Photo 365 #2

August 9, 201426 Comments

I’m so creative with my post title today, aren’t I?

Anyway, I decided last weekend when I found one of my mom’s old embroidery hoops that I should take up embroidery again. My grandma gave me an embroidery kit once for Christmas when I was a kid and, though I started one of the samplers, I never finished.

No, I didn’t do this, but maybe someday…

I bought some embroidery floss and a fat square the other day when Miss Tadpole and I went to pick out the fabric for her home ec. project. I don’t have a pattern yet, but I was thinking something in a fleur de lis would be pretty. Of course, since I bought green and red floss, maybe I should stick with a holly and berry theme? That would be pretty too.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Photo 365 #1

August 8, 2014January 12, 201516 Comments

Inspired by my good friend Mara, I’ve decided to undertake a new project. I’m going to post a photo a day for a year. I hope my skills continue to develop. Also, it’ll be fun.

Right?

Right. 🙂

So, without further ado, here’s a picture I took as I was leaving work tonight. It’s a perfect depiction of how I felt all day, of struggling to shine on despite the haze, and I love the way it turned out.

I hope you like it, and I hope you stick around and see where my camera and I end up. Happy Friday!

Photo Friday: Lunch

August 8, 2014August 22, 20147 Comments

Today’s theme is lunch. I had leftover pizza from Pizza Hut, and failed to take a picture of it, but I didn’t figure anyone really wanted to see two soggy slices of pepperoni pizza, anyway.

Instead, here’s a pretty picture of what I spent the rest of my lunch break doing:

Revisions. *sigh*

I relish my lunch breaks at work because I get a whole hour to myself, uninterrupted, to write or read or sleep. Because I tend to lose myself in whatever story I find myself occupied with (whether it’s mine or someone else’s), I have an alarm set on my phone so that I’m not late getting back to the daily grind. It’s not a fool-proof system – my alarm fails on occasion – but it generally works.

Don’t forget to stop by Charnele’s blog and see what she did for lunch today! Have a great weekend, everybody! 🙂

Freeze!

August 6, 201411 Comments

*yawn*

*blink blink*

*chugs two gallons of strong coffee*

Wow! Well, that’s a little better. After yesterday, I’m exhausted. It seems like every time I have a day or two off of work, I need a day or two to recover. Vacation can be exhausting, but this summer, I haven’t been able to go on vacation, and it’s been equally exhausting.

IMG_20140805_150429 Yesterday I froze corn, something I’ve only attempted as an adult once up to now. It was bad. I found my grandma’s recipe, then promptly misread it, and the results were terrible. But we received a boatload of fresh sweet corn over the weekend and had to do something with it, so yesterday I tracked down my grandma’s recipe again, determined to have better results this time.

I’m happy to say I got what I wanted. I’m even happier to say that I’m done freezing corn (for a while, anyway).

I posted a few shots of my progress on Instagram throughout the day yesterday, but it was after 11:00 p.m. last night before we were finally finished – it would have been much later without the help of my wonderful family. When I was a kid, my mom’s family always used to freeze corn together – we shucked and cut the corn outside (this keeps the mess down, and I really wish I’d done the same thing yesterday), then cooked it inside. It was always a big day – Grandpa always had a truckload of corn to freeze. One of my favorite corn-freezing stories involved my great-grandma. I have no idea if I was present at the time this particular incident occurred (she died when I was four), but I get a kick out of the story regardless. Anyway, it was corn-freezing day…

Photo Friday: Outside Interests

August 1, 2014August 22, 20143 Comments

Today’s Photo Friday theme is all about the great outdoors. If you keep tabs on my Instagram widget in the sidebar on the right, you’ll see that I take lots and lots of pictures of flowers. Like, seriously, a ton. I may not be able to grow flowers worth a hoot, but I sure can take nice pictures of them.

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A post shared by Kay Kauffman (@kaysiewrites)

More pretties are hidden behind the cut!

Summer lovin’

July 27, 2014July 27, 201411 Comments

Nothin’ says summer like fresh corn on the cob. Except for maybe the fresh (Made from scratch, even!) strawberry rhubarb pie cooling in the kitchen. 🙂

Photo Friday: A musical flashback

July 25, 2014August 22, 20147 Comments

Today’s Photo Friday theme is music. I don’t really have many pictures of music, so I decided to share a blast from the past:

mr. fleece

As you may or may not know…

Photo Friday: Funny face

July 18, 2014August 22, 201412 Comments

Today’s theme is funny faces, and with someone as talented as Miss Tadpole is at making funny faces, I have no shortage of pictures to share. Indeed, our annual photo book for 2013 has a full-page spread of some of her funnier faces.

Behold, Miss Tadpole, Queen of the Funny Faces:

Fairly crazy

July 15, 201421 Comments

treebridge It’s been a whirlwind sort of day around here. I stayed up till 2:00 a.m. reading Inquisitor by RJ Blain, which I’m really enjoying, so I wasn’t exactly ready to rise with the boys this morning at 7:00 a.m. I spent half my day running all over three counties to get last-minute things done for the kids’ fair projects, which are being judged as we speak.

redbloom At last, I have a little bit of peace and quiet to get done the dozen and one other things I have to do today, and I’m so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open.

So. I think I’m just going to go sit down with my candy-coated licorice bites and listen to the birds sing in the trees while I finish reading my book. It’s nice to relax every now and then.