This is for Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Music. These are the instruments in my house.

My oldest daughter teaches herself to play songs on the piano and ukulele by watching YouTube videos. One instrument that I can’t photograph is her beautiful singing voice. It is my most favorite instrument in the world!

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My youngest daughter plays the recorder for school. In music class, they have “Recorder Karate”: for every song she masters, she receives a karate “belt” (i.e., the strings tied to the end of the recorder.) The belts progress in color as the difficulty of the songs she learns do.

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Several years ago, my husband bought me a guitar for my birthday because I wanted to learn how to play it. I realized right away that I do not possess the patience or true ambition for such an endeavor. It is my favorite instrument to listen to, however, besides my daughter’s voice :).

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This is for Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Abstract. I had these dumped out every where on my counter, but it turns out they look much cooler sitting in the container they came in. I dialed up the highlights during post-processing to give it more of a vibrant, artsy feel.

abstract offshoots12.com

Since March 17th is the feast of St. Patrick, I thought I would share with you a few shots of some of the characters we saw in the St. Patrick’s Day parade this past weekend.  I am also sharing these with Cee’s Odd Ball Photo Challenge this week.

I wish I was as happy-go-LUCKY as this girl appears to be!

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Everyone was handing out beaded necklaces. People couldn’t get enough of them. Crazy!

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This guys looks so sad. I put him front and center in the photo, but as you can see no one is looking at him.

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This dude, on the other hand, is in the same spot on the street as the last guy, only he is still getting cheers and claps. The crowd loved him!

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St. Patrick, himself, was there, shaking hands with children and adults alike.

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Finally, here is a whole group of characters for your Irish entertainment.

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This is for Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Cameras and Photographers. This first one is an old camera I used to use before I really got into taking pictures. It’s been so long since I’ve used it, I couldn’t even get all of the dust off of it!

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This is the camera I use now, and I really like it. It’s a Sony Alpha SLT-A35. I just recently started shooting exclusively in manual mode which is very exciting to me! I feel like I accomplished something big. 🙂

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Lastly, here is my phone camera, which I rarely use simply because the quality isn’t as great as my Sony and I don’t have any control over things like aperture, shutter speed, and ISO settings.

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This is for Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Things Made Out of Plastic. The first is a butterfly craft Caitlin made at her 4th grade spring party yesterday using jelly beans, a snack-size plastic baggie, a clothes-pin, and a pipe cleaner. So cute!

butterfly craft offshoots12.com

This last one is a photo of a frog figurine taken through the view of an almost empty plastic bottle of hand sanitizer.  I think he’s cute, too!

plastic frog offshoots12.com

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