Leopard Spots

Productivity

It's been a crazy productive day, not only at work....because, well, I'm paid to be productive there. But at home as well. 

After I picked LaPooh up from school, which coincidentally was after I got off of work we spent some quality time together and I sent her off to a thing.

Then it was off to the grocery store. I just recently figured out how to make spring rolls from scratch. AMAZING! Quite possibly my new favorite food. Bought the fresh veggies to make the spring rolls and then I was cutting, peeling and chopping my way to spring roll awesomeness. 

Stinks was totally excited for this. It turns out she didn't like the wrapper but ate all the yumminess on the inside. 

I still need to work on my wrapping skills, but I finally got the sauce down to perfection! 

After dinner it was off to Ikea for another furniture project. It's true I never get sick of these, this one was for the kitchen. I'm always looking for more counter space! 

Lastly, today I fixed my DirecTV tuner, it wasn't allowing me to record two shows at once...only a problem when I want to record both Grey's and The Office on Thursday nights. Fixed.

I'm feeling totally handy today. 

Tomorrow is the final step in Zen Den phase one. Painting my living room a totally mellow green! 

Then chilling all weekend. Yeah :-) 

The Final Purge!

I did it y'all. I finally cleaned out the garage! I am finally rid of all of my ex-husband's items, a local charity is going to come and pick up the rest of the items that need to be donated. I found a few items that I have been looking for, for a while...example...I finally have all of my parents' yearbook together (something that is mildly important to me) and they're all green! Way to be original two separate high schools that were 1500 miles apart! 

The other big purge was the house. I have been on work vacation for 9 days and while I've spent most of the days hanging out with the ladies and having fun. We have cleaned the entire house, and we finished today. I own so much less than I did a week ago and it feels so good! This week has been amazing. And now that it's over perhaps I can talk about something besides ridding myself of material items :-) 

I hope everyone else has had a fantastic spring break or will...even if you don't take the spring cleaning literally. 

Happy Easter! 

Sick Mac

I was all about to begin blogging about the Chicago trip. I turned on my Mac the screen lit up, but there was NO display!

I brought it to the MOA Apple Genuid Bar and it's a hardware problem. Luckily it's still under warranty so I took it home to back it up and today my Mac is on the way to be repaired.

So only a little blogging for the next week. We'll see how brave I am, maybe I'll turn on my PC!

If you must know what is going on in my life I'll be Twittering as always! See y'all in a week!

My Favorite Photo

I have shared with you all most of my photos from San Francisco but I have saved my favorite for last. 

Amazing? I think so. 

This is a photo that I wanted to do something with. I couldn't just let it sit in my MacBook while I figured out what to do with it. I've always wanted to get a photo on canvas. I've spent so much time scouring the interwebs for places that print photos on canvas and they all have one thing in common.

They are expensive! With prices starting at around $50 for an 8x10, it just wasn't gonna happen. At least for awhile. But then, thanks to my amazing Twitter network, I love my Twitter friends! I found @photocanvas and all he does are canvas prints and for half the price of those other places!

My 8x10 just arrived in the mail...and it was amazing! I immediately put the print in a place I will look everyday, in my room amongst all the photos of my little leopards. 

This photo can't do it justice. The flash washed out the vibrancy of the colors, the sharpness of the print. If you want to know what it looks like, just take a look at first photo posted above. Fabulous. 

The best part is that their prices start at just $25 for an 8x10 canvas print. And on top of that they are amazing photographers. The care and attention to detail that is put into your print will far exceed the care that is put into in a one of those other photo "factories." So if you have that really special photo that you've just been waiting to do something with. Order a canvas print! And the best part is, they come ready to hang, so you don't even have to search for a matte and frame! 

Photo Friday

On Friday morning I was greeted by the fact that I am not immune to hangovers. This after taking Advil before, after and that morning. 

One would think that I had learned my lesson the night before. 

Not quite. 

But I have the whole day to get to that. 

Lunch at Loui's. A great little breakfast place between the Seal Rock Inn and the Cliff House.

Yumminess.

Then off to Starbucks. Because lets face it. This girl needed some espresso. Stat. 

Which completely explains why I got a Say Chai Latte.

Yeah, sometimes I can't explain myself either. 

Then on to a Bay Cruise. 

Being hungover and on a boat don't mix. Just in case anyone was wondering. But I did fine. Took some really cool photos. 

I dislike digital photography in its pure form. Too sterile. Very much returning to film photography for art, but otherwise running my digital through Photoshop. 

It was actually a beautiful day on the bay. Not too windy and not too cold. Loved it. 

Met the Captain who was into photography as much as I am, so we talked about what we liked, disliked. It was really cool to meet someone who like photography as much as I did. 

After the bay cruise we drove around stopping and I took a few more photos.

I'm working on getting a body of work together. I've not been taking photos for myself for ages. And it's a blast to create again and figure out where I am as an artist and more importantly who I am. 

Some really cool and interesting results were a result of Friday. And even though Big Brother didn't like most of what I produced, it was a great day for me. At least. 

He liked this one. 

Then it was nap time for the adults. 

As an adult I totally appreciate nap time. What was I thinking as a child?!?!

I will be back tomorrow with Friday nights festivities. (This is the part of the trip where I lie my pants off!)

Taking a look back...

I have the big migration from PC to Mac complete! Right now I am just going through all of the photos I have ever taken of the little leopards and editing and organizing them. iPhoto organizes a lot differently than a PC in that it actually organizes for you! That being said, I had this elaborate file system set up on my PC. It worked quite well and I was very organized. When it comes to digital photography file organization I'm actually quite good at it. But when I opened iPhoto it had imported each file I had created into a different event! Omigosh! I had over 600 events that I had to organize. Additionally, my earliest digital camera lost the date stamp in the file so I had literally thousands of photo files with the date stamp of Dec 31, 2000!

Right now I am down to 46 "events." They are all organized by month, or a group of months. I've also gone through and gotten out the blurry photos. I've gone through every single photo I have taken of the girls in the last couple of days! Omigoosh! What an amazing experience. Cub has kept all of her priceless looks throughout her life. She has always been Little Miss Serious apparently! 

So I will share with you a few photos. Starting from when Cub was just an itsty-bitsy, little 5 pound wonder!

That is a standard issue bouncy chair and those are 0-3 month clothes!!!

Spring 2004!

June 2006

Going down the big slide at the Corn Maze!

I can't believe how she has grown so much! 

Holga Love

First off, I am so behind on blogging. This week has been CRAZY!!! But it's almost over and I have the weekend off! YAY! 

That means I have to catch up from everything I have not done during the week!

Anyhoo,

last week I got my Holga photos back! 

I just got a Holga camera a couple of months or so ago and have been quite anxious to get them developed. For those of you that don't know a Holga is a medium format toy camera that is fantastically lo-fi and yields really unique results with blur and light leaks among the qualities that appear on the photos you take, it adds to the appeal!

It's been almost surreal going back to film from using digital for so long and I think I'm going to have to find a different place to process my photos but it's all a learning process!

So here is yet another sneak peak at the photo project I am working on...

Got YouTube?

I like YouTube. 

I'm not sure if I like it more or less than other people, but I do and I thought since I like it so much, why not share...

So I'm starting another blog just for YouTube videos!

Check it out, Video Hunter!

Also, I am looking for contributors, so if you want to just click on the "email link" under my photo and let me know! 

Thanks all! 

A little break...

I'm currently trying to subsist on very little sleep...I can't stay away from the computer and more importantly PHOTOSHOP!!! I'm very diligently working on my next photography project, and that's all you get. For now. In a couple of months I will share with you all, but I am trying to get the majority of the work on this done now. So enjoy this photo and I'll be back in a bit. 

I can only stare at Photoshop for so long...right???

Of things to come...

I've spent my day working on a little project while the little leopards have been busy with various activities. I'm trying to enjoy the last day of fall, and am dreading the apparently incoming snow. Groan. 

Here's a preview.