Photo Scavenger Hunts

In addition to the "All New Scavenger Hunt" I participate in, this month I also joined the "Monthly Scavenger Hunt" group on Flickr as well.  It's a bit different as it is 20 items every month, no challenges, you can use photos from your archives and the hunt items are vague.  This allows  more creativity to go into each hunt item.  For example, the photo of Blue with the Santa hat on was for the hunt item "Grinch, Humbug or Scrooge".  Plus with my time constraints it's more feasible for me to complete (though I do still participate in the ANSH as well).  You can see the full size photos here.

Yay me!  Friday starts Project 365 - wish me luck, I'll need it!

So as you may know, I am involved in a monthly photo scavenger hunt group.  It really is great fun and keeps me shooting, even in the busiest of times.  I'm trying really hard to keep my scavenger hunt photos interesting and not just a blah photo of some inanimate object, but sometimes it's difficult!  So for this round and any upcoming I've decided that if I can't get a good, artistic, pleasing photo, I will just bypass that photo opportunity, even if it means not getting my hunt item.  For some items this is very difficult to do, but I'm trying my best.  For example, three things today that I got were 1) Colored erasers; 2) A patch or badge; 3) Something depicting a hobby.  So I searched about the house (since I'm still mostly home-bound) and came up with the following:

My favorite of this set is the erasers - the colors pop and turned out quite nicely.  Not sure about the other two, but I'm working towards a goal here and that takes time!  Stay tuned for more scavenger hunt goodness...

My first photo scavenger hunt is completed and I came in 5th place out of 11 participants.  Not bad for my first attempt!  The next one starts soon so I'm hoping to do better.  I didn't find 4 of the items on the list, which cost me 20 points, so my goal for May's hunt is to get all items for that extra bonus!  You can see all the items I managed to find for April's hunt here.

Not much else going on.  Mother's Day is tomorrow so we'll be making the rounds to visit moms.  I made gifts for my mom, mom-in-law, grandma and mama this year.  But since some of them read my blog I can't say what it is just yet.  But I'll likely be posting photos in the coming days as it's a first attempt at this type of project.

I've been working a lot with some of our "pet projects" this week.  One of them is our PetResearch.net blog, which we just set up discussion forums for.  If anyone has pet related issues to discuss, check it out!  It's a wealth of information already and growing steadily.

Another site we've started noodling around with is our Garden and Home site.  It's basically the same idea as the pet research site, but for information about craft projects, gardening tips, recipes, etc.  We just got the first post up yesterday (a small how-to on hand made Mother's Day cards) so it's a newbie site and still pretty small.  We have faith that it will grow nicely though.

Happy Mother's Day to all you hot momma's out there.  Hope you have a wonderful day!

One of this month's photography scavenger hunt items was to find "Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue".  Well, boy do I have the perfect Blue!  I set up the studio lights with a black backdrop and sheet for Blue to lay on.  With much slobbering over treats I got him to cooperate fairly easily. Such a good dog!  He'll do anything for treats.  :)

So this was my entry for Item 12: Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue.

Old: Pink kitty I've had since I was a wee baby
New: The silver necklace Blue is wearing
Borrowed:  Jason's camel cap
Blue: Blue, the B. Dog!

[caption id="attachment_494" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="Blue"][/caption]

One of my photography scavenger hunt items was to find a bird nest.  As luck would have it, a robin has been diligently building a nest in one of the trees in our back yard.  So today I climbed out onto the roof to get a good shot and waited for Momma Robin to come back.  She graciously cooperated.  :)

While I was up there I got a few more shots of the birds flitting around the feeders below. The tufted titmouse was a willing poser!

Thank goodness for March 31 to have arrived and gone!  Now my work schedule can get back to normal again.  The last two months have been a frenzy at work to complete our new web site and get it up and running properly.  After working a lot of overtime lately it was nice to actually come home on time today!  The work is not near over as Phase 2 starts immediately with enhancements and further functionality, however at least the pace has slowed down.  Now I can focus more on my own work again. And as a reward I get Friday off without taking a vacation day - woot!  Long weekend!

I'm also starting a new photography project this weekend.  Last year I participated in Project 52 on Flickr and had considered doing it again, but wanted to switch things up a bit this year.  Lucky for me I found just the thing - a Flickr Photography Scavenger Hunt!  The new list is available this weekend, perfect timing for me to start up with it.  It looks like a fun group and will get me out and about and looking for the items on the list to photograph, hopefully with an interesting aspect and not just a snapshot of each item.  It's an open group for anyone in the world, so if anyone is interested in taking the challenge with me join here!

Not much other news right now.  Family is healthy - human and critters alike.  Spring is on the way, which I am very grateful for since it also means camping season is upon us!  Jason started planting the garden today and the fish pond is starting to shape up with some new bamboo we planted behind it.  In a couple of weeks the five new fish will be added to the eight that are in there now and we'll work on the landscaping around the pond some more.  And then once it starts staying warm the pond plants go in.  I'm very eager to get it all done and see how it looks.  :)