My favorite photos of 2011

This is obviously going to be a photo heavy post and if you have a slow connection it could take a while - a long while - to load.

This year was different from previous years. Instead of working on tons of projects, I spent my time what I called "gallivanting" and that means instead of a list of things I accomplished this year, what I have is a list of favorite photos. And oh yeah, I love nature. These photos are pretty much all nature, all the time.

Winter 

I will say one thing for our winter - it makes for some fantastic sunrises and sunsets.

 Spring

Getting any light this time of year is such a rare and precious thing.

Summer

 My longest bout of gallivanting and therefore my largest collection of photos I had to whittle down.

Autumn

My second largest bout of gallivanting.

Winter again

What a wonderful treat this winter was! Blue skies and dry weather for almost a whole month which meant lots of pretty frost and fog.

And a gorgeous Christmas morning sunrise.

This is the year I learned a lot about tricking my camera into doing what I wanted and then got a new camera that can do so much more (hello zoom!). So here's to 2012 and the lovely sights I see through my lens.

The year of the scarf

I love scarves and I'm not sure I've said it so much to the people around me as they've just noticed I wear one....every single day.
I actually keep a coat rack next to my dresser for scarves, hats and handbags that are in a regular rotation. Today I cleaned it off and put on all the new scarves I got for Christmas.

And guess what? They are all handmade!

The pink stripey one was made by my mom, the purple ruffled, and gray ruffled made by sariejune.

The pink ruffled was made by my cousin Judy.

And this neat red one my mom picked up at a local bazaar. I wish I could link to her shop but she's only got phone numbers on her card.

So the big question is...which one am I going to wear first? :)

Merry Christmas to all

I posted this photo on facebook and everyone griped about how creepy it was. I've never photographed red lights before, have you? It is impossible! The entire room looks like it is glowing red even though it looks nothing like that in reality. And when I tried a different setting...

I give up. But Merry Christmas, anyway!

Paint me argyle....or is it Plaid?

Back in...September? I submitted my painted pumpkin to Plaid Crafts Trick My Pumpkin contest. I put myself out there to win which is always difficult but can be so worth it.

The pumpkin I submitted was actually the argyle one.

I did not win the grand prize but I was chosen as a runner up! I came in third and was quite tickled to be chosen as even that. And I didn't know it at the time but soon received an email asking where to send my prize box. Prize box? Woohoo!

And here's what I won:

A box full of $50.00 worth of product! I got a small jar of Mod Podge which....I have actually never used before. I know, right? I don't know how that happened but I'm glad I can finally try it.

I'm also SUPER excited about these:

I'm excited because I'm actually wanting to try a new jewelry technique using these paints.

Thank you, Plaid!

Currently, they have a Christmas contest going on.

Crocheting coming along

My crochet is coming along pretty well! Better than knitting ever did, sad to say. I picked up a couple of books to give me some ideas and some help.

That Austentatious Crochet book is a fun idea but "contemporary designs from the world of Jane Austen" is completely false. Unless people are still wearing muffs and I just haven't seen them. The Happy Hooker is super helpful for learning new stitches. I have the knitting book as well and it helped me immensely.

After a semi-rough start in which nothing I tried to make turned out, I decided to try something more simple and made some of the wash cloths from the spa collection by Lion Brand yarn.

They are not only beautiful but they gave me some skill and experience that I needed to be able to try some more difficult patterns. Enough so that I was able to make a couple pair of...

Thank you Ravelry members and your lovely free patterns. At first I only had the grey yarn and it was bulkier than the pattern called for so those gloves don't look as pretty and consequently I'm keeping those. :) The white ones, however, turned out just right! Let that be a lesson to always use the recommended yarn weight and hook size.

Mosaic Monday - frolicking felines

One kitty climbs the grape arbor while the other looks on. I like to take product photos in the grape arbor during winter and early spring because of great light filtration and the cats like to follow me everywhere I go so I suppose these antics were inevitable. :)

Be sure to visit Little Red House to see all the beautiful mosaics!

Mosaic Monday - dark skies

I started a new job two weeks ago and it is seriously cramping my photographer's lifestyle. You've no idea how much I cried and whined every morning when everything was frosted and gorgeous and foggy and amazing and I could do nothing about it except look and soak it in as I drove to work.
So here are some photos of the darkening skies that I took last month and a couple sunrise photos thrown in for good measure.

Be sure to visit Little Red House to see all the beautiful mosaics!

The ugliest key holder in the world

I may be giving in to my dramatic side. Take a look for yourself:

The face on this thing! What the heck?

I removed the hideous golf boy insert, removed all the hardware, painted the entire piece in an off-white and painted the hooks, hinges and clasp with oil-rubbed bronze.
What I planned to use it for was not related to golf, ugly man-children or keys, but jewelry.

It works great for holding my jewelry or it works great at displaying my jewelry for sale.

Either way, it's better than how it started.