Autumn Colors

Around here the leaves are starting to turn into gorgous shades of yellow, orange and red. I've had a lot of fun out in our yard taking pictures.

I'm entering the next photo into the Live Every Moment photo challenge:

The theme is Autumn and this is by far my favorite picture that captures "Autumn".

This next photo I'm entering in the Shades of Autumn Challenge:

This week's color is "green". I love the fact that it's mostly green, but you can see the beginning of gorgeous colors peaking through.

Fall also means school which means waking up early enough to see the sunrise. Most mornings I don't even notice the sunrise in my rush to get ready for school, however yesterday morning I happened to glance outside and see a spectacular sunrise. Of course I had to run and get my camera and run outside and find someway to make it interesting.

Those were the true colors, I promise, the only editing I did was add my watermark and sharpen the leaves. That's it.God is the true artist of this beauty, I just captured his amazing work.

This next photo makes me so happy. I've wanted to capture a scene like this for a while and I finally did!
And since it makes me so happy I found a photo challenge for it!

On our 45 min. drive to school Monday morning, my mom rolled down the window and came to an almost complete stop so I could get this picture. :)

I love fall colors!

I still have a bunch of photos waiting for me to edit them or post them. In fact I still have never gotten around to posting the photos (or even finish editing the photos) from my little impromptu photoshoot with my younger siblings last week.

But I figured that if I try to wait until all my photos were edited and ready to share, then I would not be posting for a very long time. Because the problem is, I keep taking new photos each day and then every few days I sit down and edit a couple here and there. So I'm always behind.

Ah well, at least I have these. I'll leave you with a bunch from the last two weeks:

Trying to be creative by sticking my camera in the cabinet to get this shot.

How my bedroom looks most of the time. And how I want it to look the rest of the time.

Very random picture taken while listening to my Spanish CD for homework.

Rose is a goofball. 'Nuf said.

The starfish in our bathroom.

One of the pictures during our "impromptu" photo shoot last week. See how messy his shirt is? yeah I didn't bother to change his clothes, that's how spontaneous it was. :)

Our globe.

During our photo shoot I pretty much just followed Joey around and snapped pictures of him playing.

I more formally "posed" the older kids. John Paul, as stated by one of my friends "has beautiful eyes". I agree!

Our family "bus" aka 12 passenger van.

I hope you are all having a great Autumn!

~Mary Kate

I've been loving...

Beautiful light...

A clean family room and books...

My SAT prep book (it's so helpful!)...

My YouCat that came...

Silly, cute little brothers with amazing light for the perfect pictures...

my personal favorite. :) shows his wacky personality (he's 4)

Beautiful eyes...

Can you see our chimney reflected in his eye?

At some point in the next few weeks I will be renting a 50mm lens and then taking 1 year old portraits of my cousin and 1 year anniversary portraits for the same couple I did last year for their engagement portraits. (All for free, for gifts and for my portfolio and practice).
~Mary Kate

Back into Routine

School started today. Actually I'm excited for this school year, I think it's going to be the best one yet. I'm homeschooled, but I go to a two day a week homeschool co-op, so I still have teachers, classes and classmates (although to put in perspective, the entire highschool at the co-op has 33 students). It was a little nerve-wracking in English, because we're already talking about SAT's, actually, our the point of our whole English class, for the first half of the year, is preparing and practicing for them. (Then starting in March we switch to a pre-thesis class). I feel like Harry, Ron and Hermione at the beginning of the 6th book when professors start talking about the OWL's right from the very first class and Harry keeps thinking how far away the OWL's are, and yet the creep up on them so fast :) lol... I'm a total Harry Potter lover, in case you didn't know. :D

I do love summer, but in all honesty, by the time Sept. rolls around, I'm ready for school. I like the order and schedule the school year brings. And I like to learn - I don't like all the hard work, but I do like discovering new things. 



I'm excited for the debates we'll be getting into later this year when we read Martin Luther's writings. I'm excited for the creative writing assignments we'll be given after reading Dante's Inferno, Utopia and Shakespeare's Henry IV.
I'm excited to read Utopia simply because it's in one of my all time favorite movies, Ever After. "The Prince as read Utopia?" (Danielle) "I found it sentimental and dull. Honestly, the plight of the everyday rustic bores me."(Henry) :)

And most of all I'm excited to grow in my faith and relationship with our Lord.
~Mary Kate
(As a side note, the first picture was taken this past spring, the second picture was taken last fall with my old Kodak p&s and the last picture was taken at the end of this past July)