Practicing in the dark

Merry Christmas everyone! I felt like playing around with my camera tonight while the boys watched football. I wanted to capture the mood of the night and try taking some pictures without my crummy flash. I have my thoughts about the quality of the photo in italics, so if any of you real photographers out there want to give me hints, feel free to let me in on them.

I like the mantle.
The color is weird though.

I like the color and lighting on this one. It has warmth, in an appropriate way. (candles ;)

I really loved this star ornament and had to buy it last year.

I wanted to take a picture of the tree and Nathaniel with the natural lighting of the room. What you see here is what I saw. It took me only two tries. I am finally getting it. I did use a tripod.

I love these crackle glass ornaments. They are so heavy, that I just put them in a basket. It took me a few years to collect all these.
It is really yellow, I think just waiting till daylight would be good for this shot.

The ornaments with my kids' pictures on them are favorites for sure. The teddy bear one is from Mother's Day Out, when Nathaniel used to go there once a week for a few hours.
I think for this one, I could have raised my F number higher so that a had more depth of field so you could see the other pictures???

One of the kids made this in a primary class. I think it is absolutely precious. Notice the star, it is connected by a wire. I'd like to make a whole set of these.
It would have been nice to have the star in focus, depth of field issue again.

Whenever we lived in Oklahoma, I did hair for a friend and traded for a set of these darling handmade ornaments. I also worked off a tree skirt and stocking for Madison.

eBay! What a find, I love this vintage Delft, handpainted ornament.
This was up high, so I was standing on my chair trying to hold my tripod steady on the arm.

This blown glass heart is one of a set I bought from a school fundraiser (0r my mother-in-law gave them to us... I forgot!) the first year we got married. I LOVE them, only 3 of the 6 survive.

it is up really high on the tree, so this picture is super lame

My mother-in-law gave us a set of Raggedy Ann and Andy. Cuteness.
I didn't mind that Andy was blurry.

I got this hand painted beauty when we lived in the Netherlands.

My sister, Kelly gave us this. I love bells that have the year on them, I have three on the tree.
The quilted one in the foreground is a new one this year from a patient Tom had, she brought one in for everyone at the office.
I should have moved the bell so the light was not going through it, it distorted it a bit.

I bought this one at Mt. Vernon.

This was a Target special. I loved how tiny (about 1 1/2") the snowglobe was.

This is my favorite ornament. It was a wedding present and has 1986 on the opposite side.
I took a lot of this one and had a hard time with it, trying to get the birds and the words in focus. Higher F number again perhaps?

Then Morgan came home from a date and I wanted to take a picture of her cute hair Brooke her cousin styled for her.

How do I avoid the shadow?

Morgan took this picture. Brinley has great lips and skin like satin.