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The 1850 Mile Pinterest Challenge of 2012

Tuesday, January 10, 2012
My sister, Diana, and I had intentions to join the fun over at Young House Love for their Pinterest Challenge last November.  But I had moved in October so it was postponed.

Then Christmas happened, Diana had guests and I was still running around like a nut.

During December we chatted about doing it but expanding the idea.  We thought it would be cool to do it once a month and share our projects with one another so that’s what we are doing. We are calling it the 1850 Mile Pinterest Challenge since that’s how far apart we are.

I have chosen a Christmas theme since I have been wanting to make new Christmas decorations for my home. I have a good number of pins already in my Pinterest Christmas board.

My idea is that I show you each of the projects as I do them and in December I’ll show you how I’ve used each of them in decorating my home for Christmas! 

I wanted to start simple and decided to recycle my Christmas cards into a Christmas Card Ball.

I didn’t take any how-to photos but I will share a link to a animated gif that shows you how easy it is to determine the equilateral triangle for any circle.  This will make it easy to grab anything circular to trace in your house to make the template to fold against. It’s as easy as taking the cards you received and cutting 20 circles out, folding in the sides using the template and gluing it together. Don’t worry if it doesn’t go together perfectly

As it happens, it’s not quite finished (it needs glitter!!) and it deserves better photos. So I will be updating the photo below with something less pink and more sparkly.

Now I am dying to know what Diana made and will update this blog post ASAP when she posts!

UPDATE!  My little Christmas ball pales in comparison of Diana’s Baby Silverware Shadow Boxes.  Absolutely adorable! She also invited others along to join* and please do this.  I’ll make sure to share your link and ooh and aah over your project as well.

*No need to live 1850 miles away, anyone can join, no matter your distance!

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No. 59

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

I’m a stranger.

Last month, I saw a tweet in my feed asking if anyone was feeling photogenic. I was, so I answered. It was a small brave act, not thinking anything would come of it and preparing myself not to have anything come of it. I was admirer of the 100 Strangers Project at Le Mien and had been following it since No. 22, Robyn Paton (writer/photographer of mintyfresh, one of the first Ottawa – now Montreal – blogs I started to follow). Every stranger on it is so chic and hip, was that a prerequisite? I didn’t know. My response to a tweet turned into an e-mail conversation that ended with plans to met Kym and her camera at the Canadian Museum of Nature.

It was a great experience and reinforced my courage. I have been using Twitter to push myself out the door and meet people in Ottawa, not an easy task. Answering a random tweet from Kym? That was a leap forward I didn’t expect to take.  Our time together flew by too quickly, chatting the entire time, and once she was satisfied with the shots she had taken, we stopped. Later, she sent me the photos and I told her to pick; I wanted to know what she saw. We agreed.

Fifty-nine.

I like my stranger number, the last minute of any given hour, the last second of any given minute.

Every moment counts.

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Update: I realized after having this post up for 24 hours that I had completely forgotten to thank Kym for this experience. Thank you, I enjoyed meeting another Ottawan and photographer. I enjoyed having my photo taken by you. I enjoyed the flurry of attention I received simply by saying yes. Oh, and Kym’s an excellent listener herself.

 

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Why Photography?

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Well, it’s always been around me. My father was a photographer and we always had fabulous photographs for our family albums. When we were young, my sister and I were given Kodak cameras (remember disk film?), we took photos of school trips, our friends, our rooms, and each other as fashion models. In university, I got my hands on my father’s SLR (Nikkormat F-series, if memory serves) in the mid-90s but film was too frustration and I didn’t want to put the time and money into learning it properly. After that, I didn’t really have a camera to play with and any fascination with photography was forgotten.

My husband, Christopher, and I had met and fell in love in high school. As the years went by, we went from dating, to living together, to getting married. He had brought digital cameras into our home and this made photography more accessible, although it wasn’t something I was particularly interested in, besides I didn’t have anything to photograph and I considered the camera to be his. That all changed when we decided to have a baby. I knew I would want to document everything: baby toes, baby nose, baby fingers, baby ears, baby blues, first smile, first tooth, first step, first birthday. The baby would learn to associate the sound of a camera’s shutter release to his or her momma since I was going to be taking many photos and not miss a moment. I wanted to remember each precious second and marvel at all the changes of a growing child.

Sadly, things don’t always work out according to plan. After two years of trying, I wasn’t pregnant. There were indications that a baby wasn’t going to happen without medical assistance and we made the decision to stop. This isn’t an easy choice to make and it wasn’t made quickly. The details of how we came to it aren’t important, everyone’s choice is different as the circumstances and options are never the same. At this time, I also put down the camera, I had only been learning to capture the life of this child, what’s the point now?

Slowly, the grieving lessened and with gentle and persistent pushes from Christopher (and myself), I reached for the camera again. I gave myself 52 assignments for the year of 2011 and embarked on a 365 project with my trusty iPhone. Even with this keeping me busy, I am experimenting more, learning new software, understanding lighting, making wish lists for gear and being inspired by other photographers and artists. It boils down to there being things I need to show you and photography seemed the best and most interesting way to go about it.

To those in the middle of trying to conceive, my heart goes out to you. For those who need or choose to stop, I can’t promise you anything. I only know how I got through it. I sat in the middle of the pain and let it come. Wave after crashing wave, I felt each one. I kept breathing, I kept moving forward and eventually those waves subsided to little ripples. It’s part of me now. I may not have the privilege of being a mother, but I didn’t let it destroy me either.

 

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