wintry wednesday

Went to an ice carving show in town recently with my husband to take a few pics and get out of the house. It was cold cold cold, but the bright sunshine and blue sky made up for the chilly air. Thankfully, they aren’t holding the competition this week, it was 53 and sunny yesterday! We Instagrammed a few iPhone photos from the ice show and I took my Canon along too, this was my favorite capture from the Mark II.

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instafun

Lucky me and Mr. bookbabie got iPhones just before the holidays, kind of a pre-Christmas gift to ourselves. We’ve been enjoying the ease of texting with them and all the apps, I actually rarely use mine for phone calls! I recently joined Instagram, a free photo sharing application that is basically Twitter for pictures. I’m having a lot of fun with it, taking iPhone photos, editing them with various apps, and then sharing them on the public feed. It gives you something to do with your cell phone photos, aside from forcing your friends to look at them of course, and it’s kind of like making miniature art (or so I tell myself to rationalize the time I spend playing with it!). Hope you all survived the hubbub of the holidays, we still have a naked tree in our family room, otherwise I’ve got most of Christmas put away and when I’m not on Instagram I’m on the computer looking for someplace warm and sunny to escape to:)

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.  ~Henry David Thoreau

budding diva

When I saw this week’s theme on iheartfaces was, “Best Face Photo from Summer 2011”, I thought of this capture of my little niece right away. Olyvia insisted on keeping her binky, and wearing her warm and cozy Dora hat in the pool while she swam. She was head-to-toes pretty in pink on that hot summer afternoon, and we envied not only her fun fashion sense, but that innocent sense of freedom to be and act and dress any old way she wanted!

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” ~Pablo Picasso

grandma’s 1st christmas

We had a lovely Christmas morning watching our new granddaughter open gifts. She was much more interested in the paper and tags than in what was in the boxes, although she did like her toy telephone, girly girl that she is! Brooklyn is such a happy baby and has brought a new sense of happiness and joy to our family this holiday season. Of course, I couldn’t help but think of my mom as I held the great-granddaughter she never got to meet in my arms beside the tree on Christmas morning, it seems we miss those who have crossed over that much more during the holidays. Mr. bookbabie surprised me with a Kindle reader this Christmas and I already have a few books on it. I don’t know that all my reading will be on e-books now, but I must admit that being able to make the font of the books larger is a big advantage for my terribly farsighted old eyes. Hope you all got everything your little hearts desired this Christmas!

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others. ~Pericles

rad radko’s

Many years ago, my husband and I started a tradition at the small company we own. We give the employees (and ourselves!) a Christopher Radko ornament for Christmas. We all have a nice collection of them now and I decided to take photos of some of them today and do a post for the You Capture blog meme. The theme this week was “Holiday Decor”.  I used my little Canon G9, hand-held with no flash, and then filtered the images with Topaz Labs Adjust and Totally Rad Dirty Pictures, two plug-ins for Photoshop. It was a lot of fun just “playing” with these photos, especially since so much of my photography is for Getty and iStock, who have pretty strict criteria for what you can upload. Happy holidays everyone, hope you had a fun, peace filled weekend!

holiday flashback

Me, my brother David, and my sister Amy on Christmas morning a few years ago

1. No, we will NOT go on another vacation until we pay down the balance on our charge card!
2. My mom told me and brother about the birds and the bees one afternoon while eating lunch at the old kitchen table. I laughed out loud and didn’t believe her!
3. I watched the steam rising from the hot cup of coffee and thought: I love starting my day with coffee and a newspaper.
4. When I look at my granddaughter I know I’m going to be okay.
5. I’ll take more iStock and Getty photos today, love a job where you can stay in your warm house on these cold, dreary Michigan days!
6.  Photoshop CS4 is a lot fun to use, but sometimes the learning curve is somewhat overwhelming, at least from my point of view.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to wrapping presents, tomorrow my plans include holiday dinner out with friends and Sunday, I want to finish shopping and just relax!

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