I have never made a New Year's Resolution. I think they are kind of dumb. And 21 days into the new year is about the time you hear people saying "well I've already broken my new years resolution". But guess what? I've made two resolutions and am still very much on top of them.
Last fall I noticed that I was starting to become addicted to this game on Facebook. It was not healthy. I was losing sleep and more importantly (and the reason why I stopped playing it) was because I felt my children were being neglected. I noticed this in December and decided that this was going to be my first New Year's Resolution: to stop playing Frontierville. And I have... very successfully. And I know my boys are happy too.
The second resolution I've mentioned before but not in "resolution" terms. I joined the group 365: The 2011 Edition on Flickr. I have been a member of the Flickr community for a few years now and I have challenged myself to take a picture a day for 365 days which started January 1st. AND along with each post I have to write a description of the picture, a journal if you will, of my day encapsulated in that one photo. I will never run out of things to photograph, my challenge is "which ONE PHOTO do I choose out of all the ones I've taken today?" I think my favorite one was yesterday's picture:
And this was the description:
What a fun relaxing day at home. Since Wednesday's are so busy for this household I usually take Thursday's to relax, get the house picked up, do laundry, catch up on my knitting, etc.
Today Jacob helped me sort through the old sewing stuff that was given to me yesterday (see #018/365) and it was a blast!! These are the 5 wooden spools of thread I just fell in love with. All the buttons in the background were mine already.
And description from #018/365
I had a few errands to run around town today and one of them was to go to our local (extremely little... I mean little hole-in-the-wall) thrift store. I was looking for large glass containers to display my old wooden spools of thread in.
One of the church ladies was volunteering there so I told her what I was looking for. As we chatted I told her that I collected old buttons, spools of thread, etc. She then asked me if I knew Mr. such-and-such. (I knew OF him but not personally). She said that he was downsizing because his wife had died a year ago. He had a lot of his mother's old buttons, etc. and was looking for a good home for them. WOW! JACKPOT! I told her I was definitely interested.
And, well, to make a long story short, Jacob and I spent the next 45 minutes at his house visiting with him and looking at his mother's old sewing stuff. He ended up giving everything to me!
There weren't a lot of buttons but A LOT of thread! He was such a sweet man, he was in his 80's and moving to be closer to family.
And the picture to go along with 018/365 entitled Small Towns Are Wonderful
So if I've been neglecting this blog it's because I'm crazy about Flickr again.
Since joining the Flickr community a few years ago I have seen other peoples photos that I may have never gotten the chance to see had I not joined. For those of you that don't know what Flickr is it's an online photography community where one can share as many or as few of your photos (with friends and strangers) as you like. You decide. For us photographers it's a way to share ideas and tips and to see photos from around the world. There are literally thousands of groups in this community that one can join. The number is limitless. Right now I'm in 74 groups but it changes as my interests change.
When I look at other members photos I continue to find new groups to explore. These groups also serve as great inspiration to get out there and try new things. I have found two groups that are going to be very challenging yet very rewarding at the same time. I'm going to tell you about one group in this post. The group is called "Strangers". This is so far out of my comfort zone I can't even tell you! The idea is to get out there and ask strangers if you can take their picture. But it's more than just click and run. It's a chance to get to know people that you may not otherwise talk to. So far I've talked to and taken 7 strangers photos; I'm trying to get up to 100. I would especially like to thank the four women I met yesterday at the Williamsburg Antique Mall. They were all very sweet, open and honest with me. This is Ronda (L) and Donna (R):
I am really enjoying my new camera. But along with taking pictures comes editing and then sometimes playing around with images. I guess that's another part of my creativity, shoot then sometimes manipulate. While revisiting my old photoshop program I stumbled upon another "filter" that I had not played around with before but love it. My favorite flower is the Black-Eyed Susan so I found an old picture and manipulated it.
