Photo Challenge Day 21

A favorite photo of myself? Despite my angst about the self-portrait prompt, I don't mind having my photo taken by other people and am often pleased with the results. But in choosing a photo for today, I found myself wanting to go back to a photo that captures something I felt very empowered to be able to do:

And in the interest of honesty, here's what was happening a split second later:

I'm really grateful we caught that moment of balance though!

Photo Challenge Days 17 - 20

So I have a confession to make first. I am not on Instagram - since I was too impatient to wait for Verizon to get the iPhone, am too cheap to upgrade before I am eligible to do it as inexpensively as possible, and actually like my DroidX. I have also decided that I want to learn how to use my camera more creatively, with the hopes of someday convincing myself that a DSLR is a worthwhile investment. SO my plan was to be inspired by the lovely photo challenge to both take pictures AND get in the habit of posting regularly. And it's not been a total failure, but I think if I was playing in Instagram land, I would probably have a picture up each day. Sigh. As it is, there's the taking of pictures...then later on the locating of cables and connecting to laptops...then the posting. And tomorrow is another day. Onward and upward!

Day 17 - Time

Day 18 - Drink

Day 19 - Something You Hate to Do

Day 20 - Handwriting

Photo Challenge Days 15 & 16

 Day 15 - Phone

The lone Droid in a house full of iThings.

Day 16 - Something New

We succumbed to the convenience of K-cups. Have not yet found the brand that replicates the flavor of my dark rich drip coffee. Sigh. Any suggestions?

Photo Challenge - Catching Up!

What is it about starting anything new and trying to make it a habit...and then falling off the bandwagon in the first week? I don't think it matters in the end IF you pick yourself up and keep going. With the photo challenge, my theory is that the self-portrait prompt for day 10 freaked me out. Which is ridiculous, especially since I found myself one week before that nodding in agreement to Tip #34 from Everyday Treats about getting over yourself and not hiding from the camera!

So I am getting over myself and offering up days 9 - 14:

Day 9 - Front Door

Day 10 - Self Portrait

This is me, getting over myself.

Day 11 - Makes Me Happy

Day 12 - Inside Your Closet

I don't even have that many shoes - they just never get put away it seems.

Day 13 - Blue

 Day 14 - Heart

Courtesy of K, who never met an embellishment she didn't love

Photo Challenge Day 8

Ooh, today's challenge was the sun...

I live in New Mexico, so almost every day it's sunny and mostly cloudless. Ironically, today we got overcast!

Photo Challenge Day 7

Buttons

 

 

 

 

I think the prompt was button (singular) - but man, we have a lot of buttons in our lives these days don't we? We live with a 7-year old who has not yet outgrown her pleasure in pushing buttons - most of the time I remember to wait when approaching any elevator!

Other random thoughts of the day:

• week two of post half-marathon recovery period...and getting itchy to run again. Last week, the rest felt good. This week, two weight workouts isn't enough.
• so close to the end of 1Q84. I don't even know if I like it. But I want to find out what happens.
• how do you train a dog to start sleeping in your kid's room and not yours? The princess has suddenly decided that the dogs are cool and Lucy is the only one willing to get on furniture. Sam, the poodle, is much more logical and has figured out that it's easier to just stay off all furniture. Lucy just won't stay all night - out of habit she'll still come to our room to sleep on the dog bed on the floor. We're working on it.

Sam & Lucy

Lucy - the comfort dog

Photo Challenge Day 6

Dinner
Cheating here because it looked way too pretty before it got cooked. The 7 year old walked in and immediately said "hey, it's a fractal!" I love Montessori.

Photo Challenge Day 5

 10:00

My favorite smoothie

Photo Challenge - Day 4

A Stranger

Every possibility begins with the courage to imagine...

When you are married to a management consultant and coach, you get to take advantage of in-house resources. So there's nothing strange about heading out of town with your 7 year old daughter to do a little life planning workshop. You'd be surprised how good a second-grader can be at doing visioning exercises around things that make you happy and things that you love and things that make you feel strong. She managed in 4 simple examples to capture all the ways most of us would want to feel strong in the world:

• making a really great drawing
• making crepes - she's really good at this and can pretty much do it on her own
• doing a lot of something hard
• crossing the monkey bars without dropping

 Yep, that about sums it up.

Photo a Day Challenge

I'm joining in a couple days late but I thought it would be fun to play along with FatMumSlim's February Photo a Day Challenge.

And here's Day 3:

Hands

Beginnings

This is actually not the first time I have started this blog - but each time you line up at the start it's a new beginning so that's where I am. If I ask myself what I have to say, instead of just saying it...or I let that little voice in my head start jabbering about how many great voices are already out there...I'll never start. So I've decided to just begin. And I'll find my way along the path.

Here's what I'm working on:

• put more energy towards envisioning what I want before I worry about the how... let those dreams breathe a little air so they aren't so fragile when I do try to figure out the how.
• make connections to people whose work I admire ... ask questions and learn from experience - beginner's mind baby!
• remember that being your big self sometimes means being your big selfish - time to put those big girl pants on. 

I just ran my fourth half-marathon this past Sunday and I'm planning to run the Chicago marathon in October - I know how cross a finish line. One step at a time.