Delicious Words

"I want to practice some words that are not my name, Mama. These are the words I want to know how to draw...."book, pineapple, candle, star and flower." -My Preschool Student

I feel like I'm doing something right. 

Oh Christmas Card, Oh Christmas Card

Oh Christmas cards. You are so complicated!!!

Argh!!! I love, love, love the idea of Christmas cards. Some years I send them. Mine always come ridiculous late. If you are watching the mail, just give up...go get your shopping done. I am so sorry and I truly vow to do better and get more proactive next year with planning. I aspire to be "those people." I have all these constraints though, see?

First, I have a compulsion about making sure that the photo we include looks wintery....that means I want to wait until its cold outside. And then of course as soon as its cold outside I get ridiculously busy and so then the first chance I get its Thanksgiving. I almost always end up taking a shot right after Thanksgiving when we are out cutting our tree. This always seems like such a perfect idea but really its more like when The Grinch gets a "wonderful, awful idea..."
There are caveats:

1. I always want people to look nice and people just want to tromp around outdoors and look scruffy.
2. I sometimes make people take off their coats for the photo and its invariably friggin' cold this does not make for good facial expressions. 
3. I am living on borrowed time trying to rev up enthusiasm for portraiture when the boys would all much rather be hacking away with the handsaw on our family tree. 
4. One picture can never, never do it. "One more time for Mommy now!!! Cheese boys!!!" 
5. It is at this point a very close shave to get the cards made, ordered and addressed in time...not to mention mailing them out! EEP! I'm The Duchess of Late...every Christmas.

What to do? Last year I told myself I would start fresh and live outside the box. I planned to skip Christmas cards and instead make and mail out Valentine cards. Seemed perfect. Turns out there was no world outside of that box. Heh. I procrastinated my ass right out of any yearly greeting at all. There was nada ever printed. I live in shame.

This year I couldn't get the boys to cooperate and although I got a nice shot of A and I, I had a zero luck with the boys. The shots are all like this: 

I am now planning to mail out paper cards....genuine, old fashioned paper cards that I bought in the grocery store in the buy-one-get-one-free rack. They will come in real envelopes and they will have holiday themed artwork on the covers. I will sign our names inside one just for you and if all the stars align....the pictures I took in the yard today after I finished raking with be tucked inside, a little momento of how insane cards and photos and holidays really are. The next time you are having your portraits taken...think of me, I can promise it will elicit jolly expressions.

Pregnancy Portraits Fourth Time Around

Here are the long awaited pregnancy portraits. Usually I take them all myself, some kind of make-shift tripod arrangement and a million takes. This year I had the handy help of a pint-sized 6 year old photographer, Ru the magnificent.

So, here I am...all 38 weeks of me and Baby. Impatient and panicking by turns about the time left.

Home From Florida

Just back home again after a week in sometimes sunny, sometimes torrentially rainy, Florida. Great to get away, wonderful to be with family and inspiring to experience beauty in new little ways. Nothing in this world quite like tent camping in the rain to make you ultra-grateful for your own dry bed. :)

Not a whole lot of anything happening around here today except for laundry and schedule resuming and extra naps when we can grab them; time to share a few select pix from our little family rendezvous in The Sunshine State.

And a grand time was had by all! 

Next stop...Laundry Room! See ya'll on the flip side.

Poetry Friday: A Photography Poem

Happy Poetry Friday everyone!
Little bit of poetic reflection today on another art form I enjoy, photography. I have had conversations a couple of times now with photography romantics (amongst whom I hope I can count myself a member) about how sad it is that today photography is more about digital manipulation than it is actually capturing the moment. While I see the point and don't myself relish the idea of living in a world of altered reality, I myself do play digitally with photos (primarily through Picasa, a great free-Photoshop alternative) and I see two great variations on the theme of manipulation of which I am a big fan...even though I am a romantic who loves reality.

1: The fact that photography has become a manipulatable art doesn't mean it is void...its just able to be a medium that is a little more like painting and sculpting now! I think that's inspiring and fun. We are able to create scenes of great photographic beauty even if we only imagined them.

2: Sometimes, let's face it...reality doesn't quite get captured with your camera. How many times have you excitedly downloaded your photos and then begun clicking through in disappointment, discovering that you didn't catch the thing or feeling you experienced after all?  So sad! But, so redeemable sometimes...thanks to photo manipulation tools. Hooray!

So, I wrote a poem about it.

Saturation

I can slide the bar sideways in Photoshop
And drain off all weak, extraneous white 
My chosen photo throwing back its shoulders 
Standing taller every second, clearing its
Throat and flashing a bolder grin at me
I like some scenes brightly re-incarnated
Better representations of my memory than the
Photograph that ended up inside our camera
Some accidental, watered-down take-away.
Sometimes our Canon doesn't think it important
To catch the hot fuscia vitality of diced rhubarb
Or, mistakenly remembers the fluttering curtains
My sister pieced from jewel-toned calico as some
Faded, older pastel version of themselves,
All frail: sun-used before their time.

Hope you have a beautiful day! The week is over and the sun is shining and the world feels full of promise. We're off to enjoy the warmth and sunshine here in our yard, here's to a wonderful weekend!

If you want to get a taste of other bloggers offerings for Poetry Friday, go check out our host blog for today a wrung sponge.

A Weekend In Pictures

Here's a little photo-tour taste of weekend fun at our house:

Living in Color

I like Calvin and Hobbes...and somehow...even though Calvin's dad makes his usual incredibly confusing muddle of the topic....there's something to this idea. I somehow feel a little like color was invented in very recent history. Its hard to imagine the turn of the century and the 20-30 years afterwards being reliably "real" somehow because I see it all in these somewhat less lively looking black and white photography. People feel like sketches, not real humans and it somehow really shocked, emotionally moved and deeply touched me to see this little series of photos that The Library of Congress has put up on Flikr....Rare Color Photographs of The Great Depression Era.

The people feel heart-breakingly real....alive...and somehow painfully interrupted and touchable. Its very core shaking especially in the midst of  reading The Grapes of Wrath. (We're nearing the end) I feel in some small way from looking through the photos that the people still are in some vague sense. They don't feel like someone's ancestor...they feel like themselves: mothers and fathers and young women and little boys with messy hair. There's something very gritty and gutpunching about it for me.

I am also impressed by the true formality of the era in small ways. The dresses that the black field workers are wearing look like church clothes to my modern eye. Very interesting to see female mechanics working with make-up, pretty scarves on their hair and just so touches.

Here's a link the whole shebang on Flikr and if you have less time in your life, here's a more touching smaller selection of them, singled out by ABC