Tag: Photography

Room-ba!

5 Comments

We’ve lived in our house for three years now and have done some extensive remodeling in that time.  Almost every room in our house has had something done to it.  At last, we’ve crossed Tomcat’s room off our list.

Photo by Kay Kauffman

Since we have three boys, we have a set of bunk beds.  The littler two aren’t quite old enough for them yet, but they will be one day, so in the meantime, Tomcat gets to choose whether he has top bunk or bottom.  While they’re great for accommodating a large number of children in a small number of bedrooms, they’re not so great when it comes to repainting a room.  Case in point:

Photo by Kay Kauffman

As you can see, the bunk beds were a bit of a problem.  Did I say problem? I meant to say that they posed their own special challenge (by which I, of course, mean that they were a colossal pain in my back side).
Seriously, having something that big in the middle of the room when you’re trying to paint really sucks. But! It gets better behind the cut.

Well, fooey…

2 Comments
Oil Painting Workspace

Oil Painting Workspace (Photo credit: nimbu)

I know I promised an exciting (Ha! :)) photo essay on repainting Tomcat’s room for today’s Photo Friday post, but the thing is, well…we’re not done.  Oh, I’ve got a few before pictures, and we’ve got two coats of primer on the ceiling, plus a coat of paint and three coats of paint on the walls and two coats of paint on the radiator (I won’t be sorry to see that thing go as soon as we can afford to redo our heating and lack of cooling system).  But the plastic is still on the bed and the floor, the tape is still on the light fixtures and the woodwork, and every night this week, we’ve looked at that wallpaper border and sighed with exhaustion.  Also loathing.  Maybe even a few other things.

So with no pretty, pretty after pictures to show off, I’m going to wait on that post-bedroom-remodeling post I had planned.  Seymour wants to get the border put up Sunday, so maybe one day next week, I’ll get it done.  That sounds like a nice, reasonably distant time.

Meanwhile, today is the day for the entries to fly in the agent pitch contest for GUTGAA (short for Gearing Up To Get An Agent).  My entry didn’t make it into the morning pitch session, which literally filled up in seconds.  Amazingly, we didn’t break Gmail. 🙂  The afternoon session starts in mere minutes.  I had my finger hovering over the send button on my email this morning and my eye on the clock; I hit send as soon the clock hit 11:00 a.m. (well, 10:00 a.m. here), but I was just a bit too slow.  Hopefully the afternoon session won’t be quite as crazy as the morning.  There are 200 available slots; 100 remain as of this moment.

Okay, I just hit send.  Let the waiting begin.

THIS JUST IN: I MADE THE CUT!!!

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

It’s another Photo Friday!

6 Comments

 

Here we are, at the end of another week, and I must say I’m glad of it.  I’m not looking forward to spending the weekend painting, but that’s another story.  Anyway, on to the photo of the day!

Photo by Kay Kauffman

Today’s photo features Tomcat, my oldest son.  Clearly this is not a recent photo, as my darling baby boy will be nine on Wednesday.  Nine!  How the heck did that happen?  Oh, right.  I blinked.  I remember now.  He was just over two and a half when I snapped this picture, slightly older than Cricket is now.  He looks so little!  And now he’s so big!  I can’t believe I have a third grader on my hands!

Quick! Get me a brick! Get me some rope! Get me a drink!

The vacation post

4 Comments

The world-famous Butter Cow, hand-crafted by Sarah Pratt.

Once again, I find myself penning a post about a family vacation.  This time, summer has come and gone, taking our family vacations with it.  This time, due to school starting in the middle of August (don’t ask me why), we were forced to cut our trip short by a day and decided not to go camping.  See, from what I understand, schools are not supposed to start till after Labor Day (September 3 this year), but they are allowed to apply for a waiver if they would like to begin prior to that date and the governor can either approve or deny the request.  I can’t recall him ever denying a waiver request and I can’t recall school ever beginning after Labor Day; it’s always started in August, and it starts earlier every year.  This year, our school started classes on August 15, but I know some schools were in session last week.

But I digress. Instead of going camping up north like we’d planned, we headed south, invading Seymour’s parents’ house for a few days and running ourselves ragged.

Redefining extraordinary

8 Comments

 

This post began its humble life as a comment on my friend Tricia’s blog post “Extraordinary.”  It was late and I began writing, suddenly wide awake.  Pretty soon, I realized that my comment could easily become as long as her actual post if I wasn’t careful.

I first read Tricia’s post on Griffin’s Quill and I found it absolutely amazing because I’ve been dealing with so many of the feelings she mentions in her post myself lately.  So much of my life is one long, monotonous march toward the end – the end of the laundry, the end of the dishes, the endless cries of, “Don’t do that!” and “Don’t hit your brother!” and “Play nice!” and “Stay in bed, for the love of God!”  It’s dreary and dreadful and mind-numbingly boring some days.  I feel like I’m living in a fog.

But then, I open a book.

Friends

15 Comments

Oh, Gretchen, how we miss you!

Make new friends,
But keep the old,
One is silver
And the other gold.

I learned that song as a Brownie, I think, and I’ve loved it ever since.  The trouble is, though, that I’ve always had trouble making new friends.  All of my friends (except for you, lovely internet friends, and I love you all so very, very much ♥) are friends that I’ve had since childhood – my oldest friend and I go back…um…*counts on fingers*…23 years now. Holy crap, we go back 23 years?! That’s kind of a scary thought!

Happy birthday, America!

Leave a comment

Today is the Fourth of July.  Independence Day.  America’s birthday.  And on this day, I’ve got something to share with you.

All gave some. Some gave all. Some stood through for the red, white and blue, and some had to fall. And if you ever think of me, think of all your liberties and recall some gave all.
Photo by Kay Kauffman

The lyrics in the caption are from the Billy Ray Cyrus song, “Some Gave All.”  I’ve always loved that song and on a day like today, when we honor those who fought and died for our independence, I find those words especially fitting.

The picture is from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Photo Friday on a Tuesday!

3 Comments
English: This is the logo of the Wartburg Coll...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So today’s photo post is all about the weekend!  I went to my cousin’s wedding this weekend and it was beautiful.  The church was gorgeous, everyone was dressed to the nines, and the reception was lovely.  My uncle (the groom’s father) is a beekeeper and made the unity candles that were used during the service in addition to providing the party favors for the reception – miniature jars of honey!  Yum yum. 🙂  The wedding featured three officiants: Rev. Ramona Bouzard from Wartburg College, David and Laura’s alma mater (I also went there for a year – go Knights!); the minister from the church they got married in whose name escapes me at the moment; and Laura’s father, Randy.  Randy performed the vows portion of the ceremony and when Laura’s voice broke after the first line, he said, “You don’t have to cry just because I am!”  That was my favorite part of the whole service because it was so sweet.

However, I’m so tired that I can’t seem to type (and I’ve been trying to since I sat down to write this post yesterday).  So instead of me blathering on about how hard it was to watch my cousin marry the woman of his dreams because he’s really more like my kid brother than my cousin, I think I’ll just let you all have a look-see at some of the pretty, pretty pictures captured by Heather Rissler Botine.

Hope everyone has a happy Fourth of July tomorrow!  Stay safe, wherever you are!

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

Ze weekend, she has begun!

2 Comments

Well, it’s Friday, and you know what that means – there should be a photo post today! But thanks to my lovely guest, and the fact that I’ve had a wild and crazy day and I have a wedding to go to tomorrow, I’m going to forego today’s usual Photo Friday post. I’ll still get it posted, but it may not be till Sunday or Monday. So until then, have a great weekend, stay safe, and keep cool!

(c) 2012. All rights reserved.

Phlog along, folks!

4 Comments

The beautiful, if shallow, Upper Iowa River
Photo by Kay Kauffman

Once again, it’s Friday.  Once again, it’s been a crazy week.  Did I say crazy?  I think maybe cray-zay might suit a little better.  It all started Sunday.  Sunday began the first-ever Kauffman Family Camping Extravaganza.  Our adventure did not exactly get off to an auspicious start. For one thing, Seymour wanted to leave our house by 10:00 a.m. as the campground we were heading to was three hours away.  His parents were going to go with us, but they live a good hour and a half south of us, so we couldn’t leave till they arrived at our house, and they were late.  Seymour’s mama wasn’t feeling well, so his papa let her sleep in a little late and it was nearly noon by the time they made it to our house.  I think we pulled out of our driveway somewhere around 12:30 p.m.

About an hour or so into the trip, possibly a little more, one of the tires on our camper blew out in spectacular fashion.  There was no fixing this tire – it was in pieces all over the road.  I should have taken a picture of it, but I didn’t think of it at the time.  And apparently campers don’t come with spares standard the way cars do, but Seymour is a smart one and bought one when he picked up the camper, so he got the tire changed and we were soon back on the road.

The excitement continues behind the cut! Will we catch any fish? Or only weeds? Hmm, seems I’ve left that part out. Oh, well – the answer was no fish, only weeds.