Photowalking day 2

Look, I made the camera do DOF again! Apparently, if I zoom all the way in and shoot straight ahead, it forces DOF.







There is a Harely parked next to the church. The pastor maybe?



Despite the haze, it was still crazy hot today. Heat is supposed to break tomorrow though







Fall is coming, despite the scorching summer heat.



This house was just completely overgrown. It was crazy.



Dead tree





This is at the church with the Harley. It thought it was an interesting policy.
ETA: The sign says "guest, senior and single parent family parking" and is about half a block closer than the regular parking lot.



More DOF





My partner in crime who, every time the camera comes out, demands "Mommy take my picture"



That is all. I had to walk a lot further to get decent pictures today. The neighborhood I picked, besides not having sidewalks, had cracker box houses and perfect lawns. Nothing worth taking a picture of. Photowalking may be at the mall tomorrow since it is supposed to rain :)

DPI - what size do you need

I ran across this while I was looking to see how big a 3 mega pixel camera could print. Since I've been doing the photo walking (which I did again today and as soon as I figure out where I laid my camera, I'll upload them), I was thinking about buying some cheapy 3mp that is smaller than my big 8mp. I need something that will fit in my pocket a little better.

I thought the scrappers might appreciate something like this. The image comes from the website below. :)

Not happy with Elemental Scraps

I played the ADSR season 2. It was fun but I don't know if I will do it again. I need a partner that works closer to how I work so who knows. I didn't win :( but with 180 some teams, I really didn't expect to. A lot of the prizes were coupons to stores, instead of just kits. That is fine, but since I don't go to the stores very often, I didn't have any idea what I wanted at any of the stores. I needed to find some time to sit down and really look at the stores to decide what I wanted. Well, I finally got around to that yesterday. I went through all the emails, one by one and went to the sites and really looked for kits. I spend close to two hours shopping for digi kits. Fish scraps and Oscraps were great. I found what I wanted, put in the code and went on my merry way. Then I spent a long time at Elemental Scraps looking for what I wanted. I put in the code and get an error that the coupon was expired. What? I haven't had it 3 weeks. I emailed the race host who told me to email the site directly. I did that and was told "sorry that expired Sept 1st" I emailed her back and told her that perhaps they should have made that more clear from the get go. There was no experation date listed in the email from the race host. I'm mad that I wasted my time looking for things I can't have and I made a point to tell her that I wouldn't be back to her site. I haven't heard back, but I'm sure she doesn't care. It is like I buy anyway, but that is so not the point.

In happy news, I got Glenda's "Sibby goes to K" kit for playing the DSD tailgate. It is freaking awesome! Bright bold colors, lots of back to school items, etc. It rocks :)

Thanks to Hummie and Glenda for doing this :)

Fall TV

I went through the TV list to see what I would be watching this fall. I made an Excel spreadsheet a couple of months ago with times of all the shows I thought I wanted to watch. There have been a few additions and now I have premiere dates so it is all good. I'm going to try and add it to my sidebar, if I can get the Excel file to upload easily :)

Vista

I was having a problem with my computer. Basically, I couldn't get to half my blogs and it was running crazy slow. I scanned it for viruses but it came back clean. I made dh scan it because I figured it was lying to me! It came back clean for him too :( Then he ran a check for spyware and it came back with 58 instances of spyware. Apparently, all the Google desktop stuff I installed was mucking up my system. Also Stumble upon was a big offender. Those of you that have should run a check for spy ware. So dh cleaned that all up and installed Vista. When I got my computer it came with a free upgrade to Vista. I've had the disk since Feb but haven't bothered installing it. There were lots of problems with it when it first came out (and if you ask my dh, the Macman, all windows products are nothing but problems) and I didn't want to mess with critical security flaws and stuff so I didn't upgrade. So he upgraded it for me and it now runs much faster. Dh says I'm not allowed to install anymore programs without his permission because he is tired of cleaning spyware of my computers. :) I have to restart to install all the updates, but it appears my blog issue is corrected. Yay, I can read Hummie's blog from my laptop again and I won't accidently post stuff like 10 times because the other pages keeps loading.

The only problem is that my touch pad scroll bar doesn't work anymore. I use that stupid thing all the time and it is bugging me that it won't work. Dh says "it is just drivers" (which is his answer for everything being former tech support LOL) and then left to go meet with his boss. I'm not sure what drivers I need or where to get them so I'll have to wait until he get home to fix it for me :)


In other news, I painted my fingers and toes blue and both kids decided they needed blue paint as well. They are so funny

Hummie made me do it - Photowalking

Well, her posts nudged me in the direction. Dropping C off at school is fine. Getting anywhere after the fact is a nightmare. You can't get across any of the major roads because it is 7:45 and everyone is trying to get to work. So today, I just left the van parked at the school and Lizzie and I want for a photo walk around the neighborhood. We have time to kill in the morning anyway and it cooler at 8 than at 2 so a good solution all around. Getting home was a piece of cake at 8:10 :)
On all the pictures of the houses, I blurred house numbers and phone numbers (lots of for sale signs). I didn't figure the owners would be thrilled with their houses being posted on the internet, competely with number.

Without further ado - pictures :)



Cute car, see the happy face?





Look at my DOF! I probably couldn't recreate that picutre if I tried but there it is :)





My photowalking buddy









A sprinkler running by the park. Texture anyone?







The next 3 pictures are of cute little cottages all in a row













Maybe another post tomorrow if we decide to walk instead of going to the park :)

Pilates

I've been doing yoga for awhile (at least 3 years, on and off) and I LOVE the book that I have. I don't like the videos because I want to watch something else on TV instead of listening to the soft, sleepy music on the videos (I realize that part of yoga is breathing and relaxing but I don't care for that part of it so much). The book is called "Simply Yoga" and has a complete program laid out from start to finish. I've been thinking for awhile about Pilates but I haven't been able to find anything I like. I found a "Simply Pilates" book at Amazon. It was used for 56 cents plus shipping. I bought it because I like the yoga book so much. It should be here in the next few days so I can start trying it out. In the mean time, I got a book from the library called "The Complete Pilates Body Challenge" It is a pretty nice book and I might pick one up, if I don't like the Simply Pilates book. It has a section called the "tantalizing ten" It is 10 moves that they suggest you do every day. Then then are other things that you can add for specific areas, including abs, lower body, perfect poster, etc. You add these 5 or so moves into the 10 and it takes about 15 minutes to run through the whole set. It works the whole body, which is what I don't like about the other books I've seen. I have one by Denise Austin that has tons of stuff in it, but is grouped by body part so you get 10 arm moves and then 10 leg and to get a full body workout, you have to flip through 300 pages to find the ones you want.

I did the 10 tonight and I'm seriously feeling it. My abs and legs both sort of ache and I imagine I'll feel it even more in the morning. This is a good thing, since I'm about 50lbs over weight. Honestly, my goal isn't to lose much weight (although, if I lose weight, I certainly won't complain), it is to be healthier. When I push the kids on the merry go round, I don't want to be panting and dying when I get done. I don't want to be winded after running up the stairs.

In addtion, I'm thinking taking a TKD class through the park district. They have a set up where if an adult signs up, you can sign a child (over age 6) for $20. C tried TKD last year and didn't do well at it because there wasn't enough supervision in the class. I think, being a year older and having me in the class with him will help and I think he would enjoy it. Couldn't hurt me either :)

I also want to take a belly dancing class because I think that would fun. I don't want to take it by myself though and no one will take it with me. :( Another class I would like to take would be a pop music kind of dance class. Like NSync or Brittney before she went crazy. I like to dance and it would be fun to learn to do some of them :) I saw a video for teens probably 8 years ago that had that sort of thing on it but I would like a class. Too bad all the dance classes are outlandishly expensive, even through the park disrict. I suppose I could just dl those old videos from youtube and teach myself. I'm such a dork LOL