day 97.

When it's Christmas time and you've gone all day and haven't shot anything, go back to your Christmas tree.

Digital Field Guide: I went back to Shooting Menu Preferences, page 54.

Images: [daily dose of imagery]

dec. 16: tea.

Today's topic is tea: your favorite kind.

I am a Southern girl, so I like tea. Iced tea is like an institution down here.

And when I say iced tea, I don't mean brown water. I mean Sweet Tea.

Chick Fil A's sweet tea is like manna from Heaven. (And yes, it's referred to as "sweet tea" down here now. When I was a little girl and even through my teenage years it was referred to as "iced tea" because it was just a given I guess that it would be sweet. Now, not so much.) Their tea is so good McDonald's almost carbon-copied it. Then again, it's hard to find really bad sweet tea, except at the pizza buffet places. And the Chinese buffet places. And the Mexican restaurants. When I go to those places I just get something else.

...Somehow, I get the feeling that Gwen Bell was not talking about that kind of tea. I'm still putting it out there though.

She's probably talking about hot tea.

I do like hot tea as well. I LOVE a nice cup of Earl Grey with milk and sugar. I also really like a nice cup of Chai tea. With milk and sugar.

the twelve days of Christmas: april.

Wow...the photos in this April collage are all iPhone photos.

And my four year-old (who was then three) took the one of Batman.

Going to the High Museum to see the Terracotta Warriors exhibit was a lot of fun.

dec. 15: best packaging.

At the beginning of the month, or right before Thanksgiving, I won a sweet little giveaway from the Design Delights blog. I was so pleased to receive the goodies Melissa sent me! The requirement for entering the giveaway was that I had to "pay it forward" and give something away myself.

I have been thinking about what to give away since then, and I decided that at the start of the new year I will have my own giveaway on this blog, my first ever! I have come up with some ideas for a sweet little gift of my own and will love sending it out to brighten someone's day.

Which brings me to packaging.

I'm not sure if I will be able to pull off some really incredible packaging for this gift; I'm thinking I'll just put it in a box and mail it. Done. But I am inspired to think creatively about packaging after receiving Melissa's gift!

You can see my cool goodies as well as the lovely packaging that wrapped them!

day 96: on a photowalk.

I went on a photowalk today with two of my current students and two of my former students. I had been wanting to go to Marietta Square and take a lot of photos for a few months, but just now got around to doing it, and thought it would be a good idea to invite my students and see who could come. I decided to make it an "official" group outing and call the group the AGE Club (AGE=Awesome Girls Extraordinaire).

We had such a fun afternoon, and I got some awesome shots of the girls as well as great random shots. We did a number of series: lollipops (Dum Dums to be exact), shoes, a video pose (the video was "Ignorance" by Paramore), my old-school-hanging-with-my-friends-in-eighth-grade-trying-to-be-cool pose (which they LOVED! haha). My thing for signage crept up several times. I also finally got to take photos on railroad tracks!

Digital Field Guide: I spent one last day looking at the last few articles on my Nikon Learn and Explore app.

Images: I went through the shots I took today and began editing them in Lightroom and Picnik. Only halfway done; my girls are waiting for that Facebook album! So I gotta get crackin.'

the twelve days of Christmas: march.

I learned how to make one of those mosaic grids, so I'll be making those for the rest of this series.

day 95: the hydrant.

Apparently, I like this fire hydrant. I see it once a week, and I think I've taken at least two or three photos of it with my iPhone. This time, I used Niki. It came out awesome. Then I edited it different ways in Lightroom and was like, cool. This was one of the edits.

Okay, so I guess I need to start budgeting for Lightroom 3 so that when it comes out I can buy it. Because once this Beta version expires I'm not gonna want to let go.

Digital Field Guide: I actually read some more articles in my Nikon Learn & Explore app on my phone.

Images: Villi.Ingi on Flickr. Very cool.

dec. 14: rush.

"When did you get your best rush of the year?"

This is beginning to sound like a theme with me, so please bear with me.

These are just the first things that come to my mind when I reflect on these questions.

The best rush for me this year came every time I saw my husband again, after being away from him for several days (or weeks).

the twelve days of Christmas: february.

Still very new to the photography craze I was, in the sense that I had not done much other than document my kids' growth and fun moments prior to, I'd say March or April. But I still love these photos! They bring back such good memories. It was hard to whittle them down to just these, but I did it!