Yesterday morning, a heavy fog sat thick over our area. It was dense and eerie, it settled thick over the farm. Rachel and I grabbed our cameras and boots and ran out the door to meet it. There is something about the fog that mutes all other noises, all you can hear clearly is the thoughts in your head. It's a nice time to walk. Rachel posted her pictures on her blog yesterday, she's ahead of me. You can check them out here.
The reason for the lack of words to day is that I'm trying to finish my creative writing story. Actually it's done, I'm just trying to copy it from my journal and onto the computer, easier said than done. It seems my hand writing has gotten so bad that I can hardly read it myself. Wish me luck.
Have a lovely rest of your day, and a fantastic new year!
xoxo Johanna
I wandered around our farm last evening, the air was fresh, the setting sun was bright and glorious, it had rained and been cloudy all day, I was itching to do something. I made sure I brought my freshly charged camera with me, to catch the grandeur of it all. As I snapped I was thinking about the word candid, it means honest. Honesty, that's what I want my photography to portray. I tend to shy away from staged photos, the forced smiles, the ridged stares. There was a time, not to long ago, when I wanted my photography to look like the cover of a magazine, flawless, perfect, immaculate. But that's not my life, I am so far from being perfect it's almost hilarious to think I could fool anyone into thinking otherwise, but that's what I am, it's how God made me.
I'm coming to appreciate it more and more each and every day. It's one reason I have almost entirely ceased editing my pictures, I wanted them to seem real. I've almost unknowingly made a challenge to myself, in the past few months, to capture life, as it really is. Beautiful, but flawed. Magnificent and entirely askew. God is the beauty, the magnificence, our sins have made the flaws in our once perfect Eden, we did the deed to make it askew. But He gave us this land in His goodness to enjoy, I don't want to cover it up by trying to make them something other than what they are.
For the year 2012, I have chosen candid as my word, a word to think on and try to follow. To be totally honest with myself and others, not only in photography, but in everything I do. Sincere. I want to be more of this- frank, sincere, open, honest, straightforward, outspoken, ingenuous, straight, forthright, open-hearted, downright, plain, direct, single-hearted, genuine, heartfelt. I want to be candid.
I have practically zero creative writing skills at the moment, due to over exertion on other projects (read, the big library thing I've mentioned before that I'm not ready to unveil yet. I'm not even close.) that's why this is an almost wordless post. The last two pictures are of my homemade goat cheese infused with freshly crushed rosemary, and just-squeezed orange juice, with zest. Then I aged it for four days, it was pretty fantastic. The next one is of the pie I made, actually it's the first cherry pie I've ever made. And you know what? It wasn't that hard! I really don't understand why so many people think making pie, or anything, from scratch is unbelievably hard. It isn't, really. It's not the most simple thing in the world, but it sure is worth it. You get to control how sweet it is, how flaky the crust turns out, whether to use all butter in the crust, or Crisco, or lard. It's so much better for you. The only downside to the way my pie turned out is that I didn't get all the pits out of the cherry's, my mom had twelve pits in one piece of pie. Hmm, don't know how that happened. But it certainly was delicious.
Speaking of pie, I'm off to go make another one, we are going to my grandparents tomorrow and I want to share this goodness!
By the way, wasn't Nela's guest post wonderful? She is always one to get me thinking. Thank you again for posting, Nela!
We were little kids once {probably some of us still are! ;) }. We had someone that we looked up too as a child. Whether it was your mom, dad, older brother/sister, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or someone from your church we all wanted to be like them.
We would try to hang out with them as much as possible, copying their every movement and word. Because back then, we wanted to be just like them.
Of course, that's not to say that we should follow anyone's example. Especially if their habits and morals are not Christian. For 2 Corinthians 6:14 says,
"Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has
righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with
darkness"
And now, it's our turn to be the role models. If you have someone looking up to you, then you have a responsibility to be imitators of Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1) by showing godly examples to the little ones in your life.
That means if we lose our patience, anger, frustration, or anything else too often in front of these little ones, they will learn
that it's okay to express your anger freely, regardless of who is
around. They may wind up displaying hostility in front of other children as they get older.
Also, it would be good practice for us girls when we have our own families someday, if that would be the Lord's will. So, why don't you start by being a godly role model to your younger sibling or someone from your church? It's never too late to start. ;)
"Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me,but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin,it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea."
~ Matthew 18:5-6
Hi there! I'm Nela. It's a pleasure to meet you! :) I'm a cook, blogger, writer, martial artist in training, photographer, and a follower of the High King of Heaven, and Earth, Jesus Christ. You can find out more about the stuff I write at my blog "Beloved Star" if you wish. Thanks and take care!
Since it's been a couple days since I've posted, and I have quite a few things to share; I'm just going to post about them all at once. Just because. We've had some births on the farm, two of our mamma pigs gave birth to a collective number of 17 piglets. That's kind of a lot. I spent sometime taking pictures of them, but as it was really cold, mamma pig started grunting, which means go away, and the bell rung for breakfast... I cut my visit short with only a few pictures taken.
Some of our Muscovy ducks. They don't quack, they hiss and they roost in trees. Sometimes, when they're lighter.
I took this on Stephens 11 month birthday. 11 months? Already? Gee, I love this kid. So much.
I got bored with how my room looked, so I messed with it. We had a whole bunch of paint chips from choosing paint for our bathroom downstairs. I glued about 20 of them to the wall, and strung a piece of embroidery floss up as a "clothes line" and pinned some little sayings to it.
This is what it looks like close up.
And finally, here are some of the pieces we played for our concert this past week. "Phantom" was my favorite because, it's phantom and it's awesome. And even if I don't altogether love the play, the music is amazing. The end.
This was fun, too.
I'm going to end on a slightly sour note. Literally. This was my solo, pay no attention to the parts I messed up in, and I did great. Sort of. I'm happy with it though.
So there you have it. My random post. I don't like posting aimless posts normally, but today it was this, or nothing. Post Script time.
xoxo Johanna
P.S (i) I saw Sherlock Holmes A game of Shadows last night. Lets just say... OH GOSH IT WAS AWESOME! Expect a review soon from either me, or my sister Rachel, who is also a Holmes fan.
P.S (ii) I guest posted at Lilly's today. You might know her as Lilly from Belle Fleur Photography, but due to some meanies she might have to move her blog indefinitely. Sad. Show her some love (because she's so lovely) and follow her new blog at Lilly Caroline Photography. Don't worry though, all her posts from BFP are imported. So you can still read them! Yay!
P.S (iii) Did I mention Sherlock Holmes was amazing? It's going to take me a while to get over the fact that I saw it on opening day.
P.S (iiii) I can't think of anymore post scripts. Good Bye.
It was a cocoa sort of day, the day I took these pictures. Blustery, cold, wet, and did I mention cold? It was about 30° outside, which for our little part of Texas is pretty much pure torture. Because, that's two degrees below freezing. Brr! So I sat comfortably inside our little warm house, doing things I like to do, like, cooking, and cleaning, watching/washing children, writing, practicing my violin, and I guess a little school too. By late afternoon, we were all ready for a warm drink. A big mug of hot cocoa with two soft marshmallows was just the thing to cheer us up. I decided to take some pictures, because I have taken a shameful amount of pictures this month. By shameful I mean practically no pictures. At all. It's the cold I tell you.
Our concert at HYO was on Saturday, it wasn't the worst one we've ever put on. But it certainly wasn't the best. I normally put all our videos for orchestra on YouTube but this symester, erm... I'm not sure if I want to put them up. Maybe a couple of our best ones, The Phantom of the Opera perhaps. Except for the fact that my nine year old brother filmed the whole thing, and did not know how to focus my camera, that piece turned out perfect. Mostly.
We were supposed to be there around 9:15am, but... our van's alternator decided to go out, so we couldn't start it without jumping it. My dad got it started around 9:35 and we we're on our way, a tad bit to late though. Lydia's class was almost over. But we made it there, and that was the point. So she went to her class, and Rachel and I... sat around. For a long time.
By the end of the day I was so spent, I don't remember concerts lasting that long. 7 hours straight with no food. (We had our bottom braces put in and the top ones tightened a few days ago, so we couldn't eat anything even if we tried.) So we just visited with our orchestra buddies until it was time for our last rehearsal and concert. It all went pretty smoothly though, my chamber group played together nicely, but I botched the beginning because I made myself nervous while we waited to go on stage. But that's ok. The main thing is it's over and I didn't have a total meltdown about nothing. Next up, solos. Tomorrow. So thrilled.
Not entirely.
Anyways. I think I need another cup of cocoa. Or tea will do, too.
