Three whole months! I haven’t missed a single day for three whole months! Whoohoo!!
I’m sure you’re heard that saying, “If you don’t like the weather, wait 15 minutes.” Well, today we didn’t have to wait. It amused me to stand on my front sidewalk and shoot to the east… 
and then to the west… 
It was actually spitting snowflakes when I took these. Craziness.
It’s not Texture Tuesday this time. Today I have to share a few shots I captured here and there. Just cuz I liked ‘em.
I think this is a great look for Austin. Whaddya think? 
(Taken with my Palm Pre Plus)
This is silhouetted in front of my kitchen window. It’s a blossom on my ornamental pepper plant. My house plants are blooming! I haven’t killed them!
Mom’s daffodils are blooming! Yay! I shot this one just by holding my camera down near the ground and shooting up towards the flower. The ground was too wet for me to get down there and look through the viewfinder. Blind luck, for sure. (This is cropped from the original to eliminate a bunch of nothingness.)
I just realized I promised a peek at the lovely ladies of Lifeway and never delivered! Here’s an album of our awesomeness!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=53641&id=1128907594&l=e171f60a53
For Monochrome Monday I took a short jaunt down to the park across Main Street. I’ve take a couple photos of Joy before, but today I decided to get up close and personal…
Here’s one I took of the fence-y thingy that goes around part of the park…
I spent some time on Flickr going through monochrome photos – so much to look at there!
One more addition… 
For this one I used the Coffeeshop Splendor B&W action and turned the brown tint and purple tint layers to soft light, then lowered the opacity on each until I got the look I wanted. I like the tones of this one.
I especially love how it looks on black!
Another full day! I almost forgot to post today! We had church this morning, my in-laws here for lunch (and Ken’s haircut) after, then this evening we had movie night at church. Whew! I’m ready for bed! Here’s my Sunday Snapshot – kids watching Babe: Pig in the City. 
Fancy’s friend Josh gave her these lovely tulips for opening night of the high school version of Macbeth. The play went well, and the flowers are gorgeous! If you’re local, check out Macbeth at the school multipurpose room at 7:30 tonight, and again at 7:30 on April 9 and 10. The cost is $5 – well worth it to support the high school kids and their thespian endeavors.
Anyway…lovely tulips.
(I see flaws I didn’t fix. Sorry.)
Here’s a Friday Food photo! It’s chocolate milk, which I believe is its own food group! 
I think I’ll continue to practice – maybe outside where I can get more natural light and not struggle with grain from a relatively high ISO (400 on this one – my 20d doesn’t handle 400 and above well).
I’m not going to have time to prepare the Friday Challenge photo – I was going to go with a “family” theme, but we’re not going to be together today, and I just barely have time to get ready for the Ladies’ Fellowship meeting this evening, so I’m going to have to miss this week.
I’m looking forward to our meeting – this month’s theme is “Tacky.” We’re supposed to dress tacky and bring tacky foods, and I imagine we might even have a tacky activity or two. I’m taking all my photo gear so I can set up a photo booth or something and make sure to capture this night for posterity. :-) (Or blackmail.) I’ll be sure to give you a peek tomorrow.
If you’re feeling inspired to try some splash photos, check out this set - ‘love ‘em! I can’t wait to try more in full daylight!
Late post for me today! I’ve been so groggy from the Zyrtec I took last night that I’ve kinda lost the whole day. I did spend a bit more time getting to know my new phone. I love it! It’s just perfect for me! Here’s my new attachment…
Quick post tonight. I spent the whole day in Missoula with my mother-in-law. She wanted to get a new laptop, so Caleb and I took her in and made a day of it. It was fun! Here was one of my favorite stops (for Walkabout Wednesday)… 
I’m very pleased to say that this photo was taken with my Palm Pre Plus. I love the quality of the photos it takes – as long as the subject is still, and there’s plenty of light. There are no options on the phone’s camera to adjust things like ISO, so it really must be full daylight with a still subject. But look how clear that is!! Walkabout Wednesday was easy!
Oh! And I got a fun new shirt for 47 cents!!
Here’s my Tuesday Texture. This is one of Fancy’s formal gowns. It’s so sparkly in the sunshine! 
I took a photo of Kristi from a couple months ago and laid the new texture on it. The texture layer is set to hard light with a lowered opacity (I don’t remember what it was set to), with a gaussian blur of 4. 
Here’s the original… 
Great article here. Check it out, photogs.
Monochrome Monday! I got near the end of this day and realized I hadn’t shot my photo for today. I’ve been too busy playing with my new phone! So I went across to my neighbor’s yard to take some shots of his collection of old wheels/tires. These are set up as a sort of yard boundary.
I downloaded some new stuff for Photoshop today from this site. If you scroll down the page a bit there’s a section of free downloads. I used the PhotoTools 2.5 to edit this. I put the HDR effect on it, then Chrome to turn it black and white. I like the result for this subject.
Thanks for all the well-wishes. I think I’m back to “normal” for me. I didn’t do any photo browsing or reading today – too busy learning the cool new phone! :-)
I actually worked at photos today! Whoohoo! I almost feel human again, although my stamina is not quite back to normal. Here are a couple shots I got with the help of my fabulous assistant.
Both were shot with my 50mm lens and natural light. We used reflectors under and around for the lily, and I set the tulips on the diffuser panel (with it laying horizontally) and bent it up to act as a reflector.
I’ve spent a good amount of time this afternoon going through this photostream. Lovely work!
I’m still not back up to full speed. This dumb virus got a good grip on me! I’m still shooting and posting, but I’ll have to catch up on blogs when I’m recovered. I’m looking forward to seeing what all my friends have been up to!
For my scenic Saturday I walked allllllllll the way to the museum (don’t tell anyone it’s a half block from my house) to shoot some gussied up teens. I don’t have permission to share all of them, so I’ll just share Fancy for now…
Here’s my collage for the Friday Challenge – Spring Colors. We do have things blooming, but since I’ve shot flowers twice this week I decided to go with something else that indicates spring to me. 
I used this template to make this. Not my best photos, but I’m still not up to speed after the stomach bug. I hope to be back in full force very soon! Thanks for dropping by!
Walkabout Wednesday! It was a beautiful day for walking about. Caleb and I ambled around town for over an hour, including a brief stop at my mom’s house to take a shot of her blooming crocuses! (You can click the storyboard to see it larger.)
Here are some fire hydrants we encountered…
Here’s the site I plan to hang out at this evening: http://www.photocrati.com/
I was working on texture again for this Texture Tuesday. Once again, I loosely followed this tutorial from Shadowhouse Creations to put this together. Here’s my texture:
It’s a combination of these 4 files – one of them is actually used 3 different times. I used a variety of layer blend modes – mostly soft light and hard light.
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Here I’ve used it very lightly on a photo on hard light mode: 
I’m going to take a page out of Sandra’s book (heheh…book” – if you read her blog you will probably understand why I’m amused at myself) and share with you what I’ve been reading up on today. I spend way too much time every day reading photo blogs and looking at other photographers’ work, so I’ll share a bit with you. Here’s one site I found interesting… http://blog.epicedits.com/
Monochrome Monday! As Caleb and I were taking our photo walk today we passed by these air conditioning units (I assume – they’re sticking out of windows in a building). Caleb pointed at the filter portion and said, “That’s black and white!” He was absolutely correct, so I shot it for my monochrome Monday photo. I like the pattern.
Word of the day – Catkin. We also discovered these wonderful treasures on our walk. I knew they were the cottonwood flowers but I could not remember what they were called. Caleb and I talked about it for most of our walk, and when we got home the first thing we did was Google it. Catkins! That was it!
Amanda Hill shared this nice, simple storyboard on her blog recently– thanks Amanda! I put a few photos from the weekend in it just to test it out. I’m sure you’ll be seeing this layout often!
It’s Snapshot Sunday! So I took, retook, and reretook this photo to get it just right. I guess that’s not really a snapshot. Oops. Well, here’s my sick little man snuggling in for a nap with Daddy.
I snapped this shot quickly this morning because I thought it was cute…then I played with some freebies from Totally Rad Actions, and I decided I really liked the photo! Molly is so tolerant, and Kristi just adores her!
For today’s photo, I decided to put the Friday Challenge with the Friday Food. I went with a different interpretation of the “Green” theme for the Friday Challenge. Here are a few of my “green” items – reusable grocery bag, a reusable, insulated lunch bag, my plastic water bottle (reusable), and my snackTAXIs (reusable sandwich bags).
And just because I love, love, love, my polka dot Thirty-One lunch bag…
It’s Thankful Thursday! And it’s time for a Blessings list!
1) Renewed zeal for God. I have really been enjoying my time with God lately, and He’s really been sharing some great things with me.
I walked about on Walkabout Wednesday!! I haven’t done that nearly enough, but it was nice! It was a bit cool this morning, but it sure was pretty. Molly and I walked over to St. Mary’s Mission to see what we could see. 
I love the progression of this little building…I kinda looks like, “Here’s the church. Oh, we need more space. Oh, we need even more space. Oh, we need a tiny bit more space.”
See all that fresh snow on the mountains? It’s not spring yet!! We still have a few days of winter left!
So I tried some new stuff today. I was playing around with some textures after reading this tutorial over at Shadowhouse Creations. 
So the rocks are a little too heavy in this, but I was just playing, so that’s okay. Anyway, I tried it out on this photo 
after reading this tip and ended up with this…
I also used Jerry Jones texture on one of my weekend photos to try it out. Here’s the original…
It’s fine, and I was reasonably happy with it since it was taken with my softest lens and all the colors of the scene were pretty bland. Then I ran added that Grunge Palette Texture with a soft light blending mode, and this was the result.
It’s not enough to make it look all Photoshopped – just enough to give it a boost. I never would have thought of using a texture this way before I saw it at Shadowhouse Creations, but I love this!
Well, it’s Monochrome Monday, so I will share a black and white photo… 
I used Totally Rad Action’s Bitchin Black & White action to do this (I tried several other methods and didn’t like any of them – I kinda like this one). I only did this because is Monochrome Monday. I’m much happier with the color version… 
Spring is coming, and I can tell because the tulips are coming up! So are the crocuses, but they weren’t as interesting yet.
I also have to share this funny little storyboard. This is Caleb’s current favorite lunch… 
He was really ready for me to be done taking pictures of his lunch. That’s why he was hanging on the counter staring at it – he kept asking if I was done taking pictures yet. lol.
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