Last, but not least, here is my 'partridge in a pear tree'.  That concludes a successful challenge year. Today, we begin a fresh challenge!

See Kiki's.

I actually had this one ready since the beginning of November.  I think it was the second to last photo I took that night.  Hope you like it.

The female dove is trapped inside her cage and her male lover dove can only look on longingly in despair.

See Kiki's 2 turtle doves.

This was one of the first pictures I took that day.  

Let's see what Kiki is up to this month.

If you are looking at this and not wondering whether or not this is a photograph, well, I'll tell you anyway.  This is a photograph I took at an Indigo book store for the 9th photograph in Kiki and I's annual Creative Christmas fun. The photo is of course highly edited.

If you are asking yourselves what this is all about and why I'm posting Christmas themes in October, see my post here - It's Christmas all over again.  I have three more photographs to go and I'm already getting excited for this year's Christmas challenge!  It's my turn to come up with something.

Hi Kiki...let's enjoy your 4 calling birds photo. :)

Long overdue. :/.  What do you think about my interpretation of "5 golden rings"?

Go check out Kiki's :).

Lay 'em shoppers!

KiKiKiKi!  (Click to see Kiki's picture for this month)

I'm very late in posting this, but here it is. Hehe.

Let's see Kiki's (<-- click) interpretation shall we?

Since early birds catch tasty things, let me post this.  It's my May Christmas Challenge.  Does it look a bit like strips of raw meat??  It's actually candy; one of those big lollipops - a white and red one (aka...the milk part). And there's 8 of them in the picture.

What has Kiki come up with this month?

I'm early!  This is my Christmas challenge photo of the month for '9 Ladies Dancing'.  There really are 9 Hello Kitties lined up, not that you can really tell by looking at the photo.  I took this at the Indigo store while kiki was taking photos behind me.  I wonder what she was taking photos of.

The motto of this month's theme: - be unique - Miss Hello Square Kitty says.

Since it's still early, kiki hasn't posted hers yet. Can't wait to see what she comes up with!

(The makers of Hello Kitty really should make square-headed ones!)

A day late. A big opps. I had this ready to go for a while and for some reason I didn't post the picture.

I always knew I wanted to try something a little different for each of the 12 pictures I'll be posting, but I didn't quite know what to do about this picture I took. So as an experiment, I figuratively flipped the switch and inversed the colours. I think. I can't quite remember. I hope you think it's a bit interesting at least.

Go take a look at Lesley's retro-inspired photograph here.

This is photo deux of the "12 days of Christmas" christmas challenge that Lesley and I are doing, where each month we are to post a photograph inspired the song.  All the photographs were taken back in December 2010 (see Lesley's interpretation here). 

This photograph was taken in a Hallmark card store.  I saw these boxes with pictures of Santa blowing on a horn and I thought they were perfect.  I cleared everything off from the shelf (the people at the store were kind enough to let me rearrange their shelves (hah)...not that I actually asked (shhh)) and stacked 11 of the boxes, just as you see them in the picture.  I did quite a bit of photoshopping as you can probably see and I wouldn't blame you if you didn't think this was a photograph at all!   I wanted to make the photograph very pop art-like.  Not sure I achieved the effect I wanted, but it is colourful, if nothing else!

12 Drummers Drumming

Every year (almost), kiki and I celebrate Christmas by running around a mall for our "Christmas Hunt".  This involves crazy shopping at Eaton's Centre during the busiest time of the year and with a set of rules for what we should be purchasing, all in 1.5 hours. We call this fun (hah!).  For the last several years, we've also incorporated a photography component to the Hunt.  The last Hunt we did, was a Christmas postcard theme, which I've posted in my tumblr.

This year, it was kiki's turn to think up the game and she warned me that she wanted to kick our creativity up a notch.  We had to take 12 photos that fit the theme of the "12 days of Christmas" - a photo for each of the 12 days.  We had to take the photos in 30 minutes (!).  Thankfully, the photos did not have to be literal, but could be loosely inspired by each of the themes for the 12 days.  By the end of each month, one image must be posted.

Here is my photo inspired by '12 Drummers Drumming'. 

[Why, yes, I like to work last minute - just managed to get this posted before the end of the month deadline]

This first photo for '12 Drummers Drumming' is quite literal.  It was one of the last photos I took that night; my imagination went off shopping by itself at that point.

After the photo challenge, we spent the next hour shopping alone for 4 items with the total the purchases not exceeding $30 (!!).  We also had to consider the fact that we will eventually have to create both a print and TV ad for each of the items received.  Never done a video before, so I foresee disaster in the works.