ABC Book

I saw this idea somewhere (Starting on Pinterest) and then I began looking around and found lots of fun examples, tutorials, ideas, whatever you want to call them.  So I started playing around with some of the pictures that I already have and actually got a pretty good start.  I feel like I have been pretty bad at printing pictures off and I think that this is a fun way to print some pictures and let Seamus interact with the pictures too!  I am hoping to finish this by Easter and give it to Shay then :)

I have had a ton of fun making this book!  I think I am only lacking 9 letters.  I will definitely be making a book for Declan in about a year as well!  It's fun to use pictures from the past 2 years and to see how much Shay has grown up!

So here are a few sneak peaks at what I have so far:

Pictures

So lately I have seen lots of pictures of adorable siblings.  An older brother holding his baby brother with a sweet smile is one picture that I would LOVE to capture.  But no, this is what I get:

Now, Seamus loves his brother and always wants to hold him but suddenly anytime there is a camera, even if I have my phone trying to take a picture, he gets mad and makes these wonderful faces.

This one is not too terrible, I did for a moment think he was going to throw his brother off of him.

Seamus loves to just wear his underwear, it is really quite funny and annoying at the same time.  We are constantly asking him where his pants are and then he just runs and hides under a table laughing like the mad man that he is!

So, anybody have any tips are getting siblings, well older siblings, to take pictures?  

I will leave you with 2 pictures I was able to capture that I love:

This one of Daddy and his boys is ADORABLE, this was right after we moved to NC and only really seeing each other on the weekends.

I was able to snatch this picture right before Seamus started yelling about pictures, if only laundry wasn't on the back of the chair but such is life :)

I am one lucky lady!

Photo Hunt

I have decided to attempt the October Photo Hunt. I read about this on Meredith's blog, La Buena Vida , and decided to give it a try.

Several months back I made a feeble attempt at 12 weeks to Better Photography, by feeble I mean I read each week but really only took and posted one set of pictures.

Since then life has become even more hectic with baby, work, and school but I find myself having my camera with me more and using it to help myself remember to slow down and enjoy life.

I work with 2 year olds so I get to take a lot of fun pictures and Seamus has gotten A LOT of personality so I enjoy getting to take more and more pictures of him.

I am hoping that by doing this challenge that I will CHALLENGE myself to take and post some pictures and actually finish a challenge.

Everyone should sign up! It will be fun to see how everyone interprets the categories (there are 20 total) and its seems to be a lot of fall stuff and I know how much we all love fall!!

Better Late Than Never...

So, I had planned on participating in 12 weeks to better photography when I first read about it on my friend Lindsay's blog. However, life got in the way and now everyone is beginning lesson 7 and I am just getting started with lesson 1. But as I said, better late then never! We got our camera as an early Christmas gift so that we would have it in time for Seamus's arrival, that was in December and I have really been wanting to learn how to use it and get the best pictures that I can. Having a little one really makes you want to take lots of pictures and since they move and grow so fast you don't always have a second chance at a great picture. That said, here goes the first lesson on basic aperture:

For this first picture I used a low aperture setting. I set my aperture at f4.5 and you can see that just the front rock is really in focus.

For the second picture I set the aperture at f8. You can see that the trees in the background are more in focus and you can also see some pine straw.

For the last picture I used an aperture of f22. In this picture you can see clearly all of the trees in the background as well as the pine straw.

I took all of these pictures at my parent's house on the new rock wall/patio that my dad has been working on. On to next week's lesson :)