I went to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival on Sunday with a few of my knitting group buddies. We had a blast! The weather was beautiful and the festival was not crowded! I had never gone on a Sunday before, but I think this may be the day I go in the future. We saw lots of sheep, alpaca, and even some bunnies. There was tons of yarn and fiber everywhere. I really didn't need any more yarn, so I limited my purchases to one skien of lace weight alpaca yarn from Tess' Designer Yarns in a pretty saphire blue and one mini skein of super wash merino in purple for my bee keepers quilt. I also found a really pretty shawl pin. My son wants to join me next year to see the sheep and eat fair food. We'll see....
This week's challenge in the 52 Week Challenge was using the panoramic setting on my phone. I have an iPhone and just recently discovered that there was an option to take panoramic photos. I am still a bit shaky when panning, so I tend to get a black blobish line on the top of some photos. I also didn't do all that much that was exiciting...no snow, no fun daytrips...that is until the weekend, which is why this post is not on Friday.
So on Saturday of this past weekend we took a day trip to the beach. Not only was the beach a perfect place to take some panoramic shots, but we also caught the sunsetting over the bay near Barnegat Lighthouse! Here are my shots for this week:
Ship Bottom Beach, at 25th St., LBI NJ, 1/19/13
Sunset over the bay, Barnegat Lighthouse, LBI, NJ 1/19/13
It was fun to head out to the beach in January! We were also happy to see the island coming along nicely with the clean up efforts from Hurricane Sandy. We checked out the bungalow we rent each summer and were releived to see it still standing. We know it had water damage, but the owners assured us it would be ready for the summer.
We drove the entire length of the island. In the winter with no traffic lights it was remarkably fast to drive. We were saddened to see that so many businesses suffered and appeared to be out of business. We are hoping that some do come back by summertime. We drove all the way to the most southern end of the island, as far as we were allowed to go, to Holgate, the part of Long Beach Island that seems to have suffered the most from the destruction of the storm. Having seen so many photos of the destruction, I though I'd be prepared, but seeing the damage in person was still shocking. Even after several months of clean up work, there was still so much sand everywhere. It looked like piles of snow in some places, instead of sand. Then there were the homes....so many were ruined. Big beach houses missing the entire first floor, with just the pilings showing where the garages and stairs once were. Several homes were literally washed off their foundations by the waves and sand. The trailer park is in the process of being closed permanently since there was so much damage to the infactructure. The mobile homes looked like someone had knocked over a row of dominos.
I had wanted to park and walk around to see everything, but there was no where to park with all the sand everywhere. I took some photos out my window as I drove slowly down the street. Here are some that I took:
I hope that those homes were just vacation homes, and not leaving anyone truly homeless. I think it will be a few years until Holgate returns to some sort of normal.
The rest of the island, while certainly suffering from storm damage, appeared ok. There was lots of sand on the end of the streets, but when we took a walk up to the beach in Ship Bottom, we were happy to see how much sand was on the beach. I had feared that the beach would have been washed away. It definitely seemed somewhat "shorter" than last summer, but it looks like they have worked hard at replacing fencing and moving the sand from the streets back onto the beach. The kiddo had a blast running around on the beach. He is our little beach boy.
We ended the day with a visit to the Northern end of the island, near Barnegat Lighthouse. We got there after the park and lighthouse had closed, but there is a small park area across the street that we were able to explore and watch the sunset over the bay.
Week two's assignment for the 52 Week project with Picaboo was capturing winter activities. Needless to say, this week in Southeatern PA wasn't very wintery. In fact, it was cold but not cold, the snowman is still melting on the patio and is down to one sad ball of snow and dirt, and it rained off and on and then on most of today. So I ended up capturing an indoor activity, something that fills the afternoons when the weather is lousy: building with Legos!
My son loves Legos and wanted the Lego Police Station for over a year. Santa finally gave in and he received it for this past Christmas. This was a BIG deal. He sat for two weeks just playing with the box. He has many of the accessories that complete the police station, such as police vehicles and little criminals, along with the classic 1970s police station that was mine as a kid. But that wasn't enough! So on Thursday afternoon when he said he was bored (despite a pile of unplayed with gifts still in the family room!) I suggested that we assemble the police station. Bingo! This was what I figured I'd use for this week's project post.
My kiddo is 5 and still learning about building, so I ended up building the majority of the structure. He helped as he could. I have to give kuddos to Lego for not only having awesome instructions for the assembly, but for also the great packaging. This particular kit came with 9 individual bags of legos and four instruction books. To assemble, one bag is opened at a time in order. Ingenious! This definitely made it a joy to build. Now if only it came with clear lego glue so that a certain 5 year old wouldn't lose parts during play...
Here is our progress...
The set, all 783 pieces!
Getting started...
The finished project in action!
It took two days and a total of three hours, but it's finished! The kiddo has been playing with it and loves it. Gotta love Legos!
Last year this time I was revved up to participate in the 365 photo-a-day project. That enthusiasm died out fast. Sometime in the middle of the year I got a new cell phone, an iPhone, that takes awesome photos. So while I didn't formally categorize my photos, I took a lot of them and started sharing via instagram.
This year I am going to try to keep my enthusiasm going for this new project described on Picaboo's blog, a 52 week project in photography. Each week they are going to post a challenge of sorts to photograph. I'm not sure how many photos I'll actually enter on their facebook page, but I will try to track my progress here. Don't hold your breath, though!
The challenge this week was to capture glitter. Ummm, ok. It's pretty, right? I read the post and misread it and took this photo of my son, at the Please Touch Museum, blowing confetti, at their Noon Years Eve party:
See, I remembered the word confetti, not glitter. So I got the blowing effect, but not the glitter effect.
So today, in my weak attempt to "capture" glitter, I took these photos:
The second two photos are photo ornaments I made using a tutorial I found on Making Lemonade's blog. I love how they turned out and will make more next year! Next time I'll use finer glitter, as the glitter I used was a bit too "chunky" and didn't stick as well. My son keeps asking why I printed the photos in black and white. KEEPS ASKING. It's artistic, kid, really!
Just now my son saw a beautiful photo of a girl blowing a handful of glitter on the Picaboo blog. He asked if he could do that. So maybe this weekend I'll finally get the glitter shot right!
I can't believe another year has passed and it's January 2013. The month of December flew by, thanks to our family vacation to Disney World and the rush of the holidays. I haven't even had the chance to get online much, especially to blog. Here is my wrap up of last year in pictures:
January
A visit to our favorite place, the Please Touch Museum!
We spent a week at our favorite NJ beach, Ship Bottom, Long Beach Island. We didn't know then that the beach and town would be devastated months later from Hurricane Sandy.
July
We saw the Imagination Movers three times in 2012, including this time in July at Sesame Place! So much fun!
August
Fun at the Turkey Hill Experience! Ice cream samples galore!
September
My baby turned FIVE in September! And found out he was going to Disney World in 60 days!
October
Some spooky fun at the Morris Arboretum in the fall!
November
We visited Grover and the gang at Sesame Place in November for the opening weekend of a Very Furry Christmas. Saw the Imagination Movers there again too!!
A fun family day at the Garden State Discovery Museum. Here the boys are encased in a giant bubble!
December
We had our first family visit to Disney World! Meeting Mickey was just one of the highlights!
We spent the afternoon on Lido Beach in Sarasota too! Loved being on the beach in December!
The kiddo sang with his classmates in a lovely Christmas program at school! Such cuteness. Happy New Year!!
So I took a lot of photos this week with hopes of getting a few that I loved while also capturing a bit of my life. I am keeping track of all of my photos, more than one per day usually, on Flickr. You can find my Project 366 photos there. Most are public, however, any with my son or his friends in them are private and you will have to be a family/friend of mine on Flickr to see it. (Had to make all photos stored there of my son private after discovering a photo of him that I had on Flickr on a mid-western radio station's blog about whining. Sort of weird and creepy.)
I really can't believe how fast the holiday season flew by. December was so busy, I barely blinked and it was over. We had a great time over the holidays and enjoyed the season. Having a four year old in the house made Christmas more magical and certainly more entertaining.
We don't really do much for New Year's Eve, so it was fairly quiet. (Except for the neighbor's noisy midnight celebration in the street!) I watched CNN's coverage of NYC. Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin crack me up.
Today we had friends come over for brunch. I made the Pioneer Woman's Baked Cinnamon French Toast again...it was great! The boys played all afternoon and had fun. For dinner I made the traditional pork roast with sauerkraut. Using the crockpot, I put a bag of rinsed kraut in the bottom, added a bag of baby carrots, then added the pork roast. I used Penzey's 33rd and Galena seasoning on it and added slices of apple around. After 8 hours on low, I added bisquick dumpling batter to the pot and let it puff up for about a half hour. It turned out great and we have enough left over for dinner tomorrow.
This year one of my personal goals is to become more proficient at using my DSLR camera. For Christmas my husband gave me a speedlight for my camera. To get more practice in using my camera with different settings I decided to do a 365 project this year where I take a photo everyday. I found several groups doing this, but decided to go with the one hosted by Picaboo. One of their expert photographers and bloggers is Steph of A Grande Life, a local mom blogger who I met last summer.
This week's themes are Goodbye Holiday and Just Keep Shooting. I already completed the first day's photo, even though the project officially kicks off on Monday. I like there there will be different themes and techniques suggested to try. For today's photo, I used manual focus with the manual setting on my camera, along with my 50mm lens and an f-stop of 1.8. The goal was to capture the last of the holiday decorations/lights in a different way, out of focus with the lights highlighted. I photographed both my tree's lights and the lights on our banister.
I won't post all of the photos here, but once I find a spot for them, probably on flickr, I'll post a link.
