Snowshoe Adventure, survived.

Last weekend I got to go snowshoeing for my first time. It was a lot of fun, but man was it tiring! About halfway through I hurt bad, and by the time we got home, I was pooped. We hiked a very long 6.5 miles and went up to Mesa Falls here in Idaho, and it was beautiful! There were lots of trees everywhere, which was nice for a change from the flat, barren wasteland that I live in, and even though I am surrounded by a ton of snow all the time, I must admit, I even enjoyed the snow. We couldn't have had a more beautiful day for our outing either. The sun was shining bright and there was hardly a cloud in the sky. Sometimes we were hiking in just our T-shirts...and it is the middle of February! It was glorious. I must say though, next time I go snowshoeing, I plan on going at my own pace and my own distance, which you can probably count on being a wee bit shorter.

Cake anyone?

I have two nieces that were born a week apart a year ago. They just celebrated their first birthdays this month. In celebration, my two sisters got together and partied, and seeing as I live only a couple hours from these festivities, how could I miss out? So despite the bad weather, I took the weekend off from school and joined them. It was so much fun to watch them interact with each other, devour their first cakes, open new presents and toys, and gorge ourselves with more cake. Not that I'm biased or anything, but I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I'm pretty sure I have the cutest nieces and nephews ever!

photography assignment 1...complete

I'm taking a photography class this semester and I am loving it! It's a pretty basic class, but it's a good way to solidify what I know and still learn some things. We just had our first assignment, and I had a lot of fun with it. It was simple enough, we just had to take 24 photographs of a single object and then turn in our top four. My roommate plays the violin and I thought it would be a pretty good object to shoot, so she let me take pictures of it. I thought I might share a couple of the images.

The Browns!

It's official, I have the cutest nieces and nephews and the most beautiful sisters ever. In the past six months I've taken all of their pictures and they all make the pictures look so good. Always. My sister Becky came home for Christmas and seeing as her last "family portrait" consisted of her and Micah's wedding picture, we ran outside and took a couple shots. Moses Lake has actually been dumping snow for the first time in a long time, making beautiful shots. I love snow pictures! Fortunately Becky and Micah were willing to freeze a little bit. Becky was even willing to sit right in the snow. I felt bad for making her do it, but not bad enough to not make her do it ;)

and it's finally over

I made it throught the semester!! It's over, and so is my visual media class :) Here's my update and final outcome on the project I blogged about. I'm so glad it's over. It was pretty much the biggest nightmare of my life, and everything that could go wrong with this project did, but it's done now, and that makes me so happy. Anyway, my roommate suggested making a birth announcement for her nephew that was born not too long ago. I thought about it for awhile, and decided I liked the idea. Seeing as her nephew was in a different state, I didn't actually take these pictures, they just sent some to me, but I put it all together. I used photoshop to edit the photos, illustrator to make the rattle, and indesign to put it all together. I've always been a lover of photoshop, but now I'm converted to the other programs also. They're amazing!

The front of the announcement...

...and the back of the announcement

The Jeppsons

I took my sister's family pictures while I was at her house for Thanksgiving a week or so ago. We had such a fun time, I wish I could go back. We had a good time taking pictures, and the kids did such a good job. It was kind of cold and sitting for a camera is never at the top of the list for the most fun thing to do to a three year and almost one year old anyway, but as you can see, Peter especially was full of fun, goofy grins. Fortunately, my parents were right behind me jumping around to get both kids to look, but we never could quite crack a smile from Elsie.

I love these pictures of Elsie. I couldn't decide which one I liked better, so I put both of them up.

She finally gave in and I caught a small smile!

Then my parents wanted a couple quick pictures so it was their turn to jump in the camera hot spot. Family pictures all around!

Class project gone awry

Earlier this week I was working on a project for my visual media class where I needed a picture of a water droplet. I figured to save time, I would just grab one off google images, but after awhile of searching, I couldn't find one that I liked and that would work, so I resorted to my original idea of just taking the picture myself...so much for that time saver. So I busted out my camera, turned on my bathroom sink, and had some fun snapping away. I was just focusing on getting a single drop that was the right size and shape and not much else, but some of them actually turned out kind of cool.





It turned out that I couldn't make any of the pictures I took work either, so after a long time of working on this endless project, I ended up having to start from scratch and figure out a whole different project! What was that about time saving??? I was so frustrated, but at least I had fun taking some pictures and I think I have something else figured out that will work, right?