Edit Me Challenge 9-26-12

This is my 2nd Post today because I nearly forgot that I planned to participate in the current Edit Me Challenge.

If you are here for Scavenger Hunt Sunday please scroll down one post or click on the link:

Here is the photo we were given to edit:   From Larissa at,  www.matthewandlarissa.com

Below is my edited version:

For my version I cropped the original then used the editing tools on PicMonkey to change the tones of the balloon.  I believe that I used the Intrepid effect.  I also overlayed a photo of mine with some Sunset clouds and readjusted the color levels again before deciding that I like it as is. 

It was fun joining in on this challenge.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday - Sept. 30, 2012

Hi! - What a busy week it's been.  I had most of the hunt items found by Friday but had to go out today to complete my set.
I hope you enjoy my interpretations of the prompts. 

This weeks Scavenger Hunt Sunday prompts were:  Yellow, Getting Ready, Bright, Teeny Tiny and Connections.



Before I get started I wanted to say that my Granddaughter, Coleen
ask me today if she could take pictures and do the Scavenger Hunt too.
She has her own blog (Creative Coleen and her Imagination) so please stop
by and check out her pictures.  She took them all herself.  I helped a little with uploading them to her blog and helping put the frames on her photos. She picked out all the colors and fonts and did all her own typing as well.

CLICK ON PHOTO'S TO ENLARGE

                                                                                                         YELLOW:

The neighbors behind my mom have some Sunflowers that hang over her back fence.  I've been enjoying photographing them this summer.  This one is slight worn out from the dry weather we've had but still quite lovely.

                                                                                   GETTING READY:

This is my mom getting ready to throw her bowling ball during league bowling this past Tuesday.  My mom hates having her picture taken so I snuck this one in without her knowing it.  She was mortified that I planned to post it on my blog.  I told her know one will recognize her because you can't see her face!  She bowled a "strike" on this ball by the way.

                                                                                                       BRIGHT:

Some of my many bottles of bright, colorful glitter.  I love how they sparkle, don't you?

                                                                                                           TEENY TINY:

Coleen and I went to Rook's Park today to do a photo/nature walk.  I spotted some teeny tiny blackberries on the vines and snapped this picture of them before Coleen picked them and ate them.  She really enjoyed finding the berries and eating them.

                                                                                                         CONNECTIONS:

This prompt can be interpretated in many different ways.  I chose to use some quote about Connection/s and added them to appropriate photo's.  I have two pictures for this prompt because I liked both of them.  Both photo's have had "textures" added to them.
The textures were Free from Bonnie at Pixel Dust Photo art.

I have to confess that this is actually 2 separate photo's that have been overlayed to create one photo.  See smaller photo's below:

The geese seemed a little plain by themselves so I added the clouds and tree shot to jazz it up a little.



Finally my last Connections shot was taken at the school carnival this week.  Coleen had just dunked her teacher in the dunk tank and was having a wonderful laugh over it. 

Don't forget to stop by Ashley's blog and check out the other participants.

Have a "blooming" good Friday !

It's Friday and time to link up for Photo Art and Flower Art Friday.

PHOTO ART FRIDAY

This week Bonnie (Pixel Dust Photo Art)  gave us the optional prompt of,

Abstraction(s) from Nature.

I wasn't totally sure what exactly to post so hopefully this fits the theme.

I did very little editing on this piece other then cropping, slight color and sharpness corrections and the framing.

This is a rose in my mom's flower garden aptly named, "Scentimental" due to it being a very fragrant smelling rose.  I love the varigated patterns of the petals which to me appear to be very abstract.

Be sure to stop by Bonnie's blog and check out the other great entries.

FLOWER ART FRIDAY  Next up is my entry for Flower Art Friday at Photo's by LeAnne.  Enjoy!

Take care and have a wonderful weekend.

Quarterly Top 5 - Plus 1

Hi,  It's time once again for the Quarterly Top 5 featured on Ashley Sisk, Amber Cullum and Sarah Halstead's blogs.

This shot was taken this summer during Coleen's swimming lessons.  She absolutely loves swimming and I love the look of concentration on her face in this shot. - Just in case you are wondering about the (Eight) I used this shot for a Scavenger Hunt Sunday prompt of, Eight.

Again another shot that was used for a SHS prompt. - I love this photo because it features Coleen acting silly with our Pug, Cricket.  She adores that dog.

I like this shot because to me it shows the innocence of childhood where making a Wish by blowing on a Dandelion (or in this case a Milkweed) head can make anything seem possible.

This shot has never been posted on my blog before today.  I love it though because Coleen has such expressive eyes and she loves all of our kitties so much.  This one is, Callie-Jo.

Again this shot has never been published until today.  I took this at the Salmon Feed this summer.  Coleen decided to suck on some lemons and I snapped this fun shot of her.  I like it because it shows she's not afraid to try new or different things.














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Finally as a "Bonus" shot I'm including a picture of my daughter, Greta (Coleen's mom) because she says I never take pictures of her (pretty much true) to share.

This is a shot of her and our adopted "stray" cat, Piglet that we have been taking care of for about a year now.  He's allowed inside at night after the other cats have gone to bed and they are sharing a bonding moment.

That's it for this quarter.  Enjoy.

"Whatever Wednesday" - The Photo Walk Edition, Part 1

Happy Hump Day! - Yep, halfway through another week.  How's yours been going so far?  Hopefully great.

This week I'm sharing a few photos that I took while out with Coleen a week ago for a little photo walk/drive. 

First up one of the things I set out to try and find again to photograph.  We'd driven by it one afternoon on our way home from church and I set out to find it and get some pictures because it looked like something interesting.  Hubby was driving at the time so I really didn't get a close enough look to figure out exactly what it was.  Curious?....

It turned out to be this fun carving of a Squirrel relaxing under a mushroom.

Apparently the owners of the home had a dead tree stump in their yard and decided to have it turned into a piece of art.  Quite cute and very clever if you ask me.


















Here is another view of the carving.

Now this wasn't the only Squirrel we encountered on our little journey.  We happened upon a "live" squirrel in a tree that decided to come down and take a closer look at us.

                                                                                                                                                      
                                                             Across the street from the Squirrel Carving we spotted a house with some pretty grasses and plants around it so headed over to take a few pictures.

                                                                  The bee's were enjoying this lovely flower.

                                                                                   Coleen just loved this next plant.  I have no idea what it is but the leaves were so soft and fuzzy.  She said, "Grandma feel this plant, it's like a fuzzy blanket."  And she was right!

                                                                                            Up the street we  

            

discovered a fun little planter which was featured in a recent Scavenger Hunt Sunday:

 

This planter was in a little garden plot of an apartment complex.  It was so clever that I had to take a picture of it.    Coleen also spotted this next little planter which we thought was worthy of having it's picture taken as well.

Finally we were visited by this wonderful cat.

Two little girls came out and informed us that the cat was their Grandma's and her name was Molly.  She was very friendly and Coleen enjoyed getting to pet her.

There is more to our little journey but I'll share them another day.                 

Take care and have a great day.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday - September 23, 2012

Welcome! - Won't you join me for this weeks edition of Scavenger Hunt Sunday.

This weeks prompts are:  Cracked, Fallen, Ordinary Color, Bokeh and Fence.
I have to admit that I struggled with a couple of the prompts this week but managed to get them all in just not as well as I would have liked to.

CRACKED:

There is a house up the street from us that has a Walnut tree that they just let fall to the ground for the squirrels to eat.  I spotted this one on the way to pick Coleen up from school.  Not only is the shell cracked but it's a bit smashed as well.

                                                                                                              FALLEN:

Out on a walk to take photos I spotted this decaying leaf where it had fallen from the tree onto the sidewalk.  I thought the colors were very striking and decided to photograph it.

ORDINARY COLOR:

I snapped this shot by accident while trying to adjust my camera settings.  See if you can figure out what this ordinary color is.

Blue Jeans!

BOKEH:  This was the hardest one for me this week.  With all the haze and ash from the fires in the central part of the state wafting our way there wasn't much sunlight in which to capture Bokeh very well.  I did get this shot the same day as the leaf photo and while it doesn't have as much bokeh as I would have liked you can still spot some in the photo.

                                                                                                             FENCE:

My mom had a section of her fence repainted this week and I snapped a portion of it,  a knothole showing the neighbors metal fence (albeit a bit blurred) through the hole.

That's it for this weeks hunt.  Blogger has been giving me fits lately and it took almost 2 hours to get this post up.  Frustrating!!! - Don't forget to stop by Ashley's blog and check out the other participants.

Beauty among the Ash.

This past week we've had Air Quality control issues in our area.  Due to Wildfires in the Central portion of Washington state there has been a lot of smoke and ash fallout.  We live in the S. Eastern corner of the state a good 2-3 hour drive away from the fires and this is what we woke up to the other morning.

Yes that is Ash from the fires.  It was everywhere.  On the roses, the ground, floating in the air and even on spiderswebs,

Why some people thought it was trying to snow but how could that be when our temperatures during the day are still in the upper 80's and low 90's.  Needless to say it's not so great for people like me since I have Asthma and it makes it very hard to breath with all the smoke in the air.  My niece's husband has been trying to paint a house on his job and said it was very difficult because the Ash kept falling onto the paint and making a mess of things.

However it has produces a really gorgeous orange sun.  Unfortunately it's very hard to capture.  This one shows a wonderful orange ring around the sun.

My favorite shot though is this next one.  I had sprayed some water on the driveway and later caught the reflection of the sun in the water and you can see the intense orange color much better.

We've had less then a 100th inch of rain here in "Wally World" (aka Walla Walla, WA) since July 1st.  There is however a 20% chance of rain this coming Thursday.  Maybe another 10-20 drops might fall if we're lucky.  So not normal for this area at this time of the year.

Still you have to admit that sun is beautiful.

Triple Treat Friday

Fall begins on Saturday here in the US so I thought I would change up my blog banner to welcome in the season.  I hope you like it.

Hey it's Friday and you know what that means....Yes, it's time to join me for my favorite Friday Memes:  Flower Art Friday, Photo Art Friday and Orange You Glad It's Friday.

Click on photo's to enlarge.

This week we are starting with:  PHOTO ART FRIDAY

This week Bonnie gave us the optional theme of The Beauty of Aging. 

Here is my piece:  As I've gotten older I've started realizing there are certain aspects of aging that (aren't so beautiful) but it's how you deal with them that really matters.  Inside my head and my heart,  Time Stands Still.  So no matter how I'm feeling on the outside there is still beauty on the inside.

The sentiment is a line from an Amy Grant song titled, Stay.

http://youtu.be/tbfzWfdzN8A

Here is my original photo:

I added a layer of Bonnie's texture:  Vintage Vellum in Hardlight at 100%
Then I added another layer of Bonnie's texture:  Other World in Screen Mode at 100%.
These were both added on PicMonkey.

Please stop by Bonnie's blog (Pixel Dust Photo Art) to check out the other fabulous participants.

Next up...

FLOWER ART FRIDAY

Here is the original photo:

A single Nasturtium blossom photographed on an end table.  I added a free texture called, Paint on PicMonkey erasing the texture off the blossom and stem.  Did a few tweeks with different effects (Soften, Boost) and then added the quote.  I really like this piece inspite of the fact that after I had it finished I noticed that the quote was wrong.  The website where I got it from had an error and instead of saying "Once" they had One...needless to say I had to go back in and start all over.  It took me about 5 tries at editing to get the result that I wanted but I persevered and am glad that I did.

Please be sure to stop by LeAnne's blog, (Photos by LeAnne) and check out the gorgeous floral array that awaits you there.

Finally it's time to join me for:

ORANGE YOU GLAD IT'S FRIDAY: (Hood Photo)

Last week I took a walk early on Friday morning and discovered something just laying on the sidewalk that I normally would walk right by.  It caught my eye though because it was, "Orange" and the object of Orange You Glad It's Friday is to post something that has the color orange in it.  I think it's kind of fun to spot something unexpectedly like I did that fits the theme.  Hopefully you don't think I'm to weird for taking a photo of it.

A simple piece or Orange Plastic bent into this shape and just sitting on the sidewalk.  I think it's fun though and hope you do as well.

Have a fabulous weekend.

"Whatever" Wednesday - Bug Wonderment.

Bowling Scores from yesterday.  I'm actually excited about listing most of them this week.  First game,  137 (not so great but not bad)  Next two games  199 and 198!!!
Smoked the lanes those two games but couldn't break over to a 200 game.  I'll keep on trying.

Welcome! - Last week I wanted to go out and get some pictures of a few things that I had seen while driving around town but didn't have my camera with me at the time. - Yes I know I should always carry it with me but sometimes I forget.    Coleen was going along with me for the ride and just before we got in the car she spotted a bug on the side of the house and ask me what it was.  Here is our first view of the bug,

It's a Katydid.  - They look similar to a grasshopper but they are a totally different insect.  After several shots on the house we decided to move the bug to a different location so it could find something to eat.  That proved to be a bit more tricky then we had anticipated.  I tried to use a piece of paper  to entice the bug onto but it had other ideas and instead flew onto the car.


                                                                                                            I like this shot of Coleen watching the Katydid as it made it's way up the car. 

This next shot shows the "wonderment" of a child so perfectly.  The Katydid is rather blurry but the joy on Coleen's face is not.

At this point our Katydid was on the side mirror of the car.

Trying once again to move this bug it flew and landed in the driveway. 

Coleen didn't want me to run over it when we left so we made one last attempt to move the Katydid...Once again it flew and this time to a much safer spot.

                                                                                                                                                            
                                                             Can you see me now?

We went on our way and I'm sure the Katydid did the same!