Leaving On A Jet Plane

Can't you just hear John Denver singing?

My bags are packed and I’m ready to go.
There won’t be any taxi but I hope someone will be there to kiss me goodbye.

Although, that someone has been left a very long To-Do List, so maybe not.

I'm going to visit Leigh Anna. Debbie and Amie will also be there. Leigh Anna has made several appointments at bridal shops in an attempt to find that perfect dress! It would be wonderful if she did find that perfect dress while we are all visiting, just to be a part of that whole experience. Besides dress shopping, site seeing, a bridal show and an engagement photo shoot I hope to find a bit of time to just sit by the pool in the HOT sun. Most of all I am just looking forward to the four of us being together!!

Paser By

We don't have many airplanes fly over our house so when we do hear one it gets our attention. Sunday morning I awoke to the noise of this flying over our house. Thankfully I had the camera ready to go. According to an article in our newspaper, it's a company out of Canada searching for underground mineral deposits. I had no idea such technology even existed.

Thanks to everyone who voted on the Picture Poll, I hope Amie wasn't buying votes, especially since she is living on an austerity budget. If anyone has any connections or even knows someone working in the fashion industry please contact her. Below is the photograph that will replace the one in the North Face jacket. I can't help it but I still like that photograph.

Weekend in Reveiw

A beautiful Saturday summer afternoon spent with some wine on the deck.

In the evening we met up with Brett for dinner, he looked great. Liked his new hair cut. We had a toast with our Vodka & Red Bulls. A drink that Kristen did not care for. Guess you had to be at The Idle to appreciate that drink.No weekend for me comes without any work. Eric came home with the below.

55 shirts. Eric figures he can only wash a few times a year and have enough shirts to wear to work. I need to restate: Marie & Mom only have to wash a few times a year. I thought only college kids came home with dirty laundry??

Weekend Visitor

Three quarters of Eric's college hockey team were boys from Canada. After graduation we thought it would most likely be that we would never see any of the boys again. We were so excited when we found out that a teammate, who was also Eric's roommate, is coming from B.C. for a visit.

The photo was taken in January 2004 in front of their dorm room after the Saturday game. Notice the cut on Eric's chin? He received 5 stitches after the game. Thankfully, the school had a doctor at all the games so we didn't have to go to any emergency room, he was stitched right in the training room. After the season when I met the doctor he told me in all the years he had been the team doctor, he didn't think there was anyone that he stitched more than Eric. Anyway, the ironic part about the 5 stitches was that Brett had a 5 point weekend!! Needless to say, we CAN'T WAIT to see Brett on Saturday. Wish LUD could be here. Maybe keeping with our hockey tradition we'll all have a Vodka with Red Bull, or two.

Hope you will also have a weekend to remember.

PICTURE POLL

Slowly, oh so slowly, I've been working on deciding what pictures to put into the frame arrangement that we have in our family room. As you can see, until I get the final result of the poll, Amie and the barn door is there.

Mom gave me a matt cutter for my birthday several years ago. I convinced Mick that it takes a lot of math skill to cut matt's, not to mention the money that we could save and he should cut matts. He really did not want to use it, he thinks it's a craft project & he "doesn't do crafts." Anyway, he cut the matts for the five pictures and except for one corner on the first one he tried, they came out perfect. I am so excited since I have other projects that need matts. Remember this? Also, I did go against the one poll and decided to have all the pictures in black & white.

Book Recommendation

I borrowed this book, Unclutter Your Home by Donna Smallin from our local library. If you need to clean out and who doesn't, my father-in-law is an exception, this is the book for you. I had the book for a month and it was a sad day when I had to return it. Told the librarian, if the library only had one book on decluttering this would be the one.

I learned a lot of tips and now I really need to get going. I know I've mentioned this on several occasions, our basement is a disaster zone. Our New Year's Resolution was to spend a half hour a week down there. To date, there has been no we. I've done maybe five hours in 2008. In the book it talks about the time wasted looking for things, yes I agree. How much happier you would be when things are in order, yes I agree. If you think I'm going to end this post with a picture of the basement, I do not agree.

The words on the cover "7 Simple Steps" does not mean "7 Easy Steps."

Renovation of Living Room

This is what the living room looked like the day we purchased our circa 1895 home. The built-in is not original to the house. It was built in the mid 1970's.

This is what it looks like today. I have NOT been able to get an accurate picture of what the wall color looks like. The walls look very gray in the photographs.

Below looks the closest to the wall color, just a bit to light. I will not be adding pulls to the doors, it will look less kitchen like.

The fireplace at some point during our renovation. I'm working on trying to figure out what I want to put on the mantle. Also, there will be a linen color area rug on the floor. This is the wall across from the fireplace.
Come by someday and see it for yourself!

PICTURE POLL

I want to frame and hang the above 8 x 10 photograph in our family room. Amie does not like the photograph. Please help me decide and vote.

Hens and Chicks

Two years ago I pulled some hens out of my Mom's garden and planted them into my container pictured below.

Last summer no chicks, this summer I have chicks!

I was excited to finally have chicks and it's been fun watching them grow. There won't be any watching this weekend thou. We are both home for the first time in about five weekends. This will be a work weekend at our house. Hope you can go out and have a bit of fun for me.

Also next week, there is much interest in the picture of Amie that she doesn't like. I'm going to post it and have a Poll for you to place your vote. I really need objective opinions since it's an 8x10 ready to hang in our family room.

Chocolate Agony

Did you ever think you would see me write about Chocolate & Agony together? Our living room renovation gave me weeks of agony. I could NOT decide on a color for the walls. I wanted brown as in chocolate, but couldn’t find the shade I liked, didn’t know if I would even like brown walls, wondered if our style of home was right for brown walls, just to name a FEW of my worries. I had Dayle come over, she has similar tastes as mine, and got her opinion, and I never ask opinions when it comes to my home decorating. Mick told me he would repaint over the brown if I didn’t like it, he just wanted the project done! So, I finally choose a color and he painted. It was late last night when he got the first coat on & I loved it. When I woke up this morning & saw it in the daylight, I still loved it.

Mick thinks it looks like the color of a B-17. I think it looks like the inside of a chocolate truffle.

I always liked how the fireplace came out but the color of the walls really show off the brick. Surprising, the wall color gives the room a very calming feel. This would be a great color for a bedroom. Next is the painting of the built-in, installing new outlets & dimmers and the room is complete. Well, I may have to do some shopping to complete the decorating. Although, Mick is convinced there is what ever I need being stored in the basement.

Portrait Photography

My favorite photographs to take are that of people. When given choices of photographs to look at I would even choose looking at “people pictures” over anything else. I don’t even care if I know the people in the photograph. Yesterday, I was so excited all day knowing that in the evening I was going out to photograph our friends daughter.
Before the shoot, I was talking with Mau and she wondered why anyone would want to go out & purposely have their photograph taken. She should just so her children will have some pictures of her. I would hate to have her kids end up like her with very few photographs of their mother. In her defense, she has humored me on several occasions. Anyway, when you are an absolute beautiful girl why wouldn’t you want to have your picture taken?

Both are SOOC (Straight-Out-Of-Camera), except for my watermark. Yes, I have my own watermark. I didn't do it to prevent making copies. I did it to prevent people that I/we don't know from making copies or using the photograph. There about 20 pictures that she liked and several that I really like that are not on her list. This always amazes me. Two of my recent photographs of Amie that I love she hates. Why is that? In fact she hid an 8 x 10 that I had printed when she was home. I'm happy to report that I've found it.

I used my 50mm f/1.4 lens yesterday, I have only used it once before. I have a big engagement photo shoot coming up in two weeks and I need to get in a lot of practice. I learned so much yesterday and learned I have so much more to learn. Thankfully, we are going out again one day next week to some new locations that she will be scouting out. Thank you N.! Now I need to hit Photoshop. Something else I have a lot to learn about. Although, I don't believe in a lot of editing in portrait photography, even thou it is all the trend.

Boilermaker Part 2

This is the place that the 9,773 participants hope they get to cross. This year was the 31st annual.

We worked hard to get positions along the course near the finish line. With all the participants you can only imagine how many spectators there were. Don't get me wrong, we didn't work as hard as the participants thou.

The youngest members of the team.It was so EXCITING to finally see our girl.

You can see on the lower left some of our cheering section. I wanted to get good clear shots so I held my camera as still as possible and didn't yell a thing. I really wanted to wave my "Go Ellie" sign also but couldn't. E.G. Racing finished second with a time of 1.14.40. The racer from yesterdays post, she was the one in the picture, placed first.

A congratulatory call from sister Kate.

Team members start to arrive back from the finish line to congratulate E.G.

The entire team. E.G. Racing has registered for a second race to take place on Cape Cod in August. From what I hear there are already team members planning on going. The coach also gave me a shirt to mail to LA, Amie was so disappointed she couldn't be at the race. We had cheers, tears (not from the racer), excitement and I'm so proud of Ellie's accomplishment!!

Boilermaker Part 1

I was a member of the E.G. O'Neill Racing Team on Sunday. It was an honor to be able to watch & take part in her very first race. She didn't start with any easy race either, it was a 15k!

Signing her registration.

Here's Paul. He's the coach, trainer, equipment manager attaching her number. I hope she kept it after the race. He even made sure the entire team had shirts to wear & signs to wave for the event.

Preparing for the race.Last minute pointers. Notice the other woman in the picture? She is E.G.'s top competition. Members of the team that were able to make it to the start line. Warming up.
E.G. fifth from the left. And they're off.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you how she did. I will let you know that there will be pictures from the Finish Line.

Boston Beginning to End

We stayed in a boutique hotel. When I entered the bathroom and saw the live orchid I thought, this is what they must be talking about. My favorite of the hotel was the two water dispensers in the lobby. One had limes the other lemons. With all my walking and the hot weather I must have drank the contents of each dispenser myself over the three days. I want one for our kitchen.

Saturday night we ate on an outside patio along the harbour. The meal ended with this dessert sampler. It was delicious!
Boston is a great city, educational and it was moving to see all the sites of where our country began. Go here and take a test to see if you have what it takes to be a US citizen. Let me know how you do. If you don't do well, spend some time this weekend brushing up on your US history!

Boston Skyline at Night

All the pictures were taken on the 4th.

I love how the color of the sunset reflects onto the river.

The light on the trees at the bottom is from the Hatch Shell.
I need to figure out what building this is. Mike & Terri probably know.
This picture does not do justice to the true color of the sunset.
I used my telephoto lens and balanced the camera on the railing of the balcony. I didn't have a tripod.

It has come to this?

The Hatch Shell is where Rascal Flats, we saw them live on Thursday practicing, and the Boston Pops played. The entire area several streets around was blocked off near the shell. Admittance was only after going thru screening. During our walkabout we could not believe the security involved in this event. The few pictures I took do not do justice to what was there. I tried to be discrete in what I took, I didn’t want to be taken off someplace and questioned as to my photographic motives. We saw rows & rows of police cars, an FBI bomb squad with all their equipment, a CSI woman dressed in an outfit that looked like a space suit, a “Commander” in a jump suit with a head set and all this equipment around his waist and National Guard members they all looked so young.

Many officers on motorcycles, I actually liked seeing them. Their uniforms are neat.

I'm sure they are talking to their wives on the cells.

There was also boat patrols in the Charles River.
This would be a good job for Eric. Biking the streets of Boston all day.
After the fireworks a helicopter patrolled the river using a spot light.
I did finally get the nerve to ask a Boston Police Officer what all this security costs the city, he didn't know. He did say they received federal assistance. Also, that this doesn't compare to the security for the NYC fireworks display. Mick and I were continually thinking at least this was Massachusetts tax dollars at "work" only to find NY is spending more.