Happy New Year!

Okay, I feel a little like an average teenager since I'm so excited about the Hunger Games movie that is coming out in March, but really, I am pretty excited. I wasn't even super wowed about the books. I think one thing that got me more excited about the movie was this song:

I know, I know, it's Taylor Swift. And Taylor Swift is every teenage girl's heroine at the moment, but I really really like this song. It's for the soundtrack of "The Hunger Games" and it is so haunting and pretty that I can't help but loving it. I love the simpleness of the guitar, and then Taylor's voice blended with the singer (from The Civil Wars, I presume?) sounds so melodic and sweet.

Anyway, this wasn't my only reason to post. I will be leaving for a few days to go see our friends for New Years, so I won't be posting for the weekend. I had wanted to do something special for the New Year on here, but I guess it's not going to happen. Maybe next year I can! :)
I hope you all have a Happy New Year!

Love and hugs,
Madeline <><

Christmas Eve Eve

This might sound just a tad crazy to you, but every year we have three Christmas celebrations at our house. They vary in order, but the celebrations went like this this year: Christmas with just our family (on Christmas Eve eve (Or Christmas Adam, because Adam came before Eve), Christmas with my mom's side of the family (Christmas Eve), and Christmas with my dad's side of the family (Christmas Day).
Needless to say, it was fun...and crazy. :) Here are some pictures from our first celebration.

Sorry for the blurriness...I had the lens on manual focus for some reason :P

It was a fire pit from us kids, if you were wondering ;)

And this is all you will get to see of me :)

I think that about sums up our celebration in pictures. :) Usually in the morning we kids will wake up and wait upstairs while we visit with each other, until Mom and Dad say that we can come down. Then we all line up, and march down the stairs, youngest to oldest, into the living room. We usually open one present, have a special breakfast, and then go back to open all the rest of the presents. The rest of the day is usually spent watching movies, playing with new toys that we got, and just relaxing. :) This year we had a pot roast with mashed potatoes and gravy for lunch. :)

More on the celebrations to come soon! :)

Post Christmas

How is everyone dealing with the post-Christmas blues? I think I am doing extremely well so far. :)
  My two older sisters and I met with one of my friends and her older sister (who is friends with my sisters) at Starbucks today, and we ended up talking for two hours before we had to go. It was really fun, even thought we didn't end up talking about much besides movies and books. Oh, and being at Starbucks meant that I got to try the Peppermint Mocha for the first time. It was yummy! :) I'm glad I got to try it, I just wish it wasn't so dreadfully expensive. :P
  Another thing that makes it not too bad that Christmas is over is that we are going on Friday to our friends' house for New Years. Every year we go to their house for the New Year, and we stay up late watching movies and talking, and we kids make a couple short films for the grownups. :) It's really fun.

  Speaking of the New Year (yikes! I'm not ready for 2012!) I have decided to do the 365 project. What is it, you ask? The 365 project is where you take one picture every day for, you guessed it, a year. :) I told myself last year that when I got a nice camera I had to do it, and I got my camera last March, so I guess it's time I did the project. :) I'll be creating another blog specifically for posting my pictures from everyday, so that I don't clog up this blog, so I let you know what the address is once I have everything up and running, and a first post on there. :) Also, I was wondering if anyone would like to design that blog for me? I have no clue about HTML designs or anything, and I honestly don't think I'd be that picky about my 365 blog. :) Anyway, if you are interested, please leave me a comment letting me know along with your email address (I won't publish it) and I can email you about it. :)
  I'm not sure if I'll be posting Christmas pictures...I took over 200 pictures (yeah, it's not really that much) but I'm a bit overwhelmed with editing. I had a hard time figuring out a good camera setting, so a lot of the pictures were pretty bad.  *sigh*

How was our Christmas? Did you get anything amazing? Do you have New Years resolutions? Are you doing the 365 project?

Christ the Savior is Born!

"And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,  'Glory to God in the highest,
   and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!' "

Luke 2:8-14 ESV 
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Merry Christmas to my lovely followers!!

You are all such an encouraging blessing to me! Thank you so much for taking the time to read my posts and comment! I hope you all have a lovely Christmas. :)


Christ the Savior is Born! Christ the Savior is Born!

Christmas Lights

More Christmas light experiments...

*An amazing version of 'Carol of the Bells'*

...

Praise God from Whom all blessings flow. I just got a major answer to prayer, and I am so happy that I just might cry. 
I don't want to say what the thing is, but I just wanted to make a public thank you to God for encouraging me that when I pray, He makes things happen for His glory.
 Praise God, praise God, praise God.

Feedback? Please?

All right then.
I have a few questions for all of you photographers!
I have been looking around at tripods, and I'm not sure what kind to get. I've heard nothing but praise for Manfrotto tripods, but they're just too expensive for me at the moment. I was looking at a particular Dolica tripod that I thought looked good, but I just wanted to check with you ladies first. :)

What kind of tripod do you have? What kinds have you heard of that are really good?


Also I was thinking about possibly getting a UV Protection Filter, and wondering if you girls have one and like it (or don't like it) and if you think it's worth it to get. I guess I wouldn't exactly be getting it for the UV light help, but more for the protection of the lens. I know that it can reflect light too, which isn't a nice thing...
Anyway, just a few things that I've been thinking about that I would love feedback to!

I shot some inanimate objects...

The marbles and I had a fun time.

They loved it when I made them "disappear" by altering the shutter speed.

And then those trees just really wanted me to take their pictures....*sigh* 

This violet was actually begging me to snap a photo

(Okay, inner squeal here. I was actually begging the tree to let me take a picture of him. I LOVE how this shot turned out!)

This little tuft of grass was so smiley on a bitter cold day that I just had to take a picture of its joy at being alive.

Psssh. Those trees. :)

And now for some CHRISTMAS shots. Actually, the only thing they have to do with Christmas is that they are pictures of the Christmas bulbs and tree lights.

Manual Focus

I really like this in manual focus....it might look better in b&w though.

The End.
On Friday our family is having our first Christmas celebration (of three!) so I should hopefully have some pictures from that. Also, Kitty took some cute pictures of Lyddie and I, so I would like to post those as well. But that won't be until Friday, so stay tuned! :)

p.s. Thank you so much for the comments everyone! Especially about my asking about giveaways. :)

A random post

Would you look at that? I've reached 25 followers! Thank you so much everyone! You just made my day! :)

It would be really lovely if I could do a giveaway soon, but I have no idea how to go about it. Do people usually contact the person hosting the giveaway, or would I contact someone to sponsor a giveaway? :S

(SOOC shot)

My homemade first pair of socks. They are beautiful.

I've been enjoying the Christmas season. Every year we kids do Secret Santas with each other, and we are going to be doing that this Sunday! Christmas is a week from Sunday! I can't believe it. It seems like it really crept up on me this year. I'm not ready yet! There's not even any snow! :( 

Tomorrow night is the progressive dinner with the youth group that I "help" with (I'm one of the adults, but some of the kids and other adults are my friends, so it's not like this annoying thing I have to help with ;)) I'm pretty excited, since everybody gets dressed  up, and it's my first time going. Everyone always says that it's one of the best youth group events, and a bunch of the college kids are going to be there as well. :) So, hopefully it will be a fun evening. 

Tonight's evening was fun. Three of my sisters sat around the dining room table writing Christmas cards while I played the Christmas station on Pandora from my laptop and made snowflakes. It was nice. And I took videos of them, and they hated it. XD

What do you like to do to prepare for/celebrate Christmas? 

Driving and Christmas wrapping

On Thursday evening my uncle came over and gave Mary and I a driving lesson before supper! It was Mary's first time driving at all, and I had only done a teensy bit before. We went to a huge parking lot and he instructed us on what to do (he's a REALLY great teacher!). I was pretty nervous at first, but then it ended up being sooo fun, and I didn't want to get out of the driver's seat. ;)

Then today my sister was wrapping Christmas presents, so I decided to wrap with her! I was inspired by none other than Pinterest, and I decorated my gifts a little differently! I love how they turned out! Here are a few that I did.

Be a little more creative in your present wrapping this year! All I used for the brown paper was brown paper bags from the grocery store. You can use twine or string to tie them up with, and then make some homemade snowflakes to put on top!

Happy Christmas wrapping!! :)

Foodography Contest

Nela is having a Foodography Photo Contest!

Here are my two photos for the contest:

P.S. I'm thinking of changing my blog design to something different...I really like the looks of blogs like Carlotta's and Lucia's, but I don't want to be a copycat either. :P Hmmm....

Rainy night

I saw this and I just had to take a picture. It may not look amazing to you, but the real scene was a bright spot for me. Something about it...

Skating Around

Today we went roller skating with some of our friends for one of the girls' birthdays. :)

Almost the whole group (minus four kids including myself). Yes, this was only two families. :)

I like this picture  

The birthday girl (Siobhan) and Kitty

We had a lot of fun with them. :)