Capture Your 365

Five for you this week!

pink

ISO 100, 50mm, f/2.2, 1/80 sec

Day 229 – Pink: Pink is not my color, blue is. My home is decorated with lots of blue and I have a lot of clothes that are blue. It is hard for me to find pink things around my home. It was getting to the end of day and I remembered that I still needed to capture a photo from my day. A cloud filled evening sky usually has some shades of pink, so I stepped outside and saw this lovely summer evening sky with just a few shades of pink. Perfect!

measured

ISO 100, 50mm, f/2.2, 1/50 sec

Day 230 – Measured:Pinterest is a wonderful way for me to store recipes that I want to try (I even have a whole board devoted to recipes I would love to try!) No more piles of clippings from magazines collecting dust in my home. But every now and then, there is a recipe I find that sits on my counter just begging me to give it a try. And since I had just about all of the ingredients at home on this summer day, I decided to make it!

spin

ISO 100, 50mm, f/14, 1/80 sec

Day 233 – Spin: Kelsey and I were meeting a young mom from church at one of our local parks. Since I knew they had swings, I just had to bring my camera along! She wasn’t spinning too quickly, so I knew I didn’t need too fast of a shutter speed to freeze the motion. This was my favorite one out of the bunch. I love how her braid is ‘flying’ out away from her. And I love that my 13 year old daughter is not ‘too old’ to swing for me.

abundant

ISO 400, 50mm, f/16, 1/320 sec

Day 234 – Abundant: Kelsey and I were able to spend the whole day with friends up in the foothills today. My friend and I were able to talk all day long while the girls played, chatted, swam, and made fun videos. It was a wonderful day! On the way home, I knew I wanted to capture the sunset. We pulled over a couple of times to get just the right shot. I love the sun flares on this one.

local landscape

ISO 200, 50mm, f/6.3, 1/80 sec

Day 235 – Local Landscape: As I have mentioned before, there are some days when we just stay home all day long. I could have driven around town to find something away from our home to photograph for this prompt, but why not take a picture of my own backyard since it is part of my local landscape and a place I enjoy spending time. Especially reading over in those red chairs with my iced coffee.

Have you started to Capture Your 365 yet?

Step in the Gap

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziQwy4KEoSk&w=420&h=315]

One big reason that I blog these days is to bring about awareness for the thousands of children who are waiting to be sponsored through Compassion. And as a Compassion Blogger, September is shaping up to be a pretty exciting month!

During the month of September, Compassion will be giving Compassion Bloggers some writing assignments which we will post on our own blogs to encourage our readers to ‘step in the gap’ and sponsor a child, to release that child from poverty in Jesus’ name.

There will be some prizes awarded (you can read about them on the Compassion blog), but the best prize will be for the children that will find sponsors and for the families that sponsor them!

Will you be joining in? I sure hope so!

Guest Post: Kelsey’s App Review

My daughter, Kelsey, has a few educational games she likes to play on her iPod, so I asked her if she would like to share about them here on my blog:

So my mom wanted me to talk about some learning apps that I like. I only have a few so I will do my best to talk about them and tell you how much I have enjoyed them!

Presidents vs. Aliens

The Presidents vs. Aliens app is really fun if you want to know more about our Presidents and their nicknames, facts, quotes, and more. What I love about this game is that when I get a question right, I can use the circle picture to take down the aliens that are put in different places. It’s fun because it’s not just learning, you are doing something fun in between if you get the question right. Another thing I like about it is that you can change the settings on it. You can change the questions that it asks you. So if you want the game to ask you the nicknames that belong to a President or you can just do identifying. You can do more then one too. It has helped me learn a little more about my Presidents but I’m still learning. Another cool thing is that once you have gotten a certain amount of Presidents (after you have taken down all the aliens then you earn a President depending on how many questions you have gotten right), you can play some side games, which are still about the Presidents but they are really fun to play and I have been learning so much about all of our Presidents.

Stack the States

Stack The States is another really fun game that I really like to play. It is the same company that made Presidents vs. Aliens. The game will ask you a question about a state, like maybe where is Yellowstone Park located and it will give you options of which state to pick. If you get the question right, it will make the state as big as it would be and then you have to put it on a platform and well, stack them, hence the name. It has a ‘finish line’ a bit up away from the platform. What you have to do is stack the states up to the finish line and if you got a certain amount of questions right after you reached the finish line, it will give you a state to add to your map like the Presidents vs. Aliens game. This one also has side games for you to play once you have earned a certain amount of states. I really like it because again, you’re not just answering questions, you’re doing something fun in between. I have also ,been learning about the states and where things are located. I don’t believe you can change the questions on this one but it is still fun and you can learn a lot from it.

Another thing that is cool about these two games is that each player can have their own game. So maybe Tim and Bob want to play. Bob can have his own game and earn his own states while Tim can also do the same with his own game.

Duolingo

Duolingo is a cool language app that you can use when you, well, want to learn a new language. It has lots of different languages and you can learn more then one at a time. But for me that might be a bit confusing…. But it’s really cool and I have been learning quite a bit. It does get difficult sometimes just trying to learn all the verbs and things with Spanish, but that’s just Spanish. You can go back at any time to a lesson and review everything that you learned in that lesson. I think that’s really awesome. You have a certain amount of hearts in each lesson. When you answer a question wrong you will lose a heart and this will keep happening each time you answer a question wrong. If you run out of hearts you have to do the lesson all over again, which can be a good thing because then you can learn a lot more by doing the lesson over and over again. I like it better then Rosetta Stone because you know what the sentences are and what the words are because it switches between English and Spanish. Maybe one time you’ll have to write out a sentence in Spanish from English or an English sentence from looking at the Spanish sentence. Me and my mom both do it and love it. My mom and I have been learning a lot through it and hopefully we will be able to speak the language soon. Maybe when I am done learning Spanish I can learn a different one through it.

Well, that’s all I have for today and I hope that helped you learn a little bit more about three educational apps for your phone or other device. I have learned a lot about different things from these three apps and will hopefully continue using them. Thanks for reading and again I hope these helped you out.

-Kelsey

Capture Your 365

Ready for a few glimpses into my take on the Capture Your 365 photo prompts from the last week?

sunflower

ISO 800, 50mm, f/2.2, 1/10 sec

Day 223 – Sunflower: I have to admit that some days, I really have trouble figuring out what to photograph. There are many days during the week that we just don’t go anywhere, and to try to find things that fit with the photo prompts, well, creativity can only go so far. Thankfully, I have these fake flowers inside my home since we are not growing sunflowers this year. If I had left the house on this particular day, I could have stop at many different places along most of the roads leading out of town to take pictures of actual sunflowers. Oh well, at least I have this picture.

play

ISO 800, 50mm, f/2.2, 1/60 sec

Day 224 – Play: Kelsey had a friend over on this particular day and they played quite a few rounds of Clue. I figured this was the perfect thing to photograph for this prompt! But now that I am looking at the photo on the screen, I realize I should have focused on Colonel Mustard. Poor guy must have gotten hit over the head with the wrench in the billiard room while trying to solve the crime.

remember

ISO 1600, 50mm, f/2.2, 1/50 sec

Day 225 – Remember: Now, I don’t usually take photos of photos, but my photo wall was the perfect subject for this photo prompt. I just love the memories that are displayed here. Makes me want to be sure to have other photos printed and displayed so they can be enjoyed, rather than sitting on the hard drive of my computer.

bonus

ISO 1600, 50mm, f/2.2, 1/40 sec

Day 226 – Bonus: Two photos in a row of other photos, I am thinking I need to get out of the house a little more often! Okay, but this one really fit the prompt also. Back in June, after completing my two photography classes, I entered this photo of the Bay Bridge into our town arts and crafts contest. I was really surprised when they called to let me know that I not only won a first place ribbon, but I also won Best of Show!

Are you picking up your camera everyday to capture moments of your life?

A little Compassion organization

Last week while I was working on the Compassion Pinterest boards, I pinned an item I knew I wanted to try out! I found this pin on the Compassion Australia web site. Australia is one of twelve partner countries which has come alongside Compassion’s mission to help release children from poverty in Jesus’ name.

On the Compassion Australia web site, there is a section dedicated to spreading the word, encouraging other sponsors to write to their sponsored child on a regular basis. As I was looking at some of the items they make available to their sponsors in Australia, I noticed that a few of the items are printables that any of us can take advantage of using. I just love the idea of the All About My Sponsored Child page. Many times when I am writing to our sponsored children, I will look back through their letters to remind myself of important facts. By having everything together on this one page sure can save me a little bit of time!

One other thing I hope to add to this page is a list of the Bible verses the children share with me in their letters. Every letter I receive from my sponsored children has at least one, if not two, Bible verses. Wouldn’t it be great to somehow put all of the verses together for your sponsored child once they have graduated?