Team Up Thursday - Fall

I have no idea where 2010 went, because here we are in October already. The season up here in Minnesota is moving along quickly. Just last weekend I was taking pictures of the leaves and they had just turned yellow with a tad bit of orange. Here we are on Thursday and the pictures I took yesterday are almost full on red.

As I was shooting yesterday with one of my new lenses (70mm-300mm...more on that in an upcoming post), I zoomed in and saw this leaf flickering in the wind. A heart. A perfect little heart was inside this leaf. Ella and my Dad were standing there with me and my Dad said, "What a creative little bug to have eaten a perfect little heart." Creative indeed!

Christina provided a picture almost completely opposite of mine. It just goes to show how different things are down in Texas this time of the year. I love this view with the lines directing my eyes to the bails of hay on the right. The way she processed it gives the image a baron and deserted feeling showing the end of the crop season. Even though there are no bright yellows, oranges or reds, you know the cooler weather has set in and it is FALL.


For more "Team-Up Thursday" diptych's, head over to Megan's

BSM - The Wanderer

This is how I have been feeling lately since I had to send my camera off to Nikon to get repaired. My auto focus was off and I could deny it no longer! I would take a great series of shots and then upload them to the computer. Once I saw them on the computer, I was so disappointed how unsharp they were. I held off as long as I could, but figured I had better send it off so I could make sure to have it back by Christmas.

I know I haven't posted much lately...more on that probably next week.....but I will probably be delving into my archives for posts until my camera gets back.

If I don't post before then, I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. And *rah rah* to all you day after Thanksgiving shoppers! Go get 'em!



For more Best Shot Monday images, head over to Tracey's.

WW - Enjoying Fall

Although winter is officially here (snow this week), we got a chance to enjoy atleast one week of Fall....















For more Wordless Wednesday images, click here and here.

Happy Halloween Everyone!

Hope everyone is stocked full of candy and chocolate for all those little monsters and princesses tonight! We finally got around to painting the pumpkins the other day. A few of you mentioned on my Theme Thursday post that Ella's color palette was very good....and that your child would have turned it into an icky color of brown....and believe you me, that's what happened at this house too. I luckily caught her paint plate before everything went bad!

I started to freak out about the paint dripping all over her clothes. But then I thought that it would be my fault for not putting her in clothes that would be appropriate for a 3 year old to paint in....She was just in sweatpants and a sweatshirt. It was one of those moments where I literally decided not to sweat the small stuff. What a refreshing moment. If the paint didn't come out, oh well! Thankfully it did. :)

Growing Up So Fast

Earrings and lip gloss....The begining of my little girls life as a big girl. We clipped these earrings on her and she felt beautiful, she told me. Then she got some lip gloss when hubby bought the movie sleeping beauty. She could spend hours loading and inch thick coat on her lips and still not think it was enough. Then she goes into the bathroll and pulls my hand held mirror out of the drawer and gazes at herself. She is such a girly girl! I have yet to do the makeup thing with her yet so I can take pictures of her....One pretend step at a time, I say, before she grows up too fast!






This means, "Get out of the way Mama before I run you over!"

Best Shot Monday

It was COLD today, but there are still a few things left to pick off the trees. Off to feed the animals again!



Head over to Tracey's to see more BSM.

Cleaning Up the Leaves

Most all of the leaves have fallen off of our trees now, which means its time to play in the leaves....and of course then clean them up. So we let Ella play a few times in the leaves and then she jumped on the tractor to clean them up with Daddy.

We have this little John Deere tractor that we were hoping to use over the summer to cut the grass, but every time we tried to use it, and fix it....it was scalping our yard. Atleast I got my exercise by using the push mower (not sure if a happy face or a sad face should be inserted here...heehee) But Ella loved riding on the tractor and it did have an attachment in the back that rakes up the leaves, so we decided to keep it.

Ella made a pile and started playing the drums. Oh, how I tried getting a good picture of her throwing the leaves in the air....








All these sticks that Ella is picking up belong to two cottonwood trees that have been the bain of my husbands existence for years (more of that to come in a future post). Besides having to pick up dog poop before mowing, picking up all of the branches that fall at this time of the year was a huge pain in the a**, although a great chore for Ella.




Happy Daddy and Ella time. :)

Feeding the Animals and Planting Trees

Our crab apple tree in our backyard became the sole food source for all animals in the forest the other day. Ella was picking all of the berries off of the tree in order to replenish multiple dragons, lions and critters. As we walked around the yard, she told me where each animal was and we dropped a few berries in their place.

After she fed the animals, she planted acorns in the dirt. The best part about this was that the next day, Ella went to the place in our yard where she planted the acorns and miraculously, there were trees that had grown 5 feet tall! Can you believe it? Me either. They had been there forever, but in her imaginative little mind....they weren't there the day before. ;0)









To see more Theme Thursday shots, head over to Stacy's.

A Day on the Farm - Part 2

I never knew I would enjoy being on a farm as much as I did. There was so much going on around us. So many animals, so many people working, and so many beautiful things to look at.


These homing pigeons were the coolest things. I guess I never thought much about them before visiting the farm. They had close to 75 of them and told us that they would release them at weddings and funerals. As long as they were in a 60 mile radius of the farm, once the pigeons were released, they would just fly back home. How cool is that? Also, it was really neat to see them, a dozen at a time, flying from the coop and just circling the farm way high up in the sky. So free as birds are, yet content to be confined. It was really strange.


Here's Ella and her new found friend (which she later told me she named her Sweetie Pie) looking at the sheep.


The hay maze had a slide at the end of it, and when all the kids got to the end, it was a battle of the strongest to get up and go down the slide first. Notice her hand on the little boy behind him....She would get up top and keep looking at me as if to say, "Its my turn now, right Mommy?" I would have to take my eye out of the camera and say, "Go ahead Ella, it is your turn now."


There were cats EVERYWHERE you looked. They were a big hit for the kids as they were waiting to get on the hayride.