Memories, Dreams and Reflections 2011

Ashley over at Ramblings and Photos (usually the host of Scavenger Hunt Sunday) is hosting this really cool link-up called Memories, Dreams and Reflections 2011. I've been pulling together pictures and have so many to share :) It seems to me that every single month of the past year at least one super exciting thing happened if not more.

Me  - One of the things I'm most proud of this year is how much my photography has grown. I bought my first DSLR, learned how to go on manual mode, I bought a 50mm lens, had my first paid photography gig, and just recently started learning how to use lightroom.  All the learning and upgrading has drastically improved my photos.

I Love You - My sweet and wonderful younger brothers and sisters.

Cecilia, John Paul and Joey

Rose, Ben and Max

Still Laughing... - The following two pictures are SOOC. A few weeks before Christmas both of my brothers had a basketball game (they're on two different teams) at the same school. John Paul's game was first followed by Max's game. I couldn't be at JP's game because I was working but I made it to Max's game. SInce my family knew I was comming they brought along my camera and attempted to take pictures of JP's game.

Unfortunately for them my camera is on manual and the settings were set for whatever I had last snapped a shot of. So the picture on the left is the one JP's game that I missed and the one on the right is Max's game where I was there. Another thing, the photo on the left is actually focused on the door and not the players :)


Winter Wonderland - in October we got 8 inches of snow the night before Halloween. It was crazy but definitely beautiful.

Birthday- In November I turned 16 and had a beautiful party.

 
Friends - I'm blessed to have so many wonderful friends both at my youth group and my school.

I Was Inspired... - Of the two photos below the one I'm using for this prompt is the one on the right. The photo on the right is one of my many cousins. She lives in MN with her husband and three kids. I went to the beach with them in June and she was 4 1/2 months pregnant with twin girls. I used this photo because just two weeks after this was taken she lost one of the twins and then a few weeks later she lost the other twin girl. This would have been sad enough but add this to the fact that the previous December she had just lost a baby at 3 months and before that she had a miscarriage in June.  

Spring Fever - I bought my DSLR {a Canon T2i} in March, just in time for all the beautiful spring flowers.

 Travel or Vacation - Over the summer I got to go to six different states {Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Illinois, and Maryland} - not counting the three states that I only drove through {New York, Indiana and Virginia} and see two major cities {Chicago and Boston} as well as three different beaches {Ocean City, NJ; Madison, CT; and a beach on the Chesapeake Bay} and I flew in a plane for the first time since I was two years old. All in all it was a wonderful summer and I had an amazing time!

At the beach in Madison, CT

Various pictures from Chicago

Pictures from a prairie walk in Illinois

Summer Days - This is one of my favorite ones from the summer.

A Day In My Life; - school...school...and more school {this is actually from last spring, but my normal day to day life still looks the same}

All Smiles -Me and Benny!

Autumn Harvest -

Family or Home - My whole family plus my Grandad and G. This was taken in May while we were visiting my Grandad and G in CT.

Celebrate! -In June one of my cousins had a surprise 30th birthday party at a near bye park.

 And then just a week later it was July 4th:

Let's Do It Again... - I would love to do the 30 Day Challenge again. It was so much fun! The 30 Day Challenge I'm referring to is when you take one small object {I used the earring in the photo below} and each day for 30 days you take a different picture with the object in it.

I Miss You - My Aunt, Uncle, their five kids, three son-in-laws, one daughter-in-law and eight grandkids. This is the family I go to the beach with every June. It's pretty much the only time I see some of my cousins and their adorable kids.

Beautiful - I saw many spectacular sunsets and sunrises over this past year. However while camping in MD on the Chesapeake Bay we saw the most beautiful sunrise I've ever seen - and I managed to capture it in many, many pictures. This is one of them:

Dress Up -Prom! My Academy hosts a homeschool prom in April and so I went with most of my class. It was so fun and in the most beautiful place ever!

Macro - I took this picture of my ring in a tulip last spring:

Holidays - Our beautiful, huge family tree:

My Favorite -This is so hard! I don't think I can pick just one favorite! Well actually almost all the photos I've already shared are favorites, but I still have so many more!
This one is one of the ones I most proud off. I managed to cross an itiem off my bucket list and take a successful lighting photo {some 400+ photos after the storm started, this was captured!}

And these next photos are more favorites from the past year:

Don't Ever Change - Back in June I got all my siblings dressed up in black and white and trooped them outside to do a Father's Day Photoshoot for my Dad. The picture on the right is the nice one but the one on the left is a more acurate picture of the craziness that goes on in our family. I know that change is inetivable, we'll all grow up and have our own families someday. But I hope that the one thing that never changes is our love for one another even we can't spend much time together.

The five youngest ranging in age: 11- 18 months

Just Because...So There! - this prompt makes me chuckle since my very last blog post was titled "Just Because...". anyway here's my picture:

Hopes and Dreams -I don't actually have a photo for this one. My major hope is that my photography really takes off and I get more jobs. I also want to grow in my faith and being the best oldest sister I can be.

Farewell 2011...

HELLO 2012!!!!!!!

~Mary Kate 

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