Christmas 2010

Last Thursday we packed up the car and headed south to Alice for the holidays.

Car neatly packed. Jason's Christmas present from my parents is that nice bike rack you see up there. I almost took the bike out on tree limbs when we pulled into my parents' driveway. Then before we headed home today, I almost took out the bike rack. Opps. I really don't hate your Christmas present, Jason, I swear.

Friday was pretty lazy. I helped my mom make Christmas cookies. I was responsible for the sprinkles.

Friday evening we headed to Family H's for Christmas eve.

Opening presents over there is always fun. We start with the youngest and go around opening one present each. Then it's pretty much a free for all.

The boys got sunglasses and watches from Uncle Boomer.

Modeling their bounty.

Debbie got lots of shirts. If only I could share a related story of this t-shirt. But I'll be classy, and leave it alone.

My parents joined us later in the evening for games.

Saturday morning, we opened presents with my folks.

Doesn't my mom's new tree look nice?

It was a nice quiet Christmas with the fam.

Me handing out presents. I love my new Scrabble pajama bottoms Jordan got me.

Mom's new house numbers. I think they will look lovely out front.

All of my Dad's presents revolved around one theme. Indian. Here is my Dad admiring an Indian shot glass. Have fun at college, Dad!

Jason with our new snow globe.

Christmas lunch was BBQ brisket, Spanish rice, beans, and potato salad. My grandparents, uncle, and cousins joined us.

Sunday evening, Trey and Melanie came down. Here is Mel opening a present for Baby Jackson - a cute pair of Carhartt overalls.

The rest of our time down South was pretty quiet. Battled the rain on the way home today. It's nice being back, though. The first thing Jason said when we walked through the door was, "I really like our home." So do I, Jason. So do I. :)

Kitchen Paint Swatches

Our kitchen has always felt unfinished to me. I think it's the white cabinets, white counters, white walls, white trim, white ceiling. Notice a trend? When we first moved in, we had high hopes of painting the laminate cabinets. Now, I think that would be a huge undertaking, and, honestly, I'm afraid of screwing them up. So, I've been thinking maybe a bit of wall color would help the situation.

Well, today I found a fun feature online. Sherwin Williams has a fancy shmancy Color Visualizer that allows you to upload pictures and add paint to your walls.

One of the issues I ran into is finding matching colors to the Saltillo tile floors. Here are a couple of palettes that I think would work.

Let's start with the kitchen how it is now.

Picture taken this evening.

Now, let's try a couple of color palettes.

Option 1: Green

Roycroft Brass for the tile & Ecru for the walls.

Green view into the kitchen.

Green view into the sun room.

Option 2: Blue

Urbane Bronze for the tile & Cork Wedge for the walls.

Blue view into the kitchen.

Blue view into the sun room.

We really like Option 1. Now, whether or not we actually ever paint is another question. Maybe Spring Break?

New Bedroom Curtains

I've put off purchasing bedroom curtains for awhile. Mostly because we spent so much on the house this summer, and the curtains we had were just fine. But, they weren't floor length and we were getting a bit tired of all of the brown and blue. I went with a tan/ gold color to play off of the colors in the headboard and the rug.

Before.

After with new curtains. Please ignore the sloppily made bed. I also didn't iron the curtains - I just hope the wrinkles work themselves out after being hung a few days.

Radar modeling how he matches the new curtains.

Somebody's Been Hiding

When I had about given up all hope on any cauliflower or broccoli growing this season, I saw these little guys.

Well hello, mister. Where did you come from?

I can see you!

And then there is you. So tiny and cute! I could just eat you up. (Which I will soon.)

Ooo... and it looks like our beets are coming along nicely.

And we're finally getting some peas. They look yummy!

Wrapping Presents

Last night I intended to wrap just a couple of presents, but once I got started, I couldn't stop. Wrapping presents is actually cathartic for me. Something very relaxing about it. In high school and college, I would earn a few extra dollars around the holidays by wrapping my dad's friends presents for their wives.

Our holiday shopping was done 80% online this year. We only have a few more gifts we still need to get. It was nice to just sit back and watch all of our packages arrive on the porch each day instead of having to go around town and hunt them down. And I'm sure Radar enjoyed scaring the delivery man the best he could each day.

Radar was so helpful, as usual.

Only 5 more days of work before my Christmas break. Only one more for Jason. So excited about spending time with friends and family again.

I Have a Thing for Fences, Apparently

Despite battling a cold, Jason and I took a day trip to Chappell Hill (up Hwy. 290 towards Austin) yesterday so he could bike the hills around Washington County and I could test some of the features on my camera. I can take only so many pictures of Radar and the plants in our garden.

The tiny town had a cute little Main Street, but unfortunately many of the storefronts had no-picture policies. They claimed it was for insurance purposes, but who knows. So, I ended up with a lot of pictures of fences. Unless they were particularly protective about their fences, I figured I was okay.

Country fence.

Wrought iron fence.

White picket fence.

I drove up to the Chappell Hill Lavender farm. They had a quaint little gift shop, and they said I could "most certainly" take pictures of the lavender.

Sign from the street.

Rows of lavender.

My last stop was the historic Masonic Cemetery. I figured the deceased wouldn't object to my picture taking. It was actually a very peaceful and serene cemetery. The fence theme carried out here as well.

Old wrought iron fence.

Gate into one of the family plots.


One of the ole Chappell's themselves.

I first took this picture because I thought it was interesting how the stone had broken. When I was later going through my pictures, I realized how sad this was. The grave is of a baby who just reached their 2nd birthday. The engravings read "Oh how can we render so soon to God the precious gift he gave." Sad.

More headstones.

After our stop in Chappell Hill, we headed to Brenham to have lunch with Jason's youngest brother. It was a nice day trip, but I wish I would have felt better. I'm still battling this dang cold. The crazy wind & cold doesn't help today either.

Focus is Hard to Achieve

Oh, the title of this post could relate to so many things, but I'm actually referring to focus in terms of photography. So I've spent a lot, probably too much, time over the past two days reading about aperture, shutter speeds, exposure, focus, composition, etc.

With a fancy camera now, I almost feel like it is cheating if I use the auto settings, so I've spent the last two days exploring the manual functions on my camera, especially in terms of aperture vs. shutter speeds. My lenses typically only achieve a 3.5 on the aperture side of things, and I would love to add a lens that gets down to at least 1.8. (The lower the aperture setting, the more shallow depth of field you can achieve - in layman terms, that means you can more easily blur the backgrounds.)

Also, I'm finding that you have to be ridiculously steady to achieve good focus. Seriously, the minutest movement ruins the whole picture.

It's kinda funny... usually when you shop for digital cameras, you focus on mega pixels and zoom capabilities. With an SLR, it's all about aperture and shutter speeds. And really, it's the lenses that achieve that, not the camera itself. Looks like I'll need to put myself on a lens budget.

So I came across this blog today and I have to say, I love her photography style. So whimsical. I was seriously intrigued for hours reading about her and her husband adventures and admiring her photography. I would love to achieve photos half as good as hers.

Anyhoo, here are a couple shots from today I'm halfway pleased with. All straight out of the camera for now.

This is probably my best shot of the day. I like how the tree lights reflect in the window.

This shot would be more interesting if the ornament wasn't in the middle of the pic.

Radar's cute, but this picture needs brighter exposure.

No, I didn't mean to focus in on "The Act of Marriage," but I'm overall pleased with the exposure and composition of this picture.

Oh goodness, this hobby is going to take a long time to perfect. I guess, in the end, what I really want is to be able to take decent photos to preserve family memories. This journey should be interesting.