We Feel Fine

A self-portrait that I took back in 2006 as part of a 365 day portrait project is being published in a book coming out in December. Even though I'm just one of thousands who are getting their pictures published in the same book, I'm really excited. :)

Yesterday they published a an online excerpt to their website, found here. The page with my picture doesn't appear to be on one of the pages that is clickable, though. I get a free copy of the book since one of my pictures is in it, which I will get in December. Yeah, I'm one of a large number, but still, I guess this means that soon I'll be a published photographer. :)

And, in case you were curious, here is my picture that will be in the book:

The title of the picture is "grumpy", but it's in the section of the book about being sick as I wrote about how I was grumpy because I tried to do a picture challenge of taking a picture of yourself upside down and didn't come out with anything good and ended up making myself feel sick in the process.  Hehe.  I had really long hair then, but I've had it cut a couple of times since then, including recently enough that right now it's slightly shorter than shoulder length.

I really enjoyed doing that project, and I like going back and seeing all the pictures I took and what I wrote about them each day.  This one is by no means the best of the bunch (nor is it the worst), but it's the one that caught their eye for their book when they did a search of "I feel".  I have been thinking about compiling all my self-portraits from that year into a book (for myself, I don't know that there would be much interest in that beyond me and my family), but so far haven't.  I've also tried starting a second year of self-portraits several times (and part of my latest attempt is here in this blog under the tag "365days" from when I first started writing in this blog), but so far have not stayed through for another full year.  I do still take random self-portraits sometimes though, just for fun.  :)

Anyway, I can't wait to get my copy of the book.  It looks like it'll be a fun one to look through!

Cross - Self Portrait Day 13

This was my self portrait on July 8th, or Day 13 of my self-portrait project. I've decided instead of posting them daily (which I haven't been anyway), that I'd post them occasionally, and although I might do several in a day to try to "catch up", I'm not necessarily going to post every single one of them.

Around July 8th (I can't remember if it was the same day or the day before now), I received these fun skull and crossbones appliques from Cornerstop that I'd ordered. I saw them in a promotion thread on Etsy and just had to have them. I love the contrast between skull and crossbones and a pretty flower with a rhinestone. I also like that the eye sockets are upside down hearts. I'm actually not sure what I'm going to do with them (the idea of making a scrapbook page of my girls in pirate outfits comes to mind, but first I have to convince them to dress like pirates, hehe). Another idea I had was to make little pins with them.

In addition to sending the 6 appliques I ordered, she sent an assortment of other appliques at no extra charge. Within seconds of me opening the package, my daughters descended upon the contents and grabbed the extras (ok, I did make them take turns picking, so it was a somewhat structured grabbing). I don't remember what all they got because they grabbed fast, but I do remember that there was a butterfly, a dragonfly, a teddy bear and a princess crown.

Anyway, for my self-portrait that evening, I wanted to include the cute skull and crossbones, and I decided that it'd be fun to put it on my nose and cross my eyes to "look" at it (I can't actually see much of anything when my eyes are crossed like that). As for the other appliques that my daughters claimed, I have grand plans of making small pocket purses out of the pockets from a pair of cargo pants my younger daughter wore holes through and sewing the appliques onto those. We'll see if that actually happens. ;)

If you'd like to get your own fun skull and crossbones appliques (or any of her other appliques, she has LOTS and LOTS listed), click here to visit Cornerstop's store. She also sells some cute beads, including some really great Kitty beads that I've had my eye on to make bracelets for my daughters (who love Hello Kitty). :)

Self Portraits Days 11 and 12

I've gotten a little behind on posting these, so I guess I'll be posting two a day for a while now. On day 11 (July 6th), in the evening, I got this weird feeling of Impending Doom. I called this one "Is The Sky Falling?". As it turned out, nothing bad happened (that I'm aware of), and the feeling passed. But it's what I was feeling when I took my self-portrait that day.

On Day 12 (July 7th), my husband and I went out to dinner with some friends of mine from high school and had a blast. We went to a Chinese restaurant that had a Chinese menu and an American menu. The Chinese menu had such entries like "Unique Chicken Smell" as an appetizer and "Dried Pig's Intestine w/ Chinese Celery". The "Unique Chicken Smell" is actually tasty (that we ordered). Someone else will have to get back to you on the Intestines because no one at our table tried that. ;)

I had such a good time I forgot to take a picture while out to document what I was doing, so I ended up just snapping this quick one at my parents' house when we went there to pick up our kids (my parents were nice enough to keep the girls while my husband and I went out).

Self-Portraits - Days 7 and 8

These are my Day 7 and Day 8 self-portraits. On Day 7, I was feeling uninspired. I tried taking some profile shots, but I didn't really like any of them. I finally decided I liked this one, except it was a little blurry. So I made it purple to try to cover that up. ;)

Day 8 (July 3rd) we spent on the road driving several hours to visit my husband's grandparents. We spent the day on their farm where the girls got to "drive" the tractor, go cane pole fishing, explore the woods, and just run around and play. It was a good but busy day. Not as hot as you'd expect in July, but it still got warm when standing out in the sun.

I took the picture on the way home. If I remember correctly, I took it shortly before I fell asleep in the car for about half an hour. ;)

Me and My Daughters--365 Self Portraits Days 5-6

The first one is of me and my older daughter crossing our eyes. Most moms tell their kids not to do that. As for me, well, I taught her how to do that. ;)

The second one is of me and my younger daughter. At church on Wednesday night, the girls played dress-up and in addition to taking pictures of the girls alone, I decided to take a picture of my younger daughter with me in my self-portrait for that day. :)

Self-Portraits

Well, so much for daily. ;) With the two other posts I did yesterday, I thought having a third might be a little much. So now, here are two more self-portraits:

This first one I took on a day when we were out and it was really hot..at least it felt that way. It was in the 80s, so relatively speaking, that wasn't so hot. However, if I was feeling it was too hot, I know I'm really in for it, especially since last year we had about a month and a half of days over 100 degrees. Talk about hot!

The second one is just a simple "head shot". A photo from my 365 photos the last time I did this was chosen to be in a book. The book is going to be published at the end of the year and they wanted a head shot of all the contributors, if possible. So, that's what this is for. :)

I'm looking forward to posting the next two tomorrow as they feature my daughters!

365 Days of Self Portraits

A few years ago, I started a project, along with thousands of others on Flickr, to take a self-portrait a day for one year, or 365 days. I finished that set (with one picture missing, I forgot to take a picture one day), and decided to take a break before starting another year, which I fully intended to do. This "break" lasted almost two years. I'd tried starting it back up a few times in between, but I always forgot after just a day or two.

Well, I'm trying it again. My husband was part of the inspiration for doing it now because he started his own two days before I started mine. These two pictures are the first two days of my 365 Days project this time around. I'm going to post two a day here until I get caught up, then I will (ideally) be posting daily pictures after that. Today is day 5, so the double posting will be brief.

In my Day 1 photo, I'm doing a photo tribute of someone who worked at the same library I did. She had a glasses leash for her glasses because they were reading glasses, and she would often look at people over her glasses like that. I've recently connected with a number of people who worked there at the same time, so the photo was done for them. I came up with the idea after having to get reading glasses myself (first pair of prescription glasses I've ever owned) and deciding to make myself a beaded glasses leash (which I'm using in the picture, but it's hard to tell).

In my Day 2 photo, I'm annoyed with myself because I took a shower and then laid down and let my hair dry while I was snoozing (I wasn't even really sleeping). I put in a headband to tame it somewhat for the picture. Hehe.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy taking this photo journey with me. :)