Two pics

 

I’m slowing down in my beauty challenge!  Only two pictures today.  Maybe that means I’ll start posting more words soon?

 

Hopefully I’ll have few more peppers before winter. And I’ve got pretty flowers to look at!

 

 

The clouds were incredible all day yesterday. Sadly, I didn’t get chance to take pics until evening, but here is a glimpse at sunset from my deck.

 

What beauty have you seen today?

 

 

 

another photo dump…I mean well planned post

Well, I haven’t forgotten the beauty challenge, though I haven’t been great at posting (I did warn you).  Tonight I am giving careful consideration to what I should write.  Or maybe I’m just quickly posting some pictures before I get even farther behind.  One of those.

 

Light bursts are cool.

 

 

Remember how much I like water drops?

 

 

Hopefully I’ll have some more tomatoes to take pictures of and torture you…I mean gift you with.

 

 

Spider webs and light. Sometimes I find them cool…as long as they’re outside.

 

That’s it for tonight!  God bless!

 

 

 

 

getting behind!

I’ve been getting behind with my beauty project posts.  I’ve been taking some pictures, but not getting them posted.   So this is a catch up post!

 

My daughter hung this in the window this past week. When I look up in the trees I get to see some of the beauty my daughter made too.

 

 

God made some cool bark on trees. The other day I saw a funky tree trunk at my daughter’s school. I’ll have to try to get a picture in the future. This picture is from my deck.  I love the light shining on the tree trunk.

 

 

I liked the contrasts and lines on the deck. “And that’s all I have to say about that.”

 

 

These tomatoes have been so neat to watch. As they’re started to ripen they’ve been different shades even though they’re so close together. Top one is the reddest, the one to the east is orange, and the green/yellow one is on the west side. What an impact a minor difference in sunlight makes! There’s probably a few life lessons in there, but I’ll let you sort through them.  🙂

 

Have you found any unexpected beauty lately?  I’d love to hear about it!

Pictures from this morning

.

Water droplets are cool.

I love the reflections/magnifications from water.

.

Can you see the drops of water hanging off the tips of the leaves?

.

No water droplets in this picture. But I like pine cones too.

.

What beauty are you seeing lately?

.

Random pics from this week

Here are a few pics for my beauty project this week.  It’s been a bit of a stressful week, so it’s good for me to spend time focusing on beauty and gratefulness!

 

Herbs. I like ’em.

 

 

One day after school my littles were happily playing ‘in the beans.’ Seeing kids having fun with each other and the world around them is an incredibly beautiful thing.

 

 

Sunshine streaming through the trees this morning.

 

How about you?  Have you been searching for beauty?  The more stressful, painful, and/or intense life gets, the more important it is to search for beauty.  It gives solace.  It gives hope.  It helps with perspective.  Sometimes it simply provides a drop of relief.  Beauty is needed.  And God has put it around you, somewhere!  Keep searching, my friends!

 

Bird feeders aren’t just for the birds

Yesterday morning I was so excited to see a fairly big woodpecker on my feeder.  I never did see him again…maybe he figured if the paparazzi was here he’d better stay away.  However, last night I spied this on my bird feeder:

This beauty was also on my deck yesterday afternoon!

Have you noticed some days it’s hard to find beauty and other days it seems to ooze out?  Hopefully today will be an oozing day for you!

Following up

I was working on this blog as a whole today and realized I didn’t post pictures of our chalk paint activity this summer.  Thankfully no one has lost any sleep over it, but here are a few follow-up pictures:

ice chalk. isn’t it pretty?

 

melting very slowly. Maybe we should have picked a hotter day.

 

after a while we gave up on the cubes and just used the melted paint with brushes. My youngest thought his feet should be a different color.

 

gloppy fun.

 

Painting.

 

My 12-year-old especially loved this activity and kept painting/creating long after the others were done.  I’d definitely do this again, but wouldn’t bother freezing the paint.  The kids were happier with the liquid paint and that’d be easier for momma!

a new look!

Were you wondering if you’re at the right place?  You probably are!  I was bored with the previous background and wanted a brighter look.  New look, same rambling stuff.

Thanks for stopping by!

 

A little excitement for me

I’ve been a bird watcher for about ten years.  When I started paying attention to them I was working in an inner city a lot.  It was awesome to see little reminders of God’s creation in concrete settings!

Ten years later I still love to watch them.  I’ve been hauling my bird feeders with every move and happily sharing birdseed every place we’ve lived.  Yesterday and today I was trying to get a nice picture of some of the visitors to our deck.   However, between our schedule and my kids not appreciating the time I wanted to spend sitting quietly, it was a challenge.

Here was an attempt today:

can you see the bit of blurry tail on the far left side? I was a bit too slow.

ooh, a brown bird eating.

okay, not the most thrilling for a blog post, but at least it’s a decent view of the finch.

Before I knew what was going on there was another bird in my camera’s viewfinder and for once I snapped a picture fast!  This is the first time I’ve seen a red-bellied woodpecker in this yard.  He’s almost too big to get birdseed out of our feeder, but he managed!

They’re not a rare bird, but it’s rare for one to visit my feeder.

Sometimes (or often!) when we’re looking for one thing God shows us something even cooler.  I love that.

Keep searching for beauty, friends!