From the Words of Ice Cube,

I'd have to say it was a good day. It all started when I walked into my bathroom, and my sink was beaming back at me. Sparkling, shiny rays of sunshine emitted from my bathroom faucet. I have only one person to thank for my shiny sink, that person is Flylady. I have begun a regiment, if you will, that teaches you to build habits and routines to make cleaning your house easy and not so overwhelming. I am only one week into this plan, so who is to say it will become my norm, but just bare with me. So today was kind of a FREE day, and I needed to make myself take a break from the house (I am starting to clean compulsively, which is not what Flylady is about) and do something for me. So I grabbed my camera and headed outdoors.
I really just wanted to practice with different settings, different lighting and try to get some funky effects (without the aide of Photoshop). These pictures are pictures of some of my favorite views of our yard. These are things that I see staring out my windows and they make me happy. They make me thankful for our house, yard and little family with which to share.

Did that last sentence make me sound smart? I am always ending sentences with prepositions, and it drives me CRAZY. But I am too lazy to try to rewrite, so I leave it and call it artistic liberty. This blue lantern hangs from a butchered lilac bush that sits about 20 feet outside my kitchen window. I once chastised David for hanging up such a silly, old rusty lantern, but I have grown to love it.

I love this bush, it has grown thicker with each passing year. I don't know it's name. My favorite thing about this bush is in a week or two the flowers will start to fall off, and they float through the air like ashes from smoke. There are no words to describe it. I am determined to get pictures of Charlotte in the grass when this happens.

Then I stumbled upon this broken Robin's egg in the grass. Obviously not a permanent fixture in the yard, but as of lately I have been obsessed with this color of blue, so I tried to capture it's gorgeous blue hue. Didn't turn out like I wanted, but I liked them all the same.

"Mom, take a pitchure of this..."

So Joe had to get in on the action. Ah yes, a locust shell, so inspiring.