A Visitor

I'm going to share some more before & afters of the ugly house today but first I thought I'd share a fun shot I took yesterday.

I found this praying mantis wandering along outside my front door yesterday and had to run inside to get my camera. It was in quite the hurry though, so it only stopped a moment to pose for this picture. :) Unfortunately, I didn't get a full body shot so I haven't been able to figure out if it's a boy or a girl.

The Master Bathroom

Unfortunately, I did not think to take before pics until after we'd already started ripping up carpets and tearing out floors. So you will be spared from some of the ugly. Lucky you. LOL

The first room we (well my husband and his buddy) began on was the master bath. We started there because it was the one room that had a bad floor so they immediately started ripping it out. That was when I ran home to get my camera because I wanted to document everything.

Before:

Ugly sink, turquoise floor and woah! Do you see that toilet? (That's my husband's buddy cleaning up the trash from the floor being ripped out bit by bit.)

Not a great shot but you can see my husband in the hole where the tiny shower used to be. Seriously. It was tiny.

After:

I still need to get a shot of the new shower, but it's about twice the size of what was in there before. It's funny, I thought a lot of people would hate my green and black bathroom but so far everyone has loved it, too. It makes me happy just to look in there and it's only the bathroom! LOL

More rooms to come!

The Ugly House

So, I mentioned that we bought and have been renovating a house. What I didn't mention is that we bought the world's saddest and ugliest house. Seriously. The first time we walked through it we walked out saying that you couldn't pay us enough money to enter it again.

It was dirty, and ugly and run down and so sadly out of date that the wallpaper hurt your eyes. (Just wait! I have photographic proof! LOL) Oh, and did I mention that it is yellow? Not cream. Yellow.

Or that not all the shingles match?

I could almost live with the paler color. And I don't believe that the pictures do the bright nature of the yellow justice. Seriously, I don't have anything against the color yellow, but just not for houses. Obviously, that is on our list of things to do, but we still haven't come to an agreement on color. So for now...it's yellow.

We do have this however.

My husband is a mechanic and a car guy. This garage is what made us walk back into the house for a second look. LOL The house is old, yes. It needed work and a major facelift. But it was solid, the roof was good, it's almost twice the size (even being small house) than where we're living now and it has a yard and that garage and a big field behind it.

So we bought it.

Best decision ever. More than the house, the neighbors make it wonderful. Our one neighbor has just been fantastic and is always the first one to lend a hand or to keep an eye out for things. The rest of the neighbors are kind and friendly and I can't wait to finish so we can move in.

Bright and Vivid

So, it's been a quiet few months for me, at least photography wise. We've been renovating our new house for the past year and that has pretty much taken over our every last waking minute. (Remind me to share the befores and afters!)

And of course, since my camera has been silent, so has my blog. Since I miss it and I'm trying to get myself back in the zone, so to speak, I decided to participate in this week's I Heart Faces challenge. :)



Hopefully, I'll be inspired to get my camera out and use it again!

Exhibitionists

So you know how you're walking along in life minding your own business and out of the corner of your eye you see a couple being a little more intimate in public than socially acceptable? You want to look away, pretend they are not there, but you also can't help but stand there in shock at what you are seeing?

Well, I had one of those days this weekend. Even more my kids were with me. And then the questions started...

I really wanted to tell those two to get a room, to have some modesty, to think about who might see them. Instead, I took the kids away, distracted them with toys and went on with my life as if I had not seen what I had.

Something tells me they wouldn't have understood anyway...

My Little Girl

This is a shot I took this weekend at our new house. Jason was working on our bathroom and I had been outside squirting the kids with the hose while they pretended to wash the van. LOL

When they were finally soaked through and tired of "working" they started rummaging through all the boxes I'm sorting to get ready for our yard sale. Mia had found a couple of her big sisters old Care Bears and was playing and looked so cute I had to take a pic.

She's growing up too fast, too.

Photojournalism

This week's theme at I Heart Faces is a little bit different. For this challenge, they've defined photojournalism as using an image (or images) to tell a story.

I've spent a lot of time going though picture after picture trying to decide which one to enter. I finally decided on a photo that is not a recent one. In fact it is one I took with my first 35mm camera. I don't expect it to be chosen because, well, it was taken by a 12 year old who knew nothing other than that she loved to take pictures. It's also a little battered and had to be scanned into my computer by my less than stellar scanner/printer.

I have always loved photography. As a kid, my dad was an enthusiast and I caught the bug from him. I received my first camera in second grade (it had Smurfs on it!) and after using that to death, was given my first "real" camera in fifth grade. It was a Canon Sure Shot with a remote and I loved it. I especially loved using the remote to sneak pictures when people least expected it. lol I used that camera for almost 16 years until I got my first digital point and shoot (also Canon!) when I was pregnant with Anakin. I actually still have the 35mm and it's still in perfect working order. :)

Growing up I always had my camera with me and I have hundreds of pictures in boxes from field trips and parties and school days. I'm amazed I didn't send my parents to the poor house from developing all that film but because of my obsession, I have tons of pics of things that I'm so thankful I have.

I took this picture the summer after sixth grade when my Girl Scout troop went to New York for a week. We spent a couple of days in New York City seeing the sights. I have many pictures from that trip and plenty of the famous New York skyline, all featuring the towers, but this has always been my favorite shot. I love the crowd of people, especially the older lady in the corner. I love how it was a very overcast day and how the towers seem to fade into the sky.