Outside the house

Don't miss the other entry (also with pictures) before this one!!!

As mentioned in the previous entry, I've been really trying to hone my editing skills. These are some typical everyday things around my house (the gate between my front and back yard, the hook on the screened top of the fire pit, and the rust on our charcoal grill), that I think I've really made look pretty... or at least more interesting! :)

 

 

 

Mary & Andrew

It's amazing how much I've learned about photography and photo editing this year, and it's all be self-taught, and very little reading, mostly just playing around - as well as following photographers I love online and getting inspired from them. While I probably could get better faster if I "trained", I want to keep it fun for me, which means "no work" for me.

Anyway, lately I've been focusing more on the editing side of the equation than the photography side. I remembered the pictures I took of E's family back in June and pulled out two photos and played around. I obviously made them both black & white, but I played with the curves and levels, as well, and cloned out a spot of drool on Mary's outfit:

 

 

Heart Walk!

As most of you know, I did a walk for the American Heart Association on Saturday. These are my favorite pictures from that day (the boy with the sign on his back I didn't know, but you could put stickers on your back saying you were walking in tribute to someone, and I liked his):

 

 

 

 

Oh, if you still wanted to donate, you can keep donating up until sometime next month. You can donate via credit card here.

We have power!!!

I haven't witnessed it yet, since I'm at work, but John says that the power was turned on around noon! Thank GOODNESS. Especaily for John, since his entire living revolves around being about to use electricity!

Since we had to throw away 99% of the food in the fridge and freezer, John took the opportunity to clean it out. He said it looks brand new now! Yay! I'm looking forward to going to the grocery store tonight (In my car! Yay car!) and buying food and drinks to FILL IT UP! :)

No Power

Not sure how many of you are aware... we've been without power since Sunday around 5:00 PM because of the winds left over from the hurricane. The worst part is probably that our cars are trapped inside our garage - with only an electric door opener and no people-door to the garage (lesson learned, I'm going to have to get one installed), that means we have NO CARS. Luckily I can walk to work now, and John works from home, but poor John can't ship anything (which is vital to his business, as you know) because he can't print any labels without power, so he can't have the postman pick up his packages... and he can't drop them off at the post office without a car.

In addition, there's nothing to DO without power, especially once it gets dark. So far we've hung out at the local restaurant/bar that has free WiFi, convinced John's friend to pick him up so he could go watch a football game, played Trivia Pursuit by candlelight, and read by flashlight. a lot.

FirstEnergy's estimate as to when we'll get power back? Thursday or Friday.

Back from Vegas

And we're SO glad to be back. Don't get me wrong, Vegas is great and all. But a week was WAY too long to be there. I'm exhausted (and taking the red eye home didn't help with that).

But I'm sure you want to know what we did while there:

• Met up with Tim on our first night there. He walked us down to the bellagio, because I really wanted to see the ceiling, then we went out to dinner, and then he was nice enough to take us to the grocery store so we could buy food for the rest of the week (we wanted to save money so we ate cereal, granola bars and sandwiches in the room as much as possible)
• The conference was actually really good, I'm looking forward to eventually being able to use all the things I learned about
• We did the gondola ride thing - we did the outdoor one, which meant it was HOT, but also meant that no one else wanted to get a ride then, so we got our gondola all to ourselves!
• We went and saw Blue Man Group, which was awesome. Srsly.
• John played Poker, Blackjack and War (yes, the classic card game we played as kids), and was up in all three! I only played War and video poker, and was down in both. Luckily, I limited myself a set amount of money, and so I don't feel bad about losing it all
• We took the bus one day that goes up an down the strip so we got to see the whole thing. Very exciting
• We went to the M&M store - four floors of M&M stuff! - GameWorks, and the movie theater on Friday when we had to kill time before our flight

And that's about it.

Anyway, I'm sure you're surprised to hear that I took pictures. Here's the slideshow. I recently discovered if you click on a picture during the slideshow it will pull up the description so you can see what it is that I actually took a picture of.

Don't worry, Bryan...

... your laptop is in good hands.

er, paws.

 

The last few pics

 

 

 

A few final pics I like that didn't really fit in any of the other entries... including just part of a HUGE woodpile and John playing Cornhole :)

Views from Steubenville

 

 

 

Two of these are from the outside of one of John's friend's house that we stopped at around sunset before going home. The other is from the house at the top of the hill I was talking about in the previous entry.

It's funny, I've always thought of Steubenville as just a struggling part of Ohio with nothing much in it, but going with my camera made me realize how beautiful it really is, and how many photo ops there are, I didn't talk half as many pictures as I would have if I was alone and had all the time in the world.

Top of the hill

 

 

 

 

After being lazy on the porch swing for a while (see the first post), John took me up to the top of the hill where (someone? a relative of his, I'm assuming, but it's frustrating that all these people remember me and my name, and I have no idea who any of them are because you meet them all ONCE and then they know you because you're only one person, but how can I remember them all??? gah!) has a house on acres and acres of land (40-something, I think? I really can't remember what John's dad told me... I'm obviously bad at this whole "remembering" thing.) I didn't get a picture of the house (d'oh) that was brought in from New Orleans in the 1800s. But I was in love with this barn and how secluded it was up there. We couldn't walk around much because the fields hadn't been mowed down for the year yet, so we couldn't walk around without long pants, and we were both wearing shorts. We did get to see some wild turkeys, though (in the woods, so it was too dark to get a picture)

Flowers and Trees

 

 

 

 

John & I on a swing

 

 

John's parents are downsizing and moving into a smaller house, so we went there yesterday in order to help them move. It was hot and there wasn't enough room in the car for John and I when it was loaded with stuff, so we had to walk from the old house to the new house. We were pretty exhausted and enjoyed our time on this porch swing when all was said and done.