The Hands Have It

It's summer and what better way to celebrate warm, balmy evenings than with live music. The Park District lines up bands for weekend performances at the local parks.

While I love the music, I find the details of instruments and musicians fascinating.

Such a beautiful guitar - I wonder what stories it could tell...

While I'm not a tattoo person, I was drawn to this arm - there's even a blue bass there...


I hope you check out the local events this summer coming to a park or pavilion near you.

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Team Up Thursday - Body Parts

I planned to post this last week, but life got in the way. No excuses this week!

The theme is "body parts" and Lee's son is maturing into a man, muscles and all (including that rad new hair color). I coupled his adolescence with the veins on my aging hand, and my baby nephew's plump digits. Body parts across the generations.



On Thursday, Lee Curie and I create a diptych based on a theme. You can view the other great diptychs at the Team Up Thursday Flickr group.

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The Leaf

One of the girls found this leaf yesterday during our photo shoot and I had to take a picture of it - I haven't seen too many yellow and red leaves in my backyard this year.

We needed two hands to hold it steady in the blowing wind - it's like they are taking good care of a fragile leaf.



I used CoffeeShop's Simply Vintage Action on the original version to give it the nice, soft feel. And I added a light vignette, to brighten up the edges of the photo. It's the first time I've used such a vignette - normally I use a dark vignette.

I hope your Sunday morning is filled with light and colorful leaves!

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286/365 - So Many Colors and Patterns

I just had to take a picture.

Erica and her friends had their nails done this afternoon, after school let out at 11:00 for a half day.



Speaking of cell phones - today marks the one year mark for Erica and her phone. And yes, she already wants a new one....

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Weekly Gratitude - Catching Up

I've been behind creating my Weekly Gratitude posts. I hope to get caught up this weekend, and in the meantime, have two Gratitude pictures to share, using May's theme of "Body"





I enjoyed digging these photos out, even though they were taken less than a month ago.

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Hands and Feet

Because I never captured my own children's little feet and toes on film, I made sure I took pictures of little Felix's tootsies. This was actually a challenge, because he was always wearing an outfit with those footsie things, and his feet were exposed only during diaper changes. And believe me, the last thing on my mind when changing his diaper was taking pictures of his feet!

On our last full day, he wore socks and we were able to fit in some bare feet time:





Also a shot of his hands next to mine. My sister, Teresa, took this picture:


I miss those days of itty-bitty hands and feet.

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Team Up Thursday - Work

I knew this theme would result in an unusual diptych.
I know Lee's work is centered around home (and the computer). While I spend a lot of time at the computer, too, I specifically walked outside the office and to the Maintenance shop to capture some hands on activity. I found two maintenance guys putting together some pipe.



On Thursdays, I team up with my friend, Lee for Team-Up Thursdays, a creative venture started by Melody and Megan. Each week, one of us picks a theme, we each take a picture and combine the two into a diptych.

You can view the other great diptychs at the Team Up Thursday Flickr group.

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I ♥ Faces - Hands-On-Fun

This week's challenge theme is "hands-on-fun" and no faces are required.

I took several music themed pictures over the weekend, so staying in that theme, I am submitting a picture of my hands (or fingers) playing violin:



There are so many fabulous entries at I ♥ Faces - go check them out and enter one of your pictures!

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326/365 - Glitter and Gloves

Tonight I went to the Festival of Trees with my friend, Jill. The major fundraiser of the local Junior League, the Festival raises funds for community. We enjoyed music from the Edison Jazz Band and viewed the holiday themed trees, kick starting the holiday season.

I loved the details on this wreath:


We found a unique clothing manufacturer who creates gloves, mittens, scarves, hats and vests by felting recycled sweaters and other knitted materials. Aren't these fingerless gloves adorable? (Modeled by Jill, whose hands are much nicer than mine!):


Here's the company who creates these cool items:


So I bought the pink and grey pair - they will be perfect with my iPhone and camera use during the winter months.

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250/365 - Lots of Dough

Not money, but real flour and water dough. I didn't make the dough myself, but bought frozen bread dough - works great as pizza dough. The kids get a big piece to work with. Brian created his own personal pizza and two pizza rolls.



Normally I would post what Erica created, but she was at K's house this afternoon - when she got home, she told me to take her dough and form it into a simple ball. Hey, I like how easy that is! (And she ate the big ball of bread after it was baked)

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