The other day I was spending time with my AWESOME mother-in-law, who is a remarkable fine art photographer. She and another photographer friend who was visiting from New York were going to go out and take pictures and they invited me to come along! So today, we spent a couple hours driving around the Hill Country taking pictures of whatever we happened to come across, talking photography all day long. It was so nice, and the time just flew by. I don’t know that I got any earth shattering photos, but it was just nice being out there.

*NOTE* The photo of the rock gate to the right is mine, but for the finished product, I used the photo of the house from stock.xchng.

Find something you love to do and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.
– Harvey MacKay

In honor of the wonderful Thanksgiving holiday that is before us, and in an effort to become more thankful myself, I have issued myself a challenge. I will spend the next 7 days being very deliberately grateful. I am so blessed, but I don’t always take the time to realize it and to really soak it in. So for the next week, I will be keeping a camera handy (even if it’s only the camera on my phone) and documenting all things that I am thankful for — big and small.

I thought it’d be fun if we did this one together, so I issue the same challenge to you. Between now and Thanksgiving, live gratefully and make a visual journal of all the great things in your life. Have fun, be creative, but most of all take the time to breathe it all in. On Thanksgiving day, post your images (on your blog, collage, a slideshow, in a Photobucket album… wherever) and share the link with us so we can all see them (I’ll do the same). Then, on Saturday, one lucky winner will be chosen and will win a $10 Starbucks card! I can’t wait to see what you all come up with!

And, because every post is better with a picture, here is a pic of my kiddos making pomanders on our recent trip to Love Creek Orchards.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP2snWiB1vc]

When I saw my son and nephew playing in the back yard a little while ago, I just had to grab the point and shoot to capture this moment!

Thanks to all of my clients for your patience while we’re getting some much needed R&R. I’ll be getting back to you next Monday and Tuesday!

My 4 year old took this picture! Maybe she’ll be a third generation photographer…

I love southern Louisiana. It’s so beautiful! Unfortunately, you can’t stop to take pictures on the bridge, so I had to take pictures from the car at 70 mph.

This photo was taken by my dad…

This is the way to go!

The question is:
What three skills or hobbies would you learn if you had all the time, tools, and money you needed?

My top three?

1. I would LOVE to learn how to cut hair. I don’t know why, but I think it would be amazingly fun and it would be an interesting creative outlet… if anyone would be willing to let me get “creative” with their hair. Yikes. That actually sounds scary when I put it that way.

2. Someday I would like to learn to dance. We didn’t really do any dancing growing up, so I’ve always been a bit timid. But it looks like so much fun. One of these days I’ll just cut loose!

3. Fashion Design – How cool would it be to be able to design and sew my own clothes?! Wow!

Not far behind are skills such as cooking, scrapbooking, and… marketing. I’m weird.

What about you?

(We also took some time to do some self-portraits since we don’t have any pictures of our family together at all!)