Day 88 - 7/7/07

One of my cousins got married today. There are always a ton of photos to take at a wedding, and unless the conditions are perfect, it's hard to get a great photo.

This one is a little blurry, but the lighting made it very difficult to get one that WASN'T blurry during the ceremony.

Day 87 - 7/6/07

I made this baseball dress for Haleigh to wear to games. It's very cute, if I do say so myself. The bloomers are made out of two bandanas, and actually only the ruffles are visible when she wears the outfit. I just wanted them to show for the picture, so I pinned them to the dress kinda low.


Below: closer view of the fabric used for the dress.

Day 83 - 7/2/07

Here's what I did today: I cut my hair!

I had been wanting to cut my hair for a while and today I did it. I waited longer than I usually would have after making such a decision, because my SIL had requested that I have long hair for her wedding. She wanted all of us girls to be able to have updos for the wedding.

I'm donating the braid to Locks of Love.

Day 81 - 6/30/07

A dress I made to sell.

It's a navy blue dress, and since I am a Detroit Tigers fan, I firmly believe that navy and orange go very well together. So, I added orange rick rack to the collar and hem of the dress.

Sorry about the busy background - I didn't even think about that until just now.

Day 80 - 6/29/07

Another Sunset. They're just too good to skip taking pictures of them!

This one was a little later, and is therefore slightly darker, than yesterday's.

Day 79 - 6/28/07

We have had some AMAZING sunsets lately.

Day 76 - 6/25/07

Aunt Kittie.

She had surgery today to remove her stomach and spleen because she has stomach cancer. To say that I am worried is an understatement.

Day 75 - 6/24/07

My mum's aunt & uncle celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary this year. Their anniversary was June 15. The celebration was today.

Not only is Black & White one of the themes for this week, I wanted a few in B&W for the vintage feel of it - all of their wedding photos are in B&W.

This is Uncle Gary & Aunt Kittie, right before they began cutting the cake.

Day 74 - 6/23/07

To quote DH: "Budweiser in the making."

This is a field of barley. It is very close to being ready to harvest. Since barley hops are used to brew beer, he's not all that far off in his statement.

We pass this field nearly every day on our way to and from town. This year it is going to be ready much earlier than it usually would be, because we have had a hot, dry spring.

Day 71 - 6/20/07

For this one I used an automatic setting on my camera for beach scenes. It is set up so that the water still looks blue and the sky and water do not moosh into each other. I think it came out really pretty. The water looks better on the screen than it did in real life!

Here's what this automatic setting amounts to:
-0.7 EV, ISO 64, F4.0, and something I'm not sure of at 500 (shutter speed, maybe?).

I really need to pull out my camera manual and find out what that setting is.

Day 70 - 6/19/07

The water was splashing in really interesting patterns when I decided to take the photo, but by the time I actually took it, the water had settled down and was just sort of rolling around the rocks.

I did get one little bitty splash though. Yay for my little bitty splash.

I don't remember if I used an automatic camera setting for this one or not, but here are the stats:
-0.7 EV, ISO 64, F4.0, unknown setting 250.
Chances are good I was in my beach setting, since the EV, ISO, and F are all the same as my other beach photos.

Day 69 - 6/18/07

My future SIL walking her dog, Goliath.

I think she has said that Goliath is a Siberian Husky, but he looks more like an Alaskan Malamute to me. For one thing, he's got 2 brown eyes, and most Huskies have 2 blue eyes - it's rare for a Husky to have 2 brown eyes, although one brown and one blue are fairly common. For another, he's bigger than your average Husky, and Mals are often mistaken for large Huskies.

But, since Goliath is Laura's dog, I'll take her word for it that he's a Husky.

Day 68 - 6/17/07

I just love this photo.

My niece Haleigh playing with the door in our hotel room. It actually connected two rooms, but it also fit perfectly to create a door for the little closet that she is standing in. It didn't latch as a closet door, simply covered the opening.

Day 67 - 6/16/07

Cheating a little since I did not take this photo, I am IN this photo (and I'll be using these wedding photos most of this week, so cheating a little in that respect also). I'm on the far left.

One of the hazards of being in a wedding is that you don't get to take any photos during the wedding or the festivities afterwards.

It was, however, taken with my camera, by DH's aunt. She did very well considering that I had to show her how to turn the camera on, focus, and snap the photos.

When I told her to just shoot in auto mode, she looked at me like I had suddenly sprouted an extra head. So I made sure the camera was set on auto and showed her what button to push, then told her she was all set. At that point I looked up and realized that I was about to be late for my entrance, so I grabbed my bouquet and made a run for it!

Day 66 - 6/15/07

Rehearsal kiddos.

These were the children in the wedding. For reasons unknown to me, Austin (the older boy) was called a "Junior Groomsman" although IMO he is much too young (5 years old) for that designation. The other two kids are both two years old, and they were the Ring Bearer (Jake) and Flower Girl (Kayden).

I wonder if they thought it would be odd to have two ring bearers and only one flower girl?

I didn't think to ask.

Here's another as they passed by me. For the rehearsal, I was able to carry my camera with me. I get a kick out of the fact that it looks as if Jake has completely disappeared, although you can just see his little bare feet and even though it looks as if Austin is swinging a free hand, that is actually Jake's hand and arm. Austin did an excellent job of holding both of their hands until he was told to let go.

Both of the little ones did much better at the rehearsal than they did at the ceremony, but that's to be expected when they're that young.

Day 65 - 6/14/07

For this one I was playing with the different manual settings on my camera, seeing what I could get to come out. I actually think I did pretty well.

This little cutie is named Hailey.

I took this is A mode (aperture priority), which is my current favorite mode to use. The other settings were ISO 64, F6.3, -1.7EV. No flash, and something is set at 640 but I can't quite figure out what that might be (sorry, I can fiddle with it and set it to look pretty, but I can't tell you what all of my functions are!)

Day 61 - 6/10/07

My cousin Emil and his little sister, Susan. She wanted him to come climb a tree with her and he wanted to sit there and talk with his guests. Today was his graduation open house/going away party.

Emil graduated from high school on June 3. On June 21, he will head off to Missouri to enter Basic Training for the Army. After Basic Training, he will have another year or so of training for his specialty: Combat Medic.

We are all very proud of him - our family has a long military history and we are proud to have it continue. That doesn't stop us from worrying about him - there is a war on, after all.

Day 53 - 6/2/07

What happens when the action is done:


The lighting on this one is a little weird because I took it with no flash. I didn't want to use the flash or turn on any additional lights because I didn't want to wake her up. The more I look at it though, the more I like it because it has something of a dreamy look to it.

Day 52 - 6/1/07

According to my favorite three-year-old, keychain flashlights are so cool that they can lock and unlock cars. She loved this light on my keychain (we had to stop her from shining it towards people because she inevitably hit others in the eye with the light) and every time we went out to get in the car, she wanted to hold the keys to unlock it, and she always did it with this pink flashlight. Then, when we got out of the car, she had to lock it, again with the flashlight. Her thought was that the light had to come on to make it work, since our car doesn't beep like hers does.

(Truth be told, we don't lock that car, which is why she never realized that she wasn't really unlocking or locking it)

Day 51 - 5/31/07

For today's "action" shot: SLIDING.

This is a photo of my niece at the park. She just loved the slides. It was tricky to time it so I'd get her and not an empty slide because the slide was enclosed and she shot down it so fast that she nearly came right off the end every time.