FotoMom

Donnie at West Point Mill

2012-01-31T08:22:00.000-05:00

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Between two doctor's appointments yesterday, Donnie and I had a picnic lunch and a short walk at West Point Mill on the Eno River. It was a glorious January day...57 degrees, calm winds, and bright and sunny.

Although there were pretty landscapes, mill shots, daffodils, and textures everywhere, Donnie looked too handsome in this portrait not to use this picture as my POTD.

Our view during the picnic was the mill itself:

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And our view on our walk was the river:

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I studied some of the gears and other mill equipment laying outside the mill:

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And we enjoyed comparing the bridge in this park to the ones we had seen in Smithfield on Saturday. We expected this bridge to be made by the same compaby, Contech, but it was made by Excel.

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Donnie pondered what life would have been like as a civil engineer. We studied the bridge enough to determine that is was 4 larges pieces obviously moved into place by a crane and then bolted together.

I am really enjoying collecting texture and background shots right now. I realize there is a fine line between having a good assortment to choose from and having so many you can't find the one you want or make up your mind, yet I'm generating quite the gallery now.

Papamugger will enjoy this water spider and his shadow:

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We enjoyed a very nice dinner after Donnie spent some time bike riding with Joey, Johnny, and Madi. How did we survive out on our own as kids with no adults anywhere in sight and with no helmets I don't know. The kids had fun. We're working on safety skills:-)

Love Is Always Give and Take

2012-01-30T07:33:00.000-05:00

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I didn't have a chance to take many new pics yesterday, so I decided to process another of the heart gel cling shots from my window.

Here's the original:

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Here's the texture which I took in Smithfield on Saturday:

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I didn't have to desaturate it; it didn't have much color to begin with.

Here are the filters I used in Color Efex Pro:

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I tried the text along the bottom as a straight line again, but BORING. I experimented and came up with the arches. It's different:-) The text is two layers...one for each arch. I rotated the arches to fit the curve as well as fidgeting with the bend of the arch. I didn't get too many new gray hairs, but I did have to finesse them for a while to get them right or at least as good as they are. I had issues with the text being readable, so I also had to try several fonts to get one that showed up the way I wanted it to. This is Melanie BT. Loriah BT didn't work very well.

When I saw the big heart and the little heart, it reminded me of how love is never quite fifty-fifty. How sometimes one person carries more of the load than the other but that hopefully it's a back and forth give and take where each can carry the relationship when needed.

There's one more card I created last night which I'll share:

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Maybe I like it better than the one I've posted. Oh well.

I created this texture overlay from a bokeh shot and a rust shot both taken in Smithfield on Saturday:

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I thought it looked like a mossy tree. Textures are addicting!

Original:

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I had to work to get rid of the whitish spot in the lower right corner on the original as well as repair the top of the larger heart. Color Efex Pro Polarization and one other filter were also applied.

Hopefully you're getting in the romantic Valentine's Day spirit now:-)

Two Hearts Beat as One

2012-01-29T08:56:00.001-05:00

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I'm never one to leave my holiday posts until the last minute:-) We have our Valentine's Day decorations up, not that there are that many, and Johnny and I have been enjoying these gel clings on our family room window.

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I used those clings in combination with this rusty texture to create today's card. The window was dirty and had water spots on the original, so really, I just about had to add a texture.

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With Donnie in my life, it's easy to be motivated to create images like this...

Original:

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Donnie and I went to Smithfield yesterday and walked about 3 miles along where the Neuse River flows through town on the Buffalo Creek Greenway.

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We saw some very interesting things on the walk including a historic bridge crossing. The Neuse River is a major waterway in North Carolina, and getting across 100 or more years ago would not have been trivial. Donnie enjoyed wondering about the engineering of a crossing that large over the years and how it went from a covered bridge to the modern day bridge that now stands just a few yards away. I liked the waterfall noise of the runoff coming down off the road and flowing into the river over the rocky terrain.

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We also saw the Hastings House which was General Johnston's headquarters during the Civil War as well as the town's time capsule to be opened on the tricentennial in 2077. Yep, this town, Smithfield, was founded in 1777. Not obvious to those who don't live in central NC is that Smithfield is in Johnston Country:-) Everything has a history... Now I know. Of course Donnie already new that.

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Donnie pointed out this vanishing point under the new bridge and we saw that when it floods water can get up to 30' under the bridge before hitting the new bridge trusses.

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And views along the Neuse River...

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Contech makes these really nice bridges that are installed throughout the greenway, and we enjoyed studying them too.

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There was a cemetery, pigeons, and cool spider webs along the walk too. A real treat to enjoy on a 60+ degree January day. We heard frogs and crickets and saw many families out enjoying the day too. Informative, calm, peaceful, and relaxing...

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Rainbows...

2012-01-28T09:50:00.001-05:00

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Today's daily is both inspired, pretty, and scientific. What you're looking at is a macro of a CD (really a DVD) that was put in the microwave for 7 seconds. A special thanks to Vandana and Dianne Ward for their inspiration. I saw their beautiful photos yesterday and was motivated to give it a try myself.

If you're wondering more about why CDs reflect rainbows, here's a geeky explanation that I understood.

I took about 250 pics, and the hardest part was holding everything still so as to not blur the images and actually taking images with the rainbow color that did not also contain a SP. Hi!

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This is the CD after 7 seconds in the microwave on high (my microwave is pretty powerful). Don't let the chemicals quickly igniting and burning out around 5 seconds cause you to jump too bad! It's just a small flash. Turning the fan hood on the stove on is a good idea too as there is a bit of a chemical smell for a few minutes.

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A couple other pics that I liked:

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If you want to give this a try, experiment a lot with the angle you hold the CD relative to the lens. You can make it look like lightning or veins in the body or cracks in ice or wherever your imagination takes you. Most of all if you try it, have fun! Even Donnie was getting in on the act!

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My shots were mostly taken under a compact fluorescent light. It might be worthwhile to go out in the sun or try halogen or some other light source. Water or maybe oil on top might produce nice results too!

Moody Tree

2012-01-27T07:13:00.000-05:00

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It was foggy here yesterday morning, and I stopped to take a picture of a bare tree that always catches my eye on the trip to/from the kids' school. I got out the tripod because the light was low and I knew I wanted to take some bracketed images. I thought I might try to process the shot to look like my foggy tree daily from November 2010:

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but I never saw the same potential in yesterday's tree and shots, so I started experimenting with other processing styles.

Here's the original correctly exposed shot:

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I knew when I took the shot that I was going to want to get rid of the partial tree in the upper left. Bothers me. Might not bother you.

Here's the HDR version straightened up a bit and with the left branch removed:

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It's OK, but it doesn't make me feel any emotion. It looks about like any other outdoor scene I would shoot around here in the winter and pump through Photomatix. So, I kept going.

This is the tree with a Plaster filter on it:

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I happen to really like that version, but I wasn't sure how the daily community would receive it. I really struggled on what text, what font, and what location and shape for the text. I was about to get really frustrated.

I decided to see if I liked what any of the filters in Color Efex Pro would do. Here's what I call the 'blue' version:

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I love blue (and red), and the colors here really work for me. There were about 5 filters on this in Color Efex Pro and I didn't keep track of which ones.

I wanted to try a texture, and I kept going. Here's the blue version with a texture:

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This shot didn't have a lot of negative space, but I think I like the texture with it anyway.

But then I thought I'd see what B&W looked like, and then I felt like that was the one. It's rare for me to do a B&W conversion and feel like there's any depth to the tones of my shot. I guess all those fancy filters and colors before the B&W conversion helped.

You can tell me which one you like best or how you think you would have set about pp'ing the photo. I'd be interested to hear.

I Love You

2012-01-26T07:33:00.001-05:00

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Every once in a while I like to pull out my LED color changing base and one of the glass cubes that goes on it and create a picture. I was at the Dollar Tree store earlier in the week, and bought the glass cube that I used for today's daily. Two years ago, I created this image from one of the cubes:

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Here's the background of today's shot before I altered the color:

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I rotated it, cropped it to 8X10, and used Color Efex Pro and Color Variations in Elements to adjust the color to my liking.

Here's the original text picture:

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As you can tell, I straightened, cropped, cleaned up the dust, and altered the color. I had taken about 30 pics of the cube catching various colors from the LED color changing base, and then I set about picking the most sharp one to work with.

I was going to stick with a dark/black image again, but when I Inverted the image, I really liked the colors and decided to use that version this time around.

There's a simple border and drop shadow around the center image to give it some depth.

Of course there are many other ways I could have packaged the original image up keeping it mostly black or inverting it. Tons of different color tints or frames. After trying a few combinations, it was time to pick one.

Winter Hues

2012-01-25T08:27:00.000-05:00

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I really didn't want to post a picture of ragweed as my daily today, but I thought this was the best shot of the ones I quickly took on a photo drive down my favorite dirt road yesterday.

Here's the original:

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Here's the texture I overlayed over it:

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I did not desat the colors this time.

I also took and worked on this barn shot which I spent some time processing last night:

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It's a 3 shot HDR processed with Photomatix, and then I applied the Orton Action which I downloaded from The CoffeeShop Blog.

Here's the original:

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Like the last winter barn scene I shot, it's just too full of branches and clutter:-( I'll keep trying.

It's All in the Hands!

2012-01-24T07:54:00.000-05:00

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Donnie is patiently working with Johnny to put together an Erector Crane set that he gave him for Christmas. It's heartwarming to see them sitting at the table finding the pieces and carefully adding them to the progress to far. I think it makes for a neat picture with Johnny's little hands and Donnie's big hands working together as a team.

Here's a picture of what the crane will look like. Northern Hydraulics had a much better price just before Christmas!

Crane progress so far:

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Johnny and Donnie:

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For a little boy that needed PT for help gripping a pencil and using his scissors, he's doing a great job working with those small nuts thanks to Donnie's patience.

In the background Joey and I were working on the final stage of his Lego X-Wing fighter ship. All the wings are done, and we are working on the cockpit. A picture of that for another day!

The weatherman promised sunny skies by 2PM today. One can only hope...

My second chemo treatment yesterday went without incident. I just hate the IV in my hand!

A put up a second blog today that talks about formatting urls for use in SmugMug picture captions. If you're interested, it's here.

Linking to URLs on SmugMug

2012-01-24T07:17:00.002-05:00

Lately I have seen a lot of broken 'other photo' url links in SmugMug DailyPhotos picture captions due to them containing the pound sign (#) in them. I'm not going to delve into why that happens. But suffice to say, if you paste a url into your daily photo comments that contains a pound sign, clicking on it fails, and folks have to copy/paste the link into another browser window to go to your linked picture.

Example of a url that breaks:
http://fotomom.smugmug.com/Nature/January-2012/20844772_Mzb9HP#!i=1661913395&k=67SgMJs

If you are willing to turn on the Share option for your gallery, you can use the 'Get a Link' option or the 'Shorten this Link' option to get around this. In my blog each day, I use 'Get a Link' and put the Small version in my post using the Link icon on blogger. That lets me specify the text of the link If you use 'Shorten this link', you still see a url but it is as you guessed.much shorter. You can past it just like that or use the Link icon with it too.

Get a Link:

Share a Link:

If you just don't want to turn on the Share option, or your link is not SmugMug related, you can still format a pretty link for a url yourself. The HTML behind the link is pretty simple: It all boils down to an HTML tag that looks like this:

(Do you have any idea how hard it is to put an HTML tag in an HTML document so it will show up just as text? Grrr.... I had to put it in as an image file:-)

You can replace the url with your url (the one on the browser bar for your picture) and then replace the wording for the link (SmugMug in this case) with your desired text. Be very careful not to mess with the double quotes on left and right carrot symbols (<>).

Link to the pictures in this post.

I hope this is helpful. E-mail me or leave a comment if you have questions. For me, it's all about which one of these methods is fastest since I do this a lot and am trying not to be too lazy to format things so they are easier on the eye.

Galactic Stars

2012-01-23T08:20:00.000-05:00

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I only took a few pics of the boys making Valentine's Day cards yesterday, and I didn't think any of them worth sharing as a daily. I didn't even pull them off the camera yet:-( My daily is an intentionally blurred shot that I took at Marbles Kids Museum on Saturday along with a water starburst shot that I took back in January of 2010 which I used as a texture overlay. I like the colors and think it's cheery on a cloudy January Monday.

Original background cropped to 8X10:

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Original star field cropped to 8X10:

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Something Fishy

2012-01-22T09:50:00.000-05:00

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The pictures I took during yesterday's trip to Marbles Kids Museum were all about geometric shapes and textures. I did take some fun pics of the kids, but I also spent a lot of time trying to scope out things regular visitors to the museum might not notice.

My daily is one of the fish in their big fish tank. Art inspired me to try a tank shot when he posted one from a tank at a restaurant last week. I spent some time with the clone tool cleaning up spots on the glass that showed up in the dark area above the fish. I ran Noiseware on it and adjusted the contrast and then did a crop to 8X10 taking away just a bit of the image.

This shot is of a girder in the ceiling near the Around Town play area. I guess there was an extra amount of spotlight coming through that one hole to cause the ghosting effect. This is a digital zoom, so it has a lot of grain, but in this case I think it makes the girder look like something more than what it is.

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The boys enjoyed building in the block area. Johnny came up with this fill the hole design all by himself:-) I took one with and without his hand and liked this one better.

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Of course at Marbles there are a lot of marbles. The building incorporates them inside and out. I just wish they were lit up better and closer.

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Out in the garden area, there were quite a few of this solar powered walkway lights. I love gazing globes small and big!

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The railing is a circle, and the opening looks down from the 2nd floor to the first floor lobby. I liked the reflection and tried to capture some interest with those passing by on the other side. They are in the Millennium Falcon style window enjoying the view of Moore Square.

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This is a close-up of a tree through a glass window.

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And this is the spin art activity that they had going on in their art area.

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Here are my boys doing what they do best at the museum...playing and having fun... That shot of Johnny lower left is way cool. I was very far away, and you can still see his eye through the pretend telescope lens. The shot is not cropped, but it is 35x optical zoom to get that close to him. I am enjoying the better zoom and lower light capabilities of the Canon SX40 HS.

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I'll leave you with one more shot because I just love the Millennium Falcon window. I sure wish the railing behind me while taking the window shot did not show up in my picture! If it hadn't, this would be my daily!

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Lioness at the NC Zoo

2012-01-21T09:45:00.000-05:00

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A heartfelt thanks to Donnie for taking me and the boys to the NC Zoo yesterday... Between the cold I've got and the effects of the chemo, he's doing his best to make sure I don't go out and get myself into too much trouble. The boys track back into school on Monday, so maybe life will slow down a bit. I doubt it. I also have my second of four chemo treatments on Monday too. Trying to enjoy myself before that!

Here's a collage with my favorite shots of the day:

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You know I am loving that shot of my 3 guys on the gord in the vegetable playground! No trip to the zoo is complete without climbing the spider web and the various other vegetables. Even Donnie got in on the act!

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Temps climbed up to 54 by midday at the zoo, and then they dropped back to 46 by the time we left at 4PM. Unfortunately, clouds filled the sky for our entire visit. A light drizzle moved up from the south (odd direction) as we headed to the van. I am so glad the rain didn't move in any sooner. The zoo was NOT crowded still somehow we managed to run into another family that goes to the boys' school. Not too many souls visit the zoo in the winter although they are open every day except Christmas. Actually, if you want to see frisky animals, go when it is not sweltering. Winter is a great time to visit. The female lion, red river hogs, chimps, and many of the other animals were up and about.

I saw a sign yesterday that said that there are 5 miles of trails at the zoo. I knew it was at least 3 miles. Donnie counted over 8000 steps on his pedometer yesterday. We enjoyed Chinese buffet for dinner:-)

My daily picture shows the lioness resting on a rock in her habitat. It is HDR and a big improvement over the sooc cloudy day shot. We were approaching the gorilla habitat when we heard the lion start roaring. What a sound! We raced across the Africa side of the zoo toward the lion enclosure in hopes of hearing and seeing what we assumed was the male lion roar again. I'm not sure why, but the male lion was off exhibit. However, the female lion did roar again, and I got video and countless pics.

Lion Video

We even heard the male lion roar off exhibit.

Joey's favorite zoo animal is the lion, and Johnny's is the gorilla. So, after ditching the gorillas for the lions, I walked Johnny back to see the gorillas. That was a real treat! Two of them were at the window. I got this video of Johnny interacting with what I assume was the smaller, female gorilla.

Gorilla Video

Donnie said his favorite experience at the NC Zoo yesterday was seeing the frisky ocelots. The mom had 2 kittens last April, and they are as big as her now. They frolicked in their pen to the delight of the folks looking on. Look at how they played with us through the glass in this video.

Ocelot Video

When we first entered the zoo, and you have to enter on the North America side in the winter vs. the Africa side, we were treated to the Harbor Seal training session. 3 times a day, they feed and work with the seals. The trainer explained that although they do teach them some fun tricks that most of the training is designed to acclimate the animals to having veterinary procedures preformed like drops in their eyes, nails trimmed, and teeth brushed. We were delighted to see the few tricks from up top and then go underneath to watch the seals play with a toy.

Harbor Seal Video

As we headed to the tram from Africa back to North America, we stopped to watch the giraffes running in their yard. As far as we could tell, they were ready to head to the barn for the night! and eat!

Giraffe Video

The zoos two polar bears are off exhibit and have been moved to different zoos (Detroit and Milwaukee) while the zoo enhances their exhibit. It's an 8 million dollar project. Gulp! I am sure it will be worth it in both helping to house additional bears and to put more than one bear out at a time. They are tripling the size of the exhibit and could house up to 6 bears and maybe even do breeding at the zoo. The new habitat is scheduled to open in 2013 along with a much updated Kids Zone play area. In recent years, the zoo added a bee hive playground and a geyser simulation and we've very much enjoyed those additions, so we eagerly await these latest projects to be completed. I just renewed my zoo membership for 2 years:-)

A Day of History

2012-01-20T08:32:00.000-05:00

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RE yesterday's daily... I'm really sorry that snake picture startled so many of you. I assure you that I did not post it for shock effect. I just liked the color and how sharp it was. Yes, I did take the shot through glass. That's one of the reasons I had to take so many to try to avoid the glare, frame him up just right, etc. There were at least 8 of those guys in the enclosure that was about 5'X5'X5'. None were moving. All were wrapped on a tree branch. Honest, they seemed so docile and just pretty to me. I had no issues with resting the lens right up to the glass for some of the shots:-) Don't get me wrong, if I happen upon a snake in my yard, I get startled. But, I've worked to desensitize myself over the years. Usually if I see a snake in the yard now, I get closer and start taking pics. I will even hold a snake at events where there's a trainer to assist and the snake is used to being held. I didn't get that chance yesterday. Anyway...that's my snake shot for the year...I think.

The boys and I did end up going to the North Carolina Museum of History yesterday. I think I had only been in it one other time, and I think that was when the kids were much younger. The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences is right across Bicentennial Plaza from the history museum, but I guess science appeals to me more than history and the hands-on activities in the sciences museum hold the kids' interest better. I just can't believe that we go to the natural sciences museum about 8 times a year and had barely had glanced at the history museum until now. Well, no more! It has been redone I feel sure since I was in it last time, and I was thoroughly impressed with the exhibits and well, the history lessons. Joey asked a ton of questions, and we had many discussions as we enjoyed our stroll through the museum.

My daily picture depicts the inside of a textile mill. I was totally impressed with whoever designed this parallel mirror infinite reflections shot of two textile mill machines making then look like an entire textile factory floor. Wow! The mirrors were parallel left and right and front and back! I have run out of time to try to clean this shot up anymore. Yes, you can see me in the glass. I did run a noise filter on it.

Here's one other view:

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At the end, we watched a video that basically covered 1970-present day. And, as the video ran, I enjoyed seeing the historical places around the state pass by on the screen. I smiled thinking, "We've been there. We've been there." That felt good.

A couple of key facts I learned or had reinforced in the video were:
1. Tobacco, textile mills, and furniture were the big 3 industries in North Carolina up until a few years ago.
2. North Carolina's number one industry is still agriculture with a diverse amount of foods grown.
3. 75% of North Carolinians now live in urban vs. rural settings.
4. 25% of North Carolinians today hold a college degree.

And here's a link to some other facts about NC that I found online and thought were interesting.

If you're a history buff, there are a slew of images of the exhibits in a new gallery dedicated to just today's pics. The museum followed a timeline starting with explaining Native American culture, the arrival of the Europeans, life in Colonial Times, and the Revolutionary War. It went on of course to present the Civil War, WWI, WWII, and even touched on the Gulf War. We watched how military uniforms evolved over time as well as the gear the soldiers carried. We saw how hard life was for some people. We got a glimpse at politics and religion. One exhibit showed a slave home in comparison to what I'll surmise as a middle class home. We saw how transportation evolved from horse and buggy to trains to cars. It was a good follow-on from our trips to the NC Transportation Museum and the USS North Carolina Battleship.

I do stop to pause for a minute and wonder if we should really dwell on the atrocities of the past. Does teaching history really prevent us from making the same mistakes? If we don't talk about how evil man is capable of being, will man still be evil? Well of course we have to cover some history. But, really, you should have been me for a few minutes trying to describe to an attentive and interested 9-year-old the Trail of Tears, why slavery existed and what the KKK was. Gulp. Thankfully I was able to end things with a reference to Martin Luther King, Jr. and how the Civil Rights movement drastically improved tolerance and respect for all regardless of skin color, ethnic background, religion, etc. We've come a long way but still have a ways to go I concluded.

No trip to a museum is complete without spinning a wheel:

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The exhibit was showing how furniture was built using a lathe and a saw.

Joey concluded after seeing the Girl Scout exhibit that he now wants to be a Boy Scout.

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You're in the Army now. You're not behind a plow. ...

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This camera set-up had the boys in hysterics pretty quick. I had to pull them away and regain control:-)

From a photographic perspective, I was fascinated by this image:

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Behind the man, there was a sheer curtain with part of the design, then some floods, and then a wall with even more of the design. Unfortunately, the floods kept changing intensity, and I struggled to get the shot that I had hoped for.

This was Johnny's favorite exhibit. The buttons on the display made different parts of the exhibit move including a train.

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And, for all you Nascar fans out there:

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They had a Richard Petty 43 and a Dale Earnhardt 3 there too.

Before we headed out yesterday, I captured these Yellow-Rumped Warbler pics:

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Today...Lions and Tigers and Bears Oh My!

A Walk with the Dinosaurs and other Critters

2012-01-19T10:46:00.000-05:00

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The boys and I went to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences yesterday otherwise usually referred to by me as The Dinosaur Museum. Wow has this museum come a long way since I started going to it in the old building back in the early 90s. I still remember how excited everyone was over the new Fossil Lab in the then new building. Now, in April, the Nature Research Center will open one block over and be attached by a fancy walkway. Should be exciting!

My daily is an Emerald Tree Boa. I could not resist their green skin and pose and spent some time trying to get just the right shot.

If you've never been to Raleigh, you might appreciate the view of downtown from the south side:

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It's a relatively compact downtown, and there have been quite a few revitalization projects which have done a good job keeping the city looking nice and creating a safe environment to be out and about in.

Since I've been to the museum many times over the years and taken tons of photos, I really tried to take some shots at some new angles yesterday and/or do different pp. For example, here's an HDR of one of the whale skeletons, I believe a blue whale, that hang from the museum ceiling:

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Seeing those skeletons reminds me of going to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History when I was a little girl. I hope to take the boys to Washington, DC to go to the museums there some day soon. I was telling Joey of all the dinosaurs that he would be able to see there. I dream of spaceships too:-)

Speaking of skeletons and dinosaurs in particular, here is a collage of some of the other exhibits:

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This museum boasts of having the only dinosaur with a heart...Willow. That's the top right picture in the collage.

Johnny loves this huge earth, and I got down low today to include the words 'North Carolina' in the picture.

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I wasn't satisfied with any of my butterfly shots in the conservatory yesterday. This is the best I got of a Blue Morpho:

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I was a bit humbled yesterday to learn that Owl Butterflies and Blue Morpho Butterflies are not the same thing:-) They do look similar, but Owl Butterflies have one primary Great Horned Owl looking eye while Blue Morpho Butterflies have a lot of smaller eyes. I won't be confused again at least:-) You know the old saying...learn something new every day.

A couple of other shots that I liked:

This is an educational 'toy' in the Nature Discovery Room. I found myself entertained by it. The staff member supervising the room joked with me about it being fun for all ages:-)

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The typewriter below is from the office of one of the original museum scientists. They have an area showing how scientists used to work and then another showing how they work today. A computer replaced the typewriter. They need to update the exhibit to show an iPad or at least a laptop as it has an old clunker desktop:-)

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The octopus below is part of the museums older specimens collection. This would make a great Halloween shot! I had to do it in B&W!

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The shot below is from a play area in the Nature Discovery Center. Johnny sat in this area for some time playing with stuffed animal ocean birds and shells. I remembered our wonderful day at the shore on Monday...

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Who can resist this cute bee?!?

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Joey asked me to take this shot:-)

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The picture below shows that there is still a lot of work to be done to get the new wing open by April! I wish the glass on the window in the Nature Discovery Center had not been so dirty and had so much glare.

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We'll be headed to the North Carolina History Museum across from the North Carolina Natural Sciences Museum later today. I am not as familiar with this one.

A View of the Pasture

2012-01-18T10:07:00.001-05:00

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On the way to the beach on Monday, we drove past this pasture which is very close to my house. I often want to stop and take pics here, but it's on a busy highway and there's nowhere to park. Donnie and I both saw how pretty the light and frost was, and he volunteered to turn around and drop me off and come back for me in 5 minutes. Yes, please!!! So I started taking as many bracketed images zoomed out and in and from various vantage points along the fence. I picked my favorite back at home and processed it as an HDR and then created several versions in Color Efex Pro. I ended up posting the HDR version.

If I think the comp of a shot is worth the effort, or I'm just having fun, I usually try to pp it several ways and then pick the one I think works the best. What that really means is that I give myself too many choices and then torture myself for a while trying to pick the best one :-)

Here's the original:

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Here's one Color Efex Pro Version

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Here's another Color Efex Pro version:

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Here's one other view sooc that Donnie and I really liked. I just wish I'd exposed the sunburst better:

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I often see Canada Goose in this field and sometimes a heron or an egret. It's a beautiful south facing spot where I can get both pretty sunrises and pretty sunsets. Sometimes all the cows are in the water in the summer cooling off. I hope Donnie can drop me off there again on a favorable picture day soon.

A Day at the Beach

2012-01-17T11:15:00.002-05:00

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I try to take the boys to the beach at least one day each track out period (January, April, July, and October). Remember, my boys are in year round school so 9 weeks in and then 3 weeks out plus normal school closed holidays. Anyway, based on warm weather, low wind, and mostly sunny skies, I picked yesterday as our day to go. Donnie wanted to go too and handled the driving (and lots of other things!) so that I didn't have the pressure of staying alert to drive and could really enjoy the day not to mention his company. We started out our day with a picnic lunch at the Fort Fisher State Recreation Area and then headed over the the NC Aquarium at Fort Fisher. The two places are less than a mile apart. After we left the aquarium, it was back to the recreation area for a walk down onto the beach which I knew was going to turn into two wet boys. I just would not be deterred from taking in that ocean view! The temperature of the ocean water at Fort Fisher right now is 54 degrees. So, the air temp and water temp were about the same yesterday. The boys lasted about 15 minutes, and then of course we got them dried off and warmed up right away. As we left the area, we stopped at the parking area near a Civil War Monument and Donnie and I sat on the protective sea wall rocks and watched the sun set, the surfers trying to catch a wave, and a few pelicans and dolphins out in the water. We topped off the day with Smithfield's Chicken 'n Bar-B-Q on the way home. It doesn't get any better than that!

It was incredibly hard to pick what picture to post today since I took so many that I like either for comp or emotional attachment:-) I finally settled on this gull shot because of the dof, light,and clarity of his eye. I'll include a few other shots from the day below and probably follow up with another daily from our trip tomorrow.

The picnic:

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Here's a collage showing what I think are the best aquarium shots:

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I was really impressed with the shots that I was able to capture with the Canon SX40 HS. It does handle low light shots much better than the S3 IS did. I learned the difference between a skate and a ray yesterday. We also were treated to the wood ducks being very active in their habitat. Sometimes we don't even get to see them let alone get to watch them swim around for 10 minutes. You should have heard how excited Joey was coming to find me and letting me know that the wood ducks were out. I love those helpers in my picture taking!

They had the dive show at 2:30, and the kids waited (their idea) by the glass for 20 minutes to get front row seats. They were motivated! That allowed me to get quite a few good tank shots plus this very neat video of the divers interacting with the kids.

Both boys asked questions through the microphone, and I was so proud that they were so eager to do that.

In this collage, the boys just have to be boys!

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Johnny trying to squeeze in on this guy's girl. She was quite smitten:-) "He's smart. I really like this kid."

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On the beach, I think this shot sums up our time there the best. "Mom, you know I am going to get more wet, right?"

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Yep!

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Beach collage:

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Here's me and Donnie as we sat on the rock wall:

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I love this picture even though I forgot and looked at the LCD instead of the lens (I should know better).

The dolphins:

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And, Donnie with the gulls (and grackles)...

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It started out as me throwing up the crackers and then Donnie offering to throw them up and then Donnie holding the crackers up as the birds grabbed them. A thrill for me and a first for Donnie. All fingers remained intact:-) Please don't be too upset that I fed the birds. It was really just a small number of crackers...

My hero!

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Donnie would like to point out the Alabama Crimson Tide logo for the 2011 BCS (National Football) Champions.

I'll leave you with this parting video of the day. Something to make you smile...

Sam I Am

2012-01-16T07:44:00.000-05:00

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Last night turned into family game night, and the fist game we played was the Green Eggs and Ham Game. That was officially Joey's idea and a thrift store find from a few years ago. It basically involves counting, memory, and decision making which is about what you'd expect in a board game. I hadn't taken any pictures during the day because I was too busy watching football and taking down Christmas decorations. Every once in a while I have to get chores out of the way instead of play:-) So, as we played the game, I took a few shots.

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We went on to play Boggle and Sorry! Our strategy of keep the kids from wanting to wrestle with Donnie for two hours straight worked!

A Walk in the Park

2012-01-15T12:39:00.001-05:00

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It will come as no surprise to you guys that I have a bunch of very nice things to say about Donnie again today. He's been the absolute best this week as I dealt with losing the rest of my hair. It wasn't easy, but no sense dwelling on it anymore than I already have. He went with me to get a wig yesterday and a few comfy hats, and I'm good to go until my own hair starts to come back hopefully sometime this summer.

Then on the way home he asked me where I wanted to go to take pictures. Can it get any better than that? I suggested a wildlife viewing spot next to a substation in Cary where I've been seeing folks park and walk at for years but have never made time to stop and check it out. Turns out it's a real park with real trails and a very nice place to walk on a moderate winter's day. It's called Swift Creek Bluffs Preserve by the Triangle Land Conservancy. If you check out the map at the link, you can see the the trail that we walked. We did everything but the stairs:-)

I have posted a male juvenile yellow-bellied sapsucker woodpecker picture as my daily. We spotted him early in our walk, and Donnie helped me track him between a several trees. I did my best to capture him on the sunny side of the tree and not up too high. He would move trees, land in the shade, and quickly spiral up the trees...repeat. 30 minutes later on our way back past the same spot on the trail, we saw him again and I got a second chance to take some pics. It was exciting. If I'm lucky I see one or two of these guys a year. I went back and see that I posted another one as a December 2009 Daily.

I have a gallery of textures and backgrounds which I've been adding to for a while now. However, apparently, in 2011 I didn't add any new images:-( I plan to start back in 2012, and I added a few from yesterday: Thanks to Phil Nix for motivating me to get back to this.

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A beautiful creekside HDR:

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Speared! I couldn't help but think of pitchingwedge33.

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I'll definitely be stopping at this 'park' again! The boys would love to get their feet wet in the creek in warmer, or not, weather!

A wonderful conclusion to our day was dinner with our friends Debbie and Joe and their friend Martha. Donnie snapped this picture with his iPod Touch:

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Test Post

2012-01-14T19:01:00.000-05:00

This is a test. I'd like to add a picture here:

This is an example of how to add a link to Maryann's SmugMug website.
This is an example of how to link to a video on youtube:

Dream Home

2012-01-14T09:51:00.001-05:00

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Life presented a unexpected challenge yesterday. Short story is that my van (2006 Odyssey) needed a new positive battery cable put on. The clamp and nut and housing were so acid eroded that it was affecting the battery from starting the car. This whole thing had me running around yesterday afternoon to several car repair places instead of doing all the things I wanted to do including playing with the kids and taking pics:-( Thank goodness Donnie was able to help me drop my car off and then drive me and the kids home.

Here's a shot I took this past Saturday in Scotland Neck. I love old houses, and every time I go to Scotland Neck now, I have to drive by this one and take a picture. It's just off the main road through town. This is a 3 shot HDR in late day very warm light.

My grandmother taught me to appreciate Victorian Era houses and antiques. Not for sure this classifies as that, but you get the idea. Apparently it is owned but not occupied. I thought it looked a bit lonely. It should have been all decked out for Christmas and had a grand party taking place inside.

During the whole battery fiasco, Donnie took me on a road coming out of Fuquay that I don't normally go on. I saw lots of interesting photo ops and hope to go back soon when I have time to take some pics! Today?

Blue Teardrops

2012-01-13T10:52:00.001-05:00

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I didn't take any pics yesterday that I wanted to share today as my daily. We were at Ritter Park in Cary for a few minutes, and I fired off a few pics of the boys having fun, but it was very windy at the park and despite being 54 degrees, and we didn't stay as long as we would have otherwise. Mom was cold!

Ritter Park is near the boys' old stomping grounds across the street from where they went to preschool, so they always enjoy a trip, back in time, there.

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At any point, today's daily is a chandelier shot taken at Home Depot this past weekend. Here's the original:

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I knew I liked it right away but was bothered with the setting for the pretty round beads. I really liked the reflection of the other strands of beads reflected in the closest strand. So last night I started playing around with the shot some. I ended up using a Spotlight Lighting Effect to get the outer edges dark. And then I played around with some bokeh style textures (not in the daily) and then an action from The CoffeeShop Blog called CoffeeShop Denim. If you've ever wanted to remove all the color from a shot except just the blues in the shot, this action is for you. I'm using PSE7 btw, but this action works on PhotoShop too. As with all these actions, you can do the steps yourself, but the action is a nifty way to combine several steps into one saving time and giving you a way to achieve these results without fully understanding all the individual steps. Granted, installing the first action into your PSE or PhotoShop might cause you to have to concentrate a bit, it's not trivial, but once you have it figured out on your machine, each one after the first is pretty simple. Rita on The CoffeeShop Blog has some great instructions, and you can ping me if you're stuck (on a Windows box:-).

Here's a golden version that more maintains the original colors:

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I'm open to the opinion that the gold one is prettier, I just thought the blue one was more unique and that the cold blue fit today's winter weather with snow and ice now settling into much of the country. I like my daily pictures to be on theme with the calendar:-)

Fence and Texture

2012-01-12T10:50:00.001-05:00

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I have a real interest in taking my post processing skills to what I consider the next level. I've seen several photos recently that have a texture applied to them, and I think the texture really adds to the piece of work transforming a photo to a piece of art. Of course I don't think all photos need a texture, and finding the right texture for a photo could be a bit challenging, but it's something I'd like to play around with more.

So, I was looking at a tutorial on The CoffeeShop Blog which led me to a texture in the Chaos texture set on the Shadowhouse Creations blog. I ended up applying the light colored Chaos texture to my fence shot as an Overlay. I used Color Variations to make it a little darker and warmer too. I think the main thing here is that there is no right way and no one way it's just try a texture as various kinds of layers and with various color adjustments and go from there and see if you end up liking any of the results. This is not a science but more a journey.

One thing I learned that I really took away in my travels last night was that ctrl u takes me quickly to the screen to desaturate a texture. Sometimes we want the texture but not the color. I also learned ctrl o will bring a moved/transformed layer into complete view. That might not make sense, but I've had lots of grief resizing dragged layers before, and ctrl o makes it much easier to fix. Yippee! If you saw the way I do some things you'd wonder how I ever manage to post process any images. I could use to add a few short cuts to my repertoire.

Here's the original fence:

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I also worked on this barn shot yesterday:

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I shot through the branches on purpose thinking they framed the barn very nicely but back at home found the branches to be a bit of a distraction. What do you think?

I so often include food shots in with my daily pics, and yesterday was no exception. I added a can of corn, fresh asparagus, onion, and browned sausage to this potato soup mix, and it was yummy. I would recommend the mix and then adding in items of your choice. There are suggestions on the back.

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Sophia

2012-01-11T10:55:00.000-05:00

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I'm pretty torn up about what to post today. Some days are just like that. I do many different things and have photos from each activity, and it's hard to decide which one tells the best story or is the best shot or is the one I just feel like sharing.

One of the things we did yesterday was go to Chick-fil-A for family night. The boys got to make a snowflake craft which I thought was extra nice due to the thick foam snowflake.

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The cow was there last night...always a real treat especially for Johnny who got a personal escort out to the van when we were leaving:

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After Chick-fil-A, I took the boys for their first big boy haircuts. The nice lady, Glinda, at Veasey's who cut my hair last week cut their hair last night. Both boys have much shorter hair now...gulp. Both seem pleased. More work on mom with gel and styling, though. If there is gonna be a part to the side, we're gonna have to work on it:-) Here's a cute shot of Johnny (I need to retake a cute shot of Joey):

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I look at that shot of Johnny after the haircut, and I see my father and his brothers through and through. Wow! Dad in high school:

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Johnny insisted that Ms. Glinda let him sit under the fancy hair dryer. He had her wrapped around his little finger with his cuteness, so she was glad to oblige, and then Joey didn't want to be left out. Pretty soon I was looking at this shot! Oh my!

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I spent some time filtering and doing and SCurve adjust on this mirror dimensions shot which I really like.

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While we're on the subject of hair, I am going to share a very personal shot with you of what's happening with mine. Really, I'm OK. I wanted to share this as my daily, but I don't want to evoke too strong emotion with it and hurt anyone with it. I have a few minutes here or there where I cry on Donnie's shoulder about it, and then I go on about my life. I can't totally forget about it, but I don't let it spoil the good things in my life either. As I washed my hair last night and it came out in my hand, I went to get my camera. I do tend to take pics of everything, and I think when it's grown back in I can look back on this shot and how it made me stronger. Of course the bathroom steam fogged up my lens, and the first shot was murky, but it was that first shot that ended up being the one I liked after bringing the details back out.

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I'll leave you with a POTD of an adorable little girl, Sophia, that was at the park where the boys and I went to play yesterday afternoon. Turns out she lives 4 houses up the street from me. I made friends with her mom, and Johnny 'watched' the little girl. They were so cute playing peek-a-boo and him being a 'big' brother to her. He was all giggles. She was trying to figure him out.

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And, yes, that adorable red 'stuff' on her face is ketchup from lunch. When you're that cute you can wear your ketchup proudly! I wouldn't have had her face for the photographs any other way. I sure hope her mom likes the shots and will let me capture her cuteness again:-)

Dreaming...

2012-01-10T10:40:00.000-05:00

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My POTD was taken first thing yesterday morning. I noticed Johnny sleeping so peacefully on the couch with some wonderful natural light spilling in the window and decided it was worth getting out the tripod and taking his picture before he woke up. I wish a bit more of his nose and some of his mouth was showing, but I resisted the temptation to start altering the scene. I ended up liking the flash shot better than the very low light 10 second exposure shot. Here's a modified version of the low light shot:

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It was a cloudy and rainy here yesterday, and I was busy running around to various doctor's appointments. The highlight of my day was a nice roasted chicken dinner with Donnie, Joey, and Johnny. I took this picture which I love, but everything that could go wrong with a flash apparently did:-( I tried to fix the color and glare as best as I could.

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New PJs for Joey, and they are as cute as they can be:-)

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Trying to stay positive today. I noticed last night that my hair is starting to come out. I had hoped that when they said 2-3 weeks after chemo I'd be on the 3 week side. Nope. Sigh... I know it will grow back...and that it's not really important in the scheme of things. Maybe I can find something to take pictures of today that is exciting. That always improves my mood:-)

Birdatude

2012-01-09T07:57:00.000-05:00

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As I mentioned yesterday, there are a few more shots from Sylvan Heights Waterfowl Park in Scotland Neck, NC that I'd like to share with you.

For my POTD, I've chosen a close-up of a Sandhill Crane. There are two birds in this habitat, and boy do they have some attitude. You have to be careful about getting too close to the fence otherwise you are liable to have that long beak coming through one of the holes toward you:-) I love the eye, but I am not happy about the overexposed area under the eye. I tried to adjust a bit, and it's better, but I couldn't completely fix. Still, I like the birdatude here.

And, here are a few more:

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Donnie gave Johnny an Erector set for Christmas, and they started building it after dinner last night. I know they worked on it for at least an hour. I thought it was cute how Johnny sat in Donnie's lap the whole time, and I became interested in how their hands were working together to get the job done.

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That was some OT game last night. Go Tebow! Go Denver!

A Bird's Life

2012-01-08T09:31:00.003-05:00

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After going to the Kids Workshop at Home Depot for their first Saturday of the month project, a Savings Shed (bank), we headed to Sylvan Heights Waterfowl Park in Scotland Neck, NC.

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Google Maps says that the park is 100 miles taking 1 hour and 51 minutes to drive from my house. That's about right. To put it in perspective, we're about 130 miles from Cape Hatteras by the time we've driven that far east and north! When I see the sign for the Aquarium and the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, sometimes I just want to keep on going! One day!

After entering the park and passing through the visitor center, there is a pond of mixed nationality ducks. The boys love this section because they are allowed to feed the ducks food sold in the gift shop. At 50 cents a bag, we usually get 4 bags and have plenty to share with our friends in this pond and the other designated areas around the park. Here are the boys enjoying themselves. Below is a collage of the ducks that came to visit.

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Now I'm not going to show you every picture I took that I liked. This might have to be a 2-3 day series:-) But needless to say having taken 1026 pics and saved 289 from the garbage bin, there are a few that might be worth sharing. This place has an endless number of photo ops!

Now I go to the park to enjoy being outside with the kids, taking pics, and to some extent continuing my education and appreciation of birds of all types. The boy go to see Matilda and play in the beaver blind, treehouse, and playground. Who is Matilda you ask? Well, she's a Cape Barren Goose native to Africa. She has some real personality, and if you're lucky, she might eat out of your hand.

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I tried and tried and tried to get a good picture of the black swan that's in the area with Matilda, but I didn't get exactly what I wanted at least not in the sharpness of the shot.

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You almost can't see the wire... I just love the colors!

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I became incredibly fascinated with the eye of the Toco Toucan:

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Do you have any idea how hard it is to take a picture of an eye of a constantly moving bird through a wire fence? :-)

I went through quite an effort to try to get the eyes of the Eurasian Eagle Owl only to discover back at home that the reflection in the eyes was kindof annoying:

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I took pics of the turkeys, and the boys played on the boardwalk:

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I tried and tried to get a shot of one of the turkeys with light in their eyes and the fence shadow NOT on their feathers and I just couldn't do it:-(

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There are those silly boys again... Donnie pointed out that I put them in their Angry Birds shirts yesterday. Oops!

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Did I mention that it was 70 in Scotland Neck yesterday and that I saw a blooming daffodil?!?

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At the end of the day, as the boys were playing on the playground and I was contemplating leaving, one of the staff members saw me trying to take pictures through the fence at the front pond. She proceeded to tell me about a diamond-shaped hole in the fence over on the side where the sun would be at my back. You move and clip to the side a piece of plexiglass allowing for much better pictures. Cool! Here is a collection of shots taken then:

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There were a few photo ops on the way home too. By the time I turned around and came back for the shot, the sun had fallen out of the sky. I was so disappointed!

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I wish I could be back at that spot at 5:10PM to try again... This is a barn from a previous daily.

I did get this sortof nice last minutes of sunset color on a pond at a sand pit:

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So which shot did I take yesterday that is the best shot? Which shot should I share as my daily? Be darned if I know. I guess I'd better just throw a dart and pick one at this point:-) OK...a flamingo shot...who can resist them, right?

If you live anywhere near Scotland Neck, NC or are passing through NC on I95, you really should stop in and enjoy Sylvan Heights Waterfowl Park!

Mr. Bluebird

2012-01-07T07:41:00.000-05:00

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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'?!?

2012-01-06T10:45:00.001-05:00

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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!

2012-01-05T10:20:00.002-05:00

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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

2012-01-04T11:47:00.003-05:00

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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

2012-01-03T08:57:00.001-05:00

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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

2012-01-02T10:22:00.000-05:00

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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!

2012-01-01T11:13:00.001-05:00

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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...

Orange Beauty

2011-12-31T08:57:00.004-05:00

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Look what's coming to Raleigh! It's the Nature Research Center going in next to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. The kids and I have been watching the 'earth' go up for months now whenever we travel downtown like we did today on our way to Marbles Kids Museum. Today we saw the skin on it for the first time. Exciting!

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I threw together a quick collage of the kids doing fun stuff at the museum:

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The most interesting thing at the museum today is that they had redone the Power 2 Play exhibit upstairs. The hockey rink and soccer area remained, but they added in a new climbing wall, gymnastic rings, and a netted basketball area. We spent a lot of time in that section, and the kids had a blast.

I've never seen marble run track out when we've been there before, but today there were bins of parts, and the kids and I spent some time building. I got interested in how a 35X zoom in on the run itself would look. Pretty neat if you ask me. I almost made this my POTD:

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But, it was the rose still growing outside here in December that I thought many of you might appreciate most. Marbles has a nice kids' garden area, and this is where several rose bushes were still thriving.

I can tell I've had the chemo now. My energy level is down some, but I'm still hanging in here:-)

Fun at Lake Wheeler

2011-12-30T08:46:00.000-05:00

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We had a picnic lunch at Lake Wheeler Park yesterday although it was only 52 degrees and there was a 10-15mph wind. It started out a bit cloudy, but thankfully the sun came out. I just wanted to get some fresh air and a bit of exercise and of course have a chance to take some pics. A sign said that they are closing the park playground in January and February to renovate it. I hope that means it will be even nicer when they are done.

I just couldn't resist posting the collage today. I loved those smiling faces and the red and green color coordination throughout. Every year I've taken an acorn shot of some type at this playground, so while the boys played I created the heart shot. Donnie thought it was sweet, and of course it was inspired by him:-)

There are a few other shots that I took that I liked:

Who are you looking at?!?

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Can you believe there was a flower still blooming?!? A white coneflower variety I guess.

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An overdone HDR but I still like it:

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Some people were brave enough to be out on the lake:

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They've built a really nice new fishing pier just like the one at Shearon Harris County Park. I loved the view back to the main park building (bathrooms/concession and rental stand). The sky was just gorgeous!

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Donnie has been doing a great job inspiring and motivating Joey to be more active and to get more exercise. Joey is running some sprints now, and I think he's feeling pretty good about how he feels doing it.

Autumn Colors Linger

2011-12-29T10:43:00.004-05:00

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My first chemo session went fine yesterday. At this point I am tired of getting poked with needles, and they do the bloodwork and chemo IV on the hand instead of the elbow which to me is worse, but I got through it. How can it be bad when I have this handsome guy to sit with me and keep me company?!? He always keeps his girl smiling and in good spirits. I took the pic of Donnie with my new iPad. He took the pic of me with his iPod Touch. I ran both through Noiseware. Us techies had to have something to do over the 3 or so hours we were there. Thanks to Aunt Debbie for taking the kids to the Durham Museum of Life and Science nearby while I got the treatment!

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We took the boys to Crowder District Park on the way home. It was getting late in the day, and the light was low, so I tested out shooting in higher ISOs with the new camera and was pleased with the results. While maybe not the best pics ever, they were certainly much better than I would have gotten with my old camera.

When Donnie plays with the boys, he plays with the boys!

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They of course think Mr. Don is the best, and so do I!

Donnie spotted this Canada Goose shot for me. At 3200 ISO I'm impressed. If the water had been just a tad more golden and the branch not over his eye I might have made it my POTD.

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So I'm doing pretty good today. Mild itching on my face (no rash) is my only complaint. My joints hurt a bit last night and my legs were restless, but that happens on normal days sometimes too. Hoping things keep going this good. Thanks again for all your support which means so much to me!

Joey's first picture with my new camera:

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Vibrant Red Even in Winter

2011-12-28T07:43:00.001-05:00

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Yesterday I mentioned that I had a couple more Yates Mill shots that I wanted to share. I really like how I was able to get the red berries behind the fluffy weed/grass in the shot I've posted as my daily today. Here is a shot showing off the berries that were in abundance all over the park:

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I don't know what they are, but the bushes were rather large.

The one other shot that caught my eye from our outing at Yates Mill was this neat reflection of the pond in the water beneath the wheel. I wish the wisp of grass was not there, though.

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The Lucky filter in Picasa did a nice job of adjusting the contrast and color of the original shot which was a tad subdued (in a fog).

Here's a picture of Donnie looking handsome and wearing one of the shirts I gave him for Christmas:

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Although not born in AL, he spent a good part of his early life living there. With everything else red in my post, I figured this shot fit right in!

Yates Mill

2011-12-27T13:06:00.003-05:00

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Donnie offered to take me to a park yesterday to test out my new camera (Canon SX40 HS), and we ended up at Yates Mill which is probably my favorite park in our area to take nature pics at. It wasn't real warm or real cold, and we enjoyed a just brisk walk around the mill pond loop trail. My main reaction is that I really like the camera and am pleased with the pictures that it took. My only comment is that the wheel for adjusting the aperture and exposure is harder than the button (click) control on my Canon Powershot S3 IS. I knew about the wheel as they changed this back with the SX10 IS several years ago. All it means is that I was a tad slower adjusting the exposure in manual mode. I was still able to properly adjust things and am sure that I will get faster at making the adjustments pretty quickly.

My daily is a 3-shot HDR of the mill. I just couldn't resist. I guess you can't tell it's really a mill from this vantage point since the spillway blocks the view of the wheel. Here is another HDR which Donnie said has a very flat depth due to no roof line showing in the composition. I have to agree. Still it shows off the mill wheel.

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Another beautiful view over the mill pond:

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Of course my favorite subject at the mill was Donnie...

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I could come away with 100 good pics from the mill, but if I didn't also have a good pic of Donnie to remember our outing by, they wouldn't matter.

Here's the flora and fauna going on at the mill this time of year:

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This shot was taken at 140 times digital zoom so I could try to identify these ducks. What a great pair of binoculars this lens makes too!

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There are two other shots from the mill that I really like. Since it's raining here today, I just may have to post one of them tomorrow!

I start my chemo tomorrow. It's scary, and I really wish this wasn't happening to me and my loved ones, but I know Donnie will be very supportive and the boys as understanding as they can be, and I've just got to hold on until it's over (4 treatments 21-28 days apart) and get through this looking forward to all the great things on the other side. I've got so much to live for. I don't plan to be lying in the bed every day with the chemo, and hopefully my health is going to cooperate! I'll keep shooting and posting and doing my other daily activities with Donnie and the boys as much as I am able.

Surprise!

2011-12-26T11:36:00.003-05:00

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I'm a pretty sharp cookie, but yesterday Donnie REALLY pulled on over on me. I knew he'd gotten me an iPad on Black Friday, and we'd even opened it. I wasn't expecting anything else for Christmas. That was a very generous gift as it was. Donnie even told me not to do that girl thing and get upset when I didn't have anything else to open on Christmas morning. He showed up Christmas Eve for dinner with a can of popcorn which I basically figured was for the boys and which I didn't pay much attention to. Later that night, after showing him his pile of boxes for Christmas day, he promptly loaded up my stocking with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and put the popcorn tin next to his presents telling me that it was my present. OK.

Advance to the next morning. Everyone else has opened all their gifts and there sits that lonely can of popcorn. Donnie says I need to open it. Why but OK. Donnie says I need to eat some of it. At 7:30AM? Really? OK...anything for Donnie. Johnny starts helping and Donnie has a few pieces. I like caramel popcorn a lot so it was starting to taste good. Wait a minute?!? There's a pink string and isn't that a paper plate under a few inches of the popcorn? Where is the rest of that popcorn? So a box lid was handed to me and we spilled out the popcorn and oh my goodness under that paper plate is a new camera. That had to be like the most I have ever been had on a present ever. Really? A new camera? That one we talked about Betsy Foster Breen having and looked at at BJs and kept debating. Wow! Rush over to give Donnie a super big kiss and lots of hugs. Thank you...

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So for my daily you got a shot of me all perplexed about why I am having to eat popcorn at 7:30AM on Christmas morning.

Here are the rest of the shots Donnie took with my S3 camera (should have been a clue that it was more than just popcorn but it really wasn't) during the popcorn eating:-)

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Here are a few shots of everyone else opening their gifts:

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I love Donnie holding up his Live Strong Lance Armstong socks. He always said socks and underwear were what he got for Christmas:-) He got other stuff too of course. Aren't those chef hats that came for the boys great? More pics of them to come I am sure!

Love these shots of my technology boys trying out the new gear (iPad and Kindle Fire). Donnie and I are pretty smart when it comes to tech, but that Johnny is going to give us a run for our money I think.

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Here's a shot of our Christmas Eve dinner (bottom round roast). We had ham for Christmas Day. Any other post and I am sure you all would be hungry, but I know we all ate a bit too much yesterday and aren't THAT hungry today.

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If you have never bought the sweet potato patties in the frozen veggie section at your grocery store, make sure to try them. 1/3 cup water, sugar, and butter melted and poured over them in a dish. Brown sugar and cinnamon sprinkled on top. 15 minutes at 350. Delicious! Donnie got me hooked on them.

French Apple Pie from my Pillsbury cookbook (OMG!):

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And last but not least...bird pics taken with the SX40:

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A small sampling of the birds outside my kitchen window each day.

It goes without saying that a huge thank you goes our to Donnie and the boys for making my Christmas so special...

I hope you all had a special Christmas too...

Merry Christmas 2011

2011-12-25T07:09:00.000-05:00

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As I mentioned yesterday, I wanted to share another shot from Lake Myra Christmas with you for my Christmas Day card and POTD. I hope you enjoy it. I did take and use my tripod this year after wishing that I had it last year, and Donnie ran interference with the kids so that I could get the shots that I wanted. It's not obvious from the photos, but the lights are synchronized with music.

Here is an alternate card that I made with one other shot that I liked:

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I took liberties with the daily and alternate shot cleaning up unlighted branches and adding stars on top of all the major trees; there was just one star.

The light show had a some very unique light balls made out of clear plastic disposable cups. Some were for sale. I thought they were very beautiful!

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The lollipop tree far left in this shot was made up of them:

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This snowman talked to the crowd inbetween songs:

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Donnie really liked the spiral trees:

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I hope you enjoy my pics of the show and that you all have the very best Christmas ever!

Peace, Faith, Love, Hope

2011-12-24T09:00:00.000-05:00

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Yesterday was one of those days you want to do over and over again because it was filled with so many wonderful things... As a result, it was definitely feast and not famine with possible pics for my daily today too.

I had a short doctor's appointment, and afterward Donnie went with me and the boys to Chick-fil-A and then to West Point Mill on the Eno. The boys wrestled with Donnie in the play area at CFA. In the park, we walked around the mill and over the pedestrian bridge and down by the damn. It was gorgeous! I have lots of collages to show you our day...

My crazy boys would rather wrestle Donnie than climb the playground structure!

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We didn't get a lot of rain at my house Thursday night, but 30 miles north and west in Durham, they apparently had a flood! The Eno River was very high. Under the sidewalk in the pics below, there was a whirlpool created by water rushing through the large pipes. The kids (all ages) had fun sending leaves and sticks through to the other side. There's a SP of me in the whirlpool pic.

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A series of shots showing nature's beauty in the park follow:

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Me trying to be Stevie Nicks:-)

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Me:

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My handsome guys!

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Later in the day Madi was over for our yearly present exchange. I think it's fair to say that the kids were pleased with what they got. Joey got Mario Kart 7 for his 3DS and Madi got a Whappy Dog and game for her DS and Johnny got several Cars items.

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And finally, we all went to the Lake Myra Christmas holiday light show near Wendell. This is our second year going, and it's a joy to see this huge light display flashing to the music! I have one shot that I'm sharing as my daily today, and then I think another to share as my daily tomorrow. There was talk at the show of moving the display to downtown Wendell next year. Cool!

I hope your holiday joy is in full swing today with family coming, good food to share, and warm hearts.

The Elves and Then Some

2011-12-23T08:57:00.000-05:00

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It all started 2 years ago when Joey was in first grade in Mrs. Cherry's class. At Christmas time, she got out Henry her Elf on the Shelf and started Joey's imagination running wild. Soon after, we ended up with our own Elf on the shelf named Chocolate:

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Santa sent several more elves from the North Pole and mom bought several off eBay and at Hallmark. Before we knew it, we had quite the menagerie, and each holiday season we add a few more.

Some of you will understand the collection and others of you will think we're nuts:-)

Joey got the idea a few days ago that we should photograph each of our elves and make a slide show. Yesterday we took some time to walk through the house and get a picture of each of the elves in their current landing location.

Now I really don't want or need to know how many there are. It's besides the point. We just enjoy them and are sharing with you today. Someday Joey and Johnny will have the Elf on the Shelf at their house. Madi too.

Speaking of Madi... Santa sent her 2 new elves yesterday. She went out on her porch last night to find a round cookie style tin with her new friends in it:-) She called me beaming with excitement. Ah...the magic of Christmas!

Pictured are Sleepy on the left and Giant on the right. Joey and I found these guys at Guardian Angel Thrift 2 years ago, and they are my personal favorite elves in the collection.

Our collection:

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Johnny and Joey helped me wrap presents yesterday. Johnny took this shot of me putting the curling ribbon on one of Donnie's gifts. I was impressed that it was sharp and had some nice dof!

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Holiday Card Creations

2011-12-22T09:15:00.000-05:00

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The kids and I were busy making a few Christmas cards yesterday morning. This is the front of one of the ones I worked on. The inside is a secret:-) I have a pretty large rubber stamp collection considering I never sold Stampin' Up! stuff. Notice the line of lights on the right is multicolor. You can use markers to color the stamps different colors instead of just pressing on a single color ink pad. Blow on the ink with hot breath before pressing on the paper to make sure it's wet enough. It's a nice effect to add a little extra touch to stamped cards.

Aunt Debbie came to visit and exchange Christmas gifts. The boys LOVE to see her just like they do Donnie. Try as she might to talk to me for a few minutes, Johnny in particular just wanted to wrestle. Here's a shot of Joey giving Aunt Debbie the cards and gifts that he had worked on for her earlier in the day. Johnny watches.

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This shot shows the only way she could get a break for a minute:

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The following shot is a test shot to see if I could change the shape of the bokeh obtained with my camera by holding a piece of cardstock with a star punched out in the center of it over my lens. The answer...yes. Now, how to apply it to something we'd enjoy seeing... I probably need the star or other shape to be a tad bigger.

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The North Woods Bean Soup I made last night:

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Johnny ate around the beans and Joey ate around the carrots, but otherwise, it was a successful meal:-)

Santa Train

2011-12-21T07:51:00.004-05:00

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Joey, Johnny, Madi, Teen, and I rode the Santa Train last night at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham. The Santa Train is a big fundraiser for the museum each year, and I heard them announce last night that over 10,000 people had ridden the train this holiday season. We were on at 7PM, and the last run of the year was at 8PM. I had picked last night to go because the kids got out of school for winter break yesterday. We got very lucky with the weather. It hovered near 58 degrees at ride time, and we only felt one or two drops of rain during the evening. Although we enjoyed the complimentary hot chocolate, we weren't desperate to use it to get warm. The kids made reindeer food and colored and Madi even got a cardinal painted on her cheek. This year Santa and Mrs. Claus were at a different location on the normal train route. They had landed on their sled for a brief visit at the museum, and the area they set up for that came across as quite magical. So glad we went this year (our 2nd time after going for the first time last year).

Last year I was frustrated that I didn't have a tripod, so this year I carried in my lightweight one, and Teen helped carry it around some, and I was very pleased with the shots that I was able to get. Definitely worth bringing it in!

The POTD train shot was taken on my camera at f4.5 first and then f8. The f8 produced much nicer light bursts. Again, so glad I had the tripod. The background for today's shot is a bokeh Christmas light shot from a few nights ago. I used Color Variations in PSE to adjust the warmer colors into more purple/blue to match the train lights.

The f4.5 shot:

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You can see that the Christmas lights are much flatter.

Here are my favorite family pics of the night:

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The kids squabbled a bit last night. Sigh... It's not always as perfect as the pics might convey. However, without a doubt, we had a great evening and a super fun time!

The beautiful lights around the Magic Wings Butterfly House and train station:

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Madi's cheek with a cardinal painted on it:

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And posting this shot that Joey took in the kids' daily gallery:

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Joey was so excited to try to take a few pics with me last night! With the tripod and the self timer, he was quite successful I think.

Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

2011-12-20T08:18:00.001-05:00

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I came home from the school run yesterday afternoon to find my power off. First hint...none of the Christmas inflatables in the yard were up. Oops! It was the transformer serving my house and 5 others and not a major outage. Still, Progress Energy was out pretty quick and 3 hours later they had fixed whatever was wrong. I heard 'damage to our equipment'. Donnie to the rescue offering us dinner at his place. The boys and I really enjoyed that.

The boys and I looked at Christmas lights on the way home. I tried to retake a shot of a red and green spiral tree that I shot the other night trying to get it 'just right'. I got a few intentionally blurry shots that were about what I wanted and one in focus shot and set about trying to decide just what to do with them that would make for a daily. I'm not real happy with what I posted. We can consider it a desperation shot since I don't have anything better to share, OK?

Here's the tree in focus:

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A train nearby:

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Madi and the hat made by Tina Marie. It's such fun!

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Tonight we get to go on the Santa Train at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham. It is the boys' last day of school until the 4th week in January, and it's my last day of work for the year. We ought to all be very excited at school pick-up time today!

Details:
I used a solid green layer and then added a texture from OnOne's PhotoFrame. It's easy to create a text layer and then use it as Overlay or Screen or Normal with reduced opacity. The tree layer has a simple line frame from PSE on it which I also added a Drop Shadow too.

Chili with a Smile!

2011-12-19T08:30:00.000-05:00

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I didn't take any pics really worthy of sharing with you guys today, but I did take some fun shots and videos.

The daily is Joey (and Johnny) making chili (con carne) for the first time. I find that the kids eat new dishes better when they help prepare them, and regardless, they have a lot of fun doing it. The recipe came out of my Hunt's cookbook which I don't readily see online to refer you to. Sorry. I use sausage instead of hamburger and less chili powder and a bit of pickled jalapeno peppers chopped instead.

The sunglasses you ask? Well, to protect the eyes from onions of course!

Besides the chili, we had the nicest fire in our fireplace and a Sonic Christmas kid show from Redbox.

We were at a park earlier in the day, and Johnny looked so cute in the sandbox one minute and running to Joey to play tag the next.

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Notice the stop sign behind Johnny's head lower right. I thought that was funny with him running and the sign saying otherwise.

This video is pretty cute too:

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Of course if us adults spun ourselves like that we'd be sick!

I have a new bird feeder attached to my kitchen window. I don't think it's going to yield great pics, but it is fun to watch the birds so close!

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The boys have parties at school today. Wish I could go... 2 days and counting until our year end holiday starts, though!

Angels Watch Over Us

2011-12-18T09:29:00.000-05:00

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The kids and I went to Lights on the Neuse last night. The best way to describe this experience is that you go on a 30 minute hay ride covering over 40 acres of farmland with thousands of lights. It's cold, but it's so beautiful that it's worth it. After the ride, you can walk through a 3D barn that has all sorts of Christmas-themed artwork on the walls. You wear glasses, and there are special lights on the artwork paint, and the figures seem to come alive.

It is hard to take pics of the lights on the hayride. The tractor only stops in a few places, so even shooting at a very fast speed to avoid blur doesn't always work. I did the best I could. I really needed a tripod in the 3D barn. I found a few places where I could rest the camera on something to keep it reasonably still.

My daily is one of the shots from inside the 3D barn. I used Color Efex Pro to alter the colors. Here are a few more shots from the 3D barn all of which had about the same color theme of blue and pink.

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Here's a favorite shot I took of the boys while we waited in line. Johnny has on the hat that Tina Marie made. We love how it's a scarf too! And green Johnny's favorite color. It was 32 degrees at ride time, and we were outside for about 3 hours total, so we have on the warmest winter gear that us central NC folks have:-)

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Here's a quick collage of my favorite lights on the hay ride:

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Last year I said that we needed to come to the farm in October because they have harvest themed fun going on then too. This year I am going to say the same thing:-) Someone remind me;-)

Also, the boys and I browsed the Hallmark store yesterday:

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Somehow we managed to walk away without the lifesize elf...it wasn't easy. It was a Gund.

And we also went to see Alvin and the Chipmunks in Chipwrecked:

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A pretty shot from David Anthony's in Fuquay:

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Merry Christmas - Another Card in the Series

2011-12-17T07:53:00.000-05:00

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I mentioned yesterday that I'd taken some Christmas light shots that I wanted to try to process for today's daily. I ended up taking Merry Christmas out of another shot and putting it as a screen layer over the tree shot and then adding two frames from OnOne's PhotoFrame to give it a finishing card style touch. I'm not sure how I feel about so much blue when Christmas is more of a red/green holiday, but I tried a red frame and it was just too much! I can also see that the image is a little tight in the frame, but I'm out of steam to keep redoing it this morning.

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Here are a few more shots from the night that I liked:

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I wish the snowman was more prominent in this shot. I tried to merge it with a non blurred shot, but I didn't like the results.

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We found a few houses not far from ours that had very nice lights up, which is where these pics were taken, and Joey is asking to go back and enjoy the show again:-)

Gypsy's Shiny Diner

2011-12-16T08:06:00.000-05:00

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I had yet another doctor's appointment yesterday, and I'm so thankful that Donnie went with me. Days with him are good days no matter what...

After the appointment, we were ready to get some lunch, and Donnie thought we should try Gypsy's Shiny Diner in Cary. Most folks that live in the Raleigh area will remember that the town of Cary had issues over the shiny outside of the diner and tried to block it's construction for a while. Irritating. The town and restaurant came to an agreement, and the diner did open in 1997.

"Gypsy's was constructed in Florida and trucked to NC on 6 over-sized tractor-trailers up I-95 and then onto I-40. Once the trucks reached the NC border, they were met by 2 state highway patrol cars for an escort (required by NC law for super over-sized loads). Once the diner reached Cary, the state patrol assisted the Cary police department in stopping traffic while an over-sized crane set the diner on its foundation. It was a true sight to see!!!

Gypsy's has won many dining awards and has been featured in documentaries, on TV shows, on commercials, CD covers, featured in photo shoots, and print ads. You can always count on Gypsy's being on the local "scavenger hunt" list at least once a month.

Gypsy's has an "original" 1950's and 60's jukebox spinning 45's all the time. You can choose songs from either our original Seeburg jukebox or the small replicas at every table.

Gypsy's Shiny Diner has been the site of: 19 marriage proposals, numerous birthdays and anniversary celebrations, 28,000+ "first date" meetings and thousands of informal lunch meetings. Spend your next significant date at Gypsy's.

Gypsy's is proud to have given to many local, county, state & national charities including the fight against women's breast cancer."

Here's a shot of Donnie enjoying his breakfast for lunch meal:

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The picture is definitely one of my favorite shots of the day! He's such a smart guy knowing that we'd enjoy the food and that I'd enjoy taking pictures before and after the meal. I had a sandwich and onion rings...YUM!

From the outside:

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The counter stools:

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The lights decked out for Christmas:

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The counter and table-sized jukeboxes:

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The table top:

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And last but not least the ceiling:

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I grew up eating occasional meals at the Hightstown Luncheonette near Princeton, NJ. The parents of a very close friend of my mother's owned and ran the place running a taxi service from it too. We'd stop in to say hello, and of course they'd want to feed us. So, when we walked into Gypsy's today, I took a fast trip down memory lane. Sweet!

I can't help but share these cute pictures of the kids from Chick-fil-A last night.

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I took quite a few Christmas light shots on the way home from CFA. With clouds and rain moving in today, I will probably spend some time pp'ing one or more of them for tomorrow's post.

It's back to work for me today for the first time in over a month. Do you have any clue how much e-mail is in my work inbox? Ugh... My year end vacation starts next Wednesday along with the kid's holiday break, and I am looking forward to that!

Hark the Herald Angels Sing

2011-12-15T08:33:00.000-05:00

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I took this tree light shot Tuesday night while we were out looking at lights. Although it's a 'blurry' shot, I liked it right away. The colors reminded me of the fabric I imagine an angels dress would be...golden and warm. I went through my December 2010 gallery and found this angel:

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I had decided the angel should be in the tree. I took the angel out of her shot and made her a new layer in the tree shot and then made the tree a duplicate layer on top of the angel as a slightly reduced opacity pin light layer. I added the text too...Loriah BT seems to be my favorite font. I use it a lot.

Here are the layers:

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After school yesterday, we had fun in the backyard with leaves and our slide. Mostly Donnie and I enjoyed sitting at the picnic bench while the boys played. It was warm and enjoyable as the sun set.

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Hot Chocolate!

2011-12-14T08:21:00.001-05:00

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Last night it was all about Joey and his Movie Musical at his school PTA meeting. The kids sang 6 (more?) songs in about 30 minutes including Hot Chocolate from the Polar Express. Thanks to Donnie, Madi, and Teen for coming out to support him. I was very proud, and he was super excited to perform for us. I was very pleased with his participation.

Sorry that I am out of time to clean up the wall and add a frame to the shot of Joey and Madi taken right after the performance.

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We drove around looking at Christmas lights afterward and came upon some industrious kids selling hot chocolate near one of the displays.

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On the Pond

2011-12-13T07:22:00.002-05:00

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I wish I didn't feel compelled to tell you that this bldg. is a doctor's office. Some office, huh?!? Donnie spotted it in our previous travels through the medical park and thought he should stop yesterday to let me take some pics in an effort to cheer my spirits. He's such a great guy. Not only was the architecture/view pretty, but we also saw a great blue heron (extensive crop):

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and a mallard pair (this is the female):

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There was a hooded merganser pair as well, but they stayed too far away for a decent picture.

We also stopped on the way in from school to see this heron, hooded mergansers, and a kingfisher:

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I found out yesterday that in order to reduce my cancer recurrence rate from about 18% down to more like 6% that I need chemo. It's either going to be 4 doses 21 days apart or 6 doses 21 days apart depending on which medication combos I pick. We are still trying to decide, and I have another test to help with that process tomorrow. Most people who get this type of chemo lose their hair, and most of you have probably seen pictures of me with my hair long enough to touch the tops of my blue jeans. I sometimes say it's 3 feet long...a slight but not by much stretch. You know, I'm one of those types where I get it cut a couple of times a year whether I need it or not;-) I was thinking yesterday that it's only been short 3 times in my life (age 6, 1986, and 2004). Let's just say that I'm upset about losing my hair and then I'll try to move past it. I told Donnie it's at least 5 years to get it back this long and he said but it will be shoulder length in no time. He of course it right and do I really need 3 feet of hair anyway. Sigh... The chemo will probably start the week after Christmas. Trying not to lose sight of all that there is to be thankful for but some days it is harder than others.

Added note: I made an appt. for 1/4/12 to get it cut locally for the Locks of Love charity. The may not use my hair to make a wig for the children because it has color in it, but if not, they will sell it and use the money to fund the wig making. Either way, it's good for the charity. Much better than letting it be wasted.

Candy Cane Candles

2011-12-12T03:20:00.001-05:00

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A few weeks ago I picked up a set of candy cane candles at the thrift store. The box set of 3 (2 tall and 1 round) was missing a square mirror, but the candles were still in their protective wrapping paper and looked really cool. I know, I mention the thrift store a lot. You're going to think I have a problem LOL:-) Well, maybe...

Donnie stayed for dinner with me and the boys last night, and that was reason enough to light the pretty candles and of course take some pics. I wasn't totally delighted with what I got but happy enough to try to use one of the shots I took to create the card I've posted as my daily. Unfortunately, not long after they were burning, the sides near the top got uneven and wax went down onto the mirror, etc. So, no second chance to take shots at least not with them looking pristine.

I got the idea for the card layout from Picnik. They had a card you could create and send but not save as a .jpg. So, I went into PSE and created the card from scratch. It wasn't too hard to get the boxes and stripes added to the background. I downloaded two free brush sets for the snowflakes too from here and here. Brushes are fun! I love making cards:-)

I saw this totally nifty hat that TinaMarie had made El Jay and asked her to make one for Johnny. It came in the mail on Saturday and was waiting for him when he came home last night. His favorite color is green, and he loves to run his fingers over blankets and soft things. He was delighted!

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You can look at some of the other items TinaMarie has made here.

I just can't say enough good things about Donnie... Although it was football day, he gave up some of his time to wrestle with the boys and put a smile on their faces as well as mine. Joey was quite enthused to come home and find Mr. Don:-) Joey weighs 110lbs.

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Today is the day I meet with the doctors again...

Candlelight

2011-12-11T11:16:00.000-05:00

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A pretty candlelight shot I took while preparing dinner last night. I got a set of 3 tiered votive holders at the thrift store last week. They had candycane twist stems on them in red and clear.. The pics didn't turn out how I envisioned even with a mirror as the base, but I like this shot from underneath anyway.

Donnie and I went to see the movie In Time yesterday afternoon and then settled in on a cool, December night with beef stew and candles. I love the smell of good food cooking in the house and beautiful candlelight and of course someone wonderful to share it with.

BTW, Justin Timberlake did a good job in the movie and we enjoyed seeing Olivia Wilde from House and Johnny Galecki from Big Bang Theory. Amanda Seyfried as beautiful to watch as well.

This is the recipe that I made with garlic powder substituted for onion powder and minus the pearl onions. I recommend it. I made steamed fresh green beans and herb baked potatoes on the side, and then we mixed them in. Yum!

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http://fotomom.smugmug.com/Nature/December-2012/20368322_PrFmS9#1626641692_FHrxr83

Still trying to get a shot of those roses that I think is good enough to share!

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http://fotomom.smugmug.com/Nature/December-2012/20368322_PrFmS9#1626645400_rhrBSxg

Here's one other alternate candle glow shot too:

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http://fotomom.smugmug.com/Nature/December-2012/20368322_PrFmS9#1626534194_ftszZbs

The wax was red, but I have blue LED lights in one corner of the kitchen, and some of that light got picked up in the shot.

Merry Christmas! from Madi

2011-12-10T11:24:00.003-05:00

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Donnie and I got together with Teen, Danny, and Madi last night at their house for dinner and Jenga. This shot of Madi was taken in their kitchen, and the background clutter was too distracting, so I grabbed Madi out of it. Here's the original:

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I got that dress earlier in the day at my favorite store in Fuquay-Varina...Guardian Angel Thrift. Gotta love a $3 dress! They raise funds for Alzheimer's Research. It's a great group of people and lots of fun stuff over there.

Teen and I had bought Madi a sleeveless red dress at JCP earlier in the week. It wasn't very expensive either, and last night Madi had fun modeling both dresses for me and of course letting me take pics. Here's the other dress:

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Dinner was great, time with friends was special, and on the one month anniversary of my surgery I was able to dance with Madi in the kitchen. It was a good night.

Here's the chocolate cake I made (my kitchen):

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The bundt pan was a gift from my girl friend Debbie last Christmas. It's one of those fancy ones with Christmas trees and a train around the bottom rim. The roses came from Food Lion. Sometimes I go in in the morning, and they are giving away for FREE their expired flowers. My lucky day! It's as if they made that red and white bouquet just for me!

BTW, we got to 31 levels on Jenga!!!

One more shot of the roses that I almost posted as my POTD:

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I didn't like that one outer loose petal.

My pictures at Teen's house:

She has more up than I do in my house!

And...Donnie taking abuse at my house:-) He's such a good sport!

Every time he visits the boys want him to wrestle!

The World in a Globe

2011-12-09T06:44:00.000-05:00

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I had a few minutes to spare yesterday morning while waiting to head out shopping for the day with Madi's mom, Christine. Last week, she decorated the Japanese Maple in her front yard with silver and blue ornament balls, and I'd been studying the light on them for days as I picked up or dropped off Madi from school. Teen said she'd picked out and put up the blue ones in honor of me for all the years I had blue lights and ornaments on my indoor Christmas tree. That was very sweet. At any point, I started firing off shots of the balls from various locations in the garden, and I thought the shot I chose as my POTD and the shot below were pretty neat!

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I also took this neat berry shot at the edge of a neighbor's yard yesterday. The berries are on a pyracantha shrub.

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Shopping was fun, not too crowded, and we saw Breaking Dawn Part I from the Twilight Saga at the movie theater as well.

The Light Wheel Goes Round and Round

2011-12-08T06:26:00.000-05:00

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It was near bedtime for the boys, and I realized that I didn't have a POTD yet. I asked them if they'd like to make light movement pictures with me, and showed them the light wheel I thought we'd use. We picked this up at the Museum of Life and Science over the summer thinking we'd use it for a photo shoot. The kids were thrilled to finally be breaking it out.

I really like many of the shots I took being a girl that enjoys bold colors, abstract patterns, and the use of movement in many of her shots. But, when I saw Johnny's face lit up from the wheel, and Johnny did too, I decided I'd try to bring out the best in one from that series.

Here's the original. I worked to bring out the reflection in his eye and to remove the light line on his face which distracted me. I filtered the shot and used Color Efex Pro to lighten the area over his face. I darkened the shadows and then used another full frame light shot to make a frame. I'd like a tad more smile in his cheek and for him to be more left in the frame, but otherwise it's what I'd hoped for.

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This is not exactly the one we have, this one has lights on both ends, but it's very similar.

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The background used in the POTD.

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Johnny's mask.

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Joey called this one DNA.

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To me this one looks like a Slinky.

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Maybe this is a Stargate.

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Up and down, in and out, zig zag, fast and slow...many different patterns can be created.

Princess Leia

2011-12-07T08:28:00.001-05:00

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Just a little fooling around in PSE with a picture of a light fixture taken at the NC Museum of Art, a picture of Madi taken Halloween night this year, and a picture of an R2-D2 lifesize model taken at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham last year. It's missing something, well a lot. I just thought when I saw the light picture that it was begging to have someone inserted in the scene. I set out to find the right picture of the right someone and didn't have the luck I wanted and thought I'd try the Madi shot and then one thing led to another. I did put a drop shadow on Madi and R2-D2 to help convey the reality of it.

Forest Elf

2011-12-06T08:18:00.000-05:00

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I noticed this elf flying through the woods in a vacant lot in Donnie's neighborhood. I don't have any details on him. Is he magical? Did he originate from the imagination of a child? Is he meant to ward people off? Or, is he maybe a festive symbol from a party or something. What do you think?

I fussed with the texture on the facial area a bit and then applied a face brush I got from here. I also used Color Efex Pro to alter the colors. I treated myself to that for Christmas. I waited since last Black Friday for them to discount it again and decided I wasn't letting it pass me by again this year. I wish I could have gotten the full package and Silver Efex Pro too. Maybe another year.

Here's the original:

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I didn't take any other pics yesterday. We're warm but cloudy.

Friends and Holiday Traditions

2011-12-05T08:05:00.001-05:00

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Madi and her mom Christine were able to hook up with me and the boys yesterday to go to Wal-Mart to see Santa again and then to go to Crabtree Valley Mall. The main destination there was Build-A-Bear; it's a holiday tradition at this point. The kids each get a 'bear' and we also put a bear in the Toys for Tots bin.

My POTD is a collage of most of the shots we took while visiting Santa at Wal-Mart. When we arrived at the store, Santa was going on break. That was unexpected. However, let's just say that everyone at the local Wal-Mart knows me and the kids, and Santa was more than happy to put his suit back on and pose with J&J&M. Santa had asked yesterday where Madi was, and it didn't seem right to be taking those pictures without her. So, with a few winks and nods I distracted the kids while Santa got ready. Besides the joy the kids bring to me, it's always great to see them bring a smile to others too. Thanks for the pictures Santa and for cutting your lunch a bit short for us. That felt like Christmas magic at work to me...

The next collage is made up from the pictures we took at Build-A-Bear. Joey picked out Alvin the Chipmunk. Johnny got Erik from Happy Feet. Madi picked out a fennec fox. We also bought a bear to put in the Toys for Tots bin. I'd like for the kids to develop not only a joy in receiving gifts but also a joy in giving gifts to others.

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I got this really nice picture of Teen with the kids at the Penny Road Happyland Christmas Lights show on the way home too.

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It's one of those cases, though, where the cell phone did a better job than I know how to do with my real camera. (Teen, the picture that has Johnny in it that was better didn't get uploaded to FB.)

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A shot of a small ferris wheel.

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Lastly, I don't get in two many pictures, and I usually don't like how I look when I do get in them, but here's a shot of Madi and I taken at her house yesterday.

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No one is happy that it's Monday and time to go back to school. But, we're in the home stretch now!

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-04T10:53:00.001-05:00

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The boys and I were out and about yesterday doing tons of stuff. Most of my pics were just happy smiling faces. On the first Saturday of each month, Home Depot has their Kids Workshop project and the Fuquay-Varina branch of the Wake County Library has a reading program, See Spot Read, where therapy dogs come in for kids to read to them. The boys love to do both of those activities, and the timing is just right for us to make it to both and have fun. Memories are made and hopefully character is built.

We saw Santa at Home Depot and at Wal-Mart!

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And, we saw Ruby at the library.

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This is how many books Santa Joe carried out of the library today!

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Most days he reads a chapter book with 60+ pages. Sometimes more than 100. I'm very proud of him. Right now, Geronimo Stilton is one of his favorite series.

I really, really, really want a good shot of these large ornaments at Bath and Body Works. I tried for the second time yeserday to get one with minimal luck. I share the one as my POTD but am not happy with it. Thanks to the sales people for ignoring me and my camera:-)

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At Michael's craft store, I was in love with these mirrored and silver glass items! If only I had real light and more time to actually take a few real shots of these items...

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We also saw the movie Arthur Christmas which I thoroughly enjoyed and drove past and stopped at the light show just off Penny Road.

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Off today to see Santa at WM again this time with Madi and then I think risk going to a mall:-)

Seen Better Times

2011-12-03T07:40:00.002-05:00

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My girlfriend Aunt Debbie and I were at an estate sale on this property several years ago. Always a bit sad to see someone's home being distributed after their death. Although we yard saled a lot, we didn't often go to estate sales. At any point, in my travels on Thursday, I noticed the tree down between the house and barn and stopped to take the shot I've posted as my picture of the day on this now decaying property. Sortof OK SOOC, I thought the HDR effect gave it an oil painting type feel giving the tree some character.

I was leaving Billie a comment today while looking out my favorite window at Donnie's house when I saw this huge bird with a red head fly by. Wow, it's a pileated woodpecker! I made it outside and kindof close to the tree to get this shot through the branches. If I'm lucky I see one of these guys a year. And, if I'm really lucky, I come away with a shot where I can at least prove I saw one:-) I guess I had some luck yesterday.

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This is the view heading up Donnie's driveway to his mailbox late afternoon this time of year. Can't beat this walking hand-in-hand... Very cool if Santa has delivered something in the mailbox too:-)

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The boys had early release from school yesterday, and Donnie took us to Harris Lake Country Park near the Shearon Harris nuclear power plant. At various points, the sun felt warm, and the guys were trying to catch some shuteye.

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Aren't they good sports to create shots like this for me?

Actually, in the shot below Donnie is actually trying to entice the boys to come and play soccer because we all know that kids don't like us to rest.

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After a good meal and some Wii bowling, the boys had their guy time. The new thing tonight was Mummifying Joey and Johnny Donnie style! They have a very big time wrestling. I just stay out of the way and enjoy the laughter. I'm not sure if Donnie worked harder yesterday running 3 miles or throwing the boys about last night. Good thing I fed him a nice dinner.

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One last shot from the day is my sweet boy Joey on the playground equipment.

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Some Enchanted Forest

2011-12-02T07:51:00.003-05:00

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Yes, THAT song was playing through my head when I thought up that title. I'm taking various routes to/from Donnie's house, and yesterday I decided it was THE day to stop and finally get a picture of this tree. I've been admiring it for some time and have never had the time or the motivation to park and walk back to it. It was 39 degrees with 5-10mph winds when I took these shots, and I wondered as I walked along the side of the road if today really should have been THE day:-) What we do for our pictures sometime.

I had such a tough time choosing between the one I posted for my daily and the following two shots.

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What I really wanted to do was get out and move the tree and rolling hills another 30 feet to the left in the frame so that things were spaced out better in the shot. Can't do that, so I tried shots from 3 different fence posts and both vertical and horizontal on each post and then picked these views to process with the far right fence post showing the rolling hills the best in my opinion.

Just to show you how dramatically different you can process a shot, I pp'ed the tree in B&W too.

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I thought the tonal range in the shot itself was too even to be good. I just have not mastered how to selectively darken areas of a photo yet to increase the drama.

This is the view on the other side of the road.

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One last shot, well a collage, to share with you. On my favorite John Adams Road, the fields are all a beautiful green now. I thought I'd pass on that bright color to you!

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There is one other shot that I took at yet another location yesterday that I really like that I'm going to hold on to for another day:-)

The Holiday Light Show (Store)

2011-12-01T07:45:00.000-05:00

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The boys and I were in Cary for Joey's dentist appointment late afternoon yesterday, and we saw our first major Christmas light display on the way home. This one is is at the corner of Ten Ten Road and Fanny Brown Road. There's a sign up advertising The Holiday Light Store in the yard, and I'm guessing this is the owner's house! For as long as I can remember, we've enjoyed this display each holiday season. It stands out differently than other displays in the area because it's comprised mostly of metal frames to create shapes with lights attached vs. inflatables or plastic figures or other types of holiday lights. The picture below shows another view of the house without the spiral light trees in front.

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And this view shows the train that Johnny loves.

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I spent some time with Donnie at his house yesterday, and I saw a field with about 30 turkey vultures in it on my drive over. Of course I had to stop and take pics. I took these with my Canon SX10 IS since my S3 is still malfunctioning, and I was not happy with the quality of the pics at all! I have a back-up S3 that I need to dig out and try to shoot with today.

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I saw this interesting scene on the way too but just could not take a shot of it that I thought truly worked despite liking all the elements in the shot.

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I'll probably create quite a few more holiday card POTDs this year. I am not sure I'll actually print any of them, but I try to produce them as 8X10 and 4X6 just in case. It's an interesting thought process to consider what sizes finalized pp'ed shots should be.

Merry and Bright

2011-11-30T08:11:00.000-05:00

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It was late last night, and I hadn't taken any pictures. I'm a little bummed that I don't have much new Christmas stuff to work with this year. I started out trying to take a picture of this elf on my green tinsel tree. I didn't do so good handheld, and my S3 was malfunctioning again...not doing a focal lock and just firing at will:-( It did this once before. Maybe it will quit again.

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After realizing the elf shot wasn't working, I just got silly, and the card I ended up making in my POTD is the result. I tried to apply a snowy looking frame to make the tree look like it's inside a window with snow on the outside. I liked the green swirls. The sentiment is nice anyway.

Peek-A-Boo

2011-11-29T07:51:00.000-05:00

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My POTD and the supporting tree shot were taken a couple of weeks ago at The Garden Hut. Joey is really into Sock Monkeys, and when I saw the tree, I just knew that I had to snap a few pics!

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My procedure at the doctor's office yesterday went well. Now we just wait probably into next week for an important test to come back.

Madi in Pink

2011-11-28T07:48:00.001-05:00

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I got a chance to spend a few minutes with Madi yesterday while Donnie and her dad, Danny, worked on Danny's lawnmower. Something to do with the carburetor. Us girls took a short walk around her yard and then mine. Of course, I ended up taking a few pictures. Madi was so cute in her pink sequin top! Maybe cute isn't the right word. It's more like 8 going on 18 now...so grown-up! I pp'ed my favorite of the shots, and that's my POTD. Some of you will remember this tree in my yard from previous photo shoots of the kids. 7 trunks from one base. Just a gorgeous red oak. Usually if I ask the kids to get in the middle of it for a picture they are eager.

I had already taken some pink shots before I saw Madi. My neighbor, Judy, has a very nice pond out near the street in her front yard, and there's a beautiful sasanqua camellia just beside it. As the petals fall off the blooms, some of them end up in the pond making for some very pretty photo ops.

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Judy also has a beautiful landscaped bench area beside her driveway.

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A special thanks goes out to Judy for all the meals she has sent over in the past two weeks. I keep saying that no one is ever going to want to eat my cooking again because her food tastes so good.

The bluebirds were active in Madi's yard today too. I got several shots of them frolicking in the water. This is the best but highly cropped.

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I also saw this female red-bellied woodpecker at my feeders today. This shot is also cropped to show you the detail.

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One more shot today showing the dazzling grasses growing in the Kidd Family garden. I worked to get the leaves of the oak tree just behind the grasses to make pretty bokeh. The grasses were really swaying in the breeze, so most of the shots were throw-aways.

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I'm sorry to see our gorgeous 70 degree and partly sunny weekend come to an end. On the other hand, the doctor will be removing an annoying drainage tube that I've had in place for over two weeks now since the surgery. I can't wait! It's gotten so uncomfortable!

Christmas Inflatable Parade Comes to Town!

2011-11-27T09:54:00.001-05:00

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Donnie worked very hard yesterday to make sure my (and the boys) Christmas will be merry. I have a big set of inflatables that usually gets added to each year in the after Christmas sale. We're up to quite a few now (also at Halloween). Usually I put them up. They aren't too hard. But this year I can't bend down and twist like that, so Donnie agreed to do them for me. What a guy! Not only did he put all of them up, he posed without a fuss after each one too adding some humor to the shots. Usually I get the kids to pose by each one. Don't worry, I'll get pics of them sometime over the holiday season too. I can't wait to see their faces light up this afternoon when they come home and see that they've been put up while they were away.

Here's my version of watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. Donnie had the inflatable up in the air to position it just right, and I thought of my friend Betsy's parade shots.

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Donnie is definitely not a Grinch! Look at that arm-in-arm pose:-)

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Mr. Conductor was busy today on the rails overseeing Thomas the Tank Engine. Sir Topham Hat would have been proud!

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Donnie and his new Bud this year!

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Jolly guys ready to spread some Christmas cheer!

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What a sense of humor!

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Blaze (Blazie) got all hot to trot to go outside one of the times I came in the house for something, so I leashed her up to come sit by us outside. She's such a house dog spending her time in a few favorite spots in the house most of the day including on the couch. She sits on the floor beside wherever I'm at my computer and sleeps on a small rug in the boys room each night. She begs us and visitors for biscuits whenever we're near her jar in the kitchen and likes 3 shorts walks a day. At 12, she's slowing down a bit, but she still has most of her spunk. She's a hard pooch to take pictures of because of her dark fur and apparent fear of my camera, so I was excited to get this shot yesterday of my sweet girl:

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She kept walking toward me as I tried to shoot. In most of the shots her head was turned away. Here she's not smiling because she sees the camera. Still, her fur is lit up nice, no flash eyes, and she's looking at me so I'm pretty happy. The shot shows all the lovely variations and beauty in her auburn colored fur.

Like Gemmy Industries on Facebook to see the latest inflatables.

O'Kelly Chapel Christian Church

2011-11-26T09:18:00.000-05:00

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I took this shot when Donnie and I drove around in the Jordan Lake area last Tuesday. We went around the corner on Hwy. 751, and I saw the pretty church and asked Donnie to turn around so I could take a picture. I processed 3 different sets of bracketed shots standing in various spots in front of the church, and we liked how this one turned out best because of the rusty roof and trees. The church is rich with history as the historical marker above indicates.

We also stopped on Hwy. 751 to take a picture of this house?

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I don't have any more details on this setting. It just caught our eye because of the cannon, stone wall, and picturesque setting. There was a satellite dish off to the side and a car in the driveway, so it did seem like a residence.

One last shot from our Jordan Lake trip that I'd like to share. It reminds me of the marina shots of Dan and Patti who I miss from our daily community family.

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I did make it into Wal-Mart and Kohl's for a few Black Friday deals. Donnie was content to stroll through those stores with me mid-afternoon when the crowds had died down. We saw a few guys in the parking lots waiting for their girls one of which was playing solitaire on his cell phone:-) I thought of trying to capture some pictures of the day like that but was shy.

The Making of a Thanksgiving Meal

2011-11-25T10:54:00.002-05:00

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I did enjoy my Thanksgiving thanks to Donnie and the boys. I really wanted to cook my 20lb. turkey like usual although Donnie offered to take me and the boys out. It's a big laugh each year that I make such a big bird for so few people. I guess I figure it's no more bother to make a big bird than a little bird, the photo op is nicer, and maybe some year some special guests will show up and actually help it all get eaten on the first day. As it is, we have lots of nice leftovers and light cooking duties the rest of the weekend.

I enjoyed the boys in the kitchen helping out. They had so looked forward to us cooking together. Joey often talks about wanting to be a chef when he grows up with Johnny and Madi helping to run the restaurant with him. It was good food not only for our tummies but also for my soul. Carrot skins ended up on the floor and other spills here and there but somehow it just didn't matter. They were trying so hard.

The meal came out as hoped with sausage stuffing, broccoli rice casserole, carrots cooked under the bird in the juices, Crescent Rolls, Bob Evans mashed potatoes, and fizzy soda (sparkling apple cider). For dessert we enjoyed Libby canned recipe pumpkin pie and a Mrs. Smith's apple pie. After the big meal around 2PM, we barely ate anything the rest of the day.

Rather than have to pick one photo, I share the best of the day in this collage as my daily.

Here's just the bird:

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I also have a collage of some of the Christmas decorating that we did while the turkey was cooking. We have the elves out and watching over the kids now reporting back to Santa each night. I love how Joey believes with such enthusiasm at 9. We also got out our nutcracker collection which is newly displayed this year in a curio cabinet that came from my grandmother's house (mother's side). Our little green sparkle tree is up. I know we can't do as many decorations this year as usual, but we do quite a bit and enjoy them.

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I bypassed Black Friday shopping this year for the first time in my adult life. I am about as gunho about it as a person can be most years. The boys left for their father's house this morning, and I just didn't want to shorten our time together to do something as silly as go shop. Money is tighter and the crazy midnight or 3AM hours just took some of the allure out of it for me. I may go out for a bit later today.