moments where I miss my tiny little babies, I truly am enjoying this age. They are full of questions and ideas and astounding knowledge.
I really love this particular shot because of the reflection. It makes me wonder what will be starting back at that little face in another five years.
