All my adult life I have dreamed of having at least one hobby. I will never forget how hard Dale and I laughed when I was moving to San Francisco and filled out a bio for a roommate search and under hobbies all we could think of was smoking and drinking coffee! In the 11th hour of my maternity leave I have started establishing some real hobbies. While on vacation I found this wonderful old cookbook called The American Woman's Cookbook and decided I would start collecting old cookbooks. I forgot to mention in my Aloha post that I also got a wonderful little cookbook entitled, "Around The World in 80 Recipes, Hawaii's International Cookbook of Exotic Recipes" with little drawings next to the recipes to represent which part of the world the recipes are from (in case you couldn't tell by the titles). And I just discovered this wonderful website - http://www.oldcookbooks.com/ And you know how much I love Peanut Butter, so I just had to order the Skippy Peanut Butter Art of Cookery & Accomplish'd Gentlewoman's Companion! I think this might actually be something I will stick with!

And then there is photography. I have always loved taking photos and so badly wanted to learn on a manual film camera, especially the developing (something so appealing about developing ones own creations). My sweet husband (then boyfriend) bought me a wonderful manual camera over 7 years ago...and I never made the time to read a book, take a class, surf the web or just try. And then a week after Elliot was born he went out and bought us a digital SLR just like our friends have (I couldn't stop talking about it!). Since then I have been a picture taking crazy person, and loving it! I try new shots, play with editing tools and develop (print) to my hearts content because it is relatively cheap as far as hobbies are concerned.

One of my 'Maternity Leave To-Do List' items was to take pictures of our morning coffee ritual, frame them and hang them in our kitchen. I almost gave up and started looking for art online and then I found some inspiration and viola. I am not going to frame any from this first series, but really think I am close.



Here is an image from Hawaii that I was particularly proud of.

I am also the photographer (not the editor, that was Dale) behind our Christmas Card, though I suppose I should give the model some of the credit :) Isn't he just precious?!

Labels: Thinking