If they could only stay little....

Thematic Photographic #302  Temporary

This post was kind of prompted by the Thematic Photographic and the theme for the week 'Temporary'.  It is a post I have been thinking about for a little while now anyway.
 Since I have been spending so much time with my adult daughter and my grandsons I have also been pondering on how fast life goes by and how little time we have with these precious souls when they are young and innocent.  Having raised 6 kids with a 16 year gap from first to last; I spent a LOT of years with small children in the house, but looking back on it now, it seems to be such a short time.  Even the 20+ years with teenagers in the house seems a short time.  Now time flies with the grandchildren.  Every year when I come back I see how much my grandsons have grown.  I regret that I have not been able to spend as much time with the other grandkids.
 Everywhere I go and I tell people that I spend my summer with my daughter and help her with her kids; their first reply is usually "Isn't it so nice to spend so much time with your grandchildren?" or something similar.  I have to say that it is also wonderful and a rare privilege to be able to get to know my daughter on a day to day basis as a grown adult. If they live close most grandmas may help with the grandkids but,  I believe it is kind of rare for them to pack up, move and stay for months and this makes for a totally different experience.
I have been confronted head on with both the good and the bad that I did as a parent.  I knew that parenting traits were passed on from generation to generation because when my kids were young and having sworn I would never raise my kids like my parents raised me, I still found myself saying

 "How did my mother get in my mouth?".  Living with Laura and watching her with her boys I get a much different perspective on my parenting, a lot more regrets but also a lot more joy in the kids that I raised and their accomplishments.  I'm kind of surprised with how much as people up here get to know me, they can, if they are smart and observant, get to understand and know Laura better.

There is one rule that none of the kids or grandchildren were not able to obey and that was their Daddy's and Grandpa's admonition to stay little.  Oh why, oh why?  Well the why is because they need to grow into their own person that we only see as they mature.  Those same sweet souls that we started with can if both sides work at it develop into sweet adult relationships.

I now know that I need to cherish these times with my kids and grandchildren because each stage of life is temporary and precious and we only get one chance to enjoy and savor these moments.

Enjoy

them while you can

Johnina

Thematic Photographic #301 -Dirty

Dirty

One of my favorite sites that I used to visit and participate in is Carmi's writteninc. Now that I am back in the blogging world it is one of my first visits.  He gives out a photo theme for the week and any of his readers can take photos and do a post on the theme and then leave a link to that post in his comment section.  It is delightful to see what other bloggers do with his theme.  No prize just sharing among bloggers which is so much better.  I like getting to know my fellow bloggers and the exchange of interpretations and ideas is fun.  This exchange is what draws me to blogging and keeps me coming back.

The top photo was actually taken for a contest on MyShutterspace.com (which at the moment is having problems).  This particular photo contest had the theme of minimalism and since I didn't really understand the theme, I just took lots of photos and guessed.  The top photo did not qualify as the dirt kept it from having clean lines (no pun intended, of course), one of the qualities of a minimalist photo. 

However, I did like the photo of the dirty vents so I decided to play around with them and came up with a couple of fun pieces of abstract art.  Still did not qualify for the contest, but it came in handy here.

If you would like to check out how others have interpreted this theme click here. 

Enjoy

Johnina

See the beauty

 I named my blog young-eclectic-encounters because I have many different interests and experiences to share.  Although I do tend to be easily bored and have a little ADHD you will find that there will be common threads throughout my posts.  As I mentioned in my last post I have been working on improving my health and have found this to be a fascinating subject, so there will be lots of these.  I am also a lover of good books, as I have learned much from them, both lessons from life and information to improve my life.  Most of what you will see is my artistic strivings.  I draw, paint, art journal, quilt, design my own clothes, but my first love is photography so you will be seeing lots of photos.

My description for my blog is "See the beauty- a survivors art journal" more than anything else learning photography has made me really look around to find the beauty that surrounds me.  It has kept my spirits high, fought off depression and generally kept my life hopeful and moving forward.  The photo above is a good example of seeing the beauty around me.  I saw these beautiful roses on trip just out running errands.  I enjoyed them then and am enjoying them now having captured their beauty with my camera.  But, guess where I found them?  They were part of the drive-thru at Burger King. 

How much do we miss of this beautiful world when we go about our daily lives?  Did this person in the car even notice the roses? Think about this over the next week, notice, share you observations in the comments or write a blog post about the beauty that surrounds us and share it in the comments, too.  One other thing I have found is that when we share the beauty of this world with others we help to make this world a more welcoming place and we humans much more cheerful.  So join me and encounter this world it's many beauties and pass the word.

Enjoy

Johnina

Changing my life

My world now.

The reason that I have been gone from blogging is I have been working hard to improve my health so that I can spend time with my grandchildren and get back into the world.

When I was last blogging on a regular basis (Winter 2011), I was also very incapacitated due to multiple health issues.  I was mostly sitting with the remote in my hand watching TV or with the computer on my lap, blogging.  I am so glad to have had my blog and all the internet friends that I developed.  It kept me sane and connected to the outside world.
I think I have gotten enough of my health back to attempt to rejoin the blogging world, which I enjoyed very much.

Enjoy

Johnina

Passion perspective

Everybody has a passion for something; passions in your life bring excitement, joy and in all ways enhance your life.  These Passionflowers represent two of my passions, photography and gardening.  With the advent of digital photography I have been able to grow and develop my skills simply because now I can take many pictures of the same object and experiment to my hearts content

. 

Just recently my Passionflowers have started to bloom and yesterday there was a particularly pretty one in bloom so I decided to take many photos of it and see how changing the angle of my camera would change the look of my photographic art.

I edited them in Picasa keeping the crop dimensions and color editing the same for each photo.  The only differences come from the camera angle.

 I was surprised when the camera angle did on occasion make a difference in the colors that showed up.

My garden and flowers brighten my day.  After I have left my home I always come back to the beauty that my family and I have created.  My garden; my other passion.

“Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel quotes (German Philosopher and Inventor, 1770-1831) Enjoy ☺☺☺Johnina☺☺☺

No place like home- Front door greeting

Welcome home rose

Having spent most of my summer in Kingsport Tn with my daughter and two grandsons, I have come to appreciate the comforts and routines of home.  While I enjoyed my visit I am glad to be home.  My husband did a great job of making my front flower garden flourish.  My roses and flowers were there to greet me.  My front garden always makes me sigh with pleasure as I pull into the driveway.

I got out my camera early one morning in order to catch the early morning dew.  Using my macro setting I was able to capture that shimmery quality that comes from the morning dew.

Early morning dew

I switched to my landscape mode to better show my roses as I approach my walkway and my front door giving an entirely different perspective on my roses and my garden.

Hope You

Enjoy

♥♥♥Johnina♥♥♥

Once in a blue moon

Blue Moon Aug 2012

Since I have not posted in a while I thought having a blue moon was a perfect time to get back in the groove of blogging again.  The saying 'Once in a blue moon' came about because of the rarity of blue moons and my blogging had indeed become a rarity.  However my life is getting a little more settled and predictable so back to blogging I come.
I researched what a blue moon is; which is two full moons in a month and they are indeed rare. The next one is July 2015.  I also found a really cool website on all things moon, where whatever you want to know can probably be found. Click here here where a photo  moon phases calendar for Sept can be found.
I experimented with my camera settings (shutter speed and aperture) and my preset settings and my zoom feature and came up with some very distinctly different photos.

Blue moon Aug 2012

Although The first photo is not the best technically, I like it best.  I was actually kind of impressed with my second photo, it was the clearest moon photo that I've been able to accomplish in a long time.  My last photo is even clearer but not as artistically rendered. Sigh.

Blue Moon Aug 2012

 Hope you enjoy
☺☺☺Johnina ☺☺☺