1. Proud owner of a new driver’s license, 2. Birthday cookie cake with chocolate chip lettering, 3. Chocolate mustache, 4. “On Joy” from Something Beautiful for God, 5. Put on a happy face :), 6. My jumbo mug makes me feel like Alice in Wonderland, 7. Photogenic food #Publix4Pork, 8. Dinner in the works #publix4pork, 9. Braised Pork with Peppers and Onions #publix4pork

As most parents who’ve “been there” will tell you, once the initial fear of your teen driving wears off, it’s mighty handy to have an extra driver’s license in the family. Because of the spacing of our oldest kids, we’ve had kids that could drive leave for college without another teen driver to take up the slack. Twice.

On Friday our third son turned 17 and got his license—an eventful day! Unfortunately for him, our oldest son had a wreck the night before, so there isn’t a spare vehicle. We’ve done some interesting maneuvering with the ones we have this week!

What about you? Do you have a teen driver and does it make your life easier or more stressful?

What did your camera phone capture this week?

Camera Phone Friday: Another Driver’s License in the Family is a post from: My Home Sweet Home
© 2012 My Home Sweet Home | All rights reserved

Here are a couple of quick tips if you like to shoot landscapes. First, place the horizon line—the point where sky meets land or water—either 1/3 from the top or 1/3 from the bottom of the image. It’s much more interesting than perfectly centered.

You’ll usually be able to decide whether to place it 1/3 from the top or bottom based on which element of the picture is most interesting. Blue skies are nice in theory, but a bit boring in photography. Big, puffy clouds, on the other hand, are highly photogenic!

Comparing the two pictures above, we see that the sky held more visual interest that day.

Also, try to keep your camera level, something that I obviously failed to do in this shot. It makes you feel like you’re going to fall and roll down the hill, doesn’t it?

Fortunately, shots like this fix easily in editing software. For instance, when I crop in Lightroom I can grab the corner of the image and level it. Grid lines even appear to help me!

What do you prefer to shoot? People or landscapes?

Tips for Shooting Landscapes is a post from: My Home Sweet Home
© 2012 My Home Sweet Home | All rights reserved

1. “She’s a fatty with juicy bits” (@inspiredbryant made me say that) #campcreativpreneur #imabouttoeatthebiggestcinnamonrollever #canyoudeciferthis?, 2. Tea for 2 with @inspiredbryant & my huge cinnamon roll, 3. Squee!!! #campcreativpreneur with @inspiredbryant @holleygerth @nester @redletterwords @lainieb @erinulrich, 4. Loving being a guinea pig at the 1st #campcreativpreneur from @squeeinc!

1. Do you want your crayons back?, 2. Creative goodness from #campcreativpreneur #lovemyjournal, 3. My own pot of Blackberry Sage tea, tarts, & a homemade marshmallow! {le sigh} Feeling spoiled at #campcreativpreneur, 4. Too lovely to eat #campcreativpreneur @squeeinc, 5. How did I get this @instagram when I’m holding my camera? ;), 6. Interesting: the Last Supper upside down in spools of thread, 7. By Gilbert Stuart #campcreativpreneur, 8. Live this painting by Edward Dalton Marchant #nofilter #dudelookslikejohnlennon #campcreativpreneur, 9. School Rules by William Holbrook Beard, 10. Rosie the Riveter in person!, 11. *like* Stuart Davis: Rue de l’Echaude, 12. @redletterwords about to experience @chickfila for the 1st time!, 13. Woo hoo! @redletterwords loved her 1st @chickfila experience, 14. Campin’ at #campcreativpreneur @squeeinc, 15. My bracelets that talk to me, 16. It’s January, & my youngest is still playing A Charlie Brown Christmas #bestkidsappever, 17. My youngest doing the 30 Day Shred with me using stuffed toys for weights, 18. Duckie balloon @chickfila, 19. Balloon dog boy :), 20. My necklace is a painted clay model of my camera, made for me by @sprittibee’s daughter!

1. Oh, how I love these onion rings!, 2. Crazy alien puppets we made, 3. Making puppet faces, 4. 10yos making shadow puppets

Wow! This has been a seriously Instagrammable week! It started a fabulous 4-day trip to Arkansas where I visited DaySpring headquarters and got to be a guinea pig for the first Camp Creativpreneur from a new company called Squee! (The site hasn’t launched yet, but look for great things to come from this collaboration between my dear friends Holley and Stephanie) and wrapped with a sweet date with my 10-year-old son to see Space! at the Center for Puppetry Arts followed by lunch at The Varsity.

Less Instagrammable moments included our first dissection this year (earthworms) for the Classical Conversations class I tutor and my progress with the 30 Day Shred, although you can see my 6-year-old daughter doing it with stuffed dolls as weights in the middle collage.

What did your camera phone capture this week?

Camera Phone Friday: Did I Actually Instagram 28 Pictures this Week? Edition is a post from: My Home Sweet Home
© 2012 My Home Sweet Home | All rights reserved

We were actually at Moe’s four straight days last week. #TrueStory #MoesQuesoIsAddictive

And, drum roll please . . . I got a new Tote & Shoot from Shootsac and I LOVE it. I was a little nervous about traveling with only carry ons (you’re limited to one suitcase and either a camera bag or purse), but I’m able to put my camera, Shootsac tucked inside with 3 more lenses, iPad, AND stuff my purse down in it. It’s amazing how much you can stuff in there! To top it off, you can unzip the bottom of a pocket on the back and slide the pop-up handle of your luggage through it (just watch the video in the middle of the page or look really closely at the right side of the collage).

Where am I this week? Well, I’m a guinea pig this weekend for the first Camp Creativpreneur (creative entrepreneur) for a new company called Squee! started by my lovely friends Holley and Stephanie. As to what I’m actually doing . . . well, if you know that, you’re way ahead of me. I just know I’m ready to be part of anything these gals are up to – they dreamed up (in)courage, so I’d say their dreaming & scheming is pretty fabulous.

I also visited DaySpring’s home office with Holley and Dee from Red Letter Words yesterday and even had a meeting(!) that may or may not lead to something more. It seems like my whole week is full of mystery at this point.

What did your camera phone capture this week?

Camera Phone Friday: Arkansas Adventure Edition is a post from: My Home Sweet Home
© 2012 My Home Sweet Home | All rights reserved

1. Ride ‘em cowboys (a Mickey D’s with saddle seats), 2. A piece of history, 3. Home where Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her novels, 4. Reading this for the high school homeschool class I teach. A really good read!

I struggled a bit over what “edition” this Camera Phone Friday should be, until I looked at the pictures: two are from Missouri’s Rocky Ridge Farm, the home where Laura Ingalls Wilder and her husband Almanzo settled down and where her Little House books were written. We stopped there on our trip home from visiting family in Kansas and Missouri. The trip barely begun, the kids sleepy, so only three three youngest, my husband, and I got out to look.

It felt like stepping back in time. I ran my hands up and down the rail and then approached the door to the old farm house, touching the knob. I wanted to believe that writing magic could seep like osmosis, transferring between the things that Laura touched and my fingertips. Hey, it couldn’t hurt, right?

The book about Mother Teresa is called Something Beautiful for God (affiliate link below) and I’m reading it for the Classical Conversations Challenge II (approximately 10th grade) class that I teach. If you want inspiration on how to live less for you and more for Him, this is a good place to find it.

What are you reading now, and what did your camera phone capture this week?

Camera Phone Friday: Inspired Edition is a post from: My Home Sweet Home
© 2012 My Home Sweet Home | All rights reserved

1. Time to create . . . (I’ll just ignore that murder part – this is T.S. Eliot), 2. Chambord champagne cocktail, 3. Costume contest, 4. Yo. I’m tough., 5. My own personal super hero :), 6. Blue skies, 7. Meeting great Granny, 8. Big orange fish, 9. Ice cream finale to happy 95th birthday dinner with Granny

This week our family undertook a cross country adventure to visit my husband’s grandmother on her 95th birthday. Our two youngest girls had never met Granny and the other kids hadn’t seen her in years. We spent two nights in Kansas City, KS, with my mother-in-law and visited family there, and then spent two days in Joplin, MO, with Granny.

Granny is an inspiration. At 95 she still lives in a duplex on her own, drives, and bowls regularly. It’s been a while since she’s hit 200, but she doesn’t score too far below it. Much higher than I’ve ever bowled, that’s for sure.

We may have provided the most chaotic birthday Granny’s had in years, but it was a happy one. We played cards all afternoon; went out for dinner to Cheddar’s, where the whole room sang Happy Birthday and were awed by Granny’s spunk and good knees; and then went home and played cards the rest of the evening.

I don’t know when we’ll see her next, but the whole family fell in love with Granny all over again (and the little ones for the first time).

What did your camera phone capture this week?

Camera Phone Friday: Granny’s 95th Birthday Edition is a post from: My Home Sweet Home
© 2012 My Home Sweet Home | All rights reserved

I‘ve found that although memory is increasingly splotchy, I rarely forget a photo, the cement that holds moments and memories together. On this last day of 2011, I’m strolling through the year in images and revisiting the posts that illuminate them. I hope you enjoy it, too.

January

SNOW! (That’s big stuff in Georgia.)

Snow Ice Cream made me popular with my kids and the neighbors, too. (Click that link to learn how to make it.)

(in)courage gals at Blissdom

The BlissDom Flashmob (I cannot believe I was in not one, but two flashmobs this year!)

Facing Fiona (the healing is in the comments).

February

Father/Daughter Dance

March

Baseball Season Begins

Striking a Pose at the High Museum

April

Spring

Enjoying my New Lens

Field Day

Easter

May

A Baptism on Mother’s Day

A Team that Prays

Spring Concert

Strawberry Picking

Memorial Day

June

Year End Carnival with Homeschool Group

A Graduation

The Instagallery (in 5 1/2 years of blogging, this is currently my most popular post ever)

Blood, Sweat, and Song in Alabama (part 1 & part 2)

July

Homegating

Homeschool Heroes at the Southeast Homeschool Expo

August

Lake Time

Family Time and Meeting a New Cousin

Disney Summer Social

September

The Hubs (and three friends) Ordained as Deacons

(in)courage Girls in Hilton Head

Mother/Son Outing

Worldwide Photo Walk

October

Disney on Ice

The Relevant Conference

November

Veterans’ Day

Thanksgiving

December

Straight No Chaser Concert

Christmas

The Defense of the Faith Seminar at Church

If you made it this far, you’re probably a member of my family thanks for hanging in there with me! Going through my flickr stream made me realize how much I love seeing the Instagram (camera phone) photos from the year, too. They’re less a record of the big events and more of the day-to-day.

Can you believe tomorrow is a new year? Did you capture this one in photos?

2011: A Year in Pictures is a post from: My Home Sweet Home
© 2012 My Home Sweet Home | All rights reserved

1. Our Elf on the Shelf swinging from a cable after TPing our Christmas tree 2. Bowling with the family 3. Bowling with style 4. Bonfire & marshmallows

Do you ever get cynical about new year’s resolutions? I do. After two years carrying around the same one, I finally realized that it needed some tweaking: maybe what I thought I wanted wasn’t exactly what I wanted after all. I’m a little slow sometimes, how about you?

I’m thankful for a God who gives me what I need instead of what I want.

While we’re talking about a new year, let me share with you one of the best calendar covers ever, snapped in the checkout line at Big Lots—a classic!

What did your camera phone capture this week?

Camera Phone Friday: It’s Almost a New Year Edition is a post from: My Home Sweet Home
© 2012 My Home Sweet Home | All rights reserved

1. Phineas & Ferb LIVE, 2. Straight No Chaser @ryansongs, 3. @SNCMusic rocking Atlanta!, 4. @SNCMusic signing autographs after the show, 5. Oooey gooey cinnamon rolls from @thepioneerwoman in the works!, 6. A friend’s 17′ tree

By the end of the day today we should have all of our family in Georgia (our second son flies home from Dallas) and by late Saturday we should all be here in our home sweet home. Until you’ve had a child leave, I’m not sure you can appreciate the feeling of having your entire family together. We’ve got a sweet reunion ahead of us.

Yesterday we made a double batch of the Pioneer Woman’s cinnamon rolls. They roll out too big and messy to be contained on a cutting board, but this year I kept it somewhat under control. Based on an idea from a friend who makes large cakes, I bought a 30″ x 36″ piece of acrylic at Lowe’s as a work surface. I peeled off the protective coating, cleaned it with a mild all-purpose cleaner, and then rolled my dough and cut the rolls on it.

When the tsunami waves of butter, cinnamon, and sugar surged in my direction (check out the bottom center picture in the collage above), my mother-in-law was able to lift the edge of the acrylic and keep the tide in check. Clean up was easier than expected, too. It was definitely money well spent (around $22).

I took 3 of this week’s Instagram images at the Straight No Chaser concert Sunday night. Click here to view a slideshow of my camera (not camera phone) shots. I’m really pleased with this set (not to mention with the concert itself).

[If you're an email subscriber, for some reason the last 3 weeks' Camera Phone Friday posts haven't gone through, but they posted. Also, did anyone notice that last week was the "2 weeks until Christmas" edition? I'm in don't-have-my-shopping-finished denial.]

So, what did your camera phone capture this week?

Camera Phone Friday: Home Sweet Home Edition is a post from: My Home Sweet Home
© 2012 My Home Sweet Home | All rights reserved

I occasionally apologize to my kids about the music of their generation, where popularity is garnered by bad behavior instead of talent, by style rather than substance. My parents reminisced about artists who wore suits on stage and whose dress and behavior showed respect for their audience. Even today’s talented artists sometimes fail on the respect issue.

Sunday night my 16-year-old son and I saw Straight No Chaser at the Atlanta Civic Center. It was my 4th SNC concert, so I expected a great show. The guys don’t disappoint: they look good and sound even better.

It’s amazing how unimportant gimmicks are when you actually have talent.

They obviously enjoy what they do, and when they have fun, we have fun. SNC isn’t afraid to be silly or make fun of themselves (and occasionally the audience, when they really ask for it).

My camera hearts Straight No Chaser.

Straight No Chaser understands the power of social media—they were discovered when an old college video of them went viral after being uploaded to YouTube. Photography and video are not only allowed but encouraged at SNC concerts and the guys always sign autographs afterwards. 

If you get the chance to catch Straight No Chaser in concert, you won’t be disappointed!

{Disclosure: Tickets provided by Atlantic Records (no review required). Opinions are my own!}

Concerts Done Right: Straight No Chaser is a post from: My Home Sweet Home
© 2012 My Home Sweet Home | All rights reserved