The random that is me.

Oh hello kiddies, hello???  Is anyone left out there?  I know, I know, I haven't been around much, dear Blogger, but you know what it's like, the holidays, the cold weather telling you to just stay under the covers, instead of write, people to visit and a fricken million different things to make.  You know the usual, winter bullshit.  It's been so long that I've been on Blogger, it took forever to load for me.  Punishment, I'm guessing.
Well if you're writing today, you can head on over to Miss Impulse and Shawn, both of these wonderful ladies made me feel better about my lack of blogging in their first paragraphs, by letting me know, I'm so not alone.  They're super rad like that.  They also host a no rules, just like I like it, blog hop today.  Go check it out, I double dog dare you.
Speaking of double dog daring, is anyone else out there, as anxious as me to watch 24 freakin hours of A Christmas Story?  Or see Elf 75 times before Christmas.  I own both of these movies, but for some stupid reason, it just doesn't seem like Christmas, without the commercials.  
Oh oh oh, and another exciting thing that's going on is, my older and her fiance' set a wedding date.  Next September 29th, not as far off in the future as I'd hoped, but I'm still really excited for her, and I'm loving helping her plan for it.  I'm so excited about it, that I'm getting ready to take on a HUGE project and try and make these for her, me and the Maid-of-Honor aka my younger.

These shouldn't be toooo hard to make, right?  Oh sweet baby jeesus, what did I get myself into.

And possibly a cake like this.

By the way, today's blog is brought to you by, Completely Random Crap Going On In My Life.  Invading peoples lives since 1973.
In two weeks, I, will be getting up on a stage, in a bar, and singing a song with a dear to my heart kid, that's turning 21.  He belongs to a long time high school friend, who just happens to be in a band, who just happens to be playing a gig the night of the birthday.  I asked the kid what he wanted for his birthday.  "For you to get up on stage and sing a song with me"  Hmmmmm....."Okay dollface, anything for you."  I ask him what we'll sing and he says this song.  I'm terrified.  I love this song and don't wanna butcher it.  Better take a couple shots and a Valium before singing.

I should say, that my Turkey day was good, although I got very mixed reactions when I wished people a "Happy, sorry we stole your land and killed your people, but here some land and a casino to make it all better, Day"  People either loved it or hated it, I didn't care.  To me Thanksgiving is just a day to make a feast.  You should be thankful EVERY day, for the things you have, not just some Thursday in November.  And I find it hard to celebrate the starting of what is a very tragic part of history for the Native Americans, who probably view us white people as the original illegals. 


Hmmmm, I should probably wrap this up.  I know, how bout a couple pictures to say farewell for now with.  Here's my little hummer, Theodore McTwitch.  Winter time is our time, because I make sure his nectar is always thawed out, and he lets me get super close for some amazing photos.

Not to toot my own horn, but, BEEP BEEP on this one. 

I want to love him and sqeeze him, and hug him and snuggle him, George.

He's really not scared of me anymore.  I really dig that.

Colorful little bugger, ain't he.

Now, go link up, fer Pete's sake.


Who is Pete, and why do we care about his sake?


Bye!

Editing fun.

I love taking pictures, almost as much as I love editing them.  I mean I love editing pictures, almost as must as I love taking pictures.  Okay, I guess I have a passion for both.  As much as I love the rawness of an unedited photo, I'm seriously becoming infatuated with editing and distorting those same pictures.  Here's a few of my most recent edits with their originals.

Here's the original, with a high aperture setting.  I liked it, but thought it could use a little more.

And this is what I did.  I like the faded background, it makes me feel warm.

This one was highly contrasted so I wanted to accent on that.

So I just boosted the contrast a bit and put a vignetting on it.

I like the contrast of the green background with the red leaves, but it was a lot to look at.

I cropped it down, saturated the color a bit and added a soft texture.

It's supposed to be another hot and sunny day here in WA, so I'm hoping to get to the lake and get some shots of the eagles.    They always make me happy.  Don't be afraid to go wild with editing, it can make a great picture, even more outstanding than before.  Just remember to always keep an original so you have a back up.

Rock your Monday!
Marisa

Foto Fun Friday.

Apparently alliteration and phonetic spelling go hand in hand, with me.  It's who I am.  I once tried to write an essay using nothing but phonetically spelled words.  Do you know how hard it is to learn to write, wrong?  And why aren't things spelled phonetically?  Why isn't, at least the word phonetically, spelled phonetically?  Shouldn't at least that word be spelled fonetikalee?  Isn't this post supposed to have something to do with pictures?

Oh yeah!

Yesterday, after dropping the kid off at school, for her two hours of socializing, I arrived back home to see that my big cat had a little tiny baby bunny cornered.  Now he knows, that if I'm there, he's not allowed to touch.  So, I went over and saved this gorgeous little creature, put him/her in a box and let him sleep off his/her shock, while I let the big cat take me to the nest, from which the sweet little he/she was abducted came from.  Which he did.  After a couple hours of dozing, little Hopper, yes I named him/her, this is me, was doing just that, hopping around in his box and I took him/her back to the opening of the nest, where he/she eagerly crawled into to join his/her siblings while waiting for Mama to come back to them.  BTW, are bunnies smart?  I ask this, because we've had cats, forever, two-three at a time.  Why do bunnies decided it's a good idea to make a nest in our front yard, forty feet from our front door?  Just wondering.

I didn't take one single picture of any of this event.  Not even one of the baby bunny.  FAIL!!!

But........
I did manage to get some other pictures while I was out filling feeders. 

Here's Theo in alll his red headed glory.

My Deimos. So handsome.

I love these trees.

The just scream beauty.

This little guy just looks so cute in this tree.

Casanova.  Hard to believe that he's a bunny snatcher, isn't it?

That's a huge bumblebee right there.

Take off!

Then stop for a drink.

Hope y'all have a great weekend!
Marisa