Picture a Day - Rerun #2

We just started our Lego Advent Calendar for this year (I think we finally get Santa) so in honor I thought I'd dig up that one time last year when Lego Land had an unexpected visitor.

It's a bright, shiny and Technicolor day in Lego land. Everyone is hustling and bustling to get in some of those after Christmas sales.When suddenly the ground tosses and turns as though it had a really bad New Years eve.
It's a bird! It's a Plane! No, even worse. It's Godzilla!

Run, flee in terror. Godzilla is here to smash the town!
Wait, it looks like he just wanted to get some of those 75% off Christmas garland and a nose hair trimmer set. Even a radioactive lizard can't stay away from these amazing deals.
Too bad he landed on Earl. Oh well, I never really liked that guy anyway.

Picture a Day - Rerun #1

Well I managed to keep myself away for a whole 3 hours. That's pretty good actually. Hopefully by the weekend I can get it up to at least 24.

This originally ran way back in 12/11/08 and was one of my early take a camera into a store and snap pictures attempts. It was so cute how secretive I was back then, afraid someone might yell at me. Now I pull out the camera and snap away with apparent glee.

Hope you enjoy old Picture a Day - Day 9

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to infiltrate that retail behemoth known as Wal-Mart (alias Wally World or 'For the love of God just tell me where the canned green beans are!') You must acquire two special food items for your out of state in laws that apparently only exist at this establishment in Nebraska.

Here is the list of items as well as a credit card and a cattle prod. Be warned, it is approaching the holidays so the Wal-Mart alert level has been upgraded from "slightly annoying" to "just leave the kid and run!"We plan our assault for black as midnight 6 PM (it is winter after all). Hopefully we can get in and out before anyone notices us.

We're being attacked! It's a huge pile of Santa cakes! Don't look into his eyes, he's sure to suck you into his soulless dimension filled with elves, hammers, and fireplaces.Look! The perfect answer to the Santa cake attack. Coke grenades!Run! Run to the coffee aisle!

Please tell me we found the right brand/right flavor/right level of caffeine?Hurray! We've succeeded. We can buy up the last of the Pears Coffee and Dorothy Lynch as we prepare for the coffee & salad dressing apocalypse!

Now, let's get the hell out of here before they send the shelf stockers after us.

Picture a Day - Day 365!

WOOOO HOOOO!!!!

It's the big one, the final score, the big kahuna (or is that the big Kahlua?) Regardless everyone deserves to get nicely hammered tonight.

I debated long and hard just what should be my last picture (for the project, not the last picture I ever take otherwise it'd be a little hard for me to sell a painting. Yes it's a painting of a tree, well a few trees. It's on blue well sort of cornflower and navy but also kinda vermillion . . .).

A picture of a calendar to show it's been a year? Maybe my cameras that have put in all the work? The memory discs I've filled and batteries I tore through?

Then it hit me. The last picture should be a picture of my last post!
It's like being trapped between two mirrors and pin wheeling your arms back and forth making "Whoop" noises. Not that I'd ever do that a classy department store. I never liked being in Van Maur anyway.

There ya go, the last picture. The big 365!

Well that about wraps it up. Thanks everyone for stopping bye. Make sure and try the cheese balls before you leave.

Ta ta.





Gotcha!

Where would a grand finale be without the pomp, circumstance and reminiscing? And to think this crazy project all started with a simple innocuous photo of my husband eating brownie batter.Which I also have to say is a really bad picture and I'd be incredibly embarrassed to put something like that up on the web now.

One of the best things that came out of me carrying around a camera everywhere I went all that experience meant I got a ton better at taking pictures (and am now no longer bothered whipping one out at random places that aren't a museum or zoo).

Okay maybe not a ton, but I'd have never thought I could capture something like this with my little point and click (which you don't want to mix up with your little point and shoot also known as a 38 special.)



Nature shots are nice and all but out of the thousands of pictures I took I have to say this is by far the best because it contains my all time favorite subject matter: cheese!
But taking a picture a day didn't just help me to tune my picture taking skills. I found myself pushing outside of our introverted stay at home box and encouraging my husband and I to try new and different things.

Like the time we tried making sausages.
Or when we both attended a halloween prop class or traveled to Omaha to finally see our first big Broadway show: Wicked.
Okay so going to the vineyard wasn't that out of the ordinary for us. I just thought it was such a pretty picture I wanted to share.
This has been a year of changes for both of us.

Some good: I started painting and have even have almost 45 painting sales so far, the blog followed us through house hunting, getting the house, and all the brouhaha about closing and moving into the new house.

And of course, there's the newest addition to the family. Thanks to my camera I can look back on when Essie started out so small
and seemed so much bigger when she finally came home to us.It's still crazy to think how much growing our little girl has to go.
But it hasn't been all fun, games and adorable newborns. There has been a lot lost this year. Loss of a young life, loss of my job, loss of my grandfather and then there was that getting treated like crap at a rehearsal dinner and then shunned by the family for not pretending I enjoy being harassed.

While this project of taking a picture (or 50) every single day and sharing them the next day on the web has been one hell of a time consuming challenge I am still ever so grateful that I took it on.

Now when I am in a melancholy mood I can look back at my old posts about the goofy things our 10 week old puppy got up to, or remind myself why I never want to go house hunting for as long as I haven't evolved magnetic powers or just relive the excitement of my first year being married.

When I first introduced the idea way back last December there were a few people who started it out or thought about trying it out themselves and after going through the highs and lows and the days where I just didn't want to stare at my stupid computer screen for one more second I have to say it was totally worth it.

So if you're still interested I really recommend starting again. Though I can't wait to have my weekends back! You'll never see a post on a Saturday or Sunday from me ever again! WHEEE!

Thank you to for all of you who shared this little narcissistic trip with me. For the rest of the week I'm gonna pull up some of my funnier and more obscure old posts and then see where this blog takes me.

I'm not done blogging, but I am happy to hang up my picture a day hat and move on.

Live long and post and may the blogging be with you.

Catch ya'll on the flip side.

Picture a Day - Day 364

It's almost here! The end of my year long project to eat up hours of my time and drive myself partially mad all in the name of entertainment!
There have been many highs and lows and while I wanted to get all emotional and schmoopy tomorrow looking back on the past year and the 1,187 pictures I have to show from it (no really, that's how many I have taken, edited and shared over this year) I thought I'd take the chance to whine and moan a bit (or a lot if I really get into it).

I had plans, big plans about how I'd finish this thing. It was gonna be huge, bit parties with lots of giveaways. Confetti and balloon drops as far as the eye could see across the internet.

Then I got sick, knock down drag out sick. Curled up on a couch fearing to move a muscle for all the mind numbing pain it'd bring sick. Sicker than a sick thing at a sick convention.

Slowly through November I clamored back from the brink of white cell invasion trying to just get a bit caught up with deadlines for a billion things looming as always happens this time of year.

And then my grandfather died and gone again was time and energy, another week lost.

But that isn't quite enough because I must have caught some strange super bug at the funeral because by the time Turkey Day rolled around I was once again wishing to disappear into a nyquil infused fog preferably turkey flavored in consideration of the day.

And before I know it, I'm one day away from the grand finale. The Swan Song. The Curtain Call. The giant belly flop into a vat of Jell-O as it were and have not a damn thing planned in celebration.

I wish I could say that I'm excited and happy to have reached the end and seen the light at the end of the tunnel but it's been a major struggle for the past few days to make the posts less and less people bother to read.

The journey of taking, editing and then posting a picture every day for a year without taking a break for sickness, vacation or gloom of night has felt much like poor old Sisyphus and his rock.

Each day I manage to get that boulder just to the top and while I'm standing back admiring my post it rolls back down to the bottom waiting for it all again the next day.

I can't imagine what it'll be like to finally have that boulder sitting up top tomorrow finished in all its pixel glory.
I couldn't have lasted longer than a month without all the help, friendship and tasty tasty comments from some of you: Linda, always there with a kind word and tasty looking recipe; Chesney, fellow Nebraskan also limping her way to the end of her own picture a day task; withoutadornment, Canadian friend keeping it real when us crazy Colonists like to pretend we're the only ones on the continent; Rachel, the keeper of many adorable doggies and pretty home eye candy.

These wonderful women would slog through the good, the bad, the off and the ugly days. They'd comment through my obvious "Crap, it's Wednesday and I have nothing to post" like a squad of paratroopers trying to turn coal into diamonds.

Thank you for all your support, and all the other commenters that would stop by for a drink or two and a chat. You made what would at first appeared to be a Herculean task seem bearable and even fun as hell at times.

I'll see you on the other side tomorrow!

Picture a Day - Day 363

HAPPY CYBER MONDAY!

I've already got all my cyber decorations hung: the keyboard decked out in black ink, paypal invoices strewn across the windows all in the hopes that the money fairy will be there to buy up everything I'm trying to sell on-line.

After all, isn't fiscal gain the true meaning of cyber monday?

Okay so obviously I don't expect to sell anything and figure cyber monday is something invented by newspapers back in the late 90's when they were a little bored one day and thought they could start a rampage on the internet ala Black Friday. (This was before the Steven's theory that the internet was a series of tubes and that one giant fruitcake could clog the whole thing.)

So instead of sitting at my computer staring at my sales page willing it to change I've been working on a few presents for various people for Christmas.

For my Father in Law who went to Michigan State I had a crazy idea to do a painting of a Spartan Helmet (how come everyone is either a Spartan or a Trojan and you never see any Athenians, Romans or Macedonians?).

My husband thought it was a bad idea and would never work out right. I think I proved him wrong.
I'm rather pleased with how it turned out, though Sparty looks a bit too friendly for my tastes. Maybe he just had some really good hummus.

Another idea I had is for a 6 year old girl who's big into pink, princesses and other things Disney says 6 year old girls should be into.

I had a wild idea to make a pendant with a tiara on pink, lots of pink, because at that age who doesn't love wearing jewelry. And sturdy jewelry is the best.
I plan on customizing it with her name later but for anonymity's sake (not that there is much anymore) I decided to show it off before the final adornment.

Does anyone actually plan on buying presents this gray Monday morn? Or can we finally tell the associated press to give cyber Monday a much needed holiday, perhaps somewhere warm with no shopping carts in sight?