• Creative,  Family,  Shameless Stuff,  Thoughts

    *Bling Bling* on the Blog

    My cousin Elizabeth recently re-did her webpage and coincidentally I got the urge to work on mine Saturday. I sat down last night and came up with the banner. Initially there was white space where the butterflies were but I couldn’t think of an appropriate photo to stick in there and then I found the little wingdings and the butterflies just ‘became’. Voila! The biggest pain was going through every page I have to fix it all. The photography link above does not work currently because it will eventually link to our photo website. We have a potential name, to be announced later, so once we finally decide on the…

  • Texas

    Ballooning above Plano

    Chris’ mom got us a ride on a hot air balloon on Friday morning for the Plano Balloon Fest. I was leery of going because of some previous accidents in which I was thrown out of some boats and some really bumpy airplane rides, but the ride was pretty smooth. We didn’t go far or high due to zero wind and I wasn’t that appreciative of the guide bumping the treeline on purpose, but it was fun to see. I definitely wouldn’t do it again but if you don’t have issues with heights I’d would suggest going!

  • Thoughts

    Sunday Morning Thoughts

    I was on my Flickr account the other day when I stumbled across this photo tucked into our gardening section. Ah, it makes me miss all of my plants. That is a variegated vanilla orchid and one of our favorite plants. We had several types of vanilla and because of Chris’ super awesome watering system on the porch they became very, very long vines. We cut them into sections to sell when we sold all of our plants. A few plants are still at Chris’ dad’s house but otherwise everything we had is gone. I think I miss our ylang-ylang tree the most, mostly because I grew that thing from…

  • Local Coffee

    Local Coffee: Roots Coffeehouse-NRH

    Mom told me about Roots Coffeehouse a few days ago so I went the other day while doing some errands. It is located in the North Richland Hills town center on Grapevine Highway across the northeast campus of Tarrant County College. They even have a blog Blog! If you read this Roots, you should update your blog and let us know what is going on! There were a lot of outside seating for those who wish to go out. For being an organic and fair trade oriented place I thought the prices were pretty good. I bought a cafe au lait with soy milk. I was also asked if I…

  • Appalachian Trail 2010

    Trail Tales 5: Hot Springs to Erwin

    Relevant posts: Spring in Erwin We’d heard from our friend Thin Mint had said that the climb out of Hot Springs was one of her favorites and it wasn’t a let down. As you leave Hot Springs you walk along the river front for awhile until you climb up onto the ridge and head on out of town. We saw two snakes on our way out of town, this one and a water snake down near the river. On our way out of town we ran into On the Loose who was slackpacking her way back into Hot Springs. Slackpacking is where one gets dropped off at a certain distance…

  • Texas,  Travel & Places

    Texas Roadtrip: Caprock Canyon State Park

    Our first stop on our road trip was out to Caprock Canyon State Park. We took U.S. 287 from Fort Worth out past Mineral Wells Wichita Falls, a town I’d never been too and I was surprised that it was a decent sized city, and on into the rugged, western setting of Texas. We thought we’d prepared and brought everything but once on the road we realized we’d forgotten our dinners. We’d decided to buy those heat and serve frozen meals, like Berrtolli or Stouffers, since they are easy to cook and pretty tasty so we pulled over into a dinky little town with a tiny grocery store to buy…

  • Appalachian Trail 2010

    Trail Tales 4: Davenport Gap to Hot Springs

    Relevant posts: Max Patch Bald When we left the Smokies we ended up at the Standing Bear Farm Hostel. It wasn’t our intended destination but once we heard about pizza and soda’s we were easily adaptable. We arrived around 5pm and the place was packed. The people we thought we wouldn’t see again were staying there for nearo’s and zero’s and it was an all out party. The hostel itself was kinda neat, rustic and such, but I was peeved that the bunkhouses were full and we had to tent. To boot we had to pay the same price for tenting as if we were in the bunkhouse. Probably one…

  • Family

    Budding Photographer

    Zoe loves cameras and I think someone in the family was planning on getting her a children’s digital camera for Christmas. The next set was very fun to shoot because it all happened in a short period of time. The final shot is one of her bawling but it came out blurry because she moved too fast for the camera settings I had on, so I didn’t bother to upload it. Oh, it will definitely be given to her parents so they can show it at her 16th birthday party! hehe! Hey Dad, can I borrow your camera? Sure kid, lemme show you how to use it! YAY! I’m so…

  • Texas,  Thoughts,  Travel & Places

    Roadtrip Roundup

    What I thought was a milkweed bug, but I’m not sure so someone id it for me, on a yellow flower in Palo Duro Canyon State Park. Check out the pollen it’s kicking up at the top right! Our whirlwind road trip across Texas is now over. Somewhere in the middle to late part of the trip I got a little exhausted thinking in photos. Thinking about what to shoot, angles, techniques and trying to go above and beyond. It was just a bit too much, I think. When we got to the beach on Mustang Island I just wanted to sit and be, to relax and love the water…

  • Family

    The Apple Juice Belly

    A story by Zoe: One day I was at a park with Mommy, Daddy, Aunt T and Uncle Twis. We had all sorts of fun and I was minding my business drinking out of my sippy cup and apparently I left my belly hanging out. Then my Mommy told me to stop looking like a redneck and put my shirt down! She ruins all the fun! My belly needed a tan, doesn’t she know that?