More Snapshots

Tonight is the last showing of the Eunice Players Theater of “The Diary of Anne Frank”. Tomorrow, or maybe Monday, I’ll try to post a gallery of the better photos I’ve taken throughout the production, specifically the ones pertaining to the production. But I do have a few snapshots I took during the last week that I can share with you today. I hope you enjoy them! I used my cell to take the photos and the Pixlr Express app to edit them.

I titled this one “The Shadows Grow Long” on my deviantART page. I snapped the shot before the show started one day. I liked the perspective, which is why I /didn’t/ post this one to Instagram. It would lose so much! Guess I’ll start using Dropbox soon.

I think I titled this one “Bricks and Grass”. I know. It’s not the most epic title but I don’t feel very epic today, rather, I’m more tired than anything else. I enjoyed creating this one because I was able to use this photo effect with a pleasing result. I’ve had such a hard time finding a photo to use this effect for! I really like the washed out effect on the larger portion of the photo and the more natural colors in the color block strip. I’m really pleased with this one!

These are all the flowers we’ve gotten from folks who came to watch the show. Most of them are for Starshine but there are a few for Magiba, one stalk of carnations each for John and our “second son” Randybob. There are so many, in fact that I am using two different sized mason jars and a juice jar as vases! They are such beautiful flowers and the appreciation makes us very honored, humbled, and proud. This photo was difficult to edit because of the colors. The dark, reddish wood of our kitchen turns everything slightly orange, even when the lighting is better. The lighting was terrible when I took this but I didn’t want to miss the flowers at their best. The photo came out blurry, which doesn’t make me happy. I added a definite blur effect on the top and bottom of the photo. I’m not sure it made it any better but for what it’s worth, here it is. *chuckle*

This is the view of the southern sky from our driveway. We were heading out to the theater one evening and I snapped this shot.

I made this to encourage us to continue working hard to make this play the best. I had a lot of fun playing with the color and the the typography effects on this photo. I took an upshot of the corner of a building next to our theater. It’s something I’d really like to do more of…making little encouragement or quote photos of my own. I’ve always been interested in that.

I guess I’ve added enough photos to have done a gallery with them! I didn’t even think I’d share that many when I started. I hope you enjoy seeing these. Feel free to ask questions or leave comments. 🙂

 

 

Black and White Photo

My husband, John, is the photographer in our house but I like to take snapshots and edit them on my cell. I just have fun with it and don’t intend to make a career out of it like he is doing. We are also certified storm spotters and we take as many opportunities as possible to check out storms in our area and keep and eye on what they’re doing.  I do admit to being fascinated by lightning, charmed by thunder, and mesmerized by cloud formations. As we were following a couple of storm cells in our area, John found an excellent place to stop and this tree was right there, begging to be photographed. 🙂 You can see John’s photo of the tree (a much better quality, and a panoramic photo, as well!) on his post for today, by clicking here. So, without further ado, here’s my photo.

Isn’t this the perfect set-up for a stark black and white photo? I thought so… I took this photo with my cell and edited it with the Pixlr Express app. If you’d like to download this photo for personal use, you can do so from my deviantART gallery.

“Antarctica is otherworldly, like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Stark, cold, beautiful desolation.” ~ Mark Hoppus

Fabulous Friday!

I missed last week’s Fabulous Friday post. I didn’t want to miss this one. Besides, I have something I wanted to share with you that we think is truly fabulous.

The first promo goes out to family and friends. If you have family, friends you’ve grafted into your family, and/or friends, then you know how important they are. In particular, this shoutout goes to our friends and family who have visited our home or supplied us with gazillions of bottlecaps over the last two years. That’s right. Two. Years. We’ve had in mind to remodel our kitchen from a dark, country, plain ol’ kitchen into a nifty-difty Steampunk Pub Kitchen. We have lots of projects in mind for the remodel but the first thing we wanted to do was attend to what used to be a window over our kitchen sink. My mom used it as a sort of storage cubby for years. I repainted it 2 years ago and backed it with a piece of plexiglass that I painted with glass paint. This gave it a sort of English pub feel and started the whole Steampunk Pub idea. The ‘stained glass’ was the first step and we used the cubby to display interesting bottles we’ve collected over time. Some of those were from friends and family, as well. Today started part two of the window remodel. We’re framing out the window opening with bottlecaps. So if you visited our home and drank any kind of beverage that had a bottlecap, or if you knew about our project and donated to the cause, it’s likely you’ll be represented in our window frames. Here’s a photo of the progress so far. We completed as much as we could with the adhesive that we had on hand. We’ll continue working on it over time. We’re very excited about it!

This photo was taken by John with his cellphone. He wanted to share our progress on Instagram.

John and I have been storm spotting/chasing lately and if you haven’t seen any of his recent storm photography, then you’ll want to click on the photo above to go to his photography page and check those out. I don’t think people really appreciate or understand what a valuable asset Storm Spotters and Chasers are to the community as a whole. Yes, sometimes a situation can escalate to danger quickly but in all cases, safety is the first important thing you learn when you take the Storm Spotter Class. If it was not for the spotters and chasers, I really believe more unsuspecting citizens would be seriously harmed or killed during dangerous weather. It pays to learn, observe, and be better prepared. So my second shoutout is to the Storm Spotters and Chasers out there who are doing their best to save lives. Reed Timmer is one of the very active storm spotter/chasers and you can check out what he does at his website by clicking here.

For some strange reason, there aren’t many quotes about bottle caps. (Having a little chuckle about that!) But I did find this nifty photo post on Tumblr (Sorry, WordPress!) which shows several Jones Bottle Caps sayings. I chose one to type out below, but if you click on these words here, you can read more of them!

“Feelings of goodwill to all should lighten your mood.”

“We often hear of bad weather, but in reality, no weather is bad. It is all delightful, though in different ways. Some weather may be bad for farmers or crops, but for man all kinds are good. Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating. As Ruskin says, “There is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.” ” ~John Lubbock, “Recreation,” The Use of Life, 1894

And for a song today, I’d like to share one from Matisyahu, who is a favorite artist of ours. I hope you’ll enjoy this piece from his new album. If you like what you hear, please do support his hard work!

Funnel cloud

This is the kind of weather we’ve been having around our area lately.

Fabulous Friday 7

It’s time for another Fabulous Friday! Woo hoo!

Today’s first recommendation is for Red Stick Storm Spotters, brought to you by John, who really enjoys the idea of storm spotting and chasing. He’s already looking into classes!  If you’ve looked at John’s photos, then you know he has many photos of clouds and storms and lightning. So please go check out Red Stick Storm Spotters webpage here! You can also find them on facebook.

Today’s second recommendation is for the Gotreaux Family Farms out of Scott, LA. They are a local farming family who strive towards sustainable living. I really enjoy reading Dawn’s blog posts when I get a chance and I’ve always enjoyed the produce and eggs we purchased from them in the past. I know that when I shop with them, I’m getting healthier products from down-to-earth people who care. You’ll find all manner of vegetables, as well as honey, eggs, tilapia, chicken and turkey, all when they are in season. They open a farm stand on Tuesday afternoons from 2pm until 6 pm. You can also shop with them at the Hub City Farmer’s Market in Lafayette, LA on Saturdays from 8 am until noon. You can also find them on facebook. I hope you’ll stop in and shop with them for some great food of excellent quality.

Today’s third recommendation is for one of my good friends and crafting Sisters. Her shop is called Itty Bitty Bling Bling and you can find her informational website here and her facebook page here. She makes gorgeous car charms for everyone who loves shiny things! She also takes custom orders which have included almost every kind of accessory you can imagine. She’s a ray of sunshine doing her best to shine the light of joy everywhere she goes. Please do check out her stuff! 🙂

“He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left.” ~ Aldo Leopold

“Few things in the world are more powerful than a positive push. A smile. A world of optimism and hope. A ‘you can do it’ when things are tough.” ~ Richard M. DeVos

Today’s recommended song is from John. We hope you enjoy it! Marooned by Pink Floyd