Crap shoot

As part of my 'how do I make enough money to keep us out of the poor house' research, I've come up with some pretty out there ideas to, well, make money once I quit my job in December. I will be working part-time somewhere to help - and to get out of the house and see adults for a few hours here and there - so it's not like I'm putting all of my perverbial financial eggs in one basket or anything.

I feel like I have to explain that - the part-time job - to everyone when they ask what I'm doing come the end of my materinty leave. In reality, it's none of their damn business, but I can see why some of my friends are concerned. For the last 8 or 9 years, I've always had at least 2 jobs at a time. I seemed to thrive on working all the time. I never made much above minimum wage, but I liked being busy.

Anyway, so my ideas to bring in the dough. I'm a creative person, but not in a drawing/painting way. I can draw stick people and even then, they're pretty pathetic. I can, however, build things and sew and cross-stitch and do crafts, for lack of a better term. So I'll probably try to focus on things like that to bring in some extra cash.

I've also discovered, or re-discovered, that I'm a half-decent photographer. True, evidence of this on this particular blog may not support that statement, but I have an affinity for nature, especially fauna, photography. Such as this:

This particular shot was taken earlier this week, around noon, in my backyard. We have a few birdfeeders for the vast variety of birds we have throughout the year, including a sunflower seed feeder. We didn't notice until a couple of weeks ago that there were some strange flowers popping up on the lawn and the patio. I thought they were weeds or something that may have blown into the yard, but no. They were sunflowers. It's too bad it was so late in the season by the time they started sprouting or we may have had a semi-decent sunflower seed harvest for the feeders over the winter.

To get the shot, I held my Nikon Coolpix P80 under the flower and shot at roughly a 120º angle. I should mention, too, that the flower was only 4 or 5 inches tall, too. I used the Close-up setting, the one setting I've found to be the best for this type of photography. For my next major camera, I'd love to have one with a manual lens, but that's a long way off; right now, this is the perfect camera for me and what I use it for (mainly the close to 10,000 photos of my daughter... thank god for digital).

I've got lots of photos along the same lines. I was on a kick this summer of shooting up from under plants, trying to catch the sunlight through petals and leaves to get interesting illuminations. Some worked, some did not. Trial and error and all that, I guess. I've always loved taking pictures, something I inherited from my dad, but this is probably the first time in years that I've actually thought about what I'm taking pictures of.

And now that I've got a decent collection of random shots of fauna from this summer, I'm going to make a calendar. I plan on making it the Christmas gift to most of my family and friends and maybe, just maybe, finding somewhere to perhaps sell it, should it turn out. I will never, ever profess to be the 'best' at anything, but I think this idea may be a profitable one. If I ever get around to it.