Life in a Snow Globe

I can't believe that it's March 5th and I'm doing a post about snow!  How crazy is that people?!

This morning, when I left to go have lunch with Ms. M and my good friend Doug, I was amazed to see how wintry our world was, especially since we've had such a mild winter.  And yes, those are Christmas lights on the railing of our patio, we keep them up year round so that in the summertime it looks like fairy lights, and helps us find our way back when we kayak after dark.

The flakes were coming down fast and furious and you couldn't even see the creek very well or the barn in the field next to us.

It was so pretty though, and it made me feel like I was living inside a snow globe.

The pups even looked like little creatures inside a snow globe as the big fluffy flakes settled onto their coats making them look like reverse dalmatians!

The weird thing was that as I drove the half hour to Ms. M's house the weather changed dramatically.  Over there on that side of the county there was almost no snow on the ground and the trees were not covered the way they were at our house.  And I'm glad I snapped some pictures before I left, because by the time I got back home the temps had risen and there was not much snow to be found at our house either.

I had a lovely lunch with friends and I got to see one little blast of winter before it finally bids us farewell this year.  I guess mother nature just felt like she couldn't let the winter pass by without a little reminder of how things could have been these past few months.

Plus, if I were mother nature I would just want to show off what I can do, like turning someone's world into a snow globe, if only for a few short hours.

In other news, I picked up a copy of the photo editing program Lightroom.  I'm still learning how to use it, but so far I love how much I can do with it, like creating very custom black and white images like the ones in this post.  It allows me to adjust each color and hue so that I can really customize the shades of black, grey, and white in any image...and I'm loving that feature!

I hope your week is off to a good start!

Time Marches On

Today was absolutely glorious...70 degrees, clear blue skies, and a lovely breeze all made it as close to a perfect day as anyone could wish for.

Not only is it the 1st of March, but today it just felt like spring had finally arrived.  You could sense the world coming back to life.  There are nests being built...

Lawn chairs are waiting at the ready.

The pups sense it too, and want to be outside all of the time now.

The water seems more blue somehow...

And little birds perch on nearly every branch singing their little hearts out...

Smells that haven't been smelled since last year at this time are emerging and curious noses need to breathe in the promise of renewal...

And branches are unable to hide their new colorful springtime attire.

But better than all of that was seeing the sun still high in the sky even though the clock said it should be getting dark...oh how I love you sunshine and long, light filled days!

Happy March Everyone!!!

Nothing to Write Home About

Where does the time go I sometimes wonder?!  I've been so busy with work that I haven't had a chance to reply to comments, send emails, or even snap a picture in the last 4 days!

I broke the no picture streak this afternoon when I took a few photos from my back yard.  What you can't see in the picture is that is was, and still is spitting snow.  I doubt it will amount to much, the lion's share is expected to stay pretty far south of us, but seeing big fluffy snowflakes was fun none the less.

The older I get the more I find a certain sense of beauty in the stillness and lack of color that the winter has to offer.  Though I can't imagine I will ever give up spring and summer as my favorite seasons, in winter it seems as if the world is forced to bare its soul for a few months and I think we all need to bare our souls to someone every now and again.

As I'm winding my way through new ventures I've been bending Mr. Tide's ear a lot lately and he patiently listens and offers sage advice.  Someone should probably give the man a medal, because nothing I drone on and on about is really anything to write home about, but he treats it as if I'm pondering world peace or ways to save the planet.  You have to love someone who lets you bare your soul and doesn't laugh when you share your dreams and aspirations.

Well it's back to work for me...at least until Downton Abbey starts!  I hope you each have a wonderful week and if you have something to write home about, do tell, I can always take time away from work for a good story!

Spread Your Wings

When was the last time you really stepped outside of your comfort zone?

When you dared to spread your wings while others played it safe, keeping their wings safely tucked beside their bodies?

Do you hesitate because you're afraid you might not soar, or because of what others might think?

Because most of the time others don't even notice.  And maybe, just maybe those around you won't judge you, or think you are crazy, they might even just keep swimming right beside you and offer you support and encouragement.

And even if you don't soar to great heights, you will have at least tried, and reaching the sky isn't always the measure of success.

Sometimes the success is in the trying.  And I just happen to think that people who spread their wings...even just a little, are much more beautiful than those who choose to play it safe and never try at all...wouldn't you agree?

Take These Broken Wings and Learn To Fly

Thank you everyone for all of the cabinet love you gave me on yesterday's post!  Things are slowly coming together and I'll be posting pics of the finished room soon.

Yesterday, when I should have been working, I went outside to snap a few pictures of the birds at the feeder instead.  It was a veritable cavalcade of feathered friends...although they weren't riding in carriages or on horseback, so maybe cavalcade isn't the right word, but you know what I mean! ;-)


 

When this little guy landed on the feeder I thought he was a red winged blackbird, but he just didn't look quite right to me.  While I was processing pictures, Mr. Tide looked him up and found out that it's a young male red winged blackbird.

He pretty much hogged the feeder, and everyone backed off, except for this little house finch.

The cardinals were not pleased at being pushed aside, and they flew from tree to fence, to bush and back anxiously waiting for the blackbird to leave.  The cardinals are normally king of the hill at our feeder, so they weren't very happy about our newest visitor.

And then, little man blackbird was joined by what I assume is his dad, or at least an older brother.  The other red winged blackbird looks like what I'm used to seeing when I think of this particular bird.  We often see them flitting about in the marsh grasses when we are out kayaking in the summer, and that patch of red is always so striking against the dark grasses.  They tend to dash away quickly though, so it was nice to catch him on the feeder and really be able to look at him for more than just a few seconds.

Finally, after patiently waiting in the wings, Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal were back to rule the roost at the feeder.  She was very happy to have her favorite perch all to herself once again.

This is one of my favorite Beatles' songs, it is so simple, and the melody and words are so lovely.  As I was photographing the blackbirds, the tune kept running through my head.

Ok, we have people coming to pick up furniture tomorrow, and someone coming to photograph our house tomorrow...not for a magazine thank goodness, but I still have to have every square inch pulled together.  And did I mention that we've been moving stuff all over our house?!  Let's just say that I hope she likes the new "antique store/flea market" chic look we have going!

Enjoy your weekend everyone!

The Polished Pebble

 (Mrs. Cardinal's tree is all decorated for Christmas)

Wow, can you believe it, 2 posts in one day?!  I know, I don't normally do that, but I wanted to tell you that I'm so excited to be featured over at Kelley's amazing blog, The Polished Pebble!  

Kelley is an amazing designer and one I really respect.  She doesn't just re-hash what other people are doing.  Instead, she is fresh, innovative, and oh so clever with how she transforms rooms and whole houses into magazine worthy places that make you want to move right in.  So when she asked if she could feature me, I was truly honored.

Thanks so much Kelley!  And to read the post just click HERE!

Shadows and Light

I thought we would take a little break from Europe and talk about photography and a local sale going on in southern Maryland this weekend!

When it comes to taking photographs, I feel that trying new and different stuff is the only way to find what works best for you.  As a self taught photographer, I am slowly learning the terms of photography, but I doubt I will ever be an expert, heck I can barely remember which lenses I own, but I do know what I like.  And what I love doing is playing around with the settings and trying to grow as a photographer through pure luck and lots of trail and error.

In the photo above, it was early morning the other day when a heron landed right on the dead log by the end of our dock.  The fact that a heron did this is nothing new, but the fact that it let me and 2 boisterous dogs come clamoring out of the house without freaking out and flying away is nothing short of a miracle!  Herons are skittish birds in the wild, and they will fly off at the drop of a hat, screaming loudly at you as if to say, "you scared the heck out of me and I'm outta here!"  I have lots of pictures of heron butts to prove this!

This heron however, was quite content to perch on the log long enough for me to extend my telephoto lens to it's full 400 millimeters so that I could try and see every feather.  Of course I realized after snapping a few pics that my ISO was way too low and so the pics were going to be very blurry.  As a general rule, and without using a tripod, your shutter speed shouldn't be any less than the length of your lens.  So if you are using the 400 mm your shutter speed shouldn't be below 1/400th of a second.  This is the number that you can see when you look through the viewfinder, on my Canon it is in the lower left of my screen display. 

So I quickly bumped up my ISO, which makes the light sensors more sensitive, meaning you can have less light and still get a good image.  And voila, I got a great shot of the heron!

When shooting wildlife that is apt to move off quickly, you don't have a lot of time to stop and see if you got a good shot, you tend to just snap away and hope for the best once you are done.  So besides changing my ISO, I also switched to TV mode for a few shots.

In TV mode, you can set a fixed shutter speed, one that is quick enough to capture something in low light.  These images can often be dark, but if you shoot in RAW format, you can sometimes lighten things up and still have a fairly sharp image.  This is a great trick if you simply don't have a tripod for low light situations.  I actually used this trick while shooting in a castle in France, and even though the images looked almost black on my LCD screen on my camera, and I wasn't sure I would get anything out of them, I was pleasantly surprised when I got home and manipulated the exposures in Photoshop...I got some wonderful images by using the TV setting 1/125 while using my wide angle lens which is a 24 - 70 mm.

Anyway, that is all a very long and boring way of saying that I like trying these different settings, and learning the capabilities of my equipment.  The image above was taken using the TV setting and I decided not to lighten it, I loved the dramatic effect that I got as much as I liked the first image.  They are both different and each have their own appeal, at least to me anyway.  Sometimes photography is about shadows and light as much as it is about the subject matter.

Ok, enough camera gobbledygook for one evening, but before I go, I want to tell you about a sale going on this weekend in my neck of the woods.  My friends Susan and Julie are at it again, pulling together a fall show that is sure to help you find those early Christmas presents!  

The flyer below will give you all of the details, and if you go, please tell them Kat says hello!  I will be up in DC meeting a bloggy/Garden Web forum friend of mine (for the first time) who will be in town from Atlanta!  We've been friends for a few years now, and I can't wait to meet both Traci and her husband!  

I hope you each have a wonderful weekend!

Moving at a Snail's Pace

Today I ventured down to our dock to get an up close and personal view of our swamp hibiscus or marsh mallows in full bloom.  They are really outdoing themselves this year.  And I also noticed that we had a few visitors on the marsh grasses...these little snails.

I have decided to name them Gary (in honor of Spongebob's pet snail), and Escar Go (it seems less morbid if I break it in to 2 names and misspell it!), who is visiting from France.

I love their bright green ribbed shells, but I didn't want to keep them in the hot sun for too long or they might become a little dry and crispy!

So after snapping a few shots with my uber cool new macro lens (a treat to myself bought with photo shoot and writing money), they were free to return to the cool shade and slightly cool waters of the creek.

I have to say that I love this new macro lens, but learning to use it has been harder than I thought.  If you move just a teeny, tiny bit, you loose your focus because the depth of field is so shallow.  I'm learning, but it's hard teaching an old dog new tricks!  But when you can get up close and personal with your subjects, it makes it all worth it!  Thanks Kate for encouraging me to buy a macro lens, now maybe I can take pictures as lovely as YOURS! :-)

And thank you for your sweet comments about my new venture into portrait photography.  After I posted yesterday I realized that I had used the low res versions of each picture, but I was just too darned lazy to replace them with the higher quality ones...so they will forever remain a little fuzzy looking on my post!

And one more thing before I go, thanks for your comments on my post about what this time of year means to you, I so enjoyed reading all of your comments!!

Humming Along

Has it really been almost a week since I last posted?!

I guess I've not had much to share this past week, and I've been extremely busy with work stuff.

I've been humming along with picture taking, writing, and cleaning...all the usual stuff.

It's all been a bit of a blur, much like these hummingbird pictures...why won't they stay still just long enough for me to capture their beauty?!  Work, work, work...they have to do that to live, kind of like the rest of us I guess!

I captured these lovelies at dusk tonight as they flipped in and out of my neighbor's yard...you know, the sweet neighbor who doesn't think I'm crazy when I show up looking not so lovely but with my camera in hand!  You gotta love a neighbor like that!

She loves these delicate little birds...the only birds who can fly backwards.

As they buzzed past my head as I tried to snap their picture I realized that it had been awhile since I had really slowed down to enjoy life and snap some fun pictures.  We all need to do that from time to time, stop and smell the roses and also capture them!

I hope everyone's week is off to a good start...and here's a bit of nostalgia for those of you who grew up in the 70s!  Until next time friends! :-)

Mother Nature Knows Best and A Winner

Mr. Tide wanted me to thank everyone for your sweet birthday wishes, he had a very happy birthday!  And I hope everyone who celebrated Memorial Day yesterday had a wonderful time with friends and family.  We had a small cookout at our house to celebrate not only the holiday, but also our son's impending graduation!  There was lots of good food like hamburgers, hot dogs, waldorf salad, coleslaw, potato salad, fresh veggies, strawberries, and baked beans.  Of course there were lots of yummy desserts too, like brownies and a delicious blueberry pie made my my neighbor "J"!  It is always so much fun to have friends and family gathered around and to get caught up on what everyone has been doing, and a cookout is such a fun and casual way to host a party!

Today was spent hanging out and trying to recover from eating too much yesterday, but we did manage to spend some time outside enjoying a cool breeze in the shade and visiting with my in-laws. 

While wandering around outside I decided to snap a few photos of our lawn knickknacks and some of our flowers, while Mr. Tide decided he would take a few pictures of things that interested him, like this beautiful wood fungus.  I love the pale blue greens and grays and how mother nature can make even a fungus look exquisite!

Or the striking electric blue, golden yellow, and black combo of this lovely butterfly!

And often times it's not just the colors that really draw the eye in to something found in nature, it's often the textures as well.  Mr. Tide captured this unique tree knot that I think looks a lot like a conch shell, Mr. Tide thinks it looks like a bear's face if you tip your head to the left and squint a little!

Of course we all know that we can't improve on nature, but I still like to add my little yard art to the pots on the porch to add some interest.  This glass and metal sun face came from Walmart or Target years ago, and I still love putting it out each summer!

I also have this sweet little metal grasshopper, complete with spiderwebs from being tucked in the back of the garage all winter!

And this painted stone is one of my favorite yard ornaments.  It was a gift from my in-laws, and I think it's so clever, colorful, and cheerful!

And getting back to colors and how mother nature just seems to be a color specialist without even trying, take a look at this amazing combo...I love the dusty gray moth against that soft pale pink of the clover, perfection!

I think this Lantana is like a tropical sunset rolled into a beautiful flower!

Doesn't this just make you want to run out and buy a few tangerine, yellow, and magenta pillows to throw out onto your screened in porch or deck?!  This color combo makes me want to kick back and sip a fruity drink with an umbrella in it while watching the sun slowly sink into the ocean!

And this Lantana is equally as colorful with shades of pink, cream, yellow and orange.  I want a sundress, earrings, or shoes with this color combo to wear all summer long!

And the deep purple of this clematis would be the perfect color to paint a couple of adirondack chairs to put down by the water in my backyard!

Even when mother nature is in a bad mood she manages to be dressed to the nines.  White and blue is always a great and very nautical combo!

These clouds were so pretty and dramatic, but they were fair warning to stay of the water and out of mother nature's way this afternoon!

And even amidst her dismay she still put together this dramatic combo of bright green and dark bluish gray!  She really is the best at what she does, and I wouldn't want to go up against her on Design Star!

And because you have all been so patient for letting me ramble on about the colors found in nature, I won't make you wait a minute longer to find out the winner of the giveaway from Frosted Trash!

It's lucky #30, the lovely and very sweet Linda from the great blog Itsy Bits and Pieces!  Congrats Linda, just send me an email with your mailing address and I'll get the necklace in the mail to you right away!