It’s raining in the desert today.  The skies have been grey and wet for 2 solid days now, I could not be more pleased.  @mother nature- BRING IT ON!

I’m recovering from last weeks massive fundraiser at the kids’ school and a few other things.  These grey days have been perfect for curling up on the couch…which of course leads to massive amounts of deep reflection (you to?!).  I read a book yesterday that caused a serious rift in my glorification of the 1950′s & 60′s.  Its called Cotton Queen by Pamela Morsi, and it was a light piece of fiction- easy to read and a story that isn’t quite as predictable as I thought it would be.

I am not naive to the plight of women through the centuries, I took the prerequisite Women’s studies classes that all enlightened and educated women take in college.  I was fascinated with Women’s suffrage at the tender age of 17 and wrote a history report all about the movement and the key players.  While I intellectually understood a lot of freedoms that were not available to women- even in to the 1970′s and 80′s, this book helped me to feel it, for the first time.

The thought of living through the 60′s feels like a horror movie to me. I want to kiss the ground of every woman who walked before me and paved the way for me to enjoy the freedom to: educate myself at some of the best schools; to climb as high as I am willing to on the corporate ladder; to raise my children how I know to be best without the ramification of a narrow social view.

My grandmother was a divorced mother of 6 (!!!) in the early 1960′s, I can only imagine the social isolation she must have felt and the lack of social structures to help her both care for her children and feed them.  She managed to come out on top, though no doubt it was a hard battle.

My mother became a single mom of two little girls at a tender age and at the beginning of the 1980′s.  Women were just starting to be offered the same jobs as men at that point, but the pay was no where near equatable.  I can only imagine the fear in her heart as she had to decide what to do to support my sister and I…the isolation that comes from being a single mom when all your contemporaries are young college co-eds.

I am glad that our mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers paved the way…I hope in my own way I too can make the world a better place for my daughters.  I am grateful that they will have choices; but with those choices comes a great responsibility.  I hope they will grow to be strong, capable, and compassionate women.

I’m working on a meatier post for later this week, but in the meantime I wanted to share this photo I took last week.  That’s right, LAST WEEK.  My roses start blooming again in the fall (perks of the desert)!

The softness and colors were just so beautiful I wanted to bottle them!  I did the next best thing and created a color swatch of the colors used.  If I had the talent and power, I would make my bedroom feel as soft, light and beautiful as this image.  sigh…I’d never get out of bed!

The Veteran’s Day parade makes me cry….every year.  Same with 4th of July.  I am such a sap for patriotism (read my feeling here).

As I watched the Tempe High Marching Band strut down Mill in their snappy blue and black feathered hats, I felt a little thrill.  I love parades, and I love the marching bands the most (the drums being my favorite!).  It occurred to me that parade season is just beginning….Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade later this month and then the mother of all parades The Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena (sigh, one day I’d love to see it live!).

I love the feeling of community that comes out for the small town local parades, I saw so many faces that I knew today marching alongside the veterans, shriners, councilmen and local scouts.  Just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy today, the opportunity to honor those very brave men and women who selflessly serve and protect our freedom every day.

A few weeks ago a friend from chuch asked me if I would take her family photo this year.  At first I think I laughed.  I explained that I am not  a photographer at all, I like to pretend online, but that’s just it, I pretend!  She insisted that she loved my photos and that both she and her husband wanted me to take them.  I agreed to do it after fully disclosing again that I only pretend to be a photographer!

Today was the day…I wanted to pee my pants with all the anxiety!  I flipped through the camera manual and read a crash course online of portrait photography and hoped for the best.  I still don’t have a prime lens (I vow to buy one with my next paycheck!), so I shot with my kit lens (boo!) and my old hard body 1.4/50mm lens…from the 70′s.  I so heart the images that lens can produce…only problem is you have to shoot blind.  Since it isn’t a digital lens you have to manually focus and there is no light meter and you can’t shoot on auto (which I try to avoid anyway).  I took about 200 photos, and thought I would share 2 sneak-peek out-takes for the family.

The blond, she is full of personality, she and my daughter love to ham it up together!!  The above photo was taken with the 1.4/50mm lens, oh how I adore the DOF and the clarity of the family.  I really really heart this lens.  HOWEVER, because I am not great with manual focus many of them did not come out. boo.

I just loved this shot, it captures the fun personalities of these two!  I gave it a bit of a cross-processed edit, to add to the urban feel the family wanted to capture.

Now, let’s all cross our fingers and whisper to the photography gods and hope that the R-family will be happy with the results!

I’ve decided to be more present and to focus on feeling all that my life throws my direction.  The good, the bad and the ugly.

Today it was good.  I had the chance to visit the Desert Botanical Garden this morning with some friends, it was free today thanks to Target (which I stopped at on my way home and spent more than the general admission, so it was a wash!). I tried hard to be present and to really enjoy the day with my daughter, to appreciate her and what she enjoyed.

I hadn’t visited the butterfly exhibit in YEARS, and it was a treat.  The baby enjoyed the butterflies too, she very much wanted to grab them (and probably rip their wings off!)

(really loving the texture in the background…want to isolate it and use it for other projects)

In an attempt to appreciate the desert (which I struggle with), I looked around and tried to find a view that made the desert look pretty.  I liked the contrast of the Papago Mountains near the front entrance…

Question- those of you who do not live here, do you think the desert is beautiful?  Can you appreciate the greens and browns and dry earth?

After a record breaking 6 hours in the car yesterday, we made it safely (and gratefully) to California!

I say record breaking because we’ve never made it in under 6.5 hours with kids before.  HOORAY for us!!  We stopped twice (4 times if you count the side of the road) and still make record time.  Everyone was happy about that.

Even the little Oreo eater was happy, 10 pts to you if you know why I have 60 packs of Oreo cookies at my house!

Well, this past weekend was semi-productive.  We went to Tempe Town Lake to check out the new pedestrian bridge to find that it was STILL not open.  Talk about being behind schedule!

I did get some quilting done.  First I tried putting sections of the quilt into my largest embroidery hoop and found that it was very tedious as I was needed to move it often.  Next I tried this set up, push pinning the sides of the quilt to some scrap boards and then setting it up on the chairs (like a make shift quilt frame).  This didn’t work out so well either.  Currently I have it pinned really well and am just bunching it up in my lap to hand quilt.

I quilted kind of an ornamental circle thing in the center and then cross hatch designs in the center of each plate.  I am quilting about a 1/2″ around each plate as well.  I am not sure what design to quilt onto the border?  I was thinking maybe scallops?  or 4″ spaced lines a at 45degree angle?  Any suggestions?

Taken about 5:30pm TODAY.  Please send snow cones, ice cream, icicles and anything else extremely cold.

That’s how I roll.  Somethings I plan and take my time on, but really, I like to just wing it and figure it out.  Monday night after we finished our delish fish tacos I decided I wanted to go take pictures of the sunset.

Still learning how to use this uber powerful camera, I did a quick google search and an even quicker skimming of this article.  Grabbed the camera, tripod and hopped in the car.

I put the camera on Shutter Priority and just started shooting.  In my mind, I thought the canals would be a great unobstructed view of the sunset.  Stupid electric lines and towers!

Actually I like the way they turned out.  I think the wires and poles give it and urban sunset feel.

I tell ya though, this camera is giving me a run for my money!  My pictures are still turning out darker than I would like, despite me getting the light reader spot on.  Or worse, when I have plenty of light streaming into the room, but the camera says its not enough, but I can’t go lower than 150 if I am shooting a moving kid, and then the lens won’t go lower than 4.5.  Grrr I have learned though, that I would rather have a photograph under exposed, rather than overexposed (see below).

Thank heavens for Photoshop!  (although I did almost no editing of the sunset shots).

It was a good day yesterday.  We took the kids to Montezuma’s well for a picnic, water play and cooler temps (although it was only 98 compared to phx’s 105).  After picnicking and playing we headed to the NORTH side of Tempe Town Lake where we had a great view of the fireworks and none of the crowd ( I don’t like crowds).

Hope your celebrations were good too!

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