Let There Be....

LIGHT, love, fanciness....this is officially the first picture I've ever taken with a real camera. =)

All you pros out there will probably notice right away probably six hundred things (what's up with the graininess?) that I could have done better and I can tell you that I'm BEYOND excited to get to learn all about them. I've pinned the Stanford photo course and will begin it after the New Year. As for today...I took over 300 pictures. And hey! Because I know you've been SO deprived, I will share a few of them.

I can feel your enthusiasm from here. =)

Waiting for Carly's ballet class has just gotten SO much more interesting. =)

Okay, so I think I've made it clear enough that I'm at best ambivalent about where we live during any season other than the summer, so I'm going to get a jump on another one of my New Year's Resolutions and stop complaining about it ALL the time. You're welcome. As part of that, I'm going to show you the things I like about our house. Here's the outside, which I don't think I've ever shown before. To be fair, it really is most sincerely charming and cottagey with all the peaks and cute decoration.

This is another good part - Paul's man-cave. It put to great use our Ugly Couch, our dusty rug and finally gave his Marine Corps stuff a nice home. He refuses to hang that stuff actually inside our house, but he's happy to have it out there. I guess garages are more manly than living rooms. It hasn't been ALL that cold here, but I've found him out there on 40 degree weekends bundled up in a couple of blankets playing Playstation until he can't feel his fingers. =)

Moving inside, I like the way our furniture fits in this house. I love the tan that I had the entire interior of our house painted when we first moved here and I cannot wait until I get a bench pillow for our trunk. The girls love kneeling on it to look out the window for visitors.

The island! As you can CLEARLY see, this is command central for our afternoons. We've got Pandora, preschool art, big kid art, prepped lunch ready for tomorrow, neighbor gifts, flowers....I love it. This is our life, right here, including the horrendous wallpaper. Oh shoot, I did it again. ;)

But my all time favorite part about this house and this place? The people I share it with. Sickly feverish Paul, Carly explaining her German tannenbaum drawing and Bree interjecting with stories about elves, her friends, and how you shouldn't sneak cookies during naptime because Mommy gets REALLY MAD.