Thursday already?

My how times flies. I can't believe it is thursday already. I have been doing nothing in particular and everything in general, you know, the laundry, regualr household chores, etc. I did have someone over to look at our main bath and I am hoping I get a reasonable quote for renovating it. So then I went and looked at bathtubs and sinks. We have an older home so it has quite a small bathroom. which may create a problem for switching out the tubs but when we moved the house from the farm the tubsurround separated from the tub and I think water got behind it and the drywall now looks alittle crumbly. anyway, we are going to replace the tub and sink as they both are chipped and rusting alittle. I also want to replace the livingroom carpet. I really wanted hardwood floors but dh says absolutely not so i have finally given up on that ( I have put it off for quite awhile hoping that he will cave, but it's not to be). So I went and looked at carpet samples as well. And I looked at the newest duraceramic tiles for the bathroom floor. I quite like them. So then, I looked at new blinds for the windows, and while I was measuring them, I noticed that the wooden frames look alittle water damaged from frost melting and pooling on the ledges, so now I have to visit a paint store and check out what I need to do with them before i get any new blinds on them. Probably will paint them instead of stain and varnish. I hear there is a new kind of paint that will protect against any mold forming and gets rid of any that is there now. So I must go and check that out. I may as well paint the entire livingroom them too, right? So guess we have to get that ball rolling now and I think it is going to pick up some speed as we go along. I am thinking maybe new furniture too!!!! Argh!!!! What have I started???? Will there be no end? It could go on and on and on!!!! Stay tuned to future developments!



I have been reading Stacey Julian's book, Photo Freedom and trying to imagine having no guilt about my ever growing pile of photos. I have decided to embrace a part of her philosophy. I will start just pulling out photos and scrapping them, and not care if they are recent or as old as the hills! So I did that. I just went through a pile of older photos of our girls and picked 2 out of the pile. Then I made this layout. The paper and embellies are from the July kit from Just Cre8. I decided it would go into an album named "everyday life". Maybe someday I will get to the part about sorting the photos into her 4 categories, but for now, I think this is how I will start!

I have done a few other pages from one of my old albums but because it is of dh's sister's wedding I don't think I should post it here, there are too many other people in the photos and I don't know how they feel about being in my blog. Suffice to say, I did alot of cropping and got many photos onto a page without losing anything but alot of white background! My old photography skills sucked bigtime!! The cheap camera probably didn't help much either!

Oh and if you want a smile for today, you should go to the Just Cre8 forum and look for a youtube video about a wedding procession, it is priceless. I would have posted it here but i have no clue how to do that so you will have to do the work and go find it. maybe I can put the right post here with a url, I will try and see if that works.

http://justcre8.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8489

okay, here is the post in the forum, enjoy.

Photography Road Trip

On Saturday we decided to do a road trip to look for things to take photos of, just for fun!! WE started out around 9 a.m. and headed north toward P.A. By Rosthern there is a deserted farmyard that has a car ( a Cadillac I believe) that has a tree growing out from inside the motor compartment. There is also a falling down shack and a bunch of old machinery.




We left P.A. and went east towards Choiceland, stopping here and there along the way if we saw something that we wanted to photograph. We found old churches, flowers galore, abandoned yardsites with falling down houses and old granaries. It was hot and the flies were everywhere!!! We had a great time and then towards evening we ended up at St. Louis. From there we travelled along the river back to Saskatoon. All in all we were gone for 12 hours and we travelled close to 600 kms.!! I took over 300 pictures and I am including some of my favorite ones here.

This is a frog in one of the churchyards we were in. I was taking photos of flowers with my macro lens at the time. this little guy wouldn't stay still for me very well and was hard to get a focus on him!! Patience paid out though. I think he thought he was hidden from me here!!!

The St. Louis bridge. It was around 7 p.m. and I set my shutter speed to get this lighting. I can't remember what setting I used but I know that I wanted it to look different than what I was getting so I played abit to get the look I was trying for.

This was alittle later and the evening light made the canola field look so bright against the old granary and the green trees. The fields during the harsh sun of the day looked way more washed out.

This is my absolute most favorite photo of the entire day! I just love it and it was taken on a whim with no pre planning at all!! Isn't that just how it works some days????

This elevator is at Hagen and we just laughed at all the different angles all the separate pieces were leaning at!!

A prairie lily. It was one of the things I was specifically looking for today.

We looked all day for a lane that would photograph this way, like it went on forever. I took quite a few photos of this and with different lenses to see what would give me the look I was aiming for. This one is with the 17-85mm lens.

I don't know how I got 2 of the same photos on here, and I tried to take one off but I couldn't figure out how to get one off and leave all the others so this one got left! There was a radio tower that I could see in my frame and I tried many views to get it not to be there, finally found this one where the church steeple hid the tower perfectly!!! There's that try every angle tip that I was told about in the one and only photography course I have taken!!

I am going to put more of these photos on my Flicker site next, so if you want to see more, try going there and looking. Thanks.

Someone tell Mother Nature it's summertime, please

I took this photo with my macro lens at the end of June. My dd wanted a photo of our gd at 18 months. I think I took around 500 snaps and I got quite a few good ones but I think this is one of the best. I then "warmed" it up, added a glow and softened the edges abit. Oh yes and I used the little brush to take out afew red spots on her chin. I think it turned out pretty good. She is such a doll right now, trys to repeat everything you say to her and is starting to love playing with the girls old cabbage patch dolls, she kisses them and hugs them and lays them down, puts a blanket over them and tells them nighty night, pats them on the tummy and leaves!!! It is priceless!

And then, there is the weather, not nearly so endearing!! I am not really a beach person so I don't need sun for that but if I wanted clouds and rain, I would have moved to the west coast!!! I need some sun just for mental well-being!! and one day every 2 weeks is just not going to cut it for me!!

We had a family reunion this past weekend and would really have like some nice weather for it. Sunday was nice but we were all busy packing up and getting home during it! We had a good time anyway and it was great seeing all the nieces and nephews and their little ones. My how times have changed, we used to be the ones with little kids and the older aunts and uncles sat around reminiscing and now we ARE the older aunts and uncles!!! There are very few of the original aunts and uncles left and the ones that are,don't travel very far away from their homes these days. (This reunion was on my husband's side). On my side it is much the same, I think there are only 2 uncles and 1 aunt still alive and they are quite elderly.

Nothing else too much exciting has been going on around here. I haven't been scrapping much. I am going to try to get at some older photos this week and see if I can do something with them. We will see how that goes!!

Guess what I bought???

Aren't these photos just gorgeous?? I broke down and bought both a macro and a zoom lens. I have been having a great time taking pictures of everything around here!! I must say that I learned more things about my camera and these lenses from the guy at Don's Photo than I have learned in all my reading over the past few months. They are just great there. Anyway, I am hoping to find some more stuff to photograph in the next few day.s I spent the morning at the playground with our granddaughter and my zoom lens and got some great pictures there too. I am loving these 2 lenses for sure!!!

Fast scrapbook pages

Anybody want to make 4 layouts quickly and with no or minimal scraps left over? I know I really like this idea. If you would like to see how, go HERE. Amanda over at Just Cre8 is going to be doing "recipes" for fast pages every month now. She started this during our last on-line crop and there was such a favorable response, she has decided to do this every month. It's a great way to get some fast layouts done.

New Photos

I am finding that I really like the macro setting on my camera and I look for things to take pictures of that will need me to use that setting! I am thinking seriously of getting a macro lens but I also want to get a larger zoom lens too so am going to have to decide what I want to have the most, my birthday is coming up so even though I would actually like to skip that day I really want a new lens so maybe will have to celebrate this year again!!

The light was filtering through this honeysuckle tree so nicely, it looked so pretty on the leaves and flowers, I was crawling all over the ground to try and find the nicest shot. Between this bush and the dandelions, I think I took 100 photos!! Ya just gotta love digital!!!

Conversation with a toddler

I really don't have much to blog about, there really isn't much going on, but on Sunday I had our little granddaughter here to visit and I am really amazed at how well developed her sense of humor is. Our conversation went sort of like this:

"Bamma, appos?" while she is looking at the grapes on the cupboard. Everything round is either a ball or an apple to her. "No, Amanda, those are grapes" "Bapes" "Yes, grapes, would you like some?" She nods her head. "Mo appos" "Grapes" Now she looks at me, giggles and says "Bappos, tee hee" I think this is one of those moments that should be scrapped and put into her album so I will have to think about that for awhile.
Then later, she was standing on the chair, "Amanda, sit down" "No" "Yes, please" "No" "A-man-da" said by me in a warning voice and then her, in a sing-song voice, "Nan nan da" giggle, giggle. The little shyster!!!
We have such a good time with that little tyke, but man can she tire me out!!! She never walks, always runs and has done a few face plants onto the ground, but has learned to put her arms out and turn her head now!!!
I am still having problems with my ankle and the dr. is still keeping me off work with minimal activity, which I am finding to be abit of a problem because there is so much to do around here. I really try to stay still but I must not be doing well because my ankle and foot still hurt quite abit in the evening and during the night and that is with regular doses of Advil on board. I will have to try harder I guess. Maybe if I go on a vacation where I can't see the work, yeah, maybe that is the answer!!!
We finally have nice weather and I really like being outside, I have cut my garden down drastically this year because i can't be in it, dh planted some potatoes, mostly because he likes them so much. And I didn't really plant any flowers, mostly because of the weather being so cold but also because I am not supposed to be out there!! I put a few petunias in my front bed because it can be seen from the street and I thought it needed something.
Well, must do my 15 minutes of something now and then it will be back to sitting again! Hope everyone enjoys the nice day today.