Sky

Linking up with Cari for Theme Thursday - The Sky!  (I'm lazy, and today's sky is boring, so you're going to get lots of previously-taken photos)

1.  A perfectly blue sky always actually makes me a bit uneasy; I like a bit of cloud to ruin the stifling ideal.  This is the CN Tower in Toronto, taken in spring 2009, when David and I lived in the big city.  I vividly remember the vertigo I felt standing and looking up.

2.  Now we're going back to the summer of 2008.  These next two pictures were taken on our honeymoon.  The first one I've shared before, but the second is a favourite of mine.  Do you see the circling bird?

3.  Now we're going to go about four years into the future - to the fall of 2012.  I took this picture of migrating geese while Samuel and I were visiting a cattle farm outside of town.  It's hard for me to think that the bird above was photographed in such a very different time of life than the ones below.

And here's one that Samuel took!  Just a few weeks ago, with my camera.

Worst Baby Name Ever

There you go, right in between Fuchsia and Frythe, in the 'girls' section of the baby name book, is Fructuose.  Are you serious?

Giving Things Away.

It's hard to give away 100 things.  I'm being very broad in my definition of single items because, well, I just am.  It's really more because of how anal retentive I am than anything else - I had a conversation in my head that went something like this:

Amy:  "K.  We're a-gonna give stuff away!"
Amy:  "Um.  Yeah.  About that - HOW precisely are we calculating this?"
Amy:  "Shut up, please and thank you."
Amy:  "So we're counting every item?"
Amy:  "Can we guesstimate?"
Amy:  "No we cannot."
Amy:  "Fine.  Alright.  What if we count every item."
Amy:  "Even a pair of baby socks."
Amy:  "Even a pair of..what?  No.  Those can group."
Amy:  "Group?  Seriously?  Girl..."
Amy:  "Ohmyheavens.  Alright.  We count groups of items."
Amy:  "Like, by recipient?"
Amy:  "JUST GIVE IT AWAY."
Amy:  "Alright, so what we're going to do is group by date of giving."
Amy:  "Fine.  Wait.  What if I have multiple recipients in one day?"

This is probably the point you jumped to when you realized several sentences back that I was actually going to type out a dialogue I had with myself.  In my own head.  For real. 

I'm up to item #10, which if I was counting actual items would be around item 40, I'm guessing, but we're not counting actual items, we're counting times I've given things away.  So if you come to my house, and I force you to take a box of boy's clothes and five commentaries on Mark and my second Swiffer and four cassette tapes - then I've given away one thing.  This means I am one tenth of the way to my goal, and I'm feeling good about it.  I have a bag of clothing to go to the Salvation Army box, two pairs of winter boots for a little boy nearby, a few more baby supplies for a friend who's expecting, and a box of cloth diapers to send to my sister - but at some point I know it's going to get harder.  Right now I'm still just getting rid of stuff that I can completely manage without.  But at some point we're going to have to really start thinning stuff out.

I'm all giddy about it, though.  I love the idea of clean, linear, empty space.  Space not filled with stuff.  Ahhh....linen closets that close.  Bookshelves that are filled neatly with books!  SHOES IN CLOSETS!  I know.  It's just that exciting!  I tried to purge (well, I DID purge, actually) when we moved from the apartment to our house a few months ago, but even so we still have too much stuff.  I remember being on the phone with my mother, discussing towels.  I carefully outlined all of the towel options available to us, folded on my bed, and then asked her which ones to get rid of.  "I think they're all useful" she said.  And this is clearly where I get it from, folks.  I tossed a few towels away, the really bad ones, and then just packed and moved the others, stacking them neatly on the top shelf of the linen closet.  You know - I have never used the towels on the bottom.  Never.  I pull one off the top, use it, hang it up, use it again, wash it, and it gets back into place without me ever having made it down the stack of towels.  I could get rid of a dozen towels and still have enough.

Easter Outfits

Our family on March 31st, 2013, on the back porch.

Alright, the details are:

Samuel - Pants are second hand, shirt is brand new on super clearance for $1.94! 
Clara - Pants are second hand, sweater is brand new on super clearance for $3.94!
David - Pants are second hand, shirt was a Christmas gift.
Amy - All second hand.  Blazer was part of the giant $10 bag of clothing that the thrift store had on sale.

Linked up to FLAP and Clan Donaldson and Camp Patton. (and if you aren't seeing links, well, they're coming when they're coming...)

Yeah, that's right, I'm doubling up my What I Wore Sunday post with Snapshots.  :-)

We're pros on the family picture circuit.  I meant to share some of our photos on Thursday, but didn't get a chance to upload them all.  Anyway, we're a ministry family, so we do 'formal' pictures often.  If you've been a blog reader since the old blog then you will have seen them before...maybe I should do a big family picture post.

Have a blessed and wonderful Easter.  He is risen!

Green

I know Spring is coming; I know it.  But it feels so so soooooo far away some days.  And this is why I'm taking stock of the green things around me, the bits of Spring that are popping up whether I feel warmed and happy and refreshed or not!  For more bits of green, you can check out Cari's link up.

Our old planting bench, sitting on the porch and waiting for seeds...



The feathery mosses and evergreen boughs from our sleigh ride two weeks ago.



Carrot tops...essentially the only thing green and growing in the house these days besides some onions.

Joy!

My baby is adorable.  Oh so adorable.  Please ignore the screaming teething sounds and focus on that sweet little nose.  My heavens.



Is there joy above and beyond eating home made bread and emptying a cupboard?



Cari and the clan will show you what joy there is to be had in non-blurry pictures now.

Theme Thursday

Like a good friend, I have been studiously ignoring Cari's requests to link up to her Theme Thursdays, where she is exploring the best that modern photography can offer.  The reason?  I suck at photography.  And somehow it's one of those topics where I just assume "meh, it'll 'happen' sometime".  I have no intention of working on it, you see.

Except that, well, I'd actually like to be better at photography.  I would.  Don't tell Cari.

With that in mind, I gave it my best shot this week.  The theme was Architecture, which I took as loosely as I possibly could.  Here are my photos, and my own critiques.  As usual anything artistic or decent is almost certainly a complete accident.

Photo #1 - The Vine Covered Fence

I tried to zoom in on the fence here with the idea that the vines looked nice draped over the lattice.  I did intentionally keep the little post top in the shot rather than moving the picture over to the right and avoiding it.  I worried that it would look 'uneven' but actually I don't mind it there.


Photo #2 - The Clothesline

I knew I wanted both clothes wheels and the lantern included in the picture, but the final shot was both better and worse than I hoped for.  On one side, it's angled and the top wheel is partly cut off.  I don't know if this increases the 'depression era' styling or if it just looks horribly messy.  But on the other side, the wheels are different, and although I didn't notice that until after the picture was taken, I love it.

Photo #3 and #4 - The Veranda

This is the house behind us, and neither of these pictures turned out very well.  I was trying to focus on the Victorian veranda and instead ended up with a lot of messy branches and fuzziness.  And the house looks off-kilter and everything is yucky.  Moving on.

Photo #5 - The Fence

I think this one might be my favourite of the bunch.  You can see the snow falling, but it isn't overwhelming.  And I really wanted to capture the broken fence, which I think stands out despite all the messy branches and such, unlike the above pictures.  There is a linear quality to it, but still a very organic sense at the same time.

So there you go.  Now go check out the better photos and tell us what you think.