Scavenger Hunt Sunday

Good morning and happy Scavenger Hunt Sunday.  This weeks prompts were a bit of a challenge for me.  Don't know why exactly, they just were.  As always though I love a challenge, so here is what I came up with.

1. Forest

This shot was the most challenging.  Why would a forest shot be challenging you ask? I live at the beach and the closet forest is about 2 hours away.  So I had to hit the archives. This photo is from last summer when we were up in Tahoe for a friends wedding. Truckee to be exact.

2. Morning light

This shot is of the earliest of morning light as the sun was just starting to rise outside my front door.
  

3. Touch

I totally forgot about this prompt so this is another archive picture.  It was taken with my iphone in June of my daughter and one of her best friends.  It is a favorite of mine so I though I would share.

4. Newspaper

This shot was taken this morning as I stepped out to get the Sunday paper (which is pretty much the only day I read the paper).  I really hope that none of my neighbors saw me laying on the side walk in my pj's in order to get this shot. 

5. Coffee or Tea

Ahhhh, no thanks!  Love the smell of coffee but since I do tolerate caffeine all that well I don't drink it (not a big tea drinker either). But my husband does drink coffee every morning so I was able to get a shot of his morning cup of Joe.

Happy Scavenger Hunt Sunday!

InstaFriday

I think I have said this on more than a few occasions, but I am seriously addicted to instagram and I love my iPhone.  Wait, is it weird to say that I love my iPhone? I do love real people too if that makes the statement sound a little less odd.

Anyhoo.  I take a lot of pictures with my iPhone but I only a few of those shots make it onto my instagram gallery.  Here are a few unedited iPhone photo's that haven't made an appearance on IG.

It was a hot day so we decided to go to the beach for a sunset dinner.  We hit up our favorite Torpedo shop for some yummy meatball subs.  Then headed to the beach to watch the sunset.

We were treated to a beautiful sunset....and an interesting conversation with a toothless drunk man that wanted me to take pictures of him flipping off of the seawall into the sand.  No thanks buddy! (if you look to the left you can see my instagram gallery feed).

 After dinner we headed up the street for some ice cream.  Nothing like some ice cream after eating a big meatball sub!

Caught a quick snap of my daughter and her boyfriend sharing a kiss.  Love the people staring in the back ground.

Washed blueberries waiting to become a pie.  You can see the baked pie shot I took with my Canon in the post below.  It was to die for (the pie that is).

 Our twin kittens, Lulu and Pepe.  My heart melted just a little when I saw the two of them cuddled up on the bookshelf like this.

This is Lulu being a very patient kitty.  This is a look that says, manhandle me now and I promise you I will attack your feet at 2 in the morning. This is also the only shot shown that was edited.

If you want to check out my photo's in my IG gallery I am @Michelleocm.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

Wow, this summer has been crazy busy for us. Which why I haven't had any time to blog.  Not to mention these past few weeks I have spent more than a few hours watching various Olympic events.

But I did manage to squeeze in some shots for Scavenger Hunt Sunday this week so without further ado....

1. Mobile

I was going to choose a photo that I hadn't already shared in my instagram gallery but I suspect that most of you don't follow me (michelleocm) on IG so here is my favorite shot from this week.

2. Hanging by a thread

You know that tight rope act you have to perform when one of the eggs sticks to the carton?  A little wiggle back and forth to see if you can get it out without breaking the egg! As gentle as I am I never win that battle.

3. Collage

Lately the largest collection of pictures I have are of our new kitties, Pepe and Lulu.  They are such sweethearts.  They love our dogs and us and so far they haven't taken to scratching my furniture. So we are all quite smitten.

4. Always look on the bright side

 

My daughter Kate was really upset that one of her best friends had to move to the east coast. I reminded her how lucky she was that she had made such a strong connection with Hailey.  I also reminded her that with the internet staying connected would be a piece of cake. That was all well and good but it is hard to look on the bright side when you have to say goodbye to someone you are so close with.

5. Home

Nothing screams home to me like delicious homemade food.  Especially pie.  My mom taught me how to bake pies and I am teaching my girls.  I know a lot of people are intimidated to bake pies because of the crust, but with a little practice you will be making crust like a pro. 

Sunday Scavenger Hunt

Happy Scavenger Hunt Sunday......my favorite time of the week to link up with Ashley over at Ramblings and Photo's.

This weeks prompts are: Wrapped, Time together, Tell me a story, Love or Couple and Duplicated.

1. Wrapped

I think this vine is a morning glory, but I'm not sure.  Either way it is lovely and will wrap around anything it can get it's little viney hands around!!

2. Time Together

I was walking behind this trio and when they arrived at these steps they all plopped down and got out their smart phones.  It amazes me how often I see families and friends spending time together with their eyeballs glued to their smart phones.

3. Tell me a story

If you haven't heard yet, we just adopted two kittens (brother and sister) from the animal shelter.  We also have two dogs.  Both of the dogs grew up with our cat Summer, so they know what a cat is, but Summer died nearly three years ago so I was worried that the dogs might not be up for welcoming two kittens into our doggy centered life.

Much to my relief things are going well blending our furry family.  Much to my surprise our chihuahua Molly is being a lot sweeter than her Poodle sister Xena.  At this point Molly is relatively bored with the kittens and she pretty much ignores them.

Xena on the other hand thinks Lulu and Pepe are incredibly fascinating and follows them around, licks their ears, poking them with her nose and getting super excited when they play.  It will be nice when she finally gets bored with them.  However, I think that might take awhile..........

4. Love (or) couple

This picture fit the bill for both love and couple.  My daughter and her boyfriend have been dating for over a year and feel very much in love.  This particular day was the one year anniversary of the first time I took a picture of the two of them together and I made, I mean asked them to let me take their pictures again....in the same spot as the year before.  Yes, I am that mom (but they love it).

5. Duplicated

Not a whole lot to explain about this shot.  Hecho in Mexico Coke bottles.  

I hope you all enjoy the end of your weekend....or the beginning of your week depending on when you are checking out this post.  Cheers and happy shooting.

Instagram

I just discovered the app Instafocus, which is now adding to my instagram obsession. Have you heard of it? I am pretty new to the app, but in a nutshell they showcase incredible photo's found on instagram.  You won't find any of the "I'm a super cute young twenty something shooting a picture of myself with poutty lips at arms length" kind of shots over there.

Anyhoo, on to my week in iPhone shots!

The biggest news in our family is that we adopted brother and sister kitties from the animal shelter this week. They both came home with URI's so they are rather sick, but are both on the mend.  Their names are Pepe and Lulu and we are just smitten with them.

This is an HDR shot I took of the fountain outside of the Humane Society while we waited to pick up Lulu.  I enjoy taking abstract shots.

My youngest daughters BFF moved today.  On Wednesday I let her have a sleep over with all her buddies so they could squeeze in a little more together time.  We went down to the beach at sunset and took a ton of pictures.

After the beach we went to Mr. Frostie's for an ice cream treat.  You can't tell from the picture but they had all just given each other fancy designs on their toenails.

 On the way to dropping off some work we drove through a neighborhood and saw this really cool house.  Not something you see everyday in San Diego.

 My teenager daughter introduced me to the one of the funniest apps I have on my iphone.  It is called I'd Cap That.  You upload a photo to the app and it applies a caption on it, like the one above.  I have a pretty juvenille sense of humor so this app provides endless hours of laughs. Ok, I don't really spend endless hours on it.....but it does make me laugh.

TGIF and thanks for stopping by.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

Happy Saturday everyone.......I say that not actually believing that today is in deed Saturday because this Wednesday felt like Saturday.  Today felt like a Monday!

Summer and holidays in the middle of the week mess with me knowing what day of the week it is, but it didn't mess with my ability to get all but one shot for Scavenger Hunt Sunday.

1. Patriotic

After oogling all of the rainbow and ombre layered cakes on pinterest I finally whipped up a batch for the fourth of July.  These were super easy to make.  I used a boxed white cake mix and separated the batter into three bowls.  I then mixed in icing food color (which is why it is so vibrant) into the batter. Next you layer the batter, bake and decorate.  Super easy way to impress your BBQ guests.

2. View from above

We had a bbq/pool party over at my Dads for the fourth of July.  Grandpa let the girls invite their friends so we had 16 teenagers over (plus 12 adults).  The pool is set about four feet below the upper deck so it makes for great shots from above.

 3. Mosaic

 This is the one shot I had to pull from my archives.  I took this at the church on the campus of USD.

4. Something Tiny

I was putting clean laundry into Reids (pigsty) room and stepped on this tiny panda. Super cute but hurt like heck to step on it with bare feet.

5. Vibrant

Reid's boyfriend had this old guitar laying around and he asked her if she would paint on it for him.  She is almost finished with the front and about 50% done with the back. I will share the entire guitar once it is complete.  It is funky and fun.

Finishing this up as quickly as possible before my computer crashes.......AGAIN!  Sheesh

Happy weekend and happy Scavenger Hunt Sunday. I look forward to seeing what everyone came up with this week.

Instagram Fridays - Summer Daze!

I never seem to get in on trends on the ground floor. I didn't jump onto the smart phone bandwagon because I didn't see the "need" to have constant access to the internet (still don't). It wasn't until all  of my iPhone friends started sharing their cool instagram shots that I started really wanting an iPhone.

I wanted play! I wanted cool instagram photo's to share too. So when Kate needed a new phone in May, instead of upgrading her plan I gave her my key board phone and bought myself an iPhone 4S (yes, I only wanted you for your phone).

I am jumping onto the InstaFriday band wagon over at Life Rearranged and Summer Daze over at Project Alicia in order to share some of my first iPhone/instagram photo's.

This is my first instagram photo.  Well actually it is my second. The first one I took I had the tip of my finger in the shot.....how old school is that. I didn't know a lot about instagram when I first started using it but I quickly discovered how to delete photo's off my instagram stream.

 My dogs are smart little goons.  They know if I put on work out clothes that it means a potential fun walk for them.  So if I am moving about the house in my running shoes they follow me and stare at me.  It cracks me up because they totally ignore me otherwise.

 My first test of a night shot.  This was after 10 hours of being at the fair.  We had such a fun day.

 We have been eating strawberries like crazy, but I think everyone is kind of tired of them so after my last 4lb tub from Costco headed south I decided to turn them into freezer jam.  YUM!

 Took this shot at the beach the other day.  We usually have a lot of gloomy over cast days in June (we call it June gloom) but so far we have had very little gloomy days, which makes going to the beach awesome.

 This is my daughter Kate (otherwise known as Bee) with one of her Bff's that is going to be moving to another state next month.  They are all going to miss their buddy Hailey.

 The kids got out some board games to play last night.  Fortunately there were four of them so I didn't "have" to play.

Last but not least a shot of the ferris wheel from the day we went to the Fair.  I took about 400 pictures (with my DSLR) that day.  So much photography eye candy at the fair.

PS: my instagram name is Michelleocm if you want to follow me!

Quarterly Top Five photos....of ma-girls!

Sneaking in just under the wire to join in on the Quarterly Top Five Pictures of my girls hosted by Ramblings and Photo's, Click.Pray.Love, and Naptime MomTog.

Summer rolled around on June 13th for us and I had vision of having more free time to do some of those craft projects I pinned on pinterest, sharing a little more on my blog and getting my house back in order.

Well, so far......I've done none of those things.  But we have been having a lot of fun so far, so I guess that is all that matters.

Without further ado, here are the top five photo's I choose to share.

Whenever I start itching to take some portrait shots my little Bee is always ready to pose.  She watches a lot of America's Next Top Model so I never have to tell her what to do.  I just love how soft and sweet she looks in this shot.

This is my oldest.  She doesn't like to have her picture taken as much as her sister does.  But when she does pose she tends to ham it up.  But it is a reflection of her fun loving personality.

This shot was taken at Kate's dance recital.  Picking pictures for the top five I realized that I don't have a lot of pictures of the girls together.  Of course whenever I try to get a picture of the two of them they act super silly and I have to beg for just one normal picture.  This is a close to normal as we get.

I wanted to include my fur babies in at least one of my top five, and when I saw this shot I knew it was the one.  We don't call the little one Mollison P. Lickaford for nothing.

Last but not least a shot of Reid from Prom.  I love this shot of her kicking up her heels.

That's it.  My top five pictures of my girls.  Of course like any proud mama I could have shared a million more.......but that can wait for another time.