Yikes, I have been so crazy busy this past week that I’m a whole week behind on my 365 posts. I have managed to take a photo each day (actually, a couple of times I took more than a hundred pictures each day!) but despite spending hours with Lightroom and Photoshop, I never did manage to get a post written about them. So here’s the pictures from the penultimate week, July 1 through 7. With any luck, I’ll get last week’s pictures up by the beginning of August!
This one is the finalé from my Dog Meets Cat love story. This one is my favourite, and while I loved the idea of storyboarding all the pictures, I think this one is lovely on it’s own — the cat behind the curtain has a kind of ethereal quality that reminds me of a Nicholas Sparks / Audrey Niffenegger alternate-universes kind of love story, yanno?
We bought a membership to the Manotick community pool (I know, we’re “club” people now, I can hardly get over myself!) and have been spending a lot of time there. Glen at OttawaStart.com used this picture on his OttawaStart guide to swimming in Ottawa – fun, eh?
I’ve been reading Judy Blume’s Fudge books to the boys, from Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing to Double Fudge. In one of the books, the boys go to the mint in Washington, which inspired the idea for a trip to the Byward Market to visit the Royal Canadian Mint, a destination none of us had ever visited. It was okay, not quite stimulating enough for the wandering three-year-old, but the big boys were interested enough in the 20-minute tour. They were a lot more interested, though, in the excellent milk shakes at Zak’s Diner (hadn’t been there in 20+ yrs!) and the visit to Sugar Mountain. In all, it was a fun day downtown playing tourist — if you haven’t done it recently, you should try! We ran out of steam before we made it over to Parliament Hill, so we’ll have to make another trek on a different day for that one.
I love composition of this photo of the boys perched on a box beside the National Gallery, lost in a sea of lilies. I also love the patiently indulgent expressions on their faces, too: I’m not particularly enjoying this, but it makes mom happy, so I’ll endure it.
This was from our rainbow cupcake adventure day. Hmmm, I think we’re due to try this one again! *drool*
We went on this massively weird road trip that was supposed to be a quick trip up to Kemptville to check out a flea market and maybe have some lunch. The flea market didn’t exist, and I couldn’t get a cell signal anywhere in Kemptville so I couldn’t rely on my iPhone map for directions. There must have been a classic car rally nearby, because at one point we gassed up and there was a 1978 corvette, and two other early 1970s vintage cars gassing up at the same station. We decided to truck on to Smiths Falls in search of other flea markets we’d heard vague reference to with no map and no real plan. We found these two old flea markets that were more junk shop than anything, but they had some fascinating stuff. It was a really surreal kind of day!
In particular, I was charmed by this set of 1960s-era salon hair dryers — remember these? I remember being terrified when the hairdresser used them on me when I was a kid. These ones even had little ashtrays in each arm rest — pure vintage awesomeness. I wanted to buy them just for the conversation-piece value of them, and Simon thought they looked like something that might launch him into orbit!
I finally enticed Kerry all the way out to Manotick (she was fixated on the fact that she passed dairy farms on the way out – she’s such an urbanite!) and we had an excellent adventure involving burgers at the Side Street Grill, a visit to the Mill, a browse in the used book sale that goes on every day across from the Mill in the carriage shed, and ice creams and coffee for dessert. Really, despite the fact that it threatened rain the whole time, it was a perfect little wander. I’d promised Kerry a portrait months ago, and so we set up an impromptu portrait session on the dam. Isn’t she gorgeous?
There are people who do entire 365 projects of self portraits and I have such admiration for them. I can barely stand to take one of myself every couple of months, but I did like the light in my room as I was sitting on the bed teaching myself how to better use my speedlight. (This is a natural light picture, though – the flash is on the bed with a book behind me!) I called it “Portrait of the artist in her natural environment” – with tongue firmly in cheek.
One of these days, I might even take a self portrait without the camera stuck to my face…
Very nice pictures, definitely You have a gift to make it. And i really liked that dog&cat story 🙂