Miscellaneous December

It's almost Christmas!  How has the year gone so quickly?  This past year has been such a blur.  Nick and I have fixed up and sold two houses in Indiana, searched for and found new jobs in Oregon, moved across the country, bought a new house, made new friends, reconnected with (my) family, and even done a little bit of traveling.  Major life changes all in a short span of time.

This time of year tends to be hectic, and I'm sure many of you would agree.  I'm writing this post to share a few photos that are sort of from miscellaneous subjects.  It's going to seem like a very disconnected post since the photos aren't really related to one another.

One of my favorite parts of Oregon that I'd missed while I lived in Indiana was the fog.  In the colder months, the clouds sink low and cover the hills in a fuzzy white blanket.  Sometimes it's so thick you can't see more than a few yards in front of you.  Sometimes it's just enough to blur objects a few hundred feet away.  Last Sunday morning, we woke up to a thick blanket of fog.  As it began dissipating, it was still blurry but the sun was able to poke its way through a bit, too.  It made for a cool effect on our giant oak tree:

Creepy Oak

One of my favorite things about Christmas is the cookies.  Every year (with few excptions), my mom and I bake Christmas cookies.  I went to my parents' house and made a few kinds of cookies last weekend.  We're making more tomorrow, so I'll post photos of the cookies later.  But while I was there last weekend, I got to see Mt. Hood in the waning evening light, as the sun set and also after, as the light gradually disappeared.  The snow on Mt. Hood made an eerie glow while everything else was getting quite dark.  Here are my two favorite photos:

Mt. Hood, during sunset

Mt. Hood, post sunset

Earlier in the afternoon, when the sun was low enough to reach far into the house through the window, I took advantage of the bright window light to photograph my mom's blooming Paphiopedilum.  I love bright window light because it highlights whatever object is directly in the light, while everything in the background fades to black as the window light drops off very quickly.  About the Paph, I don't knwo what kind it is, but its blooms are this beautiful lemony yellow with a cute splatter of freckles across the petals.  Purely guessing based on what I remember from last weekend and not using an actual ruler, I think the blooms are about 6-ish inches across. 

My mom's Paph!