Squeamish photo post

I saw a bird chewing gum today!!

I know that sounds crazy, trust me I know!!
Here is what happened.

I was driving out of my neighborhood, headed out to do errands!
I had to stop by the bank, go to Sally to choose a new color, go to Sam's to pick up various and sundry exceedingly large items and to visit a friend who is home-bound.

I had a few other things that I probably could have done and will probably wish tomorrow when it is pouring rain that I had done, but it was more important to me to spend my "away from home time" today with this friend.
I basically only have 5 hours when I leave from home to accomplish all that needs to happen or bad things will occur.
Bad as in, little doggie left in a crate bad...need I say more??

Wow, what was I typing about??
This is my brain folks!

Bird, large bird...got it.

He was quite a large bird, which is why he caught my eye as I was driving by.
I stopped, put my van in reverse...hoping that the extra movement wouldn't scare him off, and backed up.
I had put my camera in the van today in hopes that my friend may have something interesting to photograph at her house. I put the van quickly in park and leaned over to get my camera bag while talking quietly to my new bird friend asking him not to move.

He swiveled his head to check me out.

I was so nervous about him leaving that I was a mess trying to get all my settings right on my camera.
I stopped talking to him and began confusingly talking to myself.

"Check the ISO, okay checking the ISO...oh no...it is very cloudy is 100 gonna be enough, oh it is already on 100 I am gonna just leave it there so that I can check the next thing, what is the next thing....uhhhhh, uhhhhh, oh never mind what is next how about is he in focus."
I put the camera up to my face and clicked.

and clicked and clicked.
And began my dialog to myself again.
"Oh no, he is so far away there is just no way he is gonna be clear enough especially with that stinky plant there. I wonder if that plant is a male or a female?? I know I can crop the picture but if I could only get closer then I could see if it were focused better. If I take the time to change my lens will he fly away?? I am gonna change my lens, careful now Jennifer, don't drop anything, be gentle, changing the lens don't leave birdie, stay there and let me take your picture beautiful birdie. Okay there we go lens is changed now to try to focus again, hurry hurry hurry he is gonna fly away and all will be lost"
click click click
Some time when I was changing my lens must have been when he dropped his bubble gum.

Just look at him there staring curiously at it!

I tried to focus even better, though shaking with anticipation of a good shot. I should have just calmed down and taken a big deep breath and focused on getting it right.
I was just so scared that he was gonna fly off.
I know now that one great shot would have been better than 15 not so great ones.

Living.
Learning.

The next time I looked through my lens this is what I saw!!

Whoa! He has got some of that really stretchy gum!!!

The kind you can just pull and pull and it doesn't break it just gets longer and longer.

Click, click, click!
I started to get nervous about how this looked, me parked at a wonky angle in front of my neighbors house taking pictures with my telephoto lens. I gently capped my lens and stowed my camera back in the bag.

I then removed my foot from the brake...
(because when you are rushing to take a photo of a gorgeous red tail hawk {my son who is supposed to be doing his math homework but is stalling and looking over my shoulder informed me of this fact} it is important to put your vehicle in park and keep the foot on the break, you know just in case that park gear on your van decides to stop working on the last day of the month)
... put my van into drive and went along my merry way.

And you know what else besides gum chewing hawks happened today??
Sally was personally there to talk me through the whole professional haircolor process and gave me a coupon for free highlights.
I bought 12 things at Sam's and it all only cost .37 cents.
My broken leg friend miraculously recovered and skipped to the door to greet me, then we ran out the door to go make snowmen!

If only I had taken the time to notice as I was taking the first photo,

a little squirrel leg and tail with a large bird of some kind standing on it the better to disembowel it, I may not have continued shooting and had to make up some sort of story to make this a bearable thing to write about.
Disembowelment of any sort tends to make me squeamish. I can't even do the holiday turkey!!

And furthermore...
Seeing him enjoy his ultra stretchy gum did not make me want to have any.
In fact, I don't think I will be chewing any pink bubblicious for some time now.

Ha, who needs inspiration for photo taking when there is so much just right around the corner from my own home!!

Photos

Hard finding inspiration today!

I have 4 minutes til I have to walk out the door, so this will be quick.

I asked my son to let me take some pictures of him where there was sun and shadow.

They were a good use of time experimenting.



It is clean the hamster cage day, today...so here is Storm being babysat by Daddy!!


I had him for awhile but handed him over in favor of the camera!

I just love a colorful game controller held in the hands of a little girl!


Done.
Whew!

Saturday photo post

I got my new Gimp 2.6 book in the mail. It is the book which will teach me how to use the photo editing software called Gimp. That stands for something, but don't make me try to recall it!!

I began to read it and got immediately overwhelmed!
Part of it is because I don't speak computer and part of it is because our computer is still very unhealthy and I have a strong suspicion that it will be awhile before I can actually load the program back on it...if at all.
We will worry about that later.

I decided since I wasn't quite discouraged enough with my fish photography I would go out again today to get another dose!
I began by feeding them so that I would be sure to have fish there to take pictures of.

I had quite a time adjusting my exposure levels as the fish swam in and out of the reflections on the top of the water.
There must be a perfect time of day to do this. (must remember to research this)



Funny, what I like most about this one is the happy little floating leaf!



Hey, this one isn't too bad! I like the water rings.


Oh, ho...is that fish we see!?!



Well, I will keep trying!

Granola Bar Trial

I met a buddy of mine for lunch today and she very graciously allowed me to take some photos of her... just for practice.
If, however I published even so much as an eyeball from our spontaneous "session" she would more likely than not, unfriend me...and I don't just mean on Facebook either!!

Excuse me...I simply must go feed Shelby.
She saw me carry in and open a new bag of food and has been incessantly whining for 17 solid minutes now. I probably shouldn't give in but it is only 11 minutes until her "official" supper time and frankly...I CAN'T CONCENTRATE!!!!

Isn't she cute though? Those ears are just something else!!

This is my official photo of the day. I entered her in a contest and needed a photo to submit. The photo was supposed to exhibit the dog following a command.
HA!
So, this is her (not really) doing the command "Wait!". She is to stay at the top of the stairs until I get to the landing and then on the landing until I get all the way down. More often than not she is a few paces behind me hoping I won't notice her progess.
If I firmly state the command at the outset, she is usually good to follow.

Okay, now on to our topic of this post.
Granola bars
I mainly want to say...
...this is sooooo doable!
I have spent a lot of money on granola bars and will probably still, but it is nice to know that this is a viable option.

I am going to talk you through what I did and why, but know this at the outset, I don't have a recipe to give you as I was winging it to begin with.
I am still going to experiment with different combinations of ingredients and might just get back to ya on that! Or I might not.
I am not making any rash promises.

I began with a cup of finely chopped nuts.

Don't tell my kids, but hiding under those innocent peanuts are also sunflower seeds, cashews, pumpkin seeds, and a few almonds.

My next ingredient was dried fruit. This is a blend of cherries, blueberries, and cranberries.

Oh, my...this is what really makes them yummy to me.

I diced the fruit up as small as I could, especially since I also doubled the amount (about a 1/2 cup this time) from my first trial of this recipe. I knew it would be a point of contention.

It was kindof a hassle cause this fruit is sticky, but chop I did.
Just to let you know...
...every single one of my kids proclaimed that this batch had WAY too much fruit in it.
My husband heartily disagreed!


This recipe came to an abrupt halt when I turned around to see the sun shining through the jar of Lyle's Golden Syrup!!

I sang out to me...."AAaaaaahhhhhhhhh"
I simply had to snap a few shots of it and decided on this one of Lyle, and a few of his friends.

Then I got back to my chopping.

I will admit to you that I laid each of these chocolate chips on its "flat side" to aid in my chopping progress, and I wasn't disappointed in the result. These are the rather large, rather strong, dark chocolate chips that I favor. Please, especially if you are a regular chocolate chipper, just skip this chopping step!

I then stirred all of the fruit, nuts and chocolate together in a bowl. I wanted to make sure the fruit got unstuck from itself and that everything was evenly distributed.


Next I measured out just under 1 cup of peanut butter.
I guess, really I should say I shclur-plopped a hearty amount of peanut butter in my large glass measuring cup and hoped it was enough. This went into the microwave for a little bit to get it nice and melty.
I then added enough syrup to equal 1 1/2 cups in the measurer.
Hmmmm, funny measurer is not a real word!!

My dear middle child, who happened to be close by was the pourer guy.
Hmmmm, look at that pourer isn't a real word either.
It stressed him out mightily because he didn't want to add too much!

This lovely golden liquid is simply cane sugar syrup.

Other ooey gooey liquids you might choose are honey, or brown rice syrup.
I don't much care for the big taste of honey unless it is pared equally with butter and slathered on a homemade biscuit straight from the oven, and I couldn't find brown rice syrup.
I did come across some a few days later at a specialty store and may still try it.

I think a little dash of vanilla is always nice in something, so that got stirred in too.


This mixture got dumped into the nut/fruit mixture and stirred until it was all combined.

Oh, look at that, I forgot to tell you that I added about 3 cups of oats and 1 cup of a crispy rice cereal from the organic aisle.
See how I was hastily scrawling out the recipe as I added things in.
This is really, really good to do in case something doesn't work out or taste right.

Next up, my little munchkin took to rolling the mixture into my large bar pan.
It is important to really pack it tight.

I really should have given in and turned the kitchen light on at this point, but am so, so very stubborn. It was almost 5pm in the evening and the sun was setting...really I need to better know my limits.

We put this in the oven @325 for about 10 minutes.


Once they were cooled, I attempted to cut them into beautiful rectangles of granola goodness.

I ended up with strange and odd shapes of granola goodness, (and lots of crumbles) which got layer in a tin between layers of wax paper.

Here are my conclusions on the matter:
1.This is a quite a little amount of work, but only because I am trying to please 5 different mouths. If it were just me I would dump all those fruits and nuts in whole and enjoy a hearty lumpy bar.
2.Though my kids thought it was too much fruit, my husband didn't even realize fruit was in it. I won't be altering the fruit amount by much, but will probably bump up the chocolate to mask it even better.
3.These are a little too peanut buttery for me personally. I am going to try less PB and more syrup.
4. The total cost of a batch of these was right around $3.00. The syrup and berries were high dollar. However a comparable box of bars (meaning without preservatives and corn syrup and other assorted ick) would be closer to $10.00. That is a huge chunk of change.
5. I have lots more research to do on this matter and look forward to hearing from my foodie friend who probably has the perfect recipe right at the tip of her tongue to share! You know me...I seem to not really be able to learn something until I have gotten in there and had a little failure first.
6. While these aren't a failure, and are yummy...they aren't perfect!
7. I should have just made chocolate pie. I make really good chocolate pie!!
8. I didn't really mean that, the point was to have a handy breakfast food and every one knows chocolate pie is not a handy breakfast food.
9. Don't try to eat chocolate pie with your hands, by all means use a plate and a fork!!

photo post

sigh!
I am going to have to do some reading about capturing things clearly underwater!
Uggghhhh!
I hailed my trusty companion again today and we headed out to the pond in hopes of snagging a few fish photos for you.
Alas...all I have for you is bad fish photos many of which I simply deleted.

They are very shy, and very fast making clear focus pretty ridiculous.
Add to that, the desire for my camera to focus on the top of the water...blech!
That is all I can say.
I am going to keep practicing though in hopes of getting it.

I can almost hear you cheering me on through my struggle!!


Okay, looking at this again, I will say it isn't soooo bad, however the exposure is wrong.

Sigh again.

I gave up on the fish and turned my attention to the waterfall,
and the bubbles!

I know that could be sharper, but I was intrigued by the reflection in the bubble, so I saved it.


I really like this one, but again it is too bright.

It will go first in my queue of things to experiment with when my editing tutorial book arrives!!


On to motion again today!

Not perfect but showing some improvement!!!

This one now is not quite as painful to look at as our last Shelby in the sun shot where the background was so bright it burned out your eyes.


Sigh!!
Thanks for sticking with me while I am learning!

Project avocado

I am beginning to have to think outside of the box when it comes to my next photo challenge.
I don't want to you be visually bored and I want new things to see through my lens as well.

So today as I was cutting my avacado for a midmorning snack I decided it would be the subject of my official photo blog of the day, and unofficial food blog of the day.
I really want to blog about homemade granola bars, and may yet...but the day is going by fast and I have lots to do.
We shall see.
My goal was to work on manual with my camera in my kitchen with only the natural light from the window coming in.
So here is what I got.
Oh, and just for kicks we will also make this an avocado tutorial of sorts.
I will put my photo information at the top of each picture and whatever else I want to say in green at the bottom.
We shall see how that pans out!


I learned just last week that I can look at the exposure level in my lens while focusing a shot.
So I zeroed in, adjusted that and clicked.

Cut a ripe avocado in half and remove the seed.
Next begin to score the fruit, in half inch increments all the way down to the skin.



Thankfully my knife would balance just fine while I snapped this next shot.
I was practicing adjusting the focal point here.

Now, score in the other direction as well. Maintaining an approximate 1/2 inch grid.




I tend to have a natural tremor all my own, so this was like a double challenge holding the fruit as well as snapping the shot. I found that as I tilted toward the light my exposure level changed quite a bit. Interesting!!

Now, put your knife down and pick up a spoon. Gently but firmly scrape all of the chunks from the skin. If you have scored it well, they will separate nicely.



Adding this other color in really brought something to the party! I love color.

Add a dollop of your favorite salsa!
I made this hastily last night from a can of rotel, a can of diced tomatoes, (both drained a bit), the juice of a lime, a hearty dash of cumin, a generous dose of garlic pepper, and a shake of salt. Oh, and of course cilantro!



just still concentrating on focus here

Now take your fork and smash it, and smash it, and smash it, smash it, smash it.
Gua-ca...Gua-ca-mo-le, guacamole!!
Ever heard the peanut butter and jelly song??
Yes, I have too.
Like a bunch these past couple of days.



The light was exceedingly different when I opened my back door to head out.
It was precisely at this moment that I remembered ISO.
Hello...ISO!!! The last time I shot was yesterday afternoon outside, so my ISO was still set at 100, which I just learned is the average number for such things.
Inside, with low light conditions 400 would be much easier to shoot with.
Duh!!
I could not go back and redo all the cutting and smashing but learned a very valuable lesson about checking my ISO first thing!!!

The next step in the process is to hail your trusty companion for a trip out to the herb garden.
Seeing as how you are still dressed in your pj's and cozy socks, you will find it best to slip into a pair of backless shoes. Do not be concerned if your feet don't go all the way in...those socks are thick after all.



Yes, I did go into my backyard in my pj's at 10:30 in the morning to pick cilantro because I am just hanging out at home today, doing laundry, cleaning house and worst of all bathing the dog, and so there is no way I am getting dressed until all of that is accomplished.
And, I overexposed this shot. Soon, my Gimp tutorial book will be arriving and I will be able to fix such things.

If you happen to have a cilantro plant then pick a generous amount to give this guacamole a boost. Of course, the other option is to use dried, but I wouldn't. I am never going back to dried cilantro and you can't make me.



At this point, I remembered that I had also changed my white balance setting for the pictures yesterday as well, and shifted that too.
Someday all of this will be second nature. Sigh!!

Chop the cilantro, roughly or finely...it matters not to me. I chopped it roughly because I am a meany and I was in a hurry. (It is 10:30 and I haven't eaten anything yet!)



I thought moving the guac to a white bowl would make it more visually interesting.
It didn't.

Now, eat. And clean up that cilantro mess that you left on the counter top!

Please remember that an avocado while healthy, is also a fatty food. Do not by any means follow it up with a chocolate chip cookie.

I will be here all week folks!!

Photo Post

I tried several things today to learn my camera better.
That is what this photo thing is all about after all.

There is a setting on my camera called white balance.
I was trying to figure out which to use when out in the sun, yet taking pictures in the shade.


See what a huge difference this is, just switching that one thing...and absolutely nothing else!?!


Next was a challenge to take a picture of something in motion.
The wind was blowing so I chose these berries to be my subject!!
The object...to get a clear crisp image, though the subject was in motion.
Not too bad!


And, much better!!!


My next self assignment, mess with exposure with a non moving object in the shade.

I am so stinking excited...you can't even tell this is in the shade!!!
Progress is being made my friends!

Funnier last night

So....
here at our house we have the perfectly normal habit of verbally narrating the deep thoughts and crazy concerns of our dog Shelby.
Under these circumstances she has quite a vivid personality...mainly supplied by my oldest son and I.
She comments each morning while we walk her to the bus stop speaking freely about squirrels, the temperature, wants, needs and desires.
Okay, mainly squirrels.

Her tone and tempo, and volume are comparable to someones great Aunt Ruth. You know, the one who has lost her hearing and comes at you in that strange scratchy high pitched voice. She carries a big bag which is filled to the brim with mysteries to wondrous to comprehend, and she cuts of your air supply as she bestows a full measure of her affection on you.
Except with Shelby, you have to add just a hint of snobbery to get it all pulled together just right.

Alrighty then....now that I have you all filled in on that....
Here is the latest communication by our dear Shelby.

"Hey Mom" ( she calls me mom cause that is what everyone else calls me. )
"Hey....MOM, come in here right now."
"I just wanted to show you this!!!"
She continues with the disgust evident in her tone.

"Do you see how your young boy has left all of these... these....these things out all over the floor?"
I begin to walk away not concerned in the least because I know this is a regular occurrence. These Bionicles are set up for a battle which will continue when he comes back to his room.

"Hey MOM!!! Come back here."
I turn and give her my attention, not wanting to belittle her opinion.
"Just look at this guy, he seems to be bellowing out his superiority...


and this...it just screams dangerous....


and this...I mean he could have at least put all of the red ones together."




"And is it really necessary that I point out to you other things besides just the little mulitcolored plastic creatures?
Please take note just to my right.
Do you see there, the disheveled drawers and obvious lack of laundry care? No wonder the boy can't find socks."

"I must say I am very dissapointed at the lack of cleanliness going on here!"

I turn to walk away yet again, unimpressed by her plans to discredit my son's abnormally clean room.
She heaves a heavy sigh of disgust and turns away in disbelief exclaiming,
"It is too much for me to bear. "


Well, this sure was funnier last night when I had all three of my kids rolling on the floor with laughter about it.
That is just because they know Shelby and her quirks and how she can just go on and on about a particular topic.

I feel the need to have a recipe on my blog soon.
I got a butternut squash and some sweet potatoes today at the store, in hopes of creating a nice creamy winter soup.
I don't really think it will fly with the fam but will make the attempt some time later this week anyway.
The thought just struck me that maybe, just maybe if I add a bit of crumbled bacon on top of each bowl it may disguise the lovely orange healthiness. It is worth a shot, right? I have to design it in such a way that bacon would, in fact be a sensible component.

Today I will butter them up with some good old homemade tortillas.
Wish me luck!
P.S. This cannot count as my photo blog today, as I technically took these photos yesterday.
So, I must post yet again today to stay true to my photo blog word.