Gobsmacked!!

Isn't that just the funniest word you have ever heard? I am reading Barbara Taylor Bradford's book, "Being Elizabeth" and she uses that word in place of stunned or speechless! Everytime I read it or I think about it while I am going about my daily routine, I giggle. I think it sounds hilarious. The book is based in London so i am guessing it is one of those english words like spanner, torch, knocking someone up. trolley, etc, etc. that we find so unusual when we hear them. There are probably some words that we use that they find funny too! But I just have to giggle when I think about being gobsmacked!!

I am trying to get my mojo back, still. I really need to start doing some scrapbook pages and I have almost used up all my cards in my cardbasket, so with all the birthdays and things coming up this fall, I really need to find it, wherever it went. I signed up for an online class with BigPicture Scrapbooking. It starts September 3rd and I am really hoping that it will jumpstart my creativity. Wish me luck!

Flutterby butterfly

I took alot of photos in the Butterfly Conservatory, and also of the Botanical gardens. I am not sure how I will scrapbook them, I think I may try to do a collage page. The gardens were so beautiful and lush, I was so envious, we just can't grow gardens like that here in dry, hot Sask. We certainly enjoyed looking at all the flowers there, or i guess i did, I really can't speak for dh, although he didn't complain and he carried my camera bag too! What a great guy!!

We celebrated our 35th Wedding Anniversary!

This is only a small view of what the streets look like in Niagara on the Lake. It is the most beautiful place, but having said that, it is quite expensive! At least, during the tourist season.

My dh wanted to see a play at the Shaw Festival. So we booked tickets for King Charles' Golden Days which meant that we had to stay an extra day here, hmmm, not so bad an idea. We walked the streets and checked out all the little boutiques. Lots of art galleries and little stores with pottery.etc.

This was our spectacular room at the Hilton's Embassy Suites for our stay in Niagara Falls. We stayed there one night, our anniversary night and then we moved onto Niagara On the Lake. They had alot of B&B's there, but unfortunately they had no vacancies. I had wanted to book on line but dh wanted to "wing it" for this holiday and the only room he let me prebook was this one. I am not a great "winging it" kind of gal but I did it for this week. We actually had pretty good luck with finding rooms when we wanted them.

And this was the view from our suite. It was breath taking. We did go on the Maid of the Mist ride and that took our breath away too, but because it was windy and extremely wet!! We stood on the top and in the front, probably the windiest and wettest place to be on the entire boat, but we did get a good look at the falls!

All in all, it was a great holiday, we enjoyed our time together and even though it was very hot and humid, we did get to see alot of countryside.

So Sorry everyone. I haven't been a good blogger lately. I really don't have an excuse, I just haven't been keeping up with this. I really haven't been doing any scrapbooking either. I just can't seem to get myself motivated to do anything crafty. I have, however, been reading alot of books!!

I am getting excited though. We are going to go to Niagara Falls on Sunday, my dh and I, to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary. I may have mentioned this previously but now the time is actually here!! We would have left earlier than Sunday but dh is involved with the German Club and he has to be there for these 3 days of Folkfest. So that is why we are leaving on a Sunday.

We did manage a short visit with friends at Tobin Lake last weekend and I had my camera with me, with my trusty telephoto lens, so I did get a few good shots of a friendly little squirrel they had running around. These friends have been building a log cabin on their lot. Last year, they moved out the old trailer that they have been using for many years and they started on the cabin that they have dreamed about. Our friend retired last June from the department of highways and he had made the decision that his first year of retirement would be building this cabin and then maybe he would look for a parttime job after it was done. They just have some varnishing to do yet but basically it is all done. I will post a photo on here and not feel guilty because their kids have it posted on facebook so they probably won't mind that it is on my blog. The cabin.....The cute little squirrel......This is a woodpecker that visits the birdfeeder hanging in a nearby tree at the cabin. There are

2 of them and our friends know what the proper names of them are, one is quite abit bigger than the other one.

And finally my patience won out and I got a couple of shots at catching the ever elusive hummingbird!! I sat for quite awhile to capture this little guy. And he kept coming into the feeder from the tree side so when I snapped the photo he blended in with the tree. He finally decided to try the other side of the feeder and I got a couple of snaps in, but he was pretty quick with his snack!!

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!!