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Picture This

© Michelle Hines

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My last post!
It took me much longer than a year but I did it!
I had planned on a different photo as my last post, one with a for sale sign in front of our home. We are moving to Houston, Texas. Patrick has been promoted, he will have to go to work in an office everyday after years of working from home. BIG BIG changes! I am terribly excited and a little sad. I wish I could pack my kids and Oliver up and take them with me. Being far from the children in my life will be hard. I am hoping to throw myself into photography, quilting and exploring Houston.


Oliver eleven months.

The past 20 months I have learned so much about photography. I hope with more study and practice that I will continue to grow as a photographer. I really love it. Thank you so much for following me on this journey. I am going to begin a new blog, one that follows Patrick and I as we start this next stage of our lives. I will post a link as soon as it is up and running.

© Michelle Hines

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This weekend we had big plans to attend Great Grapes. Unfortunately it has been one hundred degrees with a heat index making of one hundred ten. Definitely too hot to be outdoors drinking. We chose instead to do a little gift shopping, a little housekeeping and some reading. Around four o'clock a big storm blew in and cooled things down to a muggy eighty degrees. Patrick and I headed to Kinder Farm Park for a walk. I love to walk there. The trail is just hilly enough to feel like you are working a bit and the scenery is beautiful.

Some parts of the trail are out in the open.

Some parts are wooded and shady. (You can see all the debris from the storm.)

The farm as seen from the far side of the park.

© Michelle Hines

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I have not been taking as many photos as I usually do. It is too hot to do much outside. With temperatures and humidity in the upper nineties Oliver and I are spending much of our day indoors. The room we hang out in is small and not well suited to photography. I have also been a little bored with the same old shots. Today however I found myself longing to take photos. Since the camera has not been out as much as it should Oliver was totally intrigued and kept racing towards it. My toy was much more interesting than his. I grabbed this shot just before he grabbed the camera.

Those eye just melt my heart!

© Michelle Hines

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This weeks Digital Photography School assignment is "In The Kitchen". The assignment had been in the back of my mind but I just couldn't think of the shot I wanted. Then after making minestrone soup this afternoon I was cleaning up the cutting board and inspiration hit. The end of the celery was flower like so we had a quick photo shoot.

straight out of the camera

black and white


I submitted the black and white as my entry.

© Michelle Hines

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We found out about a year ago that Max is allergic to almost everything. His dog food is make from herring, sweet potato and oats and that seems to be working well for him. If we add other ingredients to his diet he gets itchy and his ears and face swell. Finding treats is difficult. At first I spent a fortune buying dehydrated sweet potato treats, then I started dehydrating them myself. After dropping a piece of raw sweet potato on the floor we realized that he liked it and so did Sophie. So now that the outside temperatures are in the nineties (dehydrating requires running the oven at two hundred fifty degrees for six hours) we have been just giving them raw sweet potato. Last week I was out of sweet potato and Max really really wanted something. I looked in the veggie drawer and found carrots. It couldn't hurt them so we tried. Max loves them....

Sophie isn't quite sure.

Kate and Matt decided last week that they would adopt....

(photo by Kate, edited by me)

meet Luna Lovegood.

© Michelle Hines

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On Sunday Oliver will be ten months old. It has been very hot here and we have not been able to be outside for very long. We braved the heat for a few minutes to get some ten month photos this morning. I am hoping to be able to got some "studio" shots next week.

Did you notice the post number? Only five more post to go!!

© Michelle Hines

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My first attempt at photo restoration.

This photo was taken in 1954 (photographer unknown). It is of my father in law receiving an award for being the Soldier of the Year. He is the one in the center, shaking hands. The soldier to his right had been taped over and was missing an eye. There was tape residue in the lower left corner and staples in the bottom.

(If you click on the images you can see them larger.)

© Michelle Hines

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While we were in Gainesville we visited the butterfly museum at the University of Florida. I could have spent hours there. It was magical to be in a huge room full of fluttering butterflies.

The butterflies loved Andrew. While I was busy taking pictures else where he had as many as four butterflies on him at one time.

I tried and tried to get a photo of the big blue butterflies that just never seemed to sit still. I had given up when Patrick told me he found one just sitting with its wings spread wide. It was on me! I slowly handed him the camera and he snapped this shot. Not really flattering for me but the butterfly looks great!

© Michelle Hines

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The convention Patrick had to attend was held at the Gaylord Palms Hotel. It is a huge hotel with an atrium covering four and a half acres of gardens and paths.

The Atrium

The Convention Center



The rooms and atrium are divided into three Florida themed areas...

St. Augustine,

Key West,

and the Everglades.
I got to put faces with the names of people I have been hearing about for years. The food was great. The hotel was beautiful and best of all I got to see my husband every day instead of waiting at home missing him.

© Michelle Hines

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Patrick had to attend a convention in Florida this week, mom and I tagged along. The first leg of our trip was spent in Lakeland visiting Mom's siblings.

Lillian, Donald, Mom (Eileen) and Maureen

Joe, Lillian, Donald, Trish (holding Quincy), Mom, Dennis and Maureen

Three years is way too long between visits.

© Michelle Hines

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Ego Alley, Annapolis, Maryland

© Michelle Hines

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Matt's new tattoo.

© Michelle Hines

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My hydrangea is fuller this year than it has ever been. It is as tall as I am and is covered with beautiful blue blooms the size of dinner plates. Except near the bottom on one side where there are two pink ones.

© Michelle Hines

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This beautiful flower is called Tequila Sunrise and inside it holds a surprise.....

a tiny little flower.

© Michelle Hines

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Tonight I decided to dust off my macro lens and take a walk around the yard. I was hoping to find something unusual to photograph. I got lucky but I wasn't the only one...

Love bugs

© Michelle Hines

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Oliver in his happy place.

© Michelle Hines

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Yesterday morning Lilly came for a play date while Chloe was at swimming lessons. Lilly and I worked in the veggie garden weeding and planting more peas. Last summer Lil loved eating peas straight from the garden. She worked really hard but I think she had a lot of fun too. After swim class Chloe came to play too. We had lunch and spent time picking clover and making crowns in the backyard. I hope they had as much fun as I did. Of course I took a lot of pictures. Chloe played shy and wouldn't look at the camera and Lilly has mastered the fake cheesy grin.

I am really having fun playing with black and white photos.

© Michelle Hines

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Oliver quietly celebrated his 9 month birthday yesterday. He is getting so big. He is crawling and cruising. He loves to swing and lunges towards it when he sees it. I am so head over heels in love with this little man.

© Michelle Hines

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I spent the weekend in Texas with Patrick. Saturday morning we drove out to the Kemah Boardwalk . It was nothing like an East Coast boardwalk. There was no beach. Lots of nice restaurants, rides and boardwalk games but the sound of the crashing waves was missed.

I had never seen a double decker carousel.

The wooden roller coaster was neat.

It was a nice way to spend a part of our day. After lunch in Kemah we headed back to Houston and drove around looking at different communities. I am still shocked when I see how inexpensive the homes are compared to Maryland.

© Michelle Hines

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Last fall Kate and Matt bought two pumpkins, one orange and the other white. They didn't carve either of them for Halloween. They sat on the patio until after Thanksgiving until they got squishy. Thinking the squirrels and chipmunks would enjoy them I moved them off of the patio table and into one of the gardens. The first blizzard came in December then two more in January and the pumpkins were forgotten by me and the wildlife. After the snow melted there sat two pumpkins remarkable still in their original shape. The outside shell had hardened kind of like a gourd. I had been thinking about growing pumpkins in our veggie garden this summer and decided instead to just let them grow in one of our decorative flower beds. I got out a shovel and turned the soil over where the pumpkins sat and wait to see if they would grow. They are flourishing. The orange pumpkin plant is much larger but both already have flowers on them. In the morning and late in the evening the flowers are closed up tight...

But during the day they are open, big beautiful orange stars.

© Michelle Hines

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The perfect way to end the holiday weekend.

© Michelle Hines

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After doing a lot of reading and talking to others who have used them I decided to buy Oliver a string of Baltic amber beads. The succinic acid in the beads, which is released when the beads are worn against the skin, acts as an analgesic. I am also going to buy a bracelet and anklet for myself to see if it helps with my chronic pain.

© Michelle Hines

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My Final Project

I am a bit disappointed in myself. While the photos were technically good they lacked interest. I am hoping that if I continue to work on it it will become a stronger body of work. The following is the first paragraph of my artist statement, the paper we were required to write explaining our work...

The focus of my final project is mailboxes. It is such a common place object that it is often overlooked. Everyone has one. Some are personalized; statement pieces adorning the front yard of their owners. Others, old and rusty, are purely utilitarian. I chose my subject after two separate conversations with college students who both needed assistance in addressing and placing stamps on envelopes. The way we think of mail today is changing. When someone says they have sent you mail they usually mean email. Where the traditional mailboxes use to be the inbox of choice for conversations and news from friends and family it is now a receptacle for junk mail and bills. The mail that we look forward to comes instantly over the internet. What does this mean for the future of the mailbox? My goal is to document the many different mailboxes that we drive by each day; objects so familiar that despite the owner’s attempts to make theirs unique have become all but invisible.

This is not all of them but you get the idea.

© Michelle Hines