New Acu-Rite Weather Station

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We installed our new Acu-Rite weather station today. We took down a rotten tree that was leaning towards the house to make a clear and safe spot for the weather station. The station is a tad too close to the house and there is a bit of a tree canopy, but this location is the best we could do in our yard.  We'll hook up the station to Weather Underground tomorrow.

Video

Google Twinkle

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Besides uploading all my important pics to SmugMug, I also uplod them to Google. For the past few weeks, Google has created Awesome Photos for some of my pictures. You can read more about what Google was doing here and here. But, in a nut shell, Google added SNOW, TWINKLE, and MOVIE animation to photos meeting certain criteria. Here's a picture of my tree that Google added the twinkle feature to. even the reflection in the window is twinkling! I really enjoyed what Google did the past few weeks. The only thing I would have changed was them adding a button to let me select for a certain picture the awesomizing feature. If there was one, I didn't see it.

Merry Christmas

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Wishing you are yours a Merry Christmas!

These pictures were taken earlier in December on a trip to the Durham Museum of Life and Science.  I had the tripod with me, and we lined up and took several pictures trying to get a good one.  At the end of the day, I decided that instead of putting one picture on our card like I'd done years past that, I would pick several.  I used a template from Wal-Mart and Hallmark for the ones I mailed out, and I used some embellishments from Scrap Girls for this version that I created last night.

Festive Tree

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Another shot taken on our light show tour Sunday night.  This house was gorgeous!  Somehow I forgot to get good picture of the overall lights with my real camera, but here is a quick iPhone snap to show you how massive the display was.  The green tree featured in my daily is over on the right.  

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Merry Christmas...Another Card

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This is another shot from our Sunday night drive to see lights in our area.  This house has the lights dancing to music and is really fun to watch.  I get a tad frustrated at this location because along with the typical Christmas lights there are a whole bunch of lollipop looking real RR or road lights.  They are so powerful when they flash on and off to the music and it can really be an issue when trying to get a good exposure on the regular lights.

See what I mean.

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My daily was made from two shots.  The real tree is next to the big lighted tree, but I didn't get a shot where they both looked their best at the same time.  I pulled the lighted tree from another shot where I thought it looked great and overlaid it on another shot of the lighted and real tree.  I've darkened shadows a bit to hide seems and boosted the lighted tree colors just a bit.

X Marks the Roof

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Donnie, the boys, and I drove around after dinner last night looking at Christmas lights. We saw a lot of festive and enjoyable displalys, and I grabbed a lot of pictures. I'm not real keen on this shot, but it does have an X in it. Tomorrow I will post my favorite from our light seeing tour.