Lucky with a long exposure

The snow we got on Monday didn't really come to much, but yesterday we had a whole day of it. By evening the snow had all but stopped so I went out to see if I could get some nice shots of the house in the virgin snow. This 25 second exposure at f/10 turned out nicer than I thought it would as the sky took on this purple hue with the slightly longer exposure. I shot the same photo with a larger aperture and faster shutter and the result wasn't half as good. I also got some shots of the hours in plan view from the front and the back - so that's next years Christmas cards sorted !