Drive Home From Work

Here are some more of my pictures from Friday. The previous post I showed you a morning photo. The photos below are from my drive home after work. I'm glad I had my little camera with me to capture the light. It's a good thing that I'm doing this picture a day project or I wouldn't have my camera with me all the time. Before, even if I would have had my camera with me, usually I would feel silly pulling over to take a picture. But this project is taking me out of my comfort zone and forcing me to just do it. I'm hoping by the end of the year I won't miss a photo opportunity. These are just some of the photos that I couldn't decide on for the Photo a Day project but I still wanted to share them anyway!

Here's a tree that I've wanted to take a picture of for awhile now:


and a close up of the same tree:


This is the view at the tree if you turn to the right:


A farm down the road when I'm almost home:


Just putting a different spin on things:


I hope you've enjoyed the photos from my area, but I hope I won't be boring you with these type photos all the time. I need to start taking more different type shots. Got any suggestions for photos you'd like to see - other than self portraits - you won't be seeing many of those.

PaD Jan 9 & 10

So I know I've complained about the weather here of late. I really don't like winter at all. Heck, I don't even like when it's windy in the spring.
Yesterday I had to work and when I got down to the stop sign on the road in front of my house, I looked up at the house like I always do and was greeted with such a beautiful view. I almost felt guilty for saying how I hated living in Pennsylvania in the winter time. It's just too cold for me. But when I saw what I saw, it warmed me. I really do love living on my hill. I would not want to live anywhere else in the world. It is where I raised all my children, love the love of my life, take most of my pictures, and just hang out. I remember the first time I came up my driveway. It was my boyfriend's (now husband)driveway at the time. It was gorgeous. At the time, I didn't know anyone that had a prettier driveway. Now that I lived here for 12 years or more, I usually take it for granted. I see it as an everyday scene. Every now and again, like yesterday, I stop and smell the roses (or take in the view) and realize that I am on of the luckiest girls in the world (to me, anyway). I have all these kids that love me, a husband that adores me, and I have a beautiful view. What more could I ask for? Well, I could ask for someone to do my laundry, but that is a whole nother story. Here's my hill:

Notice the two little hills? My house is on the right hill. Now look at the area in between the hills - see how there is a mountain way off in the distance? Well sometimes in the summer when you look at that if the light is just right, it looks like the ocean off in the distance. It's really cool. I just love this place.





PaD Jan 10 - It was cold and snowy here today. I have said before about the cold. I don't like it. I had gotten a recipe from the Pioneer Woman's website earlier in the week that looked really good. It's called Cauliflower Soup

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2009/01/cauliflower-soup/

Her pictures are so much prettier than mine, but that's ok. I love cauliflower. It is probably my favorite vegetable so I thought I would try it. OH MOTHER OF ALL THINGS GOOD!!!!!!! You've got to go to her website and try this soup. It is so warming and it is pure Heaven. That's all I'm gonna say or I will make myself hungry again and end up eating another bowl. Here's the picture of the day:

PaD Jan 8

Today I was so hoping the kids would have a two hour delay for school. No such luck. Tucked away up here on my hill I am secluded from the real world until I have to go out into it. I like it that way, really. I could easily be a recluse sometimes. From the weather we had lately, my driveway has been a sheet of ice for the last two days - no melting at all. I thought maybe the roads still might be a little hazardous and maybe we'd get a delay. Well like I said earlier, that didn't happen. I had to put the kids on the bus at 7:00. The high school bus showed up on time, no problem. The elementary bus on the other hand was 25 minutes late. I was almost thinking/dreading about driving them the 7 miles to school. Anyway, the point of this story is this: I had to drive back up the driveway on the ice. It didn't happen. I tried twice and backed down twice. Finally left the darn thing sit for hubby later to drive it up. He always has success in driving it up. So there you have the excitement of my boring day.
On with my picture of the day. The girls had piano lessons tonight. They just love playing the piano and going to lessons. Martha is such a wonderful teacher. She truly has a love for music and she is trying to instill this in my girls. I think it is working. They both practice everyday without me having to tell them to do it. I have to say also that they both have a pretty good understanding of the music and are rather good at it. I am so glad to hear them play and hope that someday they will take their own children to learn some form of music. I wish I was musically inclined. Ha, that is a joke. I couldn't carry a tune for the life of me. At least the girls can play that piano. Here's my oldest daughter during her lesson.

Looking out the Squirrel Hole

This reminds me of the black hole we all drew on trees as kids. Heck I still do that sometimes. Imagine if you were in that hole looking out. This might be what you would see. It's cold out there, go back to sleep and get up when it's warm again.

PaD Jan 7

The ice is still hanging around and we're supposed to get snow tomorrow. UGH!!!!!! Spring where are you? Here is my picture of the day. I was editing pictures from this morning at the computer in my dark room and my daughter says to me "Mom, you should go out and take more ice pictures now. The sun is coming out" I'm glad I did. It was beautiful. I put it into Photoshop (which I haven't touched in about four months) and added this really cool texture.

Stay warm.

Ice, Ice, Baby

I complain about the cold weather all the time. As a matter of fact, just this week I complained about it at least 5 times. Even though I don't like winter, it sure does give me good opportunities to get some great shots. Here's the pictures that got me soaked from head to toe and my camera splashed. It was raining pretty hard....so hard that I thought I ruined my camera. The ice was beautiful though. Not enough for me to like winter though. Luckily the kids had a day off of school today because of the ice or I would have slid down the driveway.


and another version of this same one that I like even better


can you see the rain falling in the background?




I don't think I could get this thing to work right now


What's next?


Heavy branches - a little blurry but thought it showed how heavy this ice was.


More Branches




























Would you want to hang your laundry out on this today?


And my all time favorite ice picture - I turned this one upside down for a different effect:


I hope you enjoyed the ice pictures.
Now I'm off to get some hot chocolate. I'm freezing.

PaD Jan 6

The old typewriter. I think it would be interesting if there was a way to read all the words that were typed on this old beauty. It really is beautiful to think about. Think of all the love letters, the poems, the resume's, etc that were typed on this little typewriter. Today these things are typed on computers that can be read at any time - even after being deleted, but on the old typewriter that was not so. I sort of miss the sound of the metal letters hitting the paper. I also remember learning how to type in 9th grade. I was never able to type more than 45 words per minute. My two oldest children can out type me just like that. Tyler's been typing for years and he can now type like 65-70 words per minute. Sara on the other hand I taught to type when she was 10 years old. She really enjoyed the time spent at the keyboard. She now types like 45-50 words per minute. (Edited 1-8-09: Sara just read this and informed me that with her latest typing test at school she was typing 89 wpm.)
I guess I will always be the slow one.