Well Holy Cow…have I fallen behind!!  That’s ok, I’ve mostly kept up on my photography.  I’m going to post what I have until week 9 (which was last week) and then hopefully stay a little more on track.. I think that I have some good excuses as to why I’ve fallen behind.  I mean, trying to buy a house that is over 1800 miles away is not the easiest thing to do!  Especially while you’re trying to prepare for the move, home school and keep some sort of normalcy for your 5 kiddies.  Anyway, enough whining ; )…  Here are some pictures. : )  (I’m going to retro date the posts on my project 52 page to match the dates I took the pictures)

This weeks picture was taken on the first day of week 9 with the theme of “light”.  We celebrated Ellie Jo’s 7th Birthday at the American Girl Store in NYC with 3 of her best friends. It was really special that we were able to celebrate on her actual birthday!  It was so much fun and she was thrilled.  I got this shot when they brought out her cake and lit the candles…I think she has the most beautiful profile..I also love the way the light from the flames of the candles looks.

Color is the theme for this week.  I love how this project is really stretching me.   I sometimes wish I had all the time in the world to think about and plan my shots, but I don’t.  Like this week.  It was insane!  3 Birthday parties (one being my daughters), Cub Scout Blue and Gold, Geography Fair ( of course waited until the last-minute to do all  THREE projects) and putting an offer in on the house! I had to pick something from the pictures I took during the week (no planning for project 52 here!) and turn it into something unique and in this case it needed to reflect the theme “color”.  I’m really pleased with this one, mostly because it stretched me a bit.  I had to look at each picture differently than when I took it.  This is a picture of Joey’s Webelos Colors (the pin with the tassels is call their “colors”) which holds all of the  activity badges.  Joey was showing me the Cititzenship Badge he earned at the Blue and Gold celebration.

9 months old and 1st Valentines Day!

This was a wild card week and I chose this collage of Luke.  This was a little shoot I tried in our dinning room. It was a good practice/learning session and I was pleased with how the pictures turned out!

I wish I could have this sort of emotion whe I do the laundry!

Week 5 was “simplicity:…how appropriate!  My life is so complicated right now that I couldn’t even get to my camera this week.  So there is no photo for week 5.  : (  Maybe it’s time to simplify a bit….uh, yeah, good luck with that Kristen. ; )

This was a tough one.  Every time I thought of something imperfect, I would start to really think about that particular thing and I would come to the conclusion that it was really perfect in its own way.  So this is what I came up with:

The picture itself is far from perfect!  Lighting was horrible, its super noisy, it’s out of focus and the composition isn’t all that great, but I love the little story it tells…

There is nothing like having a baby to interrupt your “perfect” world…6 years after you thought you were “done”! I would never have planned to have four kids so close together and then a baby 6 years after the youngest was born, but having L.J. has been a perfectly imperfect deviation from our “plans”!

Here is my photo for week three wich ends today (1/21).  inspiration is the theme and its my kids that inspire me….to shine His light, to be a better person, a mom, a wife, a photographer…I wish I could have gotten an image of all 5 of them for this weeks theme, but I didn’t and since I love this one of the baby, it will do! We had our first snow of 2012 today.  It was fairly small maybe 3 or 4 inches, but it was enough for the kids to go sledding in.  Baby loved it and his sweet-cheeks smile shows it!

Well I missed posting for week 2 of my project 52 last week. : (  I knew that I would hit some bumps!  I guess the more you have going on, the more opportunity for something to go wrong.  I did take a picture, albeit not what I totally had in mind, but it worked.  I just couldn’t get it together last week.  This week has been a little tough too, but I’m starting to catch up.

So the theme last week was “Life”.   My mind flooded with thoughts of granduer…..lovely ideas for the perfect, polished, technically correct photo that just oozed the theme.  Much to my dismay, “life” really happened and I didn’t get the photo I had envisioned.  I did get something that was a little more realistic of what my life is like right now: a little kooky/crazy but full of joy!  I looked at the last-minute snap shot and thought to myself…”Isn’t this what I’m really doing this project for?  Isn’t it to remind me of my life as it is now, this year; to photograph all of the moments that I want to savor, no matter how unglamorous or plain or crazy?” I think I’m realizing that developing as a photographer will come in at a very close second to capturing the blessed moments of my life, whether they be a hill-top experience a valley or somewhere in between.

This Photo of Ellie is exactly how “Life” played out for me last week…a little kooky/crazy, but full of joy!!  It is not the best photo, I even had to use the on camera flash (which I loath!) but it works and it makes me smile when I look at it.  Hopefully, I will be posting for week 3 tomorrow (last minute!!)…until then , blessings!