Week 1 - Minimal

Mini-beers.

With friends.

On a Thursday afternoon.

In the Holy City.

Lager love.

Tots amazeballs.

Finishing My 2012 Project 52

My 52nd photo from 2012 is this little number...

A fun trio of sheep along the road on the way out to Dutch Corner in my home town in Pennsylvania.  For some reason, I just love taking pics of the animals on the way to and from my sister's house.  On my last trip I captured some sheep, chicken, and cows.  

I can't believe it has been a year since I dove in and joined my local Hampton Roads Digital Photography Club to grow my skills and meet like-minded creative folks.  It has been a truly rewarding experience to play with my DSLR as well as my iPhone throughout the year.  I'm thrilled with my progress.  I didn't necessarily post every week, but I was able to choose one shot from each week to share in my Flickr group here.  Then, there's a nice link between Flickr and Snapfish, so I used those photos to create my Christmas card this year!

I'm starting another photo journey with Sally Russick of Studio Sublime for 2013.  She's gonna work on "focusing on life" one photo and one week at a time.  If you're interested in joining, here's the link:

Happy New Year!!!

Project 52 Pic - At the Bellagio

A few months ago my ma called and asked if she could visit over Mother's Day weekend.  Well, here in Hampton, there's lots of exciting things to do like knit or craft or play with cats, but I decided to propose something a little different.  You know...life is too short and so it's time to do fun stuff.  So, we went to Vegas!!


We called The Bellagio home for a couple of days and treated ourselves to luscious massages and a stunning Cirque du Soleiel show and fantastic late night meals and phenomenal cocktails.  It was 


I have a ton of pictures, but I decided to just feature this one for today as part of my "Project 52" set...I've actually made it to Week 19!

I captured this shot using my iPhone's Hipstamatic app with some kind of cool black and white filter/film combination.  I don't know exactly which one.  :)  We had just finished our Sunday morning breakfast and were, sadly, getting ready to head to the airport.  We decided to hang out in the lobby and  watch people for a little while before venturing back into travel mode.  I ended up watching chandeliers more.  :)

It's hard to tell that we're related, right?  haaaaaaaaaaaa

A simple breakfast can be lovely

From my Project 52 set...the week 6 shot of breakfast from Sunday morning.

I'd love to say I eat this beautifully every morning, but I used up all the milk on Sunday and haven't gotten any more yet.  Now I'm stuck with diet bread with diet peanut butter and diet jelly.  Delicious.  haaaaaaaaaa


I love that the little blueberry star is the highlight of the pic (and it only took me six shots to get it like this!! haaaaaaaaaaa)  Luckily, it's some sort of super-healthy cereal that doesn't get soggy fast.


Happy middle-of-February!

Project 52: Unraveling

Here I am for week 3 of 52.  This is a shot of a bigass hunk of yarn that one of my knitting buds is using to craft up a big afghan.  

The title of this is "unraveling" because that's how I feel like my week is going and it's only just begun.  My job is beyond frustrating.  I can't find any reason to craft...everything I make just sits around here taking up space.  I can't eat because I have to have my waist measured tomorrow morning.  If I don't meet the waist measurement in the morning, I'll feel like a total loser.  Feeling like a total loser is not good.  I wish I could retire.  I wish I didn't have a mortgage.  I wish I could make good things happen.  I guess I should just try...even if I am too fat around the waist.   Cheers to whining!!  


I think I'll go shop for some beads.  It won't make me skinny or make my job more satisfying, but at least I'll get something cool in the mail in a few days.  haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

A Little Texture

I selected my Week 2 photo for Project 52.  It's this door...the door to something delightful, but only in my imagination.  Until I figure out exactly where it should lead, I spent some time having fun with it in Elements and even added one of my own textures!  I'm gonna be learning a lot more about textures this year because I just signed up for a year-long adventure with Kim Klassen called "Beyond Layers."  I'd love to thank my dear friend, Sally Russick, but I can't just yet because I have to see just how much time I'm going to lose staring at my computer playing instead of getting things done!!  haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa  Just kidding...the only way to learn how to fun-up pictures is to practice, so having a program to follow is a great way to work.

If you're interested...here's the before shot that I took with my iPhone.  I used five different layers with various masks to make it look like this.  My brother challenged me to never "just apply a filter" and be done...anyone can do that.  It's the little tweaks that are going to make it all mine.  So, that's what I tried to do here.

So, that's two for two in Project 52!  Whooo hoooo.