Guest Post By Hayden: My Little Miss Playthings Adventure

Hello everyone!  It's me again. :)  I wanted to share a little bit about Little Miss Playthings, the photo contest held annually at the AGPlaythings site.  I was so excited when Mama told me that I would be the contestant this year!  Maggie got to do it last year, and she really enjoyed it. :)

So first off, Mama made a signature picture for AGPlaythings.  That way, every time Mama posted on a thread, people would see my picture and be reminded that I was part of Little Miss Playthings (or LMPT).  I really like how it turned out. :) (P.S.  Some of these photos might be a little bit grainy...we had to make them smaller for the forum, but I wanted them to be a little bit bigger here.  And as always, you can click on the pictures to make them larger.) :)

Each year, there are several different rounds for the photos that need to be taken, with a different category for each.  It's always really fun seeing the way the categories are creatively interpreted.  It can be really challenging if you don't have any ideas for a certain category, though! :}

The first round this year was Weather.  This is what Mama and I came up with:

We both loved the clear quality of this picture, and the way the dappled sunlight fell across the landscape and my vinyl.  Hopefully, it got the idea across of enjoying the mild, summer weather!

The second round was Contrast:

Mama and I struggled with this category.  There are so many ways this could have been interpreted.  I don't know that this photo was the most creative use of the category, but at least it turned out nicely. ;)

Round 3 was Out of This World:

As you can see, Mama and I decided to take this one quite literally. ;)  To be perfectly honest, we barely made the deadline on this one, so we had to go for a simple picture.  Mama had this great involved idea.  She was going to have Jenna and I in my room drawing the solar system.  Unfortunately, we never got around to it (that was the same weekend as Mama's yard sale and also the weekend before she left for vacation).  I'm just glad we were able to get something submitted.  I really wanted to participate in each category (according to the rules, you don't have to do each round, but the more you participate, the better your chances are of winning).

The next round was Solo, which was basically supposed to capture something we did when we were by ourselves:

I really love this picture!  And it's totally what I would do by myself...dress up and pretend to be a fairy tale character. ;)

The fifth and final round was due just this past Saturday, and was called Anything Goes.  Basically, the title says it all.  It could be any sort of picture we wanted.  This is the one that Mama and I chose:

As you can probably tell, we took this picture on my trip to the Trinity Alps Resort.  I'm really pleased with how it turned out.  I felt so dreamy sitting by that lovely river. :)

There were lots of other pictures we considered.  I thought you might enjoy seeing some of the ones that didn't quite make the cut. :)

This was the other one we were considering for "Weather".  We liked it, but we liked the one we chose just a little bit better.  It was better quality and we both just fell in love with it.  I still enjoyed this one, though.  Plus, it was really fun to spend half an hour or so picking daisies. :)

Like I said before, we really struggled with the "Contrast" round, so there were several other pictures we considered.  Mama really liked this one, but her dad thought it looked like a risque perfume commercial or something, and Papa said it made him think of Miss Piggy (not that he thought I looked fat...he just thought it looked like the type of pose she would do).  For some reason, we just couldn't look at this photo in the same way after they shared their opinions. ;)

This was the one we probably struggled with the most.  I was actually leaning towards this one myself.  In the end, though, after consulting with several others, we decided that the contrast photo we chose was a little bit better of a choice.  My hair showed up a little better on that one, plus my sleeve had a really lovely drape to it.  What do you think?  Did we choose well? (I still think this one would have worked too, personally!)

Way back in the beginning, this was the photo we were thinking about using for contrast.  But we really liked the idea of using this dress for my solo round, so we didn't want to make it less special by having the dress appear in an earlier round.  Too bad...we loved the contrast of the shade beneath the tree and the bright green of the grass. :)

There were three other photos we considered for the solo round.  This was the first.  I have to say, I really liked this one (plus, as with the weather picture, I had a lot of fun while Mama took pictures!).  It does definitely show me doing something I would do by myself.  In the end, though, the pretty dress won out. ;)

It was really hard to leave this photo behind.  I love the coloring and the pose and everything about it!  We really felt like the one we chose gave a better idea of me playing and imagining, though, while this one could have been for a historical photo shoot or something else.  I'm glad we at least get to share it with you now. :) 

This was another one we considered using for "Solo".  Interestingly enough, we also thought about using it for the "Weather" round.  It was a pretty picture and a cute idea, but we felt that the pictures we choose in both categories presented a clearer idea of what we wanted to communicate. 

And finally, this is the other picture we thought about using for the "Anything Goes" round.  It was such a tough choice!  Many of you who follow Mama's blog will recognize this as the picture she used for her header for a while.  I love this picture a lot, but we decided to use the sitting down one instead.  I hope we made the right choice!

The results for Little Miss Playthings will be announced either this coming Saturday or Sunday, I believe, when all of the votes for all of the different rounds have been tallied.  I'll be sure to let you know how I did! :)  Thanks for letting me share a little about my time as a LMPT contestant.  It was so much fun, and I'm honored that Mama chose me to do it this year. :)

P.S.  Tess and Maggie graciously allowed me to make a new header with all of my LMPT photos on it, so in keeping with tradition, I've included a copy of the former header in this post: