The Daily Shoot Challenge

This year something I'm going to challenge myself to do is the  The Daily Shoot. Everyday we will get a prompt for a picture idea or theme. You can blog about it and tweet about it after. The challenge is to help you become a better photographer and better with your camera. Between that and my photoshop classes, watch out!

Yesterday, Jan. 1 2010 was all about "looking out a window". I found the challenge a little late in the day, so snapped a quick view from where I was sitting right then

Today's challenge was to take a shot consumed in the color yellow. It totally popped out to me when I opened the "Airbourne" I'm taking to help kick this sinus issue..

I may not post all of them here, or I may do a weekly re-cap. Not sure yet. But please feel free to check out my Flickr set anytime here...

Twenty-Ten

Happy New Year! We've made it another decade. 

Looking back at the block of ten years, this one was INSANE. I got married, got a dog, had 2 beautiful (yet very, very loud) children... the list goes on. 

This year's NYE kid-friendly party was "Ugly Sweater" theme. Last year we kicked it old school with a "Mad Men" party and discovered how much fun it is to dress up for NYE, so we did it again. While I thought we could wander into our local Walmart the day after Xmas and have an abundance of sweaters to choose from at 50% off, that was SO not the case. Yet, we did manage to "tacky it up" and don some great outfits.

Since this was billed as the "tackiest party of the year I will throw" we wanted to tack it up... KFC in the bucket. Plastic snowmen and Christmas Doilies helped us out greatly. 

When asked what they could bring, I told our friends to "bring something tacky". Our good friend Marcy fit the bill perfectly when she showed up with this:

Not to mention that Marcy's husband had THE SWEATER of the night, wearing the famous Leg Lamp on his chest:

(sorry, the pic didn't come out better)

We even broke out the karaoke machine and sang along to (current?) hits such as "love shack" and "sweet home Alabama". Around 10:30 JUST before the kids totally melted down, we did a toast to the upcoming year. Hey, they didn't know the difference. 

Have a sweet Christmas!

for all the picture insanity...

Introducing the PetCobra Trio

Originally posted on DadCentric

It's a mod holiday

EEKKKKK!! That was a squeal of excitement as some of my holiday decor has been featured on The Design File. 

As you may know, we are about to embark on the "de-grandmafication" of our 1957 "atomic ranch" style house. Not a full remodel .. more like a make-over to really bring out the utter coolness of this little house that has been in Jason's family for 50+ years. One of the coolest things about this house is that every member of his family has amazing memories of this house, and of his Grandma who lived here since 1960-something. Of course, over time and age, some styles have fallen out of mode, but lucky as we are to be able to continue raising little Avants here, a lot of it is now back in fashion and almost, dare I say *hot*, in the MCM (mid-century modern) world. WHO KNEW?!

Of course, with some direction from my dear friend Maria J, I threw myself head-first into obsessing over what to do to this place to make it UBER COOL and really bring out it's unique features. That's how I found Baz over at Atomic Indy, a place I go regularly for inspiration. Since we are currently stuck on phase one, floors.. this is going to take a while. So I threw myself into something I could create at this moment... the holiday decor. I've already posted pictures here and there of some of my items, and when Baz asked for fans of his facebook page to post some pictures of what they are doing in their old 40-50 YO houses, I was thrilled to share my crafty-crap. Which lead me to the The Design File... and here we are. Oh, the wonders of social media. 

My crowning achievement of my Holiday Decor - my "gingerbread" house replica of our little abode - has yet to be seen. While its soooooflipppiiinnnncute, it's needs a little something before I'm ready to share it with the world. So check back later for it's debut.

In the meantime, head over to The Design File and look around over there for great ideas, tips and articles on MCM design!