Only A Week! I Call This Improvement

Hi there! I'm here to share my photographs with you! Except I'm really supposed to be vacuuming my room so I'm gonna go do that and I'll be right back!

... *roar of the vacuum is heard* ...

Okay, so here I am again! Pictures, pictures, where did I put the pictures...? There they are! Here:

One of the windows outside the local elementary school, along with a lovely tree:

A figurine of two sisters having a chat (this needs white balancing, doesn't it?):

AWESOME sunlight on some pretty purple flowers that fell off our tree:

A rather odd-looking pink zinnia from the mailbox garden:

This is SOOC, I promise - I probably should have turned down the exposure before I took this!

Returning to an old favorite, the baseball:

Two other figurines, lit by sunlight streaming in the front door:

Mr. Baggins' favorite squeaky dragon:

The lovely cloudy sky (and a bit of a nice tree, too):

A bit from the bottom of my family tree; by the way, I have a few notes on that subject. Please stay tuned after this broadcast for a special announcement.

My ticket for DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2! Such an awesome movie...

Snape's last words... :'(

It rained rather hard for just a little bit yesterday afternoon, and I took this picture through the window over the kitchen sink:

FORK. I'm always the one who has to set the table for dinner, because I'm to OCD to trust anyone else to do it. Some days are worse than others, but I'm always pretty picky.

Okay, I think that's it - now for the special addendum to the Harry Potter Family Tree. I have two(ish) notes:

1. Marius or Cassiopeia (third generation from the top) may have had a child called Araminta Meliflua who tried to legalize Muggle hunting. She's only referenced as Sirius' mum's cousin, though, so that actually leaves quite a lot of possibilities, even if we only consider FIRST cousins. For instance, we don't know if Irma Crabbe (Sirius' grandma) had any siblings; we can assume she had at least one brother to carry on the Crabbe name, so Araminta might come from that side of the family.

2. Also, Lord Voldemort is descended (through the Gaunts) from Cadmus Peverell, original owner of the Resurrection Stone. Cadmus' brother Ignotus, original owner of the Cloak of Invisibility, is an ancestor of the Potter family. Ergo, Voldemort is related to Harry and should therefore appear on this family tree (along with the rest of the Gaunts and the Riddles).
Building from that, both Salazar Slytherin (ancestor of the Gaunts) and Godric Gryffindor (ancestor of the Potters) should also be included.

By the by... if you have no idea what I'm talking about, look down to the next post. ;)

The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black

I get bored sometimes and start drawing up a Harry Potter family tree. It's insane how many connections there are, how many familiar names you can happen upon. Check it out (and click to view large, please!):

A couple of notes I found on past editions I've done:
*Dorea and Charlus were probably not James' parents but rather his grandparents - this makes the dates fit better.
*Also, Lucretia and Ignatius were probably Molly's grandparents - the generation missing from this particular map may include the famous Auntie Muriel.

Four and a half hours!!

...until I see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt. 2! :D I'm so excited. We had shepherd's pie for dinner and it was fab and British.

ANYWAY, I just wanted to make this post to share this picture I took today. It's the same one I uploaded to the project site, but in color. Because I like it so much better in color!

Click to view large, please! And have a very Harry day. :D

EDIT: Ah, I've just learned how to do a "vintage" sort of effect. Check it out!

July in Monochrome

Over on 365project.org, in late June, somebody started a thread and suggested that we do a black and white challenge for July. All photos must be black and white. I thought, "Hey, this sounds fun. I hardly ever do black and white. What a great opportunity to improve my skills in that area!" And so far, it's going pretty well. I've begun shooting specifically for black and white, whereas before I would just shoot a good picture and convert it without thinking. I can't wait to see the results of this little experiment at the end of the month.

EDIT: I should note that I do not, by any means, convert ALL my photos to black and white. Mostly just the ones I upload to the project site. I could never do a month completely without color!

July has so far been more relaxed than June - hanging with friends, attending the occasional band/choir concert, reading, and generally having a good time. Here's a sampling of what I've got:

This necklace is so cute but it drives me crazy! Five separate charms on five separate chains, all connected by the same clasp? Whose bright idea was this?

Taken this past Friday just before Betsy and I headed out with our boyfriends for Trivia Night at a local cafe:

I took this one at the aforementioned concert! Betsy was asked by a local church to participate in a patriotic concert they were doing, and I took this just before the program began.

Hey, it's my actual 365 picture for the fifth! I just think it's pretty awesome and wanted to share it with you guys too:

This makes me smile. :) I took it at Lowe's when we were there to buy zinnias and ceiling fans.

Taken TODAY! I got some new lipstick, in a shade called "All Heart." It's a little dark, but I think it makes me look quite sophisticated. ;)

I call this the PIZZOMLETTE! Scrambled eggs with cheese and pepperoni. (And that adorable plate that looks like a lemon? 75 cents on clearance at Wal-Mart - I got one that looks like a strawberry, too!)

Another picture from the Lowe's garden center:

And yet another! This is actually one of the zinnias we ended up buying for our mailbox garden.

I took this at the concert. It looks very Narnia to me. :D

There's the strawberry plate! On top of it is a rather wonderful salad I made for myself one recent lunchtime.

I think that'll do it! Hopefully you folks will see me again VERY SOON. If you don't, it's okay to check and see if I'm still breathing.

Sorry, June... Guess I Missed You

Hey there, party people. It's been a while. I have been legitimately busy, but in a way that looks very much like sitting around the house. I've completed one and a half of my three summer reading assignments, took the ACT (got a 32! College tuition = paid), ran a week-long day camp, and APPLIED TO MOTHER-F'ING COLLEGE! Like a boss!

Yes, the University of Alabama finally opened up applications for Fall 2012 (I've been checking for at least a month). So I jumped right on that thing and applied. So easy! I do still need to fill out the Application for Scholarships, but I think I'll wait until school starts back up to do that. Just so I can be sure I have the most current information. It feels very grown-up to have applied to college, though I'm sure this is nothing compared to the feeling of actually BEING a college student. Whether they be at Alabama, Yale, MIT, or somewhere else, those are going to be some interesting years.

ANYWAY, on to the real reason you're here. (I have two followers now, according to my dashboard, so if I felt so inclined... I could refer to you in the PLURAL!). Photographs. I have a lot of them - 100 in June alone - so I'm certainly not going to post them all. But here's a sort of Greatest Hits, in no particular order:

First off, proof of my supermegafoxyawesomehot ACT score (along with a letter I received in the spring from the National Merit Scholarship Corporation - I look forward to hearing from them again soon!):

In early June, I attended a surprise birthday party for my best friend and other half, Emily. We had a lot of fun listening to music, playing games, and of course eating cake! Apples to Apples seems to be a favorite:

I took this at camp, during one of my many down-time periods. Most of the director's work, to be honest, is done BEFORE the camp starts. During the week, you're mostly just there to make daily announcements and make sure everything runs smoothly. A leaf from the pool field:

On the sixth, Ben's mom asked him to go up to Vulcan Park and check on some sprinklers (her company did the landscaping there, I believe), and he asked me to come along. I took this from the observation deck just as the sun set over Birmingham:

The whole Pottermore ordeal later in the month got me thinking how close we are to the end, so for a day or so, I took to carrying around this huge book I have on the making of the movies. It includes this sketch from J.K. Rowling of the Black family tree:

The old Friday night stand-by: frozen pizza (DISCLAIMER: this pizza is no longer frozen):

They can't all be winners. :P The dish-scrubbing brush from our kitchen sink:

I think I took this one while we were out shopping for Day Camp supplies. I hadn't gotten a picture yet that day, and those clouds were too pretty to pass up.

My favorite thing about this photo? The contrast of my nails against the blue wall.

It's like old-school No Fear Shakespeare! Except not nearly as helpful. I've mostly been reading the No Fear version online, but when I find a quote I like, I highlight it in this hard copy that I bought for seven dollars at an antique mall (it was published right here in Birmingham!).

Poison oak? It's growing up one of our pine trees...

Testing out my new (but extremely old) tripod, again against that serenely blue wall in the front hallway. That's a prize canister filled with origami lucky stars.

Our pecan tree is dropping all its nuts too early! I blame the squirrels.

More lucky stars. I sure do love those things!

Ah, I took this at camp, on Thursday night. That's the night that all the older girls (about 3rd grade and up) get to spend the night at camp. They were supposed to be swimming when this picture was taken, but it was POURING RAIN!

Strawberry in Sprite, my favorite fruity photographic subject. ;)

This was a truly terrible photo of a couple of Lucky Stars, so I applied a cool effect to it and made it into a cover for John Green's new book, The Fault in Our Stars. Check me out on tumblr to see the other covers I've made, and also look at http://thefaultinourstarscovers.tumblr.com for some truly amazing ones!

Ah, water balloons. A big part of the camp experience. :D

The two pieces of "jewelry" that I try to wear every single day: a watch on my left arm and my DFTBA bracelet on my right. That way I always know what time it is and I never forget to be awesome!

I think I'll make a new post for what I have so far of July. And maybe, just maybe, I'll find myself a little more motivated to keep this thing up in the future.