I was going through some of my old photos from this past summer. This one made me giggle, I hope it has the same effect for you.
Category Archives: Photography
Home Goals for 2012
I had planned on participating in a linky party that the Nester hosted, two weeks ago. Obviously, I missed the party, but I liked the concept. So, even though I missed the deadline I still wanted to talk about the topic that Nester brought up. You see, Nester prompted this question, who are you trying to please this year? Of course this was in regards to the home, and could be discussed in other areas of life. But here, today, I wanted to talk about my home goals for 2012. I’m posting them, so that I can remember them and reference them, these goals are not specific they are more general in nature. I have found that making specific goals is just too constricting. Maybe it’s the free spirit in me that avoids structure, much like I avoid a well structured sentence. Anywho, here are my general home goals for 2012:
Home Goals for 2012
1. Have nothing in my home that is not beautiful or useful.
That means:
A. If it ain’t useful get rid of it. If it ain’t pretty let someone else have it.
B. Find a place for the things that have been deemed both beautiful and useful.
This goes along with the popular William Morris qoute:
“Have nothing in your homes that you do not know to be useful and believe to be beautiful.”
2. Be realistic when it comes to DIY and other home projects.
That means:
A. Remember that I am only one woman with limited time, budget, and often times energy. I must remember there is a difference between slapping paint on the walls and rewiring the kitchen.
B. Sometimes that mysterious fuzzy green thing that threatens me every time I open the fridge takes precedence over rearranging the living room.
3. Be content with the home I have.
That means:
A. If we were able to buy a bigger and better home it would still need expensive repairs and updates. It would also get dirty and cluttered just like our current home. Sometimes, bigger does not mean better, it just means a bigger space to make bigger messes.
B. Our home is perfect the way it is, because it is ours. It is the home I share with my beloved Bubba, our dogs, and anyone else who is willing to brush dog fur off their jeans after a visit.
4. Make our home comfortable for us.
That means:
A. My design choices do not need to meet the standards of top interior designers. These choices only need to make myself and my family feel happy and welcome in our home.
B. Upgrades made to our home should make us comfortable,physically, fiscally, and mentally.
There you have it, my 2012 home manifesto. We’ll see how well I remember these goals and apply them throughout the year. I’ll be sure to keep you posted.
Have you set h0me goals for yourself? Looking ahead in the coming year to any changes?
New Years 2012
When you last heard from me, I went on and on about our Christmas spent with my sweet Momma. This time around, I thought I’d talk about how Bubba and I celebrated New Years, and another certain milestone.
On December 29th, Bubba and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary. Yeah, I know, an entire year as a married woman! I can’t believe it either, and neither can Bubba as I am still referred to as “the girlfriend”. Hopefully, soon I can stop asking him who is girlfriend is when he starts remembering who is wife is.
To celebrate this milestone, we decided it would be fun to head back down to Las Cruces, where we tied the knot, and where my Bubba was born and raised. While we were down there we visited with his family, and my in-laws. There was lots of chatter, and lots of driving from place to place.
Being back in our old college town, and the place where we became Mr. and Mrs. Bubba, allowed us to sort of re-live our wedding feast. We ate at the same restaurant that we hosted the wedding dinner, and ate nearly the same dishes we had that evening exactly one year before. It was tastey, romantic, and quiet. And apparently, un-photo worthy as I didn’t take one shot of our anniversary evening or any shots of my sweet in-laws.
I did however, make sure to get a picture of my most favorite of seasonal treats, a peppermint caliche from the former Scoopy’s. If you are ever in the Las Cruces area, I highly recommend this frozen custard stand, Caliches, named after one of it’s most popular menu items. It’s guaranteed to make your mouth happy, but your jeans grimace.
New Year’s came and went, without a photo to prove it. Actually, it didn’t even feel like a holiday. Bubba and I spent it at home, watching movies and in general being lazy. Which is sort of a holiday, taking the day off, forgetting the stress of day to day life. But to me a holiday should be filled with lots of home cooked food and family. Maybe next year, I will plan a nice dinner and invite nearby loved ones. We could have who-pudding and rare who-roast beast. Doesn’t that sound delicious?
Early Christmas
Thanks to my Bubba, Christmas came early for me this year, when I came home yesterday and found this beauty under the tree:
A Brownie Target Six-16, not the most unusual or rare camera, but one that I am very proud to add to my vintage camera collection. Which seems to be growing larger and larger one camera at a time.
The Kodak on the far right I talked about in this post, but the Brownie in the middle is a fairly new acquistion that was added to my collection a couple months ago.
This one is a little worse for wear, with some rust damage, but I think it looks very nice with the other old shooters.
Don’t these photos look like mugshots? You’d think this poor camera had robbed a 7-11 or something!
Well, I’m off to clear a shelf for my new collection! It may be time to edit down some of the other “collections” I’ve got going on!
Merry Christmas Eve Eve!!!
Thanksgiving
“They will celebrate Your abundant goodness and joyfully sing of Your righteousness.” Psalm 145:7
Thank you Lord for bringing me so much to be grateful for. And thank you for giving us this holiday to reflect on all those great and marvelous blessings.
Oh, family and our similarities…thank you.
My Bubba, with his Superman curl and silver hair, which are each named April…thank you.
My dogs who patiently wait for their walks while I try to find matching socks…thank you.
For my home, be it messy and dusty it shelters me from the cold and the rain…thank you.
Have a happy and grateful Thanksgiving!
Leaves Keep Fallin’
Before fall turns into winter, how about a photo recap of my recent visit to the Rio Grande River? Out here in the desert we don’t have many trees so we have to go to the nearest water source to see the fall changes. Most of these are Cottonwoods, that are sneezily delicious in the Spring, but bring lots of pretty golds in the fall. Almost makes that Spring runny nose worth it…
Happy Friday everyone!!!
The Secret Garden…Day 3 of Charleston
Day 3 of our Charleston trip started out with our sights set on seeing a real plantation. Until we realized how pricey seeing these things were! One plantation charged a base price of $25 for one adult just to see the grounds, that didn’t include seeing the actual house! So, we went a little further down the road, to Middleton Place. They still charged to see the house and still charged $25 buck-a-roos to see the grounds. But seeing as how we weren’t too keen on driving around all day, and the admission did include a tour of the gardens and stable yards we bit the bullet and shelled over the $50. (The Bubs and I are a little cheapskate-y at times.)
The grounds were beautiful, I wouldn’t say they were worth the $25 each, but they were still enjoyed by all…
There were birds…
And pretty statues…
This one reminded me of the cherubs from Night at the Museum 2, I kept expecting them to break into boy band song. (mmmBop anyone?)
Aside from all the statues and monuments, they had a giant Great Oak…
The trunk was nearly as big as my livingroom, ok, maybe it wasn’t that big, but it was still pretty dang large. Here’s Bubba standing next to it for scale…
The branches were so heavy, they had to be supported to keep from falling over…
Since we didn’t pay the extra $12 a piece to see inside the house, I at least had to take a picture of the outside.
Of course, this isn’t the original plantation house that was first developed in the late 17th century. This house was occupied by Middleton decedents during the 1920’s, if I had taken the tour I could probably tell you more interesting tidbits. But if you are interested, please visit the Middleton Place website here.
Here is what remains of the original mansion…
Between being set on fire during the Civil War and an earthquake there really isn’t much of original house.
But boy did it have a nice view of the river…
There were a few out buildings we could enter, this one is where they processed rice. (The cash crop at Middleton Place was once rice, before it became tourism.)
I loved the old windows…
The grounds were so beautiful they deserve to be mentioned again…
I couldn’t believe the amount of butterflies that fluttered around the joint…
After marveling at the butterfly population we mosied on over to visit the farm animals…
Where we found this friendly goat who insisted that the grass really was greener on the other side.
And this happy duck who cheerfully quacked his way around the yard…
Check out this birdie apartment complex…
There was also an old house that used to house slaves and later former slaves.The last occupant lived there from her birth in 1891 until her death in 1986. The house is called Eliza’s House in her honor. In the house is an exhibit that includes nearly 2600 names of slaves that served at Middleton place in the 17th and 18th centuries. It was quite a compelling exhibit, and this seems to be the only photo I took.
After wandering around the plantation grounds a bit more, we grabbed a quick lunch and headed back downtown to ohh and ahh over some of the architecture of these old and historic buildings.
(Never mind the garbage can, it was a crowed busy street, I did the best I could.)
There were so many churches…
With old cemeteries…
(Maybe we should have named Annie-dog Mary-Annie Dog)
And this secret garden, I loved the stone work used for the driveway.
And finally, this shot of the restaurant where we had the yummy french toast.
After visiting busy downtown, we made one final visit to the beach at sunset. Said goodbye to the sandy shore and roaring ocean, watched a couple become engaged, and marveled at the starry night, as we searched for our car once again.
Our trip to Charleston was so much fun, I’d do it again in heartbeat. But next time I would stay a little closer to town. We ended up staying in North Charleston, which we thought was just the northern part of Old Charleston but turned out to be an entirely different town nearly 20 miles away from where we wanted to be. So, each day required a rather lengthy car ride just to get to the tourist spots. I would also, plan ahead. When we arrived in Charleston we thought we knew what we wanted to see, but once there we couldn’t find any of the attractions. Just poor planning on our part I suppose.
But all in all, a great trip. It was nice to come home though, isn’t that the best part of leaving, the coming back?
Put a ring on it…Day 2 of Charelston
In this post I showed you what the Bubs and I did on day 1 of our get-a-way to Charleston. Today, let’s re-visit what happened on day 2…
We got a late start on day 2, so we only had the afternoon to tourist around Charleston. We started out at the Citadel, a military college right smack in the middle of town.
Apparently it was a big weekend for the cadets, as the ring ceremony was to be held the following day. There were parents and family of cadets milling about everywhere. Especially around this…
Yes, it’s a giant class ring. I’m not sure who donated it, but I do know that it was made out of the same materials as the actual rings that the cadets receive. The giant ring has a place of honor right at the entrance of the Citadel. See those empty spaces where a year would go? Those will be changed out whenever they have a graduation or a special former cadet pays a visit to his or her alma mater.
Around the parade grounds were displayed several flying objects that I found pretty cool…
Here’s Bubba to give you a better idea of how big these things were…
They also had a tank, for some reason it reminded me of my mom’s car…
Except her car isn’t painted green with white stars…
Aside from cool things that go boom, they also had a really pretty chapel. I couldn’t get enough of the stained glass.
Then we visited the museum on campus, after reading all the placards and looking at all the pictures, I took a photo of this fireplace. But isn’t the stone work pretty?
After grabbing a couple of sandwiches and some sweet tea at the snack bar, we went to the beach again.
Here’s proof that not only my feet were there…
I still can’t believe I talked him into taking his shoes off in public! He refused to take them off at the car, but insisted on taking shoes and socks off once in the sand, hence the plastic bag.
We happened to be there at the perfect glowy-est time of day…
Being the house crazed gal I am I couldn’t resist capturing a few of the coastal houses as Bubba and I searched for the car. We later learned that each public beach access is numbered. So you must take note of which access you entered.
Check out the screened in porch on this sucker. I’ve never seen a bi-level porch before.
Upon finding the car, we got wonderfully lost again and came upon a sweet country road next to a marsh. There were lots of dog walkers, and everyone said hello. And may have looked at me funny for taking a picture of their road. But look, they have trees!
And a pretty marsh…
After finding our way back to town, we grabbed a bite to eat at a restaurant downtown called Toast. It was by far the best meal we’d had since arriving in Charleston. If I hadn’t been so hungry I would have stopped my noshing to take a picture of my steak sandwich and Bubba’s French Toast. But dinner was too good be bothered with putting my fork down to shoot a few foodie shots.
With our tummies full and our minds set on exploration, we walked around downtown. But again, I didn’t take one single shot of our night time exploring. It was nice to just sit back and enjoy the moment. And enjoy I did, I didn’t realize how different the South would be compared to the SouthWEST. For instance we came across, a man playing the trumpet in front of a grand looking office building, it was quite romantic. We also came across some pretty awesome houses, I can’t believe they’ve been standing for so long. But you’ll see those later when I cover what we saw on day 3 of our trip to Charleston. Relax, we were only there for 3 full days, so the next installment of April’s virtual vacation slide show will be the last.
Hope you enjoy!!!
I’m Crabby…
In the midst of attempting do a 31 day series, the Bubba and I snuck off for a little getaway. This little getaway must have been the demise of my series since upon my return I found it impossible to get back into the daily blogging habit. Honestly, though it was a sacrifice I would be willing to make again, this trip was long awaited for and much needed.
Where did we go you ask? Here’s a few hints…
If you haven’t guessed, we went to the coast, the South Carolina coast, Charleston to be exact. It’s a beautiful place, full of smiling faces… 🙂
Our first day in Charleston we visited Fort Moultrie, where according to Wikipedia, the entire 171 year old US coastal defense can be traced…
I won’t bore you with all the details, but let’s just say it’s really old and has tons and tons of stories to tell. So, if you are interested, visit this Wikipedia link.
I have a feeling when this fort was being used to defend Charleston, it wasn’t this well manicured.
I loved all the archways, even though this structure was built to be utilitarian the architecture is still beautiful.
But man, were those passageways small. We must be really big, or people back then must have been really small. Here’s Bubba inadvertently modeling how small this passageways really are…
This came out very blurry, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to document the amount of gun powder that was stored in this room. Wouldn’t want to let off Roman Candle near that stash!
Aside from things that go BOOM, there were lots of cool little details to capture too…
After visiting the Fort, we got some lunch at a not so great BBQ joint. Guess I’m a Texas BBQ girl, since I wasn’t a great fan of the thin sauce. Give me a nice thick tomato based BBQ sauce and brisket that’s been smoked for hours, and I’m a happy camper. Although, given time I may have grown accutomed to it. But I had the same reaction to something new as Annie dog would have…WOOF.
Aside from the BBQ I wasn’t too fond of, we finally got to see the beach…
And Bubba being the sweet man he is waited patiently as I snapped photos…
After the beach, we wandered over to a large park run by the county. At first we were slightly perturbed by the $1 per person entrance fee, but once we got in the fee made perfect sense. And by the way, it’s totally worth a $1!
See those holes in the sand there, well these guys were crawling out of them…
Don’t they look like roaches? Thankfully, the blue crabs that people were catching to eat were so much prettier. If I had thought to take a photo of someone’s catch you would see that here. Just in case you don’t know what a blue crab looks like, here’s one I found on the interwebs.
via Culinate
That pretty much sums up day 1 of our trip to Charleston. Aren’t you glad that’s over with? Well, if you didn’t enjoy today’s post then you probably won’t enjoy the recap of days 2-4! Stay tuned!
Abundant Treasures
I am participating in a ” 31 Days of…” series for the month of October. You see a whole bunch of sweet blogger buddies have been getting together the past few years to do 31 posts in 31 days. The topic is always something they have a passion for. This year they have invited all of their readers to post 31 days of their passions. If you are interested in participating in the 31 Days of…series, or you’re just curious about what everyone else is writing about, please visit The Nester, Jen, Melissa, Sandy, Darcy, Emily, and Emily. I hope you enjoy my series on finding treasures both vintage and of the heart. Let’s hope I can overcome my inconsistent blogging habit and share those 31 posts within the next 31 days!
Here we are on the final day of what was supposed to be 31 straight days of treasures. In this series of treasures I included any treasure be it a vintage treasure, a found treasure, or a treasure of the heart. Unfortunately, with travel and illness and general laziness, I wasn’t able to touch on all of the treasures I had hoped to touch on. So, be on the look out for a random treasure filled post here and there.
I had planned on ending this very short non-31 day series with a bang. However, I’m not really sure if I have any big bang content. So instead, I’ll share those treasures that are most dear to me.
Family that is also friend.
Faith in Christ.
Assistance with everything I do.
Watchful eyes guarding my every move.
Pretty things to photograph.
My love. The man, not UTEP.
What do you treasure most?
Semi-Seasonal 