Mr. Bluebird

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After work yesterday, Johnny and I went for a walk with Blaze.  Along the way, we saw several birds including the bluebird that I've posted for my daily.  That 35x zoom on my new Canon SX40 HS really let me get this shot.  Still, it's cropped quite a bit.  I used Color Efex Pro to lighten the center as the bird was in the shade and the shot was therefore darker than I wanted. I resisted tinkering with the colors on top of that as blues are so hard to get/keep right.

My cutie thought I should take his picture after taking the bird's:

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Besides the fact that it was a gorgeous 60 something day again, we wanted to take a closer look at the Yoda statue in our neighbor's yard.  Clearly the force is strong at this house.  BTW, I love Star Wars and wish I had R2-D2 in  my yard!

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Nearby this sweet kitty nestled in the warm sun:

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He was rubbing his chin into the ground and talked to us a bit but with Blaze on her leash at my feet, no way was he coming over.  BTW, Blaze does not dislike cats and probably would have done just fine if he'd approached.

I have to post one more new chef hat picture!

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We cooked up a storm in the kitchen again last night making dog biscuits for Blaze and Buddy, No Bake Cheesecake, and then a full dinner with country style steak and green beans at the heart of it.  Yum!

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The biscuits were a box mix I got in the after Christmas clearance at Target.  They were easy and seemed to contain basic things cookies are made from minus the sugar.

If I tell you what I have planned for today, you might fuss, so you'll just have to see the pics tomorrow;-)

What's Cookin'?!?

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One of the activities I really enjoy doing with the boys is cooking.  And, they are such enthusiastic helpers! The chef hats were a present from Santa, and the boys were eager to put them on while we made chicken enchiladas last night.  Bless little Johnny who always wants to cut the onion and always ends up crying.  The ingredients are chicken breast tenders broiled and cut into strips with canned mushrooms and microwave/butter steamed onions tossed in.  I used Old El Paso Enchilada Sauce and refried beans, lots of mozzarella cheese, and last night I even put some baby spinach leaves in them.  The wraps are flax seed wheat:-)  Yum!  We had this system where we denoted who wrapped which one using the number of toothpicks we inserted.  I was 1, Joey, 2, and Johnny 3.

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Inspired by the Oragami Yoda and Darth Paper books, Joey designed a Yoda puppet:

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I love it when the value of a book goes beyond the reading of the printed page.  He had this created before I even realized he had taken out the paper, scissors, and markers.  Thanks to Aunt Faith for sending the Darth Paper Strikes Back book for Christmas.

Working half days is going OK.  It's giving me a few extra minutes to get some sunshine and fresh air in the afternoon,  take a nap when I need it, time to cook a homemade and hopefully reasonably healthy meal, and time to sort through how the boys and I are feeling about all that's going on in our lives right now.

From our time at Falcon Park in yesterday afternoon, here is Johnny:

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and Joey:

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A gorgeous calm 55 degree January day:

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A daily photo by Joey:

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"Why do big kids do mean things?  Mom had to borrow a broom and work really hard to get the swing down for me."

The Hair Cut!

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As planned, my hair was cut and donated to Locks of Love last night. Friends offered to go for support, but some roads in life were meant to be walked alone. Well, I wasn't THAT alone.  I had Joey and Johnny with me, and they had their Nintendo DS'.  With a small amount of inspiration from me, it turned into a let's photograph mom fest:-)  And, that kept me smiling.  I had a surge of anxiety and almost cried as she cut the first section off, but that soon passed and before I knew it I had a new hairdoo.

Glinda at Veasey's Hair Designs is where I got it cut.  It all started one day when I walked into GameStop over the holidays and the nice girl, Carol, at the counter commented on how beautiful my hair was.  She told me that she'd just had 6 inches cut off of her medium length hair and that she was really missing it.  I told her thanks and then just couldn't help tell her I was about to start chemo and probably lose my hair.  I wasn't trying to make her feel bad at all...just I talk to people who talk to me.  She went on to tell me that her mom cuts hair and that there were several people in her family who had survived cancer (and lost and regrown their hair) and that her mom cut hair for Locks of Love donations.  She encouraged me to go stop in and see her mom, and later that day I did.  Her mom, Glinda, reassured me that Locks of Love would want my hair (they take colored hair but not bleached hair), and so we set up an appointment for after the holidays and her vacation time.

Here is a daily that I put up for the boys.  It is a combination of shots that they both took with my camera and their DS'.  Johnny had Ms. Glinda wrapped around his finger asking her to smile and rushing over to show her the picture he'd just taken.

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Another collage showing even more pics that they took:

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Although a horrible flash shot, I really like the shot of Johnny trying to help Glinda sweep up my hair.  He's such a good boy.

My daily shot is one I had Johnny take this morning and then I cropped it, cloned out the edge of a picture frame, and ran a portrait filter on it.  I didn't think there was a shot last night that really showed what the hair cut looked like.  Plus I had washed it and between that and the weight being off of it it bounces now:-)

A special thanks to Glinda and her daughter for turning something unpleasant into something I could deal with.  I made appointments for Glinda to cut the boys' hair next week:-)

Thanks for your support on this...  And if you think it looks 'better' shorter...well maybe you shouldn't tell me;-)

Sitting Pretty

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With temps in the low 20s here last night, I made a fire in our fireplace.  It was warm and pretty and a comfort to sit by.  I added some copper coated pine cones to the flames for extra photographic appeal:-)

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I thought this view looking up was pretty neat too:

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I made a new recipe for meatballs last night which used Stove Top Stuffing instead of bread crumbs.  I'd have to say that they are a real winner.

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I tried the variation of adding some cream cheese to the tomato sauce (Classico Tomato and Basil), and that was yummy too. Of course my taste buds aren't 100% due to the chemo, but the boys ate it up and said it was great too.

Stephen's Ace Hardware in Fuquay has a train going around the store.  Somehow I've never taken the boys in before.  We needed birdseed and our usual place was closed, so we ended up there.  The boys thought it was fantastic.  That and the free popcorn on the way out made sure we'll be back!

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I get a great deal of joy looking out my kitchen window at the deck rail and treeline bird feeders that I have up (suet too).  Each day I shoot a few shots of the birds.  It's amazing all the new varieties that show up in the winter time.  I've shared a black-capped chickadee picture as my POTD and here is a collage showing a few of the other visitors (goldfinch, downy woodpecker, and a pine warbler?):

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Thanks for stopping by to share in a bit of our day and to look at my pics...

The Reflection Dimension

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If you want to play The Twilight Zone opening music go ahead;-)

It all started out last evening with me wanting to take a cool picture of a beautiful snowflake ornament that my girlfriend Faith sent me for Christmas.  She loves to work with beads, and I have several lovely bracelets and ornaments that she's sent over the years.

This ornament has gorgeous cobalt blue and crimson red beads in it as well as some iridescent pearl ones.  She knows how I love blues and reds.  Somehow with me being so artistic I didn't get a shot of the whole ornament so insert pause here as I go to take one:-)

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I lit a few candles and decided to try to get my mood lights hanging off the entertainment center into the background.  Lights in my house aren't just for Christmas:-)  I didn't end up with any shots of the ornament that I really liked.  This was as close as I came:

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Candlelight was not enough to light the ornament.  I'd be better off trying to catch sunlight and bokeh out the kitchen window where it hangs now.

Pretty soon I was focusing on the candles themselves, and I started taking shots like this:

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and this:

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Note:  I was using my Canon Powershot S3 IS for these and not the new SX40 HS. I tried the SX40 HS too, and it does not have Super Macro Mode.  You also have to be farther away from subjects to begin with to get good focus (S3 is about 3'), so I wasn't getting the results that I wanted.  That's OK, around the house I can grab whatever camera suits me, right?

When I noticed that one of the flat areas on the candle holder took on a sharp looking alternate dimension feel to it (to me), I started taking lots of pics of it trying to get the bokeh, angle, and of course reflection just right.  That's the shot you get for my daily.  I was just really drawn to the pattern in that one flat panel thinking that maybe it was a portal into some alternate universe filled with life and color.  And, yes, Star Trek TNG did happen to be on for the kids while I was taking these!  Go figure:-)  We are up to season 7 now in our quest to watch the entire set of TNG episodes.  Which Star Trek series will we pick next?  Joey thinks DS9 and I'm thinking more like Voyager or Enterprise:-)  DS9 is such a guy thing.  Well, I digress now.  Let me know what you think of this candle study in red.

Today I start back to work trying to work half days.  I hope that goes OK.  I took the kids to Wal-Mart to get some groceries and have some fun yesterday and did pretty good.  I stopped to sit down and rest a few times during our walk of the entire store, and that's not something I ever thought I'd need to do.  But, it let us enjoy our shopping trip.  I keep telling myself these things are temporary and am glad that we are able to do as much as we are so far.

Roast Chicken

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I roasted a chicken yesterday with carrots and onions underneath and Italian seasonings on top.  The four of us devoured it along with some Stove Top Stuffing.  Yum!

Donnie took me for a drive in search of some pics, but it's January and there just isn't much out there to shoot with no snow or frost or ice to jazz it up a bit.  My favorite dragonfly wetland is brown and dormant:

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And on the other side of the road:

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You can just barely see the moon in the shot above just to the left top of the close pine.  It was out early:

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I found this lonely flower nestled down in the leaves in my yard too:

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I know you guys up in the northern US and Canada will laugh at us folks in Raleigh, but we consider a high on Tuesday of 37 with an overnight low of 20 to be downright frigid.  You should have heard the weatherman on the news last night talking about the arctic blast of cold air headed our way;-)  Don't worry, though, it's short-lived with a high of 63 predicted for Saturday.  Us spoiled Raleigh people that we are.

Here's Looking at You!

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With the approaching much colder weather and the holiday season coming to a close, it was time to take down the inflatables.  Until next year...

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A big thanks again to Donnie for all his efforts this holiday season.  I wasn't feeling very good yesterday, and mostly I sat on a stool near him or got up to take a few pictures close by while he packed things up.

Here is one of my sasanqua camellias:

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Soaking in the beauty of the flowers before the blooms are frozen later in the week.

With colder air approaching, the birds were extra active at the bird feeders too.  This cheery House Finch is a wonderful winter addition to my yard.

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For my daily today, I've posted a Northern Mockingbird.  He's a new addition to the feeder area too.  So far he seems to be sharing;-)

Wishing everyone a new year filled with joy and good health...