225/365 Day 2 Agape Retreat

Explored the desert a bit this afternoon in between sits, made a new friend.

224/365 Agape New Year's Revelation Retreat

So amazing... first day decompression time...

223/365 Bloom

Beedge gave us an Amaryllis for Christmas... it's blooming... :)

Spent the entire day preparing for the retreat. Laundry, what to pack?! Clean house, clean dogs for my friends who are dog sitting, snacks for the road...

222/365 Surprise Sunset

Went down to the beach today to take some shots for a friend and THIS is what greeted me on my drive home!

Nothing beats nature for an amazing surprise show!

221/365 Chickie models her new Snuggie!

Perfect for when she wants to "couch potato".

220/365 Christmas Day hike!

It's become a bit of a tradition for us to go on a Christmas Day hike. Today we expanded Ei's horizons with some rock hopping across the water that is now starting to flow in the river bed. What a trooper!

219/365 ugh

Went for a drive up the 33 yesterday, then a hike into one of the older burn areas... a little spooky, but beautiful too.

Then last night, I spent most of the night in the Animal ER with Keeko. She hasn't been eating well since her vet visit, and she really looked bad. Turns out she had a raging UTI on top of everything else. Luckily all her blood work was really good. So now she's on antibiotics and I'm still syringe feeding her, but she DID eat two treats today, and she's grooming herself again. She just needs to start eating better on her own...

Got home around 1AM and I was NOT going to mess with pics then! I DID take this one yesterday though! SOOC - taken with the nifty fifty.

218/365 Eileen and her boys

Christmas dinner number two! On the eve of Christmas Eve... At Treasure Beach Cafe, new place in Ojai. YUM!!!

217/365 Tough day for Keeko

Poor Keeko had to spend the day at the vets getting enemas... :( She's had this little problem for years, and it got really bad this week, so she had to go get a "move" on. She's home now, resting...

216/365 Silent night...

Had a bit more rain today on the first day of winter. Thank goodness that the days will now start to get longer!

This shot is straight out of the camera... love that 50mm 1.8 lens!

215/365 Another fave...

CHOCOLATE! Mostly dark... but if it's really good, I'll eat ANY. Eileen (my mom-in-law) got us these for our anniversary yesterday. From Robitaille's in Carpinteria... YUM!

214/365 Patience

I am, by nature, a very impatient person. But I can feel what it must be like to BE patient when I'm working on getting a good shot. I don't even notice time passing (if my subject isn't a person) I'll sit for an hour next to a jade plant and wait for the bees to get used to me. I'll sit long enough to see a Ladybug, and even a Fly!

When you are truly in the "zone" you won't have to be patient. You will just BE. (with the Bees!)

213/365 Christmas dinner number one!

212/365 The circus is in town!

So this is a bit of a ritual around here, and it was our next door neighbor's turn. I guess people have to do this every ten years - tenting for termites- whether or not you've got them.

We are plant sitting for them... alien sight.

211/365 New Moon Visioning

I'm so grateful for such a gifted friend, Renee, to lead such a sweet visioning tonight!

210/365 Peace

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong...Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?

~Thich Nhat Hanh

209/365 Let Go...

A cloud doesn't fight it's way around a mountain, it surrenders to the flow of the wind moving it...

An excerpt from a Yoga Journal article:

A truly surrendered person may look passive, especially when something appears to need doing, and everyone around is shouting, "Get a move on, get it done, this is urgent!" Seen in perspective, however, what looks like inaction is often simply a recognition that now is not the time to act. Masters of surrender tend to be masters of flow, knowing intuitively how to move with the energies at play in a situation. You advance when the doors are open, when a stuck situation can be turned, moving along the subtle energetic seams that let you avoid obstructions and unnecessary confrontations.

208/365 Ramsey Family shoot

More practice with portraits today!

207/365 The work we were made for.

Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.

~Rumi

Playing with my new nifty fifty and pushing the limits of what it can do in low light today... pretty impressive. Now if only I had a full frame camera...

206/365 My Favorite Things...

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things

Cream colored ponies and crisp apple streudels
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings
These are a few of my favorite things

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes
Silver white winters that melt into springs
These are a few of my favorite things

When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feel so bad

205/365 Fly

“You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life?”

~Rumi

204/365 A new perspective...

Learned something else in photoshop today. You can rotate preset brushes before you use them! Now, I'm sure to those who already knew this it's like "duh"... but this is HUGE information to me! I'm going love using my brushes WAY more now!

203/365 Winter is here!

Snow on Chief Peak in Ojai this morning.

202/365 Joy

Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I'm doing.
Phil Jackson

201/365 Oh Hell...

A VERY fun card game!

200/365 WOW DAY 200!!!

I can't believe I've been at this for 200 days in a row. Haven't missed a day yet! Some days have been posted late (like yesterday) but the picture was always taken the day of... crazy... 165 to go...

Eileen and John are in town for a visit and maybe a stay for several months! We went out to eat at a GREAT place in Montecito last night - Trattoria Mollie. Great Italian food.

199/365 Sometimes you're just glad to be done...

Glad the day is done. Heavy mind...

198/365 The Invitation

The Invitation by Oriah

It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon...
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

This is one of my favorite poems! ~Vikki

197/365 Training Day

Had some down time today during a tech training, so my great co-workers let me take a few pics of them!

Great group of people...

196/365 Snow in So-Cal

I find it interesting that even here in Southern California, where it only snows at high elevations, people still decorate with snowflakes... and fake snowmen... How many of these people have ever even SEEN snow, let alone made a snowman? I mean, half of the country never sees snow in the winter.

Who decided that snow = Christmas anyway? Probably Hollywood, which just adds another level of irony.