When you photograph a dog most of the time you want to focus and expose for some part of their body which in the case of a black dog is dark, causing much of the background to be overexposed.  Don't get me wrong I'd take a black dog over a white dog any day of the week for other reasons (you've seen the muddy Molly photos), but a white dog would be a lot easier to photograph.

Here are a few that turned out ok... but these are only two of about twenty or more that I took.  

Focus is a bit off, instead of her eyes being in focus her nose is.

As always for more photos you can visit flickr.

On vacation with my family and not happy about getting my photo taken.I used to not like having photos taken of me, I think it is part of the reason I ended up behind the camera so often (for more photos from my childhood, check flickr).  You can ask my friends and family, I was always the one taking photos.  While there are plenty of photos of me growing-up, as I got older and had my own camera I was often missing from the photos.  Over the last few years, I've realized that this is not the best practise and have even grown to like being in photos.  I even started a self-portrait project in 2007 that I failed to finish (and even retried over the last few years). 

I often take photos of myself or want to be in group photos with others.  I've gotten creative with how I go about this and have used all manner of methods for propping my camera... rocks, pillows, car hoods, fences, etc., not to mention a tripod. You name it my camera has probably rested on it in order to get a photo of myself.  Recently, I came across a blog post from Ashley at Under the Sycamore on how she gets into photographs.  She shared her tips and tricks along with great photographs to illustrate.  Take a look and try out her methods.  Like her I use a timer, myself and Joel (she uses Chris).  I also use a remote for my camera that is a lot easier then a timer and saves a bit of running around. 

Get into those photos even if you don't want to because your friends and family will appreciate it.  In another blog post, Ashley discusses a woman who inspired her to be in more of her photos with her kids.  The woman, Aleida Franklin, a mom and scrapbooker, made sure she took at least one photo of her with her kids per month.  Unfortunately, she died in a car accident, but her children still have the wonderful photos she purposely took.  Not caring if she had her make-up on or her hair was done just right, but making sure she recorded the memories of the moment.  Joel and I playing video games... who would want to forget that?

It is important to take photos of yourself, for the big events or the everyday happenings.  Having photos of ourselves is a way for us to preserve our own memories and for those who out live us to remember the times they did have with us.

I used free tutorials from Sew, Mama Sew to make both the hot pads and the napkins.

I tweeked the napkins a a bit so that I could use similar sized fabrics to what I was cutting for the hot pads. Both were fairly simple and easy to follow.  I did struggle a bit with the binding and loop on the hot pads, but they turned out great.  For the napkins I even tried one of the decorative stitches on my machine.  It was a bit scary causing me to do one side of one napkin and then I waited a few hours before proceeding to finish it off.  As my sister-in-law, Sarah, put it, "it would have been a lot of tearing out had you made a mistake!"

For more photos of my sewing projects, you can visit flickr.

Can you tell what dried vegetables these are?  For more photos visit flickr.

For more photos, visit flickr.