This morning has been profitable for me! I just cashed out for 2 $5.00 Amazon Gift Cards with Swagbucks, which is a search engine. It awards points when you do specific searches, allowing you to earn enough to cash out for various things.

I'm also almost to a $10 paypal cash out with Gather.com. Gather is a site that I think a lot of bloggers would love- you share posts about anything, and earn points. I've had some active years where I earned over $1000 on Gather in a calender year, so it's been a nice site for me. In the past 2 weeks, I have already cashed out for 2 $10 paypal payments, and a $25 paypal payment.

15th Birthday Photo Shoot

In just over 2 weeks, my oldest daughter Raegan will be 15 years old. Tonight, it was gorgeous out- sunny, warm, a light breeze... so nice. But, Raegan had to baby sit. By the time she got home, I was busy as well. I had literally only 25 minutes of free time at once point tonight, and I grabbed Rae and my new camera. I tugged her out the door, had her brush her hair in the car, and drove around the corner to a small outdoor "market" place.

The market place has nice richly colored brick columns, which make for nice back ground color.

Here are some of my favorite images from the shoot, which was done in about 15 minutes. The first image below is unedited- it was shrunk and watermarked, but no edits were done to it.

I took this photo intending it to look as it does above- sideways with Raegan laying down on the ground. When I started playing with it, though, I found it looked better right side up, so that's what I did- flipped it.

I do really like it this way- in color. But, I decided to keep trying some edits.

This is what I settled on- I love it in black & white- it's crisp and clean, and she's more striking in it.

Here are some more of my favorites- some have several edits with them.