Project 365: Days 1-12

Here's the first post of many for my 365 project I'll be attempting this year, where I'll be taking a photo every day in 2015.  I'm trying to push myself to use my camera for this, instead of my phone, not because it's better or anything but because there's still a lot I need to learn about my camera and its settings.  And about photography and lighting, in general.  I'll go ahead and admit, that the first 12 days were a challenge.  Remembering to take a photo everyday is tricky.  Not to mention the fact that it's freezing and gloomy outside so I've been pretty much limited to indoor photography.  And not just that, many most days I find myself taking photos at night, indoors, which is about the worst time to take photos.  During the work week, when I leave the house in the morning it's still dark outside.  Then by the time I get home and feed/care for the animals, it's dark again.  I look forward to the days when I don't have to go home for lunch everyday to let Mabel and I can use my lunch-break to take photos.

I've noticed that one of the things I'm going to struggle most with is not getting a photo everyday, but posting just one photo for every day.  Well, I might as well just admit defeat now...I can't do it!  I'm going to post more than one photo per day, that's just who I am.  I've accepted it, now you have to.  Anyway, here's the first 12 days, hope you enjoy.

Day 1:  What better way to start off the new year than by frying up some homemade donuts!  No?  I hadn't made donuts since high school and had been aching to whip up a batch during my time off, so I decided January 1st was the perfect day to do it!  Actually, it might have to become an annual tradition.

Day 2:  Mabel

Day 3:  I think I was feeling bad for Cheesy, like he was feeling neglected because of the new puppy, so I apparently decided to dedicate several days to Cheese! 

Day4:  Doing what our family does best...being lazy.  That's my hip/thigh covered in the quilt and Cheese is cozily nestled in behind my legs on the sofa.

Day 5:  Cheese loves all food, but his favorite veggies and fruits (which are the majority of the human-foods we give him) are probably carrots, bananas, and clementines.  Every time I eat clementines I have to share some with Cheese.

Naturally, Mabel wanted in on the actions so she proceeded to lick Cheese's jowls!

Day 6:

Day 7:  Our street is currently a work-zone (and has been for about a month now) while they work on the gas lines.

Day 8:  Cheese has learned that if I'm in the kitchen then there's probably some sort of food being made or chopped.  In this case, he's checking out the cake I was making for my boss' birthday.

Day 9:  Pistachio cream cake (with a pistachio mascarpone filling and chocolate ganache).

Day 10:  Tiki mask we got while in Hawaii!

Day 11:  For Christmas my mom made us a basket filled with all kinds of goodies (from homemade treats to a cool cutting board to bulk food store goodies).  One of the things in the basket was this bag of peanut butter cookie mix, which you just add water to, scoop and bake!  So easy and so tasty!

Day 12:  Continuing the fur-kid trend:  a picture of Gui looking down disapprovingly from his perch at Mabel.  And Cheese being a total ham!

Glamour Shots (featuring Antoine & Gui)

I don't know about you, but whenever I have a long holiday weekend off from work it either goes one of two ways: 1.) I waste most of the weekend doing nothing relaxing and the weekend feels like it flies by or 2.) I am super productive and get a lot done/do a lot of fun stuff and the weekend seems like it's actually 4 days long...until the last day when I say to myself, "Where did the weekend go!?".  This past weekend was definitely the later.  We celebrated Thanksgiving, did way too much shopping, saw Horrible Bosses 2 (hilarious!), went to Crafty Supermarket, participated in Small Business Saturday, watched What If (I highly recommend it), and went for a walk in French Park.  I also made the best gravy I've ever made, baked 3 pies, and edited some photos!  That's a pretty productive and fun holiday weekend for me!

One other feat that I accomplished this weekend was to order our holiday cards.  Every year we do the sappy/corny/ lame, etc. holiday cards with pictures of us and usually pictures of our fur-kids.  We've been doing it for about 4 years now.  This year for the card I had a perfect picture of Cheese and I (that Antoine took this summer), but no good pictures of Gui.  I decided what would be absolutely perfect is if I could get a picture of Antoine and Gui together.  So, on Friday I forced Antoine into what can best be described as Jessica's Glamour Shots and Fun!  I got several cut shots and then a lot of silly ones and outtakes.  Enjoy!

 Awe!  I think this one is my favorite.

 Gui loves the chin rubs.  Antoine looks absolutely adorable in this one!

Now for the silly shots and outtakes...

There were quite a few like this.

 The "grumpy" shot.

 The "like father, like son" shot.

 The "sad" shot?

 The "what do I do with my hands?" shot.

 The "why I oughta" shot.

 The "wild beast" shot.

 The "Gui has had enough!" shot.

I'm so lucky Antoine puts up with my shenanigans...and in cases like this, makes them even more fun with antics of his own!  

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone!

I thought I'd share some of the pumpkins that Antoine and I carved this year seeing as how it's Halloween and all.  It's no secret that I love pumpkins!  I love picking them, I love carving them...everything about them just makes me happy!  Well, except for the fact that they rot, which means I can't keep them forever.  Though if they did last forevver I'd probably have several thousand pumpkins sitting in my front yard and that's no good.  Anyway, this year I went a little overboard on pumpkins!  I think we had eight in all that we carved (I carved six and Antoine carved two) and then a couple smaller ones that we painted, plus an assortment of gourds...

 These three are mine:  a vampire on the left, a kitty in the middle, and Jack Skellington on the right!

 These are two of our larger ones: the one of the left is Antoine's and the cyclops is mine!  Also, in the background is Antoine's other one...though for some reason he decided to rot faster than the others, so he'll likely wind up in the garbage this weekend.  [Insert sad, pathetic face]

A basset hound pumpkin seemed like a must this year [read: Antoine insisted that I do one]

For the kitty pumpkin I decided to carve the front and back (that's why there's so much flickering candlelight in the background of the gif).  This pumpkin is actually pretty small and when I got it I had no intention of carving it, I just liked that it was still mostly green.  But then, when we were carving, it just looked so cute it needed to become a kitty!

 A couple of our gourds.

Two of the pumpkins that we painted; the gold one is mine and the silly one is Antoine's...and I'm just crazy about it!  I also painted a pumpkin for work, which you can see here.

I'll share more on our pumpkin picking adventure later, once I get the photos edited.  Until then, happy Halloween everyone and have a fantastic weekend!

Guillermo

Lately I've been thinking that poor Guillermo tends to get a little forgotten here on the blog.  Cheese gets a fair amount of attention/pictures taken of him because he almost always goes with us to the park and whatnot.  Plus he's very photogenic!  Guillermo stays in the house and tends to hide from the camera.  So when I recently took a series of photos of him and created this gif, I thought it was the perfect time to dedicate a whole post to this furry guy.

Name: Guillermo (pronounced: gee-YAIR-mo)
Story behind the name: It means William in Spanish.  He was actually named after Guillermo Del Toro, I loved Pan's Labyrinth when it came out and thought Guillermo would be a super name for a big, fluffy cat!
Nicknames: Gui, Gui-baby, Furrball
Age:  5 years
Breed:  I'm pretty convinced he's got some Maine Coon in him.  He's 15 lbs, not because he's overweight, he just has a big frame.  He has the light-density coat that Maine Coon's are known for, which means he doesn't shed in the same way normal long-haired cats do because his fur is so fine.  He's got enormous paws with big tufts of fur between his toes (purpose: to keep their feet warm in the snow).

10 random facts about Guillermo:

1. He was the first pet that Antoine and I got as a couple.  After we bought our house we adopted him only a week or two after we moved in!  There were boxes all over the house and it was a mess, but we were so excited to bring this little fluff-ball home.  We loved him immediately!
2. Gui really isn't that interested in food (at least not like Cheese is).  I mean, he LOVES his spoonful of wet food he gets everyday, don't get me wrong, but he's really not into treats and I think his favorite part about feeding time is the attention from Antoine or me.  He's a total lover!
3. He's a talker!  Even though he didn't really meow until he was over a year old, he loves to talk to you now.  All you have to do is say his name and he starts talking.  And he almost always comes when you call him, actually he's better at that than Cheese.
4. Favorite place to get pet - under the chin, along his jaw!  That's his sweet spot.  But if you touch his stomach or his rear-end you are in trouble!
5. He has his own bed...does he lay in it?  Of course not!  His go to spots are either our bed, the guest bed (which we call "Gui's bed"), Cheese's bed, or Cheese's crate.  He's weirdo!
6. He's a horrible hunter when it comes to things I actually want him to hunt like insects and spiders.  But he's an excellent hunter of fake mice and my hair ties.  Seriously, he has hunted and destroyed about 90% of my hair ties and I have to hide them from him now, which doesn't always work.  [Speaking of hair tie murders...we recently got a new rug for our living room.  When we rolled up the old rug we found eight massacred hair ties under it!  Eight!!!]  
7. He's a total scaredy-cat!  He freaks out at the slightest unusual noise and has a sense for when other people enter the house...he runs and hides, usually behind the washer in the basement.
8. He's a total mama's boy.  If Antoine and I are one the couch watching tv Gui will almost always go for my lap...unless the dog is already there! 
9. Gui is horribly clumsy.  His jumping skills are pretty atrocious and he seems to not really like high places too much (probably because he's fallen so much).  He's kind of the anti-cat in that respect!
10. He loves to trip people, especially people he loves.  If you are walking anywhere in the house there's a good chance that he'll be under your feet, usually meowing!  If you're walking down the steps, forget about it...you better hold onto the railing and try to maneuver around him very carefully!  It's really surprising that in all the times I've fallen down the steps it's never been his fault...at least not yet!

I hope you've enjoyed this little peek into the oddity that is our fluffy cat, Guillermo.  And happy Friday!  I don't know about you but I am so ready for the weekend!  We're actually skipping out of work early and driving a couple hours north to go camping.  It's been a couple years since we've been camping and really I miss it!  And this time there's a group of us going (and Cheese) so that should be fun!  Have a great weekend everyone!

Petal Explosion

Every year I eagerly look forward to the summer for a variety of reason, blueberry picking, hikes in French Park, bike rides with Antoine, etc.  But I also really look forward to summertime because it is when our Rose of Sharon tree erupts with flowers.  Sometime in April the leaves begin to grow, then in late May the buds start to form.  Then usually by the end of June or the beginning of July the buds start to blossom with big, pale pink flowers.  It's a petal explosion and I love it!  And so do the bees (which just makes me love it even more!).  What I love most about the tree is that it flowers pretty much all summer!  New blossoms just keep blooming throughout July and August!  It's a constantly source of beauty and pollen.  We even say a hummingbird feeding on the tree the other day, which I had never seen before!

I also took a quick detour to our back porch to snap some photos of our pretty lavender we have growing in a pot...

Late in the day is usually when the bees really come out...and we know how I like taking pictures of flowers and bees!  What can I say, it makes me happy for some reason.

A beetle joining in on the fun.

I was also looking forward to sharing these photos because they were all shot manually.  I have a bad habit of shooting in automatic or one of the preset modes out of convenience, but I'm really trying to get away from that and expand my skills.  Since I'm self-taught it's been a constant struggle with that lazy part of myself  to branch out and experiment...but I know it'll make me better in the long run, even if it takes more time and energy.  I still think there are times when automatic is the way to go and I will admit that I will almost always have my lens on auto-focus, because I don't trust my eyes and it takes me forever.  But in times like these when it's the weekend and I'm just playing around...why not!  Well, except that I look like a crazy person standing in my front yard in front of a tree for 45 minutes taking pictures of flowers.  The neighbors will just have to get used to it!