X, Y and Z!

OK, the last three! All together I know.. crazy week.

X is for.. well, X. Like the shape. A little acro yoga for you. I went for the first time last night. Believe it or not, this is the very FIRST pose you learn.

Y is for Yellow

yeah yeah.. I kinda fail at this sort of picture. I'll try again some time. But not tonight.


Z
Zebra
zero
zorro
zimbabwe

zzzz... man I'm tired. This challenge is definitely going out with a whimper. But I have enjoyed following new blogs, having new commenter and in general being part of this craziness. See you next month!

W is for Wet Mess

Nono.. not like THAT.

We bought a fixer-upper so we could get a bigger house that we otherwise could afford... but the fixing has been at a crawl. First I had a baby. Then right as I got to where I felt like I could handle working on the house more again, ops.. pregnant again. Ok, not oops, we planned to have them close together but didn't exactly expect it to happen that fast. Now second baby is one and we're back to really working on the house again.

Today was "try to match the ceiling texture where we took off the fake beams" day. Wow was it a wet mess.

The strip furthest away is the wet mud where we were trying to match the texture-- it dries white.

Our handy dandy friendly handyman friend surveying his work


Tomorrow, more of the same trying some more to match and get them all looking right.

V is for Vice

I'll let you interpret it however you want...

All images copyright Cindy Chapter 2011

.. and yes, I know I'm a day behind....  See you tomorrow!

U is for Umbrella

Kids LOVE umbrellas. I don't know what it is about them.. Here in Austin it hasn't rained in what seems like months, so my pictures will have to be umbrellas in the sun.

The "keep the babies from frying" umbrella fort

My favorite from this park trip

T is for Texture

Texture is one of those things I haven't really messed with in my photography. In my graphic design, yes, because I like a little texture on blank spaces but usually I like my photography to stand alone. For T though, I challenged myself to try to apply texture to an image or two effectively.

Here is my original:

Here it is with a vignetted vintage paper

A weathered painted metal

and peeling paint (super transparent because it made the skin look really weird otherwise)

Just because I was having fun, here's me and the younger critter also with the vignetted paper. It does make an interesting vintage effect.

What do you think? Do you like photos with added texture? Do you find it gimmicky? Do you like it but just not what I do with it? (that's ok! Be honest!)

That's it for "T".. see you tomorrow with "U"

S is for...

swim
sink
sank
sunk
swami
silver...

Did you know that some people think taking collodial silver can keep you from getting sick and heal any number of diseases? It  can also turn you permanently grey! I have bad enough luck with medical side effects, I don't think I'll ever try it!


snow
silly
sign
spin
sustain
splash
sushi--- mmmm sushi.... had sushi last night. It was nom-erriffic.

Sweep

Sweet potato Sprouts

Sweet potatoes are super easy to sprout, and one potato can make enough sprouts to grow a bunch of plants.

Here's how I did these

1. Find a sweet potato that has been neglected a bit too long in the pantry. Make sure it has a few sprouts already.
2. Chop it up into about 6 pieces
3. Let the pieces dry out for a few days (depends on the humidity level... make sure they aren't wet to the touch before planting them)
4. Plant them in a shallow container of potting soil until the sprouts are big with roots coming off of them


5. Twist the sprouts off and plant! I got almost a dozen plants out of mine.

I planted mine in some pots on my patio because I was feeling cheap this year but wanted lots of green growing things. Obviously I won't get any harvest-able potatoes out of these small pots, but the foliage looks nice, and it's a lot cheaper than commercially grown sweet potato vines at over a buck a plant.

Egg hunt fun!

We hosted an Easter Egg hunt this morning for a group of kids. I had each parent bring 2 eggs per kid and asked that they be labeled. In hindsight the labeling was a bad idea for mostly two year olds..  but I wanted to make sure each kid got one of the little egg crafts I made.

I made some tree-hanging eggs-- with little "leaf" labels... though these would be more recommended for either younger kids with moms helping, or older kids who can remove them without ripping off the leaves.

...and I made flower eggs. I love these, and they were fairly fast and fun to make
I wouldn't have wanted to make more than one per kid though because they did take a bit of time.

..

A bit off topic for the A-Z challenge, but I wanted to share the idea before Saturday's easter egg hunts.... and this is supposed to be a craft blog after all!