Lovebug the firefighter

Love my mornings with my Lovebug. He is such a ray of light ... well most of the time. LOL. When he's happy, he is HAPPY - so passionate and high on life ... and a lot goofball :-) Such a fun little guy and a total ham!

my new pink boots

I'm in love :-) Is it weird that I wore these while vacuuming? Yeah, I didn't think so. Now I match Angel. LOL. Thanks Dad, you're the best! Can't wait for the concert tomorrow night!

Settings - 1/200th, f/4, ISO250. I used the window light in the kitchen for this one.

Mess? What mess?

Last night before bed, Angel asked if we could play with sand in the morning, so I let them go to town after breakfast.

Most of my recent posts have been heavy with pics of Angel, so this one is for my little Lovebug :-)

Yup, he definitely LOVES playing with sand, playdoh, or anything messy.

I'm serious when I say he likes mess ... check out the aftermath! This stuff was everywhere, even inside his slippers! It was worth the clean-up though, he had fun and that's all that matters!

My settings - 1/100th-1/125th, f/2.8-f/4, ISO640. I used the window/door light and the recessed fluorescents.

The dig-out

The beginning of the dig-out! This was the awesome path that DH made for the dogs in the backyard.

Yup, the swing is partially buried in the snow drift.

My wonderful hubby digging out the rest of the driveway so we can get around tomorrow! I bet he'll be at work before 8:30 as usual.

View of the court from the front door. This pic doesn't do these humongoid piles of snow justice ... I swear they are like 10 feet tall!

You can see this red wall gets a lot of use for pictures ... I get such amazing light through our the french doors in the kitchen! Here is Angel dressed up to go snowtubing. Poor thing, she could barely move. LOL. She was wearing my hat and gloves ... 2 shirts, 2 pairs of pants under her snow pants, 2 pairs of socks (1 pair was actually mine), her coat and boots. She had a BLAST though. DH took her so I don't have any pics, but I hear our awesome neighbor took a few, can't wait to see them :-)

And unfortunately, Lovebug still doesn't really dig the snow that much. He stayed inside with me while Angel went snowtubing so I don't have any cute snow pics of him. Maybe next year though?

My settings varied ... 1/2o0th, f/4, ISO400 for the indoor shot of Angel. 1/2500, f/4, ISO100 for the outdoor shots. Snow is really tough to photograph ... it's impossible to not blow out the pic with so much white everywhere! I converted most of them to b&w to help a bit.

After the power outage

After we had finished making and eating dinner by candlelight I put a movie on for the kids using my computer. It was pretty well fully charged, so I knew we'd be good to go and it would give them something to do besides sit in the dark by the fire :-) They were happy ... check out how mezmorized they are!

A few minutes into the movie, the power came back on! Woohoo! The BGE guys are the greatest!

Settings - 1/25th (with a super steady hand!), f/4, ISO3200 - taken with the new ambient light from the power being turned back on!

Blizzard February 2010

So, WOW what a lot of snow. This was the view from our back door this afternoon when it was still snowing. Angel can't wait to go down the slide with all of the snow still on it.

Yes, I realize that I still have a Christmas wreath on the front door ... it totally fits with all the snow anyway! LOL. It was so windy that the snow was coming down sideways - our whole house is covered like this!

Angel totally loving this ... we were walking back from our next door neighbor's house. Angel just loves them :-) The crazy thing was that we had to walk out into the court where the snowblower had been - we couldn't take the sidewalk the whole way! By the way - Lovebug is NOT loving this. LOL.

Our snowy house. This was about the time that we found out our power was out because the garage door wouldn't open when we came back from next door. I think this was about 2:30pm. Thank goodness DH brought a key with him - he went inside through the front door and opened the garage door manually for us.

I stood in the center of our court to take this ... I liked the footprints. Our house is directly to the left.

Mailbox shot with the snow still falling.

Our view from the garage. If you look closely, you'll see where the snowblower made a path to the right this side of the mailbox - that's supposed to be our sidewalk. LOL. I'm standing on the driveway which WAS snowblowed a few hours earlier.

Settings - 1/30th - 1/320th, f/4, ISO100.

Ta-da!

Voila! The results of rag rolling! LOL. It's a little Shirley Temple for me, but Angel loves it.

Rag Rollers

I got inspired to look for curlers for Angel ... I had those pink plastic & foam ones growing up and they were pretty rough to sleep on. In trying to find ones to purchase, I came across a tutorial for rag rollers so I made some! This was actually the only way to curl hair back in the "old days" ...

Angel is sooooo excited - she can't wait to see what her hair looks like tomorrow morning. When I was putting her to bed, she said "I'm going to have hair just like [my cousin]!"

So we'll see how cousin-like she is in the morning :-) Obviously, more pictures to follow! I took these with a super high ISO of 3200 because I was only using the ambient light in the family room (which explains why you're seeing all of the grain in the images). I kind of dig the grainy b&w look because rag rollers are so old school. My other settings were 1/25th, f/4.

Dress-up

I'm not sure what Angel had Lovebug involved in, but it was too cute not to snap a picture! I just love seeing these two play together - sometimes they are so quiet that I have to go check on them ... they are almost always playing so well together! Obviously there is the occasional fight as with all siblings, but for the most part - they really are best buddies. Love that!

New b&w action

I bought a new b&w action set ... this isn't "technically" a b&w conversion I suppose, but I dig it :-) I like that it keeps all of the details and textures and I like the vanilla-y quality. LOL.

This pic was taken on one of the 50 degree+ days a few weeks ago. We went outside to play on the swing set - I think she was on the swing when I shot this one. I shot this at 1/250th, f/4, ISO200.