World Through My Lens 08.2024

 

Shutterbugs and photo-lovin’ friends glad to have you join me for The World Through My Lens 08.2024:  Everyday Images & SPSH and Sunday Stills.  Again today, I am joining Kym at A Fresh Cup of Coffee for her Every Day Images photo challenge. Kym describes the challenge as a way to be more intentional about watching for interesting things in life that she can capture with her camera.

Every two weeks she publishes a few words or phrases to focus on, and looks for opportunities to take pictures of these things.  As I have done in the past with other challenges I have participated in, I will just be sharing my photos once a month.  Here are the photos for May, June and July.

Also

Also joining my friend Ruth at This West London Life for the Summer 2024 Photo Scavenger Hunt (SPSH) who has taken over hostessing responsibilities for this photo hunt.  Ruth and her BFF compiled this summer’s photo prompts.  And I am glad to be joining the fun.

And One More

And glad to be rejoining my friend Terri at Second Wind Leisure Perspectives for her Sunday Stills series.  Until last month, it had been a ‘minute’ as the kids say since I had done a Sunday Stills post.  And like all of the photo challenges I used to participate in regularly, I have missed seeing Terri’s lovely photographs and being a part of Sunday Stills.  So, for now, I am back.  Hope I can find a way to balance all of these!!

Everyday Images #42

 

• at home (monthly):  going to share 2 photos for this prompt.  Wanted you to see how our front yard is struggling to stay green with day after day of triple digits.  I took this photo the day I mowed so it looks especially dry.  The second, closer up photo is our front stoop and a butterfly bush Lauren gave that has thrived in our yard.  Thank goodness, something is growing.

• yard (quarterly):  our backyard is struggling, too.  And now with us being gone for another week, I am really worried how things will look when we get back home.

• two:  my precious El Paso grands, Lucia and Camila.  I had the pleasure of dropping them off at school one day this week.  We played a quick game of ‘Babies,’ our pretend game that we always play in the car, and before I knew it they were scrambling out of the car.  They posed for a momentary photo taken looking out the window from the driver’s seat then clasped each others hands and ran into the school.

• sky:  we saw nary a raindrop on our 7-day vacation but on Sunday morning, as we were touring the San Antonio missions, this rainbow appeared overhead.  It was extraordinarily bright and unusual because it wasn’t in the usual arc shape but appeared almost like one of the clouds in the sky.  A straight rainbow.  A rainplain?

• path:  this isn’t exactly a path, but going to run with it anyway.  This was a canal that ran behind a nursery we recently visited.  I wanted to walk beside the canal to see where the path lead.  It was so green, and there were horses in the pasture or yard on the right, and an odd little one-seater plane.

• empty and/or full:  my favorite children’s book is Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.  I have a very old copy that was my father’s.  Lauren loved it as a child, too, and asked to borrow my copy.  I loaned it to her gladly.  Then they moved from Houston to Albuquerque and Albuquerque to El Paso and Lauren realized she hadn’t seen the book in years.  She was so sad.  On eBay I found an identical copy to the edition that was lost and bought it.  A few weeks after it arrived, Lauren discovered an unopened box at the top of a coat closet.  Guess what was inside?  Yup!!  The original Alice that had belonged to my father.  Lauren bought me this darling Alice coffee cup on a recent trip to Great Britain.  It is the only cup I use for my coffee now.

Everyday Images #43

 

• stairs:  since joining Kym for her Every Day Images photo challenge, I have been snapping more pictures.  Lots of random things…I guess every day things, just in case.  These pretty tile-adorned stairs were along the Riverwalk in San Antonio.  I took a picture because they were pretty and I like pretty.  And now I can share them with you.  The photos in the collage were created with Prisma Art Effect photo editing tool.

• doorway (quarterly):  earlier this month, my baby sister was crowned queen in the 60 & over Mrs. Cumberland County (TN) beauty contest.  So proud of her.  I can say I knew Valerie waaaaay back when.  Here she is, standing in the doorway of her Lincoln Nautilus, affectionately names Pearl, with Pearl’s new bling, a magnetic sign identifying her drive/my sister as Queen of Cumberland County.

• nature:  so glad I snapped a picture of this gnarled and contorted tree outside the visitors center at the San Antonio Missions.  Nature is so interesting.  And plants can be so resilient.  I think this beauty is a mesquite tree.  Our backdoor neighbors have 2 of them.  They are pretty and offer much needed shade to the desert southwest but they drop ‘trash’ all year ’round.  Pods, little leaf fronds, yellow flowers all over our pool deck and into our water.

• family:  our last night at South Padre Island, we all ordered take-out of some variation and ate it together at the large dining table in Brennyn’s condo.  This is my family.  Of course, there are others I love very much.  But this is my immediate family and I love them with all my heart.

• arrow:  had been looking for a ‘pretty’ arrow to snap a picture of but in the interest of completing this post in a semi-timely fashion, I am going to use this photo of the rental car arrow (and my PC) and call it done.

• stone:  one of our summer goals is to investigate creating a walk or path on the west side of the house; we stopped in at Desert Rock Company to look at their flagstone.  They had this attractive display of all of their stone products.  Lots of different sizes, shapes and colors of stone.

Summer 2024 Photo Scavenger Hunt (SPSH)

 

The scavenger hunt kicked off  06.01.2024 but I was a little late joining the party.  Would you expect anything else?  It runs until 09.30.2024 and final day to share our finds is 10.02.2024.  I have put checkmarks on the prompts for which I have found an image already.  I shared those captures, here.

• family pet or cute animal ✔️
• look up to the sky:  called in PC to help me with this one.  When we were at the beach, every time birds would fly overhead my phone would be dead.  Finally, Paul was able to capture the photo of the flock of birds flying beside our condo.  My phone finally cooperated for the other shots.  Decided to share them all.

• colourful front door:  it’s not the door that is so colorful in this picture but the decorations around the door.  We were driving by when they caught my eye.  PC pulled over and parked in front of the restaurant so I could jump out and snap a photo.  But then I had to inspect the clever way they had created this arch.  Would love to do the same around our door for holidays.

• what’s on your feet ✔️
• favourite summer food/meal:  I have been making this zero Weight Watcher’s point cheesecake since early spring.  It is light and sweet.  The perfect summer dessert.  I jazzed up the recipe by adding frozen blueberries and a dollop of sugar-free whipped topping.

• something with wings
• favourite summer reading nook/space:  my loft is my favorite place inside my home, which is my favorite place on Earth.  It is where some of my favorite things reside.  Where I read, write and craft.  It is my home inside my home.

• something colourful in your garden/neighbourhood

And There’s More

• moving water ✔️
• something that casts a shadow:  several of our neighbors on the beach strung kites from their sunshades.  They were so pretty dancing against the deep blue sky.  Especially this bright green one, which also cast an interesting shadow on the sand below.

• kitchen utensil you hardly ever use
• place of worship:  Mission San Jose, one of 5 missions in San Antonio founded and constructed in the early 18th century.  San Jose is an active parish even today.

• mark the passage of time
• your nation’s flag ✔️
• something you’ve repurposed

Alternate A: something misspelt

Alternate B: stamping

Sunday Stills

 

Glad to be back to looking for the Sunday Stills prompts again this month.  Here’s what I found.

• 08.04.2024 no challenge
• 08.11.2024 monthly color challenge: yellow and/or gold:  apparently there is a particular bridge that crosses the San Antonio Riverwalk where the bats sleep by day and come out at dusk.  The night we were there, only a few bats peeked about before we gave up waiting and returned to our Air B-n-B.  These gold fish or sun fish, maybe, are suspended below the bridge and cast a lovely reflection in the river.

• 08.18.2024 reunited:  we were reunited with our grandchildren and their parents at South Padre.  I wrote about our accommodations, here, if you are interested.  I snapped this picture of PC standing in between the 2 eldest of the grandbabies, reunited on the first evening of our vacation.  Reunited with one another.  Reunited with the ocean.  To Cadence, 14, on the left, PC is PaPaul and for Lucia, 8, on the right, Paul is Campa.  I think I would like to paint this picture.

 

• 08.25.2024 before and after: this was a tough one for me.  I even set a reminder on my phone to take a picture of my breakfast this morning before I ate it and then after I’d finished, when the plate was licked clean.  Turned off the reminder and forgot all about taking the picture.  So, I am resorting to using a scrapbook page for this prompt. Before everything was glued on the page and after the page was finished.