Happy Friday... from the trenches...

Welcome to Friday from the trenches.  Here we are.  Tons of snow, but it didn't really snow today.  Cold.  The ski instructor in this house is happy for the work and the bonus of a snow day off school following a MLK holiday off.  I guess I'd rather have a bonus day on another week, but hey, if you're on a roll, keep on rolling!!
I took some really nice snowy tree pictures last week and have intentions of grabbing a Groupon coupon and printing one or two of them on canvas to hang.  My husband likes HOT, SWEATY weather...not much love for the snow....I say, hey, we have a LOT of work to do in the office in the winter and when it looks like this outside, golf isn't an options, so you may as well sit inside, next to the heated, sometimes in your sweats and slippers, and get LOTS of work done.  So we do...



Back to my snowy pictures...I picked up a Pottery Barn catalog before Christmas and was looking through it and saw some great canvas pictures of winter, but one of snowy pine trees really caught my eye and my heart...but not my wallet.  As a DIY girl, I thought, Heck!  I can do that!  Andrea had given a canvas for a wedding gift to her friend that had enlisted her help in catching the engagement on film.  And it turned out very nice!  So I decided I needed to be on the lookout for just such snowy settings to take some pictures.
If you've done groupon before, it's always good to check out the details.  I did family calendars for Christmas, but didn't realized until I was deep into creating, and had already purchased my groupon, that it did NOT include any writing on the calendar pages, only the photos on the top of each month.  350 or so dates later, I know that next year, I will check that fact BEFORE I buy.  They were still cool.  But I left a couple of things off.  Thought I only did one mistake, but others have shown up.  I guess I needed a proofer.
10 calendars, 35 special dates, it was bound to happen.
The canvas picture groupon that I had looked at first ended up to be only a panorama print.  I'm not sure if that's the shape I want, so I'm needing to do a bit more research.  But I'll have my own snowy picture, and it will mean even more to me, because it will be some snow and trees that I know personally.  And that's always a nice thing.  Like this tree here...not one of my shots to be considered.  But it was a gift several years back for answering some questions and offering advice, from a Christmas Tree guy.  He knows how to score points with me! 


 It's in my sort-of front yard.  It's my front yard, but I can't see it from my Kitchen window, because it's kind of tucked around.  But if you look realllll close, you might see the little baby to the left of it.  A tree that came home with a kid...from school, or church, somewhere like that.  It was planted by the back deck for a few years to keep it from being a lawn mower victim, but now has reached a point where it needed moved and hopefully can hold it own out in the wide open spaces of the yard.  So far, so good.  It's not really as close as it looks, because it is small and set back a ways.  There's plenty of room for it to sprawl out.  And give the birds some cover...and hold snow on its branches....and make me smile.  In a couple of years, I'll ask myself why I didn't put Christmas lights on it while it was still small enough to be a doable thing.  And then it will be too tall to reach... and I won't be able to mow it over, no matter how hard I might try.  But I'll smile, because like kids, these trees grow, because of, and in spite of what goes on around it.  And sometimes we are just plain surprised at how much time has passed, and how big they are, and did we miss anything along the way??