January 22

About once a week a student stops by to share a birthday treat, hoping for a trinket as a trade. I always take one, hoping it will get the student back to class a little quicker. Usually I'll pass the treat onto someone else at the end of the day, the exception being halfmoons, they are too hard to resist!

January 21

Lazy shot, holding the books on my lap while taking the picture with my phone. It's what happens when it's late and I still want to get a picture. :)

Anyway...Pernille Ripp writes my new favorite blog. It's my first place to turn when I'm looking for a book recommendation. I've used it for finding books for signposts and this is what I have so far for theme, with more on the way. So far my favorite book in this pile is Chopsticks. It make me laugh out loud and I can't wait to share it with my fourth and fifth graders.

Jan 23 Giving Blood

I used to be a regular blood donor and then quit because my iron count was always a bit low. Today my son encouraged me to try again at the fire house in his village. And....success! Now to get back on track as a regular. 

January 20 Cardinal

This is the first time I've seen a bird eat the lilacs.

A few minutes later he moved farther away and there were 3 other birds in the tree.

Today as I went to shut doors around the house, to keep our dog out of them when we're not home, I saw this Cardinal sitting in the lilac tree right outside the window. I love cardinals and have such a hard time getting photos of them, they are so camera shy. I was ready to walk out the door but I set my school bags down and pulled out my phone and took a few shots. Considering they are from a distance and through a window I'm ok with the quality.

Yesterday I think I saw an eagle on my way to work. But it was on a road where there was no was place to pull over and watch. I will keep my eye open for another sighting. 

January 17-Macro Monday-Vegetables

Well, I'll be a little out of order. This was yesterday's shots for Macro Monday-Vegetables. I stopped by the grocery store on Sunday and picked up a few things just to photograph. Here's a link to the whole folder.
Here are the two shots I submitted-there were many submissions for garlic, peppers and mushrooms so I used a shot of a tomatillo and eggplant.

January 18-Snowy Day!

Winter arrived today with about 10 inches of snow! Here are a few pics from my phone of this beautiful day!

Gerite is not loving winter like she used to, poor baby.

Looks like about 9.5 inches and it was still coming down!

I don't take selfies very often but couldn't resist today. :)

The birds will be happy that the feeders are full.

Awesome present from my husband a couple years ago. I love my Tubbs.

January 16-315 Brewery

Today we headed out to an antique show in Syracuse, followed by lunch and then a stop at 315 Brewery in Warners. I love the beer there and it was great to see it busy although too busy for my taste. A few quick pictures from my phone while trying to stay out of the way of other people.

January 15-Old Shirts

Way back in the days of teaching first grade I had a 100 Book Club. If my students read 100 books (advanced readers could count each chapter as a book) they could draw a t-shirt design about reading. My husband would be the judge and then clean the design up good enough so he could screen print it for me. Parents would pay for the cheapest shirts I could find, I would help my husband with the screen printing, and students would receive their shirts the last week of school. I usually had about 99% participation rate. If students were close I'd fudge it so they got a shirt but there was usually one student that rarely read. I felt bad but that student didn't get the shirt. Anyway, my copy of the shirts have been sitting in a closet. I decided to hang them on the back of the chairs in in my classroom. I'm not sure how this will work but we'll give it a try. Now I'm contemplating letting my students design a shirt, I have some pretty artistic 3rd-5th graders, having my husband select a winner once again and printing shirts just to communicate a positive message about reading with no competition. I guess I better check with my husband first to see if he's interested in helping out again. :)

In hindsight I wish I had had the student with the winning design sign my shirt. These kids have all graduated from high school my now.

January 13-Snow Day

Well, it was another hyped up storm-10-18 inches of snow forecasted and we ended up with 4 at the most. I know those lake effect storms are hard to predict... I think all the schools in the area were closed. So, while my husband was out snow blowing I used my 50 year old cookbook, yes I'm dating myself, and made some unhealthy but easy and tasty cinnamon rolls. Our aging and sick dog is getting very picky about what she'll eat and she likes these so she's had several. I posted this picture on Facebook and was surprised at how many other people have this cookbook too. It was a good day to be home, I was able to FaceTime with an insurance adjuster and get our tree claim taken care of very efficiently. 

Here's one more shot of the tree from a different angle.

January 12-Storm Damage

We made it through the terrible wind storm on Sunday night and Monday without damage. Today when we woke up we looked out the window and were greeted with the sight below. I think this is the third tree that has landed on our property but the first one to cause real damage. The neighbor's insurance won't cover it since it's an act of nature. There's only one tree left, I wish they'd take it down because it's the largest and could land on our cars.

The birds and squirrels are not going to be happy losing a favorite perch plus for the moment some of the feeders are a little hard to reach.

 

January 11-RFMC

Tonight was the first official meeting for The Ride for Missing Children. This will be my 8th year involved in The Ride and this one is a special ride because it will mark the 20th anniversary. I rode my first year, got hurt and couldn't ride so became a volunteer the second year and have stayed a volunteer ever since. I'm sure it will come as no surprise that I started out as a volunteer photographer. The next step was joining the family committee and concentrating my photography on family members and events. I've loved it. Last year after The Ride my son was a rider in the Ride of Hope to Washington DC and my husband was his team's sag driver. That event touched my husband and he came home determined to do The Ride this year and wants me to ride with him. So..... that's what I'll be doing this year. I'll still be doing photography, just not on the day of the ride.

I took a few pictures at the meeting. This one is special. Twenty years ago when seven men rode their bikes to Washington DC for the first time they were met by a local teacher and some of his students. They sang a song when the riders got there. Tonight that teacher happened to stop by to say hello to Dick Jordan, one of those seven original riders. It was a touching moment.

You can learn more about The Ride here.
If you'd like to make a contribution you can do that here. My son, husband and I have a commitment to raise $1500 to help print posters and provide safety education to children.

January 10-Macro Monday-Buttons

No camera pics today. But here are the two pictures I decided to enter for Macro Mondays-Buttons

I am a keeper of buttons and have started a second jar to store them. Before I toss a piece of clothing I remove and keep the buttons. I have a quite a few from my kids' old clothes that are fun to look at. This face button was on my dress as a little girl. 

I'm a little embarrassed to admit this but I think this cow was off a sweater of mine many years ago.

January 9 OlloClip

This week's Macro Monday theme is buttons. I decided to take a few shots of buttons with my iPhone and my macro Olloclip. The buttons are on a Christmas sweatshirt and I took the pictures while sitting under a light on the couch. No special  set up and no editing. One thing I need to look into is a adapter to hook my phone up on my little bendable tripod, of course the name of the tripod escapes me at the moment.

January 8 New Brewery

Exciting times for our area, our first farm brewery opened up.  It's on my way home from work and less than 4 miles from home! It was great to see the place packed on the first night of its soft opening. There were three beers on tap. The stout was my favorite. I wasn't ready to bring home a growler of anything yet but I'm sure the day will come. It's being run by three teachers, nice!

January 7-My Word for the Year

Here's my blog post behind this picture:http://thereadingroomk-2.blogspot.com/2016/01/my-word-for-year-retirement.html

I took the picture with my phone and don't like it at all. I may retake it eventually with my camera for a better picture on my teacher blog. But not tonight....

January 6 The Ride Home

Today I took a little bit longer route home because it's easier to stop along the road to take a picture. I was beginning to think I wasn't going to find anything when I approached the last hill and the power lines shimmered with the setting sun hitting them and the sky was such a pretty blue. I didn't manage to capture the sparkle, sigh. 

January 5-Proud Parents' Moment

42 new PA students ready to begin training.

Our Daughter

After the ceremony it was off to Druther's Brewery for a celebratory flight of beers and dinner.

Harvest Mac and Cheese

Proud parent story today: Our daughter has known she has wanted to enter the medical field since beginning undergrad. She went from physical therapist, to physician's assistant to doctor and back to PA. She worked hard and graduated with honors with a degree in biology and minor in chemistry (I think). Then she set her sights on getting into PA school but needed direct patient care hours first. So she lived at home and fulfilled that requirement and applied to her top choice for schools. She was accepted and today on day two she received her white coat. I was surprised she got that so quickly but it was explained today they do that so the students know they are a professional in training. It's going to be a tough 28 months for her, but it will all be worth it in the end.

January 4 Macro Mondays-Negative Space

I couldn't come up with the shot I wanted. Note to self-begin working on these types of shots earlier in the week. But since I really want to submit two photos for the theme I went with this one as my second shot. I have two old thimbles with advertising; this one for a lumber yard and the other is the same colors/texture but advertises coffee. Interesting...

I posted this one the other day. Jan 1st and we had a little snow. Not a great snow for photographs but this one worked. On the last day of school before winter break I talked to most of the 4th graders about Wilson Bentley. I shared my love of photography and some of my snowflake and macro shots. Today my fourth graders enjoyed looking at this shot, I had it on the door of my classroom with a Happy New Year attached.

I did not take a photo with my phone today. After sitting in my car for at least 15 minutes waiting for the frost to melt on the inside of the windows I thought, oh I should have taken some pictures of the frost. Then while driving home someone flashed their lights so I slowed down and sure enough there were close to 10 deer in a yard. I did consider stopping for a picture but I knew my window was frozen shut and I didn't want to take a chance on getting rear ended. Who knows, maybe something will inspire me yet tonight.... 

January 3- Hockey Time

It's unusual for us to take in a hockey game on a Sunday afternoon but we were there today to support our local college team. The coach had his 200th win today!

One More Goal for 2016

Last year I switched over and bought my first iPhone. I do use it to take pictures but don't always do anything with them. So, after reading about some other photo goals yesterday I decided to add one more goal for this year; try to take and post a daily shot from my phone and add it to this blog as well. I may not post it here every day but I'll try to update at least once a week with all the shots.

So, today's picture is tire tracks at the gas station, my husband pointed these out to me.

Photo Goals for 2016

Well, it's been a year and a half since I posted here! In good news I have continued to take pictures but just neglectful when it comes to blogging.

This past fall Heidi encouraged me to post one of my photos to Macro Mondays.

I did and I have continued to participate in the challenges most Mondays since then. So, my goal this year is to try and meet all 52 challenges and to try and come up with two different images most weeks. Macro photography is my favorite so this is a fun challenge and a weekly commitment is easier than a daily one.

I'm not sure how the algorithm works for Explore on Flickr but since participating in Macro Mondays several of my shots have shown up there. What a surprise that first time when I woke up to so many messages that people had faved/commented on my photo, I wasn't sure what was going on. This is my favorite shot to the group so far, weathered and worn

I have my eye on a macro photo conference later in the year. There are a couple of macro photographers that I follow on Facebook that will be presenting there, one is Don Komarechka, an awesome photographer of snowflakes. The price is reasonable and I'm hoping I'll be able to make it to that.

This past year I took photos of two families for Christmas cards.

I think I would like to do more of that as a side business once I retire from teaching. Anything to bring in a little extra cash. Another idea I have floating around is possibly doing some notecards with my macro shots and trying sell them at craft shows or Etsy. I've got some research to do before deciding on that venture.  Continuing to improve my skills at shooting groups of people and lighting will need to be areas to work on throughout the new year as well.

For now...first flakes of 2016.