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

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

16

I had an amazing Sweet 16 party Saturday. It was wonderful! It was exactly what I had wanted. I don't have time to post all the pictures from my party. However I did participate in this weeks Scavenger Hunt show I wanted to share that with you all.  (I haven't done the Scavenger Hunt in weeks!)




Food

Food from my birthday tea party. My mom made the cake herself, isn't she amazing? All the food was homemade :)

Purple

Rosie in all her snow garb. She sure loves pink and purple!
In Disguise

Not sure if this counts, but oh well :)
Shapes

The garland decorations we had up for my birthday party.

Photographers Choice

One of my favorite pictures! It's from our freak October snow we had last Saturday.

 And I have a couple pictures from my b-day besides the two above.

Each place setting had a name tag for you to wear. I handmade each favor box and made a couple of the name tags and my grandmother made the rest of the name tags.

The tables!

Details.... :) Those are the favor boxes I made in the top right hand photo. :)

Our family room transformed into a magical tea room. I took these the night before.

Guests starting to arrive and have fun!

More decorations. My grandmother made the balls (right). They were really simple, just time consuming.

I received this beautiful necklace from my bff, Anna.

And I'll leave you with some of the last photos I took as a 15 year old:

And I took this photo of my sister Rose last week:

And tomorrow I will hopefully be getting my permit so I can start driving!!! :)
~Mary Kate

Only a Week Late

I completely missed this past week's Scavenger Hunt Sunday deadline, although I did get all five photos. So I wanted to share them even though I couldn't link up.


Stairs

I used one from my archives, taken a year ago at  Ocean City NJ

Macro

My new lovely pink stapler :)

Clouds 

The beautiful clouds that were over the Chesapeake Bay.

Abstract

Originally this photo was an up close of the end of my new book. I thought I would edit it to make it look more abstract and I like how it turned out.

Smile

Can you see the smiley face?

 ~Mary Kate

After the Storm Comes the Calm

We lived through Hurricane Irene...yay! Actually, I live in central PA so all we got was strong winds and some flash floods (not near my house though). And we did lose power all morning. It's amazing how much we use electricity for. We have a well so when we lose power we also lose water. But it was okay, it was only out for the morning and compared to some people closer to the shore we have it pretty good.

Enough about the hurricane. Moving on, I managed to get all the items for Scavenger Hunt Sunday and am actually posting on Sunday! :)

This weeks items were: Old and New, Night Photography, Music, Cheesy and Sun.

1) Old and New

I've collected postcards since I was 8 years old, buying them where ever I go. With the result that I have bought the same postcard more than once several years apart. Like this postcard from Madison CT. I bought the "old" one (the top one) about 6 or 7 years ago and just this year on our annual visit to my Grandad's house, I bought the second "new" copy.

2) Night Photography

I wanted one picture of the lights from Baltimore that we could see while camping on the Chesapeake Bay (last Mon-Wed). I took this about an hour after sunset, right before the last bit of light left the clouds, I had to use a 30 second exposure (the longest my lens can do) to get this amount of light. Click on the picture to see it better.

3) Music

I took several different photos of music sheets and the piano, and I like this shot best.

4) Cheesy

Had to use this picture because it's such a cheesy photo! When I was showing my mom the photos from our camping trip, she commented "it looks like you're about to spear them with your giant hotdog." lol... I guess it does!

5) Sun

Oh boy, this was a hard one. Not for lack of inspiration or photos. Actually the opposite, I have way too many sun photos. The two sunsets we had on the Chesapeake Bay were spectacular with the result of an overload of sunset pictures that I can't choose from! So I'm sharing my top three favorites (which all happen to be from the first night's sunset).

I love the flock of birds that flew right in front of the sun as the sun was beginning to set.

Absolutely LOVE the clouds in this one. It was one of those cases when the photo just doesn't do the actual thing justice. This was the most amazing sunset I've ever seen and the clouds were so pretty.

I've also been diligently taking a photo a day for my 365 Challenge.

Day 33 {August 25}

My list of " Literary Classics" to read. (I think I've read 4 or 5 of the ones on the list and it's a long list)

Day 34 {Augsut 26}

I've taken several pictures of my curtains before, including using it with my earring for one of the days in my 30 Day Challenge.  But I've also taken pictures of it before with my old camera

Day 35 {August 27}

Day 36 {August 28}

Right as I was beginning my evening chores, I looked outside and noticed that the light was amazing. I grabbed my camera and ran outside to the cornfield behind our house. I'm so glad I did because the light was beautiful!

More Corn Photos:

Remember I said I had a postcard collection? (I mentioned it with my "Old and New" photo for the Scavenger Hunt). I decided to count my postcards and see how many I have. And so here are the numbers:
Vintage Postcards: 31
Postcards Given to me: 71
Postcards I've Bought: 193
Grand Total: 295
This is what 295 postcards looks like:

What can I say? I've been collection them since 8 years old, I guess even then my love for photography was showing, I loved photographs and postcards. :)

~Mary Kate