Two Weeks

Yes, it's two weeks until Christmas and I was just pondering how frazzled I was last year. This past Monday we returned from a 12 day 3000 mile road trip to the cold north visiting relatives, attending a conference (not me) and general relaxing taking extra days to get to our destinations. 

As a result, I have no Christmas decorations up because I've been swamped at work. Do I care? Not particularly, but I hope no one at work cares because there are none up there either!

The first thing I did when returning was check my multitude of pumpkins scattered around the house for rotting bottoms.

I'm not ready for fall to be over. We left at it's peak and I was sure it would be gone when I got back but NO! It was still here just barely past it's glory. I drove around Monday and listened to the leaves blow across the sidewalks and watch some fall from the bradford pears. Glorious! I was in heaven for a day and I sure need that.

This was just confirmation that I need my quiet photo shooting trips for meditation. It amazes me how God can speak when you get away from everything, or should I say how much better we can 'hear'?

There were a lot of things that went wrong on this trip. 

• We encountered a rock chip in the windshield on the way out of town that actually cracked about a foot right through 'my' line of vision in the drivers seat. 
• We both ended up with physical ailments. (I nearly went to the hospital and I never do that.) 
• My credit card was compromised. 
• We got snowed in at Dad's two extra days preventing us from seeing my brother and sis-in-law. 
• We saw two really bad car wrecks, one of which we witnessed.

I counted up eight, but I'll spare you the rest.

• There were definitely some good too.
• Getting a lot of Christmas shopping done at the Mall of America and some shopping for myself. 
• Seeing that glorious snow and getting some shots of it. 
• Drive by shooting of tons of barns. I swear there was a barn every mile as we drove through Minnesota.
• Seeing a niece I hadn't seen in 6 years. 
• Watching my nephew's daughter play basketball.
• Finding the folks still in good health.

Well Christmas will just have to wait until I'm ready for it this year. Hallie did pile the ornaments on the tree before Thanksgiving because I promised her she could. (As in several on one branch.) Will I rearrange them? Probably not and that's a big step for the decorator in me.


At Dad's house.
I think they should have used this for their Christmas card by they always do a photo of themselves. Speaking of cards, mine are not done. I started looking through my Lightroom Library last night for photos to use and ended up quite side tracked as you can imagine.

This may just Merry Christmas from me. Have a very blessed holiday season!

A Winter Wonderland

Hubby had cabin fever bad by Sunday so I made him drive me around town to look at the frosted over trees and let me take photos. We actually had hoar frost on Sunday, something I'd never seen up close and personal. (I'll post them later.)

I love how these look with some of Kim's presets applied.

 kk_dreamlike with extra clarity.

kk_hazyday

kk_hazyday

kk_moodswing

kk_breeze

kk_darklight

kk_darkday

my edits

It was starting to just get warm enough that the frost started to fall.

iPhone shot edited with kk_today.

We ended up having a snowball fight and I think I lost.

This was a 'captured frame' from a movie clip. kk_toucha

kk_breeze

I plan to put a video together since I'm in the Time Capsules Class. It's a lot of work. I could spend a couple full days just on one video.

Linking up for Texture Tuesday at kimklassen.com.

Mobile Art Monday No. 3

Welcome to Mobile Art Monday! Congrats to the winners of the Stackables codes last week. I'm still having trouble getting in touch with Jeanne. If you are reading today, contact me, email is on my profile page.

Today I played in Snapseed, ReTouch, Superimpose, Brushstroke, and iColorama. This is my finished piece.

Here is where I started. I added a little Snapseed drama but masked it out of the clouds using Superimpose.
I also filled in a blown out spot in the sky using ReTouch.

Into Brushstroke, setting E2. I could have stopped right here because this was so interesting but I kept playing.

In Superimpose, (1)the original was my background layer, the Brushstroke image was the foreground set to Exclusion 44%. Then merged down.
(2)I re-imported the Brushstroke image and set it to Saturation 33%, merged down.

(3)I re-imported the Brushstroke image once more and set the blend mode to color 35%, merged and exported. 

(I did lighten it up a bit and increase the contrast in Snapseed.)

Next, a play with iColorama.

Style>Stamp>1st pattern, second row, multiply, opacity to 25%.

Still not totally happy, I took it back into Snapseed for more adjustments: brightness, contrast and saturation.

At this point I'm not doing a linkup but feel free to post a link to your mobile art in the comments.

Thanks for visiting on Mobile Art Mondays!

So Many Options

With winter hanging around so long it's kept me in the mood to process my winter shots. I'm still playing in Stackables and have several versions of this photo. It's just too fun to play. I even saved some 'strange' renditions that I hope to use in a collage.

These were my two favorites.

 The formula for this more wintery version is: 

Layer One- Glacial Ice, Overlay 50%

Layer Two- Caldera Dust, Screen 70%

Layer Three- Filter Blue Moon, Overlay 83%

Layer Four- Filter St Louis, Normal 61%

This is the original with a slight drama filter in Snapseed.

There's still time to leave a comment for a free code to Stackables at the iTunes store, on Mobile Art Monday. Winners notified tomorrow!

Join us for a link up at Keeping With the Times today for App Happy Wednesday.

Friday Finds Oct 31.

Some days just don't go as you'd expect. Monday was one of those. it turned out to be a 12 on my scale of 1 to 10. I met my friend, Kathy for breakfast on the north side of town and then the day took a detour….
I had meant to throw the camera in the car and go by the Garden and Arts Center to check out the flowers and trees. But Ms. Canon got left at home. Well the least I could do would be to drive by and check it out the tree colors. I shot some good pics there a couple years ago and was hoping to collect a few horse apples for some unusual still life pics. Because we had a very late freeze I figured my chances would be slim on finding any. It is also known as an Osage Orange.
There is on only one tree in the park grow on and it is a huge glorious tree. This year when I saw it, I felt that I knew just how the 'Tree House Man' feels when he talks about 'his' trees. There is something magical about this one.

To my delight the ground was covered with horse apples!

I love these guys! 

They're actually quite large. More like grapefruit size. Of course Miss Unprepared took the only course of action possible.

My purse must become the mode of transport. Not good, because they have a tendency to be sticky. Sticky with sap like a pine. I picked up the best ones then decided to pick a 'bouquet' of branches to take home.

My afternoon was spent "autumn-izing" the living room and some random still life shots in my studio. It's SO nice when the creativity flows.
The grand daughter also came over and we played in the leaves.
I have enough photos to keep me busy for quite awhile.

It was a very good day. Now I will be cleaning the inside of my new purse.
PS. I went back on Wednesday well dressed and prepared. More to come…..
Come on over to Kim's blog today and see what kind of great goodies everyone has found/discovered this week.

Santa Fe Road Trip- First Stop

A road trip was planned.  Two girls from Texas would meet up with one girl from Kansas in the beautiful city of Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

Cameras and food in laps, they headed out.

While approaching the city limit sign of Melrose NM, the passenger squeals! The Big Year! The movie! The Big Year!

She's a bird maniac. The driver blames her for the new infatuation.

After a google search and pretty good directions, they drive past and promptly turn around. A very unsuspecting small (appearances are deceiving) grove of trees just off the side of the road. This is the Melrose Trap? 

You can see why they drove right past. But it's a migratory stop off to hundreds of different species of birds. A birder's delight.

As they got closer the car was dwarfed by the huge cottonwoods. Yes, so very big. 

One lone pickup truck was there, a man and his quiet dog. Who takes their dog to look for birds?

A lot of the large trees were dead, which gave them great character. The girls walked out toward the east, cautious for snakes, and had a great view of the large cottonwoods. 

The young trees were bent from years of wind. No, this is not a hill.

The driver photographed the trees. The passenger looked for birds.

There were quite a few rock structures which led them to believe a house once stood there.

The driver also photographed some wildflowers and dead stuff.

 And other things.

 This was the view from the other side looking to the northeast.

By this time the bird man and dog had left so the girls ventured back into the trees. They found the bird watching chair and what little water was available. 

Perhaps that was why only three species of birds were spotted that day. The Eastern Kingbird with it's yellow breast and playful manner. (The driver is not very good at getting sharp bird photos, sorry)

The American Kestral was beautiful when it flew.

And possibly a bushtit.

It was a good first stop for this photo trip.

Linking up with Helen for Weekend Walks.