Just Because

I have a much longer post in the works however I'm heading over to spend the night at my bff's house in a couple of minutes and tomorrow we'll be gone at a party until the evening sooo it looks like my beautiful, long, photo filled post will just have to wait until tomorrow night.

But in the mean time I decided to share these few pictures that I have managed to have ready just because.

Editing has taken me a little longer than usual because I've been useing lightroom for the first time so it's taking some time to get use to. I downloaded the free 30 day trial of photoshop elements several weeks back and I was thoroughly disappointed with it. It was frustrating the heck out of me and I couldn't get any of the pictures to look good. I was ready to give up on photoshop when I decided to look into lightroom more. When I realized it was the more expesive ( which = better) than photoshop elements I got excited and downloaded lightroom's 30 day trial and I LOVE it!

 I love all the holiday bokeh and have taken lots of pictures in front of the Christmas trees. (My brother took the above photo of me)

And then yesterday we got a small snow fall but so small that it's all gone by today.

 And then there are all the pretty Christmas decorations to take photos of:

 And my new christmas gifts make fun photo subjects as well.

Left: my new ring Right: another snow picture

And I'm happy to say that I edited every picture in the post using lightroom :)

~Mary Kate

Merry Christmas!

I hope you all had a wonderful and blessed Christmas Day!

More pictures are coming.

~Mary Kate

The M Family

I just wanted to share a couple pictures from my first real photography job.

The whole family and Mr & Mrs. M:

The two oldest girls:

The boy and youngest girl:

Aren't they cute kids?

~Mary Kate

A Long and Rambling Post

I am very excited, my Christmas break officially started today after a half day at our co-op. This also means that we've finished school for 2011. Where has the time gone? Seriously.
 

And I'm sorry I haven't posted in over a week. I've been incredibly busy with school and then I started my Christmas job and I've had to work almost every day. And I'm so tired.

The days seem to blur together, especially since I've started working. School, work, babysitting, chores, homework, school, work, babysitting, chores, homework, the cycle seems to go on endlessly. Maybe that's one of the reasons I'm so excited to be on break.These past few weeks have gotten a little crazy.

It's funny how your perspective on time changes as you get older. I distincly remember being 9 years old super excited on January first 2005 because later that year in November I would reach double digits. That was a huge deal for me. I told everybody about it. This was the year and I was finally going to become double digits.

Now 7 whole years later time seems to go by a lot faster. I remember how old I thought I was. Now that my brothers are 11 and 9 I realize just how young I really was. A lot has happened in those 7 years. Our family grew from 4 kids to 7, we went to new places, we moved, we got cats, I went from a 4th grader to a highschool junior and I went through 4 digital cameras (hey it's not as bad as it sounds, I upgraded four times and the forth time = my current canon DSLR).

Two of my goofy brothers.

I'm so happy to e on break.  Hopefully we will be getting some major Christmas baking done later next week. As for this weekend, we are going to get our house in perfect order for Christmas. :)

From dinner about a week or two ago, I usually strongly dislike cooked broccoli, but this was actually really good!

Tomorrow I'm going to my first cave. We are taking a trip to Indian Echo Caverns which is about 45 minutes away from our house. And were stopping at Hershey's Chocolate World on the way home.

Thanks for stopping by and reading this long and rambling post.

The pictures are mostly from a week ago on St. Nick's feast day when we made our family's traditional Christmas cookies: molasses cookies. And believe me, they are soooo good. I'll post the recipe at some point in the future.

~Mary Kate

Portrait Loveliness

This week's Scavenger Hunt items pretty much fit perfectly with the pictures I have taken this week. I mean the first prompt is "portrait", how more perfect could it get? But it does, because then another prompt is "full of light".







Portraits

{I'm sorry, I couldn't pick just one favorite! I LOVE my new lens!!!!!}

Nostalgic

Ah...to be a carefree happy, responsibility-free little kid again...

Time

This was an incredibly busy and stressfull weekend, so ironiccly, I didn't have time to take a photo for this prompt and since I'm writing this on my new laptop and I've yet to put my archives from our family computer onto here, this will just have to be photo-less.

Full of Light

There's something about that soccer ball that makes me happy :)

Motion

~Mary Kate

My New Love

Guess what? You know that package I mentioned last post? The one I was super excited to get? Well it came! And guess what was inside.

I took this photo right before I opened up my brand new lens. I'm sooo excited! And of course, I have pictures taken with my new lens to show you all!

I'm got home from school after dark so I'm super excited to use this lens outside tomorrow in the daylight!
~Mary Kate

Tomorrow

The last day of Thanksgiving break and I'm finishing up homework. Tomorrow I will see my friends at school (I go to a two day a week co-op but we are still considered homeschoolers). Tomorrow I'm getting a super exciting package (more on that tomorrow). Tomorrow I have one of my last art classes of the year. Tomorrow I will be awake to see the sun rise. Tomorrow I will be tired.

But it's still today and even though I have a boatload of Algebra 2 and an hour of Latin and a couple more chapters of Dante's Inferno to read, I'm enjoying one last day of peacefullness before the rush of school begins again.

But in only 3 short weeks we will be done with school for 2011. Sooo exciting! 3 weeks and then we have Christmas break. 3 short weeks which will go by very fast.

And speaking of time going fast, it's already the first Sunday of Advent! Where did November go? And it's Sunday which means:








And guess what? I'm actually linking up on Sunday! It's been quite a long time since I linked up on Sunday instead of Monday or Tuesday or even past that.
This week:
Waiting
Waiting for the Thanksgiving meal:

Foliage

Candid

Knife/Fork/Spoon

Rule of the Thirds
We do Advent Angels all Advent long (each sibling becomes an angel to another sibling and the names are randomly drawn from a hat and it's supposed to be a secret until Christmas Eve). Here's a letter from one Advent Angel to a sibling:

And I can't resist sharing these two photos with you:

My 9 year old brother put one of our kittens in this toy airplane and asked me to take a picture and it was so cute that I couldn't refuse! I'm so glad I took the moment to snap these.
~Mary Kate

Joey Boy

On Thanksgiving I went outside to take some pictures of the kids playing football and playing on the jungle gym and as I went out my mom asked me to take my youngest brother with me. Joey is 21 months, irresistibly adorable and a very funny little boy.  This is Joey:

See, I told he's cute! When I started taking some pictures of him I was holding him in one arm and my stubborn kit lens would not focus on his face!

 Trying to grab my camera:

 I love this little guy so much! He isn't really talking yet, although you can tell he's trying. :) And he shakes his head "no" whether he means "yes" or "no". And he can't suck at all. As in, he can't drink out of a straw or a sippy cup with a spill-proof insert. He's always trying to catch up with his older brothers. He can be very sweet but he's also stubborn and strong-willed and definitely silly.

I know I shared this earlier but it's too cute not to share again:

{I took these pictures about a month ago and this is one of the ten collages I used for a rotating header on our family blog I write.}

I love you Mr. Cutest Joey Ever!!!
~Mary Kate