You Capture: Color

I took all of these pictures for this weeks You Capture Challenge in what we call The Back Room. It's my favorite room in the house with its turquoise and brown color scheme, big windows, book shelves, and white desks covered in art supplies. We spend a lot of time in that room. The computer is here, Gem does her homework here, the cats hang out here, we create here. The best natural light in the house is in this room. It's a cheery place, and one of the most colorful rooms in the house.

My button jar.

A snippet of my work space.

Gemma's crayon drawer.

It's A Rarity

Snow in Southern California, that is. Look what we woke up to today! Beautiful, and right outside our own door. It's been over five years since we've had this much snow, and it's still coming down.

School was canceled and Matt went into work late because of the weather conditions. It's a SNOW DAY in sunny Southern California!

And I Quote...

"Should I shrink from the work that God had set before me because it was not fitted to my taste? Did He not know best what I should do and where I ought to labor? and should I long to quit His service before I had finished my task...? No; by His help I will arise and address myself diligently to my appointed duty. If happiness in this world is not for me, I will endeavor to promote the welfare of those around me, and my reward shall be in the hereafter."

-Anne Bronte in Agnes Grey

You Capture -- Love around your home

One of the things I love most about my home are the bright spots of color scattered throughout the rooms.

Books are stacked everywhere. We're big readers here.

Tiny dolls that Matt brought back from Guatemala a few years ago.

Letter magnets on the fridge. Sometimes Gemma leaves messages, but not today.

Details on a Jim Shores carving.

See more You Capture here.

I Heart Faces: We Are Family

This is one of my most favorite family pictures ever! I'm not exactly sure why. Silly, happy faces maybe? It's not one of Matt's favorite pictures, but I just love it!

You Capture: Winter

Winter in Southern California is a different kind of affair, snow and ice are a novel rarity that never last long. We have plenty of days like this:

Trees mostly bare with a few leaves stubborn leaves clinging desperately to branches in blustery winds.

Roses still bloom because it's still sunny with temperatures in the 60's or 70's, but wilt because of an occasional frost.

A scarf hanging unused on a coat rack because it's not been cold enough to wear it.

You can find more You Capture posts here.

Go

"Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: 'Whom shall I send, And who will go for Us?' Then I said, 'Here am I! Send me.' And He said, 'Go...' " 

Isaiah 6:8,9a

You Capture Challenge: A Year In Pictures, Second Edition

As I promised in my last post, here's my second You Capture review post, this one featuring people.

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

You Capture Challenge: 2009 In Pictures, First Edition

I thought it would be fun to look through our pictures and do a year in review post, one picture for each month. Matt and I took A LOT of pictures this year and learned quite a bit about photography this year too. It was so hard to pick favorites from each month! I decided to do two separate posts, one featuring people and this one featuring other things.

I noticed that this was the challenge for You Capture this week. I've been meaning to join in those challenges for a while and since I was planning on doing this post anyway, I thought it was a good time to start! Hopefully I'll be able to participate in the weekly challenges, but I won't make any promises!

So, here are the photos! Bear in mind that I live in Southern California so the pictures may not look like they match the season. It's just generally pretty nice here. Oh,  I don't exactly remember which photos I took and which Matt did. We work as a team. I may take the shot, but he set it up; he takes a picture, and I process it, or vise versa.

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

December Happenings: Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

On Christmas Eve we went to Grammie and Papa's earlier in the day to open gifts and have some 'smaller' family time. It worked out well, the girls weren't nearly as hyper as they would have been in the evening. They watched the Christmas puppet show that Grammie put on for them and then opened gifts. The best reaction Gemma had to a gift was definitely the doll from Grammie and Papa, although the camera from us and the pink Barbie convertible from Motor Pop and Grandma got her pretty excited too. She's holding the doll, which she named Jenna, in the bottom right picture.

We all went home for a while so the girls could nap and met up again at the Christmas Eve service at our church. Matt was in the choir and Gemma and Annabelle were really good for the service. The fact that I gave them candy canes to eat during the short sermon probably helped! After church we went back to Grammie and Papa's for dinner with the great grandparents and opened a few more gifts.

You can see from the clock that it was about 7:20 am. We get up at 7 on Christmas morning and do Gemma's stocking first. She was pretty happy about the Beauty Rush "grown up" lip gloss because it's the same brand I use.

This year Gemma had a gift for the cats. She took a toy mouse that Methodius loves and always stole from her room, wrapped it in an orange gift bag that was leftover from Halloween treats, used a doll shirt in place of tissue paper, and hid it in her shoe closet for weeks. She put it under the tree a few days before Christmas along with a homemade card, and gave it to Cyril and Methodius on Christmas morning. I love how she spelled the cats' names: Methode-yes and Sirel. Methodius is posing with the card and mouse while Cyril watched from a distance. He's still wary around Gemma.

After had breakfast and read the Christmas story from Luke we opened gifts. Gemma's favorite gifts were her camera and her silver locket. Since Gemma is able to keep secrets now, I let her pick out a gift for Daddy. When I asked her what she wanted to get him she said "I think I'd like to get Dad a cow costume for Christmas, you know, with the udders." I discouraged that one and told her to think of something else, so she came up with a "pancake pan" because they like to make pancakes together. He was actually really pleased with this gift. My favorite gift was was a beautiful hardback edition of the Complete Novels of Jane Austin.

We went to Motor Pop and Grandma's house on Christmas day to open gifts and just hang out. After dinner the adults had a White Elephant Gift Exchange. This is always a lot of fun. There was a theme of gifts relating to the classic movie "A Christmas Story" which my family loves: the stocking tube socks; the Fragile (Fra-geelee) boxers; and a bowling ball. Some other funny gifts were the cowboy hat and mustache, and the cake hat. I didn't get a picture of it, but the velvet painting made a reappearance this year.