My Lilac Bush

I spent most of the weekend on the couch but yesterday I walked outside for a minute and saw that my lilac bush had bloomed!!   This is my favorite thing in our yard but it's located on the side of our house and can't be seen from the driveway or from any windows in the house.  I wish it was in a different place but I am glad to at least have it.   

It rained yesterday morning and the raindrops were still on it when I went out in the afternoon.

It was actually a good weekend to be sick and stuck in the house. It was cold, cloudy, and rainy all weekend!  

Sick Days

We've been sick around here the last few days.  Brad was actually sick all week and I finally came down with it on Wednesday.  I didn't even go to work today and only went for about an hour yesterday.  

I didn't get much sleep last night so I hope this concoction of medicine helps enough that I can sleep tonight.  
We were supposed to go to Mountain Home this weekend to look at  land but neither of us are going to feel up to it. And unfortunately this is the only weekend we were going to be able to go for a while.  Oh well, I think we need rest more than anything else at this point!

Macro Lens

I love, love, LOVE my macro lens!  Since I got it, I haven't really used my big lens at all.
I was playing around with it a couple of days ago and found a tiny little gnat on a flower.

Can you see him on the bottom petal of the middle flower?  This is the Flowering Quince in my back yard.  To give you an idea of how tiny he was, each bloom is about the size of a quarter.

I got closer and tried to focus in on him.

I didn't get a lot of detail but it was the best I could get since I hand-held my camera.  I think it would have been better if I had put it on a tripod.  Or if I had a zoom macro lens.  And I'll have to win the lottery before I get one of those!  Mine is a Sigma 50mm F2.8.  It works well for my limited abilities!!

Old Toys

A friend from work asked me to take some photos of her dad's old toys for her nursery.  I love almost anything old and had so much fun taking these! 

 The Tinkertoys were my favorite but I wasn't sure how they would turn out for a framed picture to hang on a wall.  Because of the depth of field, this one didn't look so good printed.

I couldn't really figure out what to do with the marbles.  I loved all the colors but she didn't want the prints in color so she ended up not using it in the nursery.

Isn't this one cute!?!?  I thought it looked so good on the brown burlap.

I didn't really like this one at first, but it looked really good framed.

The next two are the color we had all of the shots printed in.  It was black and white with a brown overlay.  She had them matted in blue and framed in brown.  I was amazed at how good they looked in her super cute nursery!  

This is the Tinkertoy shot she chose to frame.   It was my favorite one in the nursery.

This one was the easiest one to photograph.  It wasn't old but looked good with all of the others.

The hardest part of this project was trying to get a shot that could be cropped to an 8X10 and fill the frame.  Several of the shots were better than what we ended up using because part of the image was cropped out.  

I thought this was a great idea to put in a little boy's nursery and was thrilled that she let me take the photos for her!!

Tulips

I love tulips!  They have always been my favorite spring flower.  So when my bosses sent me flowers on Friday I was so excited because it was a beautiful arrangement of purple tulips!

I'm not even sure why they sent us flowers but it was a nice way to end the week!

Em's Treat

On Saturday I spent part of the day with my mom and Emilee in Batesville.   We had lunch and then did a little shopping.  

And Emilee treated us to dessert at a new self serve yogurt place that just opened!!  My mom offered to pay but Em insisted!  

Me and my mom decided to go way out on a limb and topped ours with strawberries.  I had Birthday Cake flavored yogurt and my mom had some sort of Vanilla.

Em really did go a little on the wild side with gummy bears, chocolate chips, and cherries!

I've loved Em at every age and this one is no different.  She's really not a little kid anymore but we definitely had a good time with her!