This photo was taken just over a week ago in North Carolina. It was the tree outside my hotel window. I just love being able to see the small, drops of water on the thinned out branches. Makes me think of winter.

I know it’s nearly December and the Christmas decorations have started to pop up, but last week I found some beautiful trees with their last bits of fall color in Western North Carolina. Here’s some amazing red color that I captured from one tree — this is for you Stacey.

The beautiful thing about orchids is that for months on end you walk by the pot and see only the green leaves. No buds, no flowers. Sure, when you bought the pot it had a magnificent flower on it. Then, it disappeared and left you with only green. After awhile you nearly abandon the growing experiment thinking you must have killed it. But, you leave it and continue to water it. Or not.

Then, one day you’re in a hurry, on your way to work, trying to juggle carrying all that stuff into the car. Wondering what you have to do that day. Probably running late. You are rushing to get to your car and then you see it.

*BOOM*

*WHAM*

*POP*

You walk by that once sad little plant and see this:

And this:

And you know your day will be alright.

I’ve been experimenting with some photography lately (barely any time for it, but I’ve managed two ten-minute shoots in the past three days so that’s progress). Here’s a bougainvillea plant that’s in my front yard. All of the blooms were killed in a freeze we had a few months ago. We thought the plant had died, but it has resurrected itself and these are some of the fresh blooms. I used parts of this photo for the header this month.

I decided to create a photo frame to wrap around a photo of my new baby and send to our family for St. Patrick’s Day. It’s going to be her first “holiday” so I just thought it would be a creative way to send an updated photo. Since I went ahead and did all the work in PhotoShop I decided to offer it here as a download for anyone who wants to use it. I put together a quick how-to.

Enjoy!

How to:

1. Open stpattywrap.psd in Photoshop.
2. Click (highlight) on the “Insert your photo here” layer.
3. In a new window, Open your photo.
4. Size your photo to 375 x 500 (width x height). (Go to the Image menu, choose Image size, type in your dimensions and click OK.)
5. Drag your photo to the open stpattywrap.psd file. Since the Insert your photo here layer is highlighted it should show up behind the green border.
6. Save the file as a JPG. (File Menu, Save as.)

DOWNLOAD THE FILE NOW.

Now you can post it on your blog or sent to your family and friends via email. Leave a comment below if you enjoy this and I’ll try to make more for other holidays.
Enjoy!

Baby photo courtesy stock.xchng.