Rural Thursday - Hey it stopped raining...

I thought I might join in on Rural Thursday over on Nancy's Blog (A Rural Journal) today.

Good Morning! - Well yesterday I posted some photos about my birthday and the fact that the weather hadn't been at all springlike with all the rain we've had.  I guess one shouldn't complain because this is what we woke up to this morning...





"What on earth is happening - The 1st Day of Spring was 2 days ago, right?

Coleen on her way to school. I couldn't help but think of how when I was a kid I use to have to walk 5 miles, uphill in blinding snow storms, barefoot...Okay so I'm exaggerating a little!






























Poor little Daffodils...Every spring it's either rain or snow that arrives just after the flowers start blooming and they look so sad...

Snowball Shrubs!

Pull up a Park bench anyone?

Apple Blossoms.

Let me just say I could not get my Captions to line up under the photo's so I apologize for that.

I'm happy to report the sun is out, the sky is mostly blue, the snow is melting.

Forecast for next week.....RAIN!

"Whatever" Wednesday - The Birthday Edition

Hi,  I've been a little "quieter" this past week because I was celebrating my Birthday. Yesterday (March 20) was my birthday.  It was also the official "1st Day of Spring" here in the US, although in my neck of the woods it wasn't very springy weather. - In fact it's down right cold (still in the low 40's) and as you will see in one of the photos today parts of the area don't look at all like it's spring.

On Monday my mom, daughter and I went to the Wildhorse Resort and Casino for a little gambling at the slots. Wish I could say we all came away big winners but that just wasn't the case.  We did each bring back a little of what we took to gamble with so as not to make the day a total bust.  I had some people coming in to the casino snap a photo of us before we headed back home.

I took a photo of the New Hotel they built just this past year.

My daughter snapped this next photo for me on our way home.  It's a view of the mountains and as you can see they had a nice fresh dusting of snow - Brrr.....

Lastly here is a (bad) photo of me blowing out candles on the cupcakes we had last night. Yes I'm in my bathrobe and my hair is messy (it was windy out when we went to dinner) but I had a good time and a great birthday.

Ah , another year older and another year wiser (?) - Till next time,  Take care and Have a great day!

Photo Art Friday - March 16, 2012

It's time once again to join everyone over on Bonnie's Blog for Photo Art Friday.  This week the options were: 1. Any Piece of Photo Art
2. Continue with the "hidden in plain sight" idea or
3. Go with the Color, Green - because after all St. Patrick's Day is close at hand.

Can you guess which theme I went with?



Here are my starting Photo's - Click on them to enlarge:

The photo on the left is some moss growing on the side of a concrete wall and the photo on the right is some clover (shamrock) in our yard.

Here is what I did with the 2 photos:

For this version I rotated the Moss photo 90 degrees right and then over-layed the clover photo using Hard light at approx. 64-74 %  Then I used a Filter feature in Gimp called, Illusion to create the circular effect.  I added the Irish Blessing and the Frame with features on Picnik.

Still playing:

For this version I used the same 2 photo's as described above but then used a feature called, Mandelbrot Fractal Elements in Gimp to create all the different swirls of clover.  I added the Text (Lucky) and a sort of hidden in plain sight element...can you guess what it is?

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY -  I'm not Irish but I've always dreamed of going to Ireland and someday I hope that dream will come true.  In the mean time I'll just enjoy being Irish for a day.

Have a great weekend and be sure to visit all the other great entries for PAF.

"Whatever" Wednesday - Kids Rodeo Edition

Welcome! - I'm a tad late getting this up as I forgot it was Wednesday and I hadn't yet put anything up for my "Whatever" Wednesday post.  But as they say,  "Better Late, then Never."

Last Saturday Grandma and Grandpa took Coleen to the Cowboy Breakfast and Kids Rodeo that the local Community College holds every year.  She went to the actual Rodeo the night before with her mommy but I don't have any pictures of that to share.

At the kids Rodeo they have things for them to do like Ride a Horse, Rope Cows (not real ones), Get tossed around in the Clowns Barrel  etc...

First let me show you Coleen's Pancake from the breakfast.  They allowed the kids to decorate their pancakes with various items.  Here is Coleen's

For her toppings she chose,  Strawberry Syrup, Whipped Cream, Nerds Candy, Blueberries and a Gummy Worm!  - Doesn't that sound yummy! (NOT) - but she ate the entire pancake.

Here she is inside the Barrel with the Rodeo Clown.

Petting one of the Goats

Riding the Horse - This is her favorite thing to do.

Lastly a little Video of her Roping.  Be sure to have your volume on and watch her face after she High-Fives the Cowboy helping with the roping.

That's it for this weeks edition of "Whatever" Wednesday.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday - March 11

Hello and Welcome to this weeks edition of Scavenger Hunt Sunday brought to over on Ashley's blog, Rambling and Photos.   Don't forget to stop by and see the other entries.

 I missed last weeks hunt so it was great to be able to join in again this week.

Here are the prompts:  Water, Light, Chocolate, Animal and Crowded.  - I will confess to using 2 "archived" photos this week.  Mainly because I really like both the photos and they've never appeared on my blog at any time.

First up, WATER:  I was experimenting using my husbands little Kodak camera the other day and took a photo of one of the little waterfalls (if you can call them that) on the river that flows through the local High School campus. 

LIGHT: - This is 1 of the "archived" photos.  I was going through my photos the other day and happened upon this one that I took of some candle holders last fall on our (fake) fireplace mantle.  It was so pretty I decided to use it for the prompt.

CHOCOLATE: - Oh yum! What a great prompt.  I confess to going out and buying a chocolate mint brownie to take photos of and yes I did take pictures and I shared the brownie too.  However in the end I decided to use a photo of a mini-Hershey bar instead (I ate it too!).

ANIMAL: I'm excited about this one.  - I bet you think you are going to see a picture of a "Cat" because what else would someone post who has 6 cats in their house and feeds neighborhood cats/strays and is referred to as the "crazy cat lady" by her friends post. - Well guess what?  It's not a cat.

This is our dog, Cricket.  The thing that excites me is that I "finally" got a decent picture of her.  She's normally very hard to photograph because she never sits still long enough to take her picture and if you do happen to get a picture of her she generally has her tongue hanging out of her mouth as well. And before you ask...no she wasn't born with 3 legs.  For those who don't know the story shortly after we got her as a puppy she fell off our back step and caught her right front leg in the chain link fence and broke a piece out of the growth plate that could not be repaired here and was far to costly to repair elsewhere so we opted to have it amputated.  She's never missed it and can run/play with the best of them.

CROWDED:  - This is my other "archived" photo.

I discovered a bunch of bees one day on the trunk of a tree while out walking and hurried home to fetch my camera before they disappeared.  They apparently had built their hive on the inside of the tree and were all crowding around outside waiting for their turn to get inside the small opening in the tree to their hive.  I'd say it was probably just as crowded on the inside as it was the outside.

That's it for this week.  Next week the prompts are:  Vintage, Word/Quote, Nature's Own, People and Photographer's Choice.