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Kitchen – the heart of the home.  I’ve lived in 5 different homes throughout my life, 4 of which have been since I got married.  While I wouldn’t say that the kitchen has always been the heart of our home (most times it was the dining room because meals, discussions and memories were shared there), I am trying to fill our kitchen with more heart.  Unfortunately, for us the kitchen is the hub right now.  It’s where papers and broken toys get dropped on the counters and left to die.  I’ll admit, I’m not always the greatest at just pitching things.  Maybe one day I’ll finally admit that the broken toys will never get fixed and just pitch them and finally file the papers.

I do have fond memories in our kitchens though.  Growing up at home, many memories were made around our kitchen table….family get togethers, games of bunco, coloring Easter eggs.
Once I got married, we moved into a little two bedroom home, the childhood home of my grandma.  My most vivid memory of that kitchen is the many evenings spent making dinner for my new husband That first fall there, there was one particular evening I just quit.  We had Asian beetles infiltrating our house, particularly the kitchen.  A few started to fall in the pot cooking on the stove.  I gave up, shut the stove off and just left.  I was so tired of vacuuming them up and more would come.

Fast forward to our move to the Chicago suburbs and our first apartment.  My fondest memories there were working in the kitchen while our little girl rolled around the kitchen in her walker.

Then fast forward to our current kitchen (don’t remember much from the 4th), where we remodeled it into my dream kitchen and have watched our kids learn to make meals.

For my take on the theme, I photographed some random things from our kitchen and some special things.

 

Any clue what this next item is? ?

 

In this next picture, I included a cabinet door from our first kitchen (my grandma’s childhood house) and an egg whisk we got as a wedding gift as well as an egg tray my husband recently bought me.

 

A macro shot of a common kitchen utensil.

 

Here I wanted to include some vegetables from our outdoor kitchen (garden) and an enamelware bowl that belonged to my grandma.

 

Another macro shot of something found in a kitchen.

Hope you enjoyed my take on this month’s theme.  Head on over to Kim’s blog and check out her interpretation!

Hope you enjoyed Kim, Debra, Sharleen and Erica’s takes on this months theme!

It’s hard to believe that it is June already!!  Another month has flown by!  Being that this month’s theme is “Earth”, naturally I set out to our garden for inspiration.  We have a sad little garden this year though.  I didn’t plant much.  So I had to scrounge for things to photograph.

I found a dead “earth”worm and was taking a picture of him, but thankfully I looked a few inches away and saw some other crawly critters that were much more photogenic.  So I photographed them instead.

I then scrounged some more and found this feather.

Hope you enjoyed my take on this month’s theme!

Head on over to Brandi’s page and see her take!!

Hope you enjoyed Brandi, Torie and Sharleen’s pictures!!  Talk about talent!!

This month, I once again mulled over the theme, pushing myself to think outside the box.  I did in fact come up with some unique ideas for “green”, but the days got away from me, leaving me little time to execute my ideas.  So I decided last minute to just take the kids outside and take pictures of them in our midwestern landscape that has recently turned GREEN as spring has arrived.

I started out by photographing the sweet little boy, Mr. C, that we were watching for the day.  He is such a sweet little guy, and we had the privilege of watching him most of last summer and continue to watch him once a month.  He has a special place in our hearts.

Evening came though, and I decided to drag my kids out to get some pictures of them too.  They don’t care too much for me always having my camera with me, they’d rather I put it down and live in the moment.  Which is what I am trying to do more often now.  I need to periodically get pictures of them though, because they are quickly growing up, and I NEED to document these moments.

I teared up tonight, because looking at your children through the eyes of a lens some how truly opens your eyes.  Your “mommy goggles” are removed (or at least partially removed). Tonight, instead of seeing my little ones, I saw these strange new kids…these kids who aren’t baby faced anymore.  Their faces looked so grown up tonight.  It broke my heart a little.  Where does the time go?!?  The funny thing is though, I thought the same thing about Mr. C.  As I was looking through the lens, I saw a more grown up face, not quite the same little baby face I had seen just a few weeks ago.

Ask me what this has to do with green and I guess I can’t really tell you, except that green is symbolic of “life” to me.  These little lives are growing right before my eyes.  They are growing like green weeds, faster than I can keep up with.  These precious children are so full of life, so full of joy.  Green may now be one of my favorite colors.  🙂

Head on over to Kim’s (Kim Sidwell Photography) page and see her gorgeous pictures!!

Hope you enjoy the theme!! Can’t wait to see your interpretations!!

It’s April!!  Spring is finally here!!

April Showers bring May flowers, so I thought it only fitting to make this month’s theme be Water.

I had a plan of what I wanted to photograph and then I changed course about a hundred times.  Ok, that’s an exaggeration, but still it was a lot of times.  I actually ended up going with my original plan though of how I wanted to interpret the theme.

Here is my take….

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Head on over to Erica at Woodsy Wonders Photography and see her take!!  Click on through to see all of our contributors’ awesome interpretations!!