Photo-a-Day Challenge ~ Week 2

Continuing with Kati's June photo challenge...a photo-a-day...

day 8: childhood

I have happy memories of swinging on a handmade wooden swing hanging by a rope from a tree in my grandparents' back yard. I knew that I'd have a tree swing for my own children and grandchildren. Our tree swing is an old tire, but I hope the happy memories are the same.

(Do you know Robert Louis Stevenson's poem "The Swing"? That's another treasure of my childhood.)

day 9: macro

What a miracle, a bloom. Think about it.

day 10: upside down
Also childhood? Fun!

day 11: jewelry
Silver, turquoise, and black.
I seldom wear anything that is not in this pile.

day 12: flower

Golden yarrow.
I have watched this particular bloom as it has opened this week. I photographed it every day, although I somehow missed Tuesday. It was fascinating to document the transformation from day to day.

day 13: shadow
The sun peeked out through the clouds sporadically yesterday, but when it was out, it shone brightly.

day 14: red, white, and blue

Red napkins, white teacups, and blueberry tea.
(As I sip this blueberry tea, I reminisce about our trip to Maine last year...)

I decided to include a bonus photo. 

Not from this week, of course.  In fact, it was a little more like 50-something years ago. 

But here it is, a picture of me and my dad. 

Happy Father's Day, Daddy!

A Personal Photo Challenge {Stormy Weather}

Over the past months, I have been learning to "see" with new eyes through the lens of my camera. 

When I first joined Donna's Personal Photo Challenge last September, I compared it to "school," I being the kindergartner and Donna being the college graduate. And although I still look at Donna's amazing photographs and see that there is a long way to go, I do believe that I am "seeing" things differently as she has had me (and the other participants) focusing on one facet of photography at a time. The informative articles she supplies, as well as her own pointers, are just the ticket for broadening our horizons...one step at a time.

This month's challenge was stormy weather. We have had our fair share of rain, so there was ample opportunity to practice!  

Here are some of my favorites. (All photos were taken with my Canon Rebel T3.)

I crouched down on my front porch to get a straight on view of the rain falling on the flowers on the front step. I liked that you could see not only the drops, but also the puddles. I thought the color (red and white flowers, black pineapple ornament) added contrast to the gloom. (Still thinking about last month's challenge, I suppose.) 

I edited this photo in PicMonkey, increasing the shadows. 

This next shot was a real challenge! I wanted to capture a view of the rain from inside my automobile. (Don't worry...I wasn't driving!) I had hoped to get one with wiper blades in motion. But it was either wiper blades with a "meh" outside view, or a nice view with no wiper blades. I'll try again sometime. In the meantime, I was pleased with the focus on the raindrops on my windshield as I sat at the end of my driveway, looking at the field across the road.

Again, I edited in PicMonkey, increasing the shadows. (Shadows seemed to be just the thing to highlight the drops!) 

For the last photo, I was a bit bolder! I took this photo of Bekah, attired in bright rain gear and walking across the back yard in the rain. (Yes, it was staged, but it was raining. ~smile~) This time, I added shadows and also increased the contrast considerably. Maybe the result is "artificial," but I wanted the hot pink umbrella and rain jacket to pop against the green. It's fun to experiment anyway! 

Yes, I said that was my last photo. (Oops.) But that one reminded me of a favorite photo from last year, taken on a July day when we got six inches of rain in one afternoon! Bekah made the best of the deluge by stomping in the puddles the pond that appeared in our front yard. 

So I decided to edit the photo using this year's eye...cropping, increasing the shadows, and sharpening the image. (Original seen ~here~.)

Thank you, Donna, for another month of challenging photo opportunities, especially as you are in the midst of your own "storm." 

Click on the button below to see more...

Savoring Summer {Week 2 ~ Black Bean Salad}

When Maryann, who blogs at It Is Well With My Soul, posted her recipe for Black Bean Salad a few weeks ago, I took note. It looked delicious and healthy and summery...and the list of ingredients was simple. 

This week, I made it, we tried it, and we loved it!!

This salad may show up on our table on Father's Day. And it may make an appearance at our church picnic. One thing for sure, it will be added to our summer repertoire.

  Maryann's recipe

Black Bean Salad

2 cups black beans, rinsed and drained (I used one)

9-oz can whole kernel corn, drained (I used shoepeg corn)

1 cup chopped red bell pepper

1/2 cup chopped sweet red onion

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 teaspoon brown sugar

1 large garlic clove, minced

1/4 teaspoon cumin 

1. Place beans, corn, bell pepper, and onion in a large bowl. Sprinkle with black pepper and toss to mix well. 

2. To make the dressing, add the vinegar, oil, brown sugar, garlic, and cumin into a bowl, and stir until sugar is dissolved.

3. Pour the dressing over the bean mixture and toss to mix well. Serve immediately, or cover and chill until ready to serve. 

NOTE: If, before you serve it, you taste test it and say "mmmmm," then people will come from hither and yon with their own tasting spoons. 

Thank you, Maryann, for providing us with a new summer standard!

(Treat yourself to a visit to Maryann's lovely, thoughtful blog!)  

Sunday Snapshots: A Bowl of Cherries

We lived life in the slow lane yesterday.

Last Sunday, our home was filled with people. Our church fellowship met at our house in the morning, Kristin's family came in the afternoon as usual, and we hosted our summer kick-off ice cream party. Good stuff. 

Yesterday, we went to church, and then came home to just us. (Kristin and Brian had decided to stay home at the end of a busy weekend.) 

We nibbled on cherries. We grilled out and ate in...and then for supper, I baked a store bought pizza and we ate out on the patio. In between we talked, read the paper, and watched You've Got Mail, one of our favorite lazy day movies. I couldn't tell you how many times we've watched it, but I can tell you that I cry every time. I cry when Kathleen closes the store for the last time, and again at the last scene. If you're a fan of this movie, you might enjoy this article: "You've Got Mail Turns 15: Here's 10 Things You Didn't Know About the Rom-Com."  (Two things. We actually did know a couple of those things. And the grammatical error in the title drives me batty.)

Yesterday, life was a bowl of cherries.

Our salad included fresh radishes from a friend's garden. Yum!

Almost...

A lazy, quiet afternoon can be restorative. (Every once in a while, that is. I'll be happy to have a houseful of people again this coming Sunday!)

Photo-a-Day Challenge ~ Week 1

When my daughter Kati did a month-long photo-a-day challenge in February, I joined her. The challenge stretched my thinking and prompted me to try different things, so I am going to join her again with this June edition of the challenge. I will be posting a week's worth of photos on Saturdays.

day 1: leaf

I took several leaf photos on Sunday, but Ron influenced my choice.

He planted a tulip tree in our front yard in 2000 and has waited for blooms ever since. He had given up, but as he drove the mower across the lawn last Saturday, he saw a flower lying on the ground. Looking up, he saw that the tulip tree was full of blooms!

So I chose to post the leaf of the tulip tree...in honor of my sweetheart and his excitement over a tree full of blooms.

day 2: favorite color

A red geranium is a beautiful thing!  

day 3: weather
The weather was bright and sunny the day we went to hang out on my parents' lovely new deck.
We sat and talked and sipped cold coffee drinks until the weather sent us into the air conditioned living room

day 4: on the wall
A framed print of "Noah's Ark" by colonial artist Edward Hicks.
We saw two of Hicks' paintings at the National Gallery of Art: "Peaceable Kingdom" and "The Cornell Farm." I wanted to bring them home!

day 5: sunglasses

Ron wears his sunglasses on his drive home from work these days.
Quite the change from a few months ago when he drove to work and home in the dark.

day 6: dot
A slice of orange cinnamon poppy seed cake on a polka dot plate.

day 7: water

This little pond is directly across from the home of my friend Lindy.
We went there this afternoon for a happy occasion: a baby shower to celebrate her daughter Christy's first baby, a little girl expected in late summer. Oh joy!

What a lovely array of things there are to see and notice all around us...if we pay attention.

Savoring Summer {Week 1 ~ A Yummy Marinade for Chicken}

It had been a while since I had made this marinade. 

I used to make it often, but somehow, I had gotten lazy and relied on little envelopes of marinade mix that I picked up in the grocery aisle. But a couple of weeks ago, I remembered this recipe when I was planning to grill for Ron to grill some chicken tenders for our Sunday afternoon meal. 

When I separated the thawed tenders to marinate them on Sunday morning, it looked like a lot of chicken. Oh well, leftovers will be good on salads, I thought.

Guess what? There were NO leftovers! 

When it was time to clean up, there was only an empty platter. Even the grands had gone back for seconds. (If a food is not a dessert and the kids eat it up, I deem it a success!)

I think I'll leave those little packets of mixes on the grocery store shelves from now on and just take a few (very few) minutes to mix up my own marinade!

  

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 cup cider vinegar

2 teaspoons poultry seasoning

2 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1 egg, well beaten 

1. Put all ingredients in a gallon bag, seal securely, and slosh (fancy cooking term) bag around until ingredients look well mixed. 

2. Place chicken pieces/parts inside bag to marinate (OR pour marinade over chicken in a baking dish and cover). Allow to marinate in refrigerator for 4-6 hours, or even overnight. 

3. Remove chicken from marinade and grill until cooked through. (Grilling time will depend on the size of your chicken pieces and the temperature of your grill.)

Do you do a lot of grilling in the summer? Do you have a favorite marinade? 

Summer Plans

The (formal) school year is finished and we've made the first homemade ice cream of the year. It must be summer. 

Now it's time to make some summer plans. Of course, I've been making summer goals for a long time. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say, Now is the time to implement the summer plans!

Here are my goals:

Make new curtains for my dining room. 
I made new ones to replace the faded ones that hung in the dining room last year. But then I decided that I really liked those better in my bedroom, so up the stairs they went. Of course, I brought them back down after a few days because the dining room windows were bare. When my friend Frances took my house photos back in December, they went back upstairs for the bedroom shots, and then down again for the dining room shots. When we updated the master bedroom, I took them back upstairs. But when we had guests, they came back down again. All of this back and forth is ridiculous...especially since I have had the fabric for the new ones since January, and since I can make them in a couple of afternoons or one whole Saturday.

Top: Curtains in the bedroom
Bottom: (Same) curtains in the dining room (photo by Frances)

Make a colonial floor cloth.
I am really excited about this! I love the look of floor cloths, and I have the perfect place for one. The braided rug in front of my kitchen sink is falling apart and needs to be replaced (before someone breaks a limb!). A floor cloth is also easier to clean than a rug, which makes it a good idea for a food prep/garbage can area.

I have been gathering inspiration and instructions and I'm going to try my hand at this. Bekah is also excited and wants to help. I'll bring you along too, if you'd like!

photo via Canvasworks Floorcloths

Organize, organize, organize.
Summer is always the season in which I put my house to rights. I will be cleaning out cabinets and closets and the dreaded laundry room. (Very few closets in this old farmhouse means that the laundry room is a catch-all. By the time the school year ends, last summer's cleaning and organization is kaput and the laundry room is a danger zone!)

Last summer, we slowly worked our way through the house, allowing two weeks per room. That worked out well, so we'll probably do something similar this year.


Plan for the next homeschool year.
That is fun! In fact, planning is almost as much fun as actually doing it. I'll pray and ponder, make reading lists, make a rudimentary schedule, do some reading, get my ducks in a row, order a few things...all over the course of the summer.


A summer recipe series on the blog.
Although I have done a winter and a summer recipe series since I started Soup On Tuesday in January, 2012, I almost decided to forget about it this summer. The idea that I had wasn't coming together and I couldn't get enthused. But I really like the discipline that a series gives me to be creative and try new things, especially during the summer when I am most likely to get into a cooking slump. So after a brainstorming session (or two or three), I have come up with a simple plan. I will be sharing recipes for summer fare...a combination of new (to me) recipes and some tried-and-true family favorites, all using typical summer foods.

Join me each Wednesday (although I'll begin the series tomorrow...on a Thursday!) for my Savoring Summer recipe series.

Have some fun!
Ron doesn't take any vacations in the summer. But who needs a vacation to have fun? Not us! We have mini-vacays all summer long.

~ Grab iced coffees at Dunkin' Donut and then do drive-bys. We love this! Slowly driving through older neighborhoods, ogling houses, snapping photos, sipping our coffee. A cheap thrill.

~ Go to the beach...the "little beach" with Kristin and the grands (so named because it is not at the ocean) or the "big beach" (at the ocean) with my mom and my sister.

~ Spend a summer afternoon reading magazines while indulging in one of the Starbucks summer coffee flavors at Barnes and Noble.

~ Eat snow cones and then go to Target. (Life's simple pleasures and all that.)

~ Visit my sister and go to the bigger Target in her town. (Have I told you that we love Target?)

~ Celebrate birthdays. If you are a long-time friend, you know that we have a gazillion birthdays and anniversaries in July and August. Thus, we spend a good part of the summer planning for birthdays, shopping for birthday gifts, thinking about birthdays, hosting and attending birthday celebrations, and hoping that we're not forgetting something!

What are your plans for this summer?

Recommendations!

Kristin, my oldest daughter, has expanded and revised the eBook she wrote and published last June! It is the Summer Reading Guide for Families: 2014 Edition and is the compilation of book suggestions and reviews, all from an avid reader and experienced mom. I have already added a few titles to our own summer book list! 

Are you reading to a child or grandchild this summer? Simply click the picture below (the one with my sweet granddaughter Alaine!), and you can get the link for your FREE download. (Yes, it's FREE!)

Kati, my middle daughter, is beginning a Photo-a-Day challenge for the month of June. There is only one rule: Using the prompts she has provided, simply take a photo each day. It's that simple. She is also providing a link-up if you'd like to share your photos. 

I have already started taking my photos which I will share collectively once per week. It's up to you if you publish, where you publish, how often you publish.

Click the image below for details and the link-up.

Bekah, my youngest daughter, has started her own blog! She enjoys photography and wanted to participate in Kati's Photo-a-Day challenge, so here she is...at Note By Note.

Joanne, not my daughter but a dear friend, blogs at My Not-So-Empty Nest where she writes about her faith, the antics of her twin grandsons, health, and gardening. 

She also shares thrifty makeover projects in her monthly feature, Make it NEW Monday! This week, I am linking our recent bedroom update. Why don't you pop over and see what Joanne has done with some old wooden boxes this month? If you have done a recent makeover of your own, go ahead and link!

Sunday Snapshots: The Inaugural Ice Cream Party

Yesterday was the day. 

The day that we kick off summer with the first homemade ice cream of the season! That's how we know it's summer around here. (Well...besides the heat and oppressive humidity...)

It was a picture perfect day for the inaugural ice cream, too...sunny, warm, low humidity (that is key!), light breeze. Yep, it was perfect.

The dads churned, but the children all wanted to get in on the fun!

They used hammers (!) to break up containers of ice...

...they added rock salt...

...and they helped with the churning. 

Then they waited...for the ice cream to get firm and for the guests to arrive.

It's ready!!

The dads served up cups of ice cream...strawberry or chocolate (or both)!

We ate and talked and ate and laughed, and moved from the sun to the shade to the sun again! And the weather was so perfect that a pot of coffee was just right to wind up the afternoon/evening.