52 walks in 52 weeks.

Well, the year is pretty much over now - only about 14 hours left in it for me here in Ohio - and I'm happy to say that I completed the biggest task I gave myself this year - I did 52 photowalks in 52 weeks. It really didn't seem like a big deal as I was doing it: I loved it for both the walking and the photography. But looking back, I guess it is rather impressive that I stuck to something like that for an entire year.

What's even crazier is that I'm thinking about doing it again next year!

Anyway, I haven't edited walk 52 yet, but I can show you 50 and 51.

Photowalk 50 might be considered a cheat, because I just walked around my parents house when I was out there in CT. They had so many great Christmas decorations up that I couldn't help myself. Besides, it was really cold outside! My favorite photo ended up being of Charlie, but you can see the entire slideshow here:



Photowalk 51 was a quick stop at a metro park in Columbus when we were down there visiting friends. It was so snowy and cold, and we were both only wearing chucks on our feet, so the walk was pretty short. My favorite photo is seen below, but the whole slideshow can be seen here:

I'm alright, I'm alright!

You know that line from It's a Wonderful Life that we always laugh at? I just read this on mental floss:

Speaking of Uncle Billy, one of the funniest parts of the movie was an ad-lib from Billy’s portrayer, Thomas Mitchell. After Uncle Billy ties one on at the engagement party and George points him home, there’s a loud crash off-screen. In actuality, someone accidentally knocked some props over while filming was going on. Mitchell saved the scene by quipping, “I’m all right! I’m all right!” Capra found it so funny that he kept it in the film.

Too funny!

Back from Connecticut!

John and I had a great time in Connecticut this past weekend where John got to go on his first Lantern Tour at Mystic Seaport. We also got to eat LOTS of good food, and introduce John to Jok-R-Ummy, which he's already wishing we had. Really, the only downside of the entire trip was being delayed a couple hours on our flight home because of the weather.

But we made it home safely, and I'm thankful for that.

I'm pretty far behind in editing/posting images, so I don't have any of the CT ones up yet, but I can show you some photos from two photowalks I did before we left (I can't believe I only have TWO left to do!)

Photowalk 48 took me back to downtown Akron. It started raining, so I had to pack up and go home sooner than I would have liked, but I managed to still get a few photos I was happy with. My favorite is seen below, but you can see the whole slideshow here:


I don't know what this building was originally used for, but it doesn't look like it's doing much these days.

Photowalk 49 was supposed to be around this lake in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. But I got there, and it was closed, so I drove on to the next stop on that road, which is the Ledges area. I'd been there a number of times before, so I wasn't quite as excited about it, but I did still get a few good photos. It's really hard to pick just one favorite, but if I must, it's the one you see below. The entire slideshow can be seen here:



Here's a few other misc. pictures that aren't part of photowalks, but I still thought were worth sharing:


Some branches in my backyard.


Chillin' in John's car (I love those boots, btw)


Mylescat.


YOSHI! With christmas lights in the background. Drapped over the living room chairs since I didn't put up a tree this year.


Maiacat. Same Christmas lights (which are actually white lights. I could go into the technical details as to why they look purple, but I'm too lazy)

More blinds and a few photowalks

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I missed hanging out with my family, but had a great time in Mingo with John.

We were able to get a lot of things done over the long weekend, though, including finally putting together the fancy-schmancy bookcase for my office, which allowed us to do some furniture re-arranging and the place looks GREAT now, check it out:


From the door


From the other corner


The New bookcase

Also, I mentioned in the last entry how great the new blinds looked not - not only from inside the house, but outside as well, check it out:



I've also been on two photowalks since last posting, so let's check those out. The first one was to downtown Akron at night, and I really didn't like most of the results, so I'll only share my two favorites here:


Outside brick wall of a parking deck


The Akron Public Library

The next week I went back to Hampton Hills Metro Park (I had been there in June when it was incredibly GREEN and vibrant). You can see the slideshow here: , but check out my favorite photo from the bunch:

New Blinds!

My birthday present from the 'rents was money to put towards new blinds for my living room. If you've been in my house, you know how desperately they were needed. The old blinds were poop-brown, plastic, and falling apart. I replaced them with cellular blinds, that are an off-white color... and CORDLESS! Not only do they look a lot better, but my living room is a lot brighter now, too, which always used to be a problem.

Anyway, we ordered the blinds right around my birthday, the arrived a couple weeks later, and now we have them all installed! Here we are with only one blind installed, so you can see the difference between the old (on the left) and the new. Another huge difference is that these blinds are inside-mounted so you can see more of the awesome woodwork:




Two blinds!

John just finished the wall of four windows tonight, so I haven't uploaded any pictures of those, but... well, they look just like those two windows there, but imagine four side-by-side instead of two :)

They look REALLY good from the outside, especially at night. I almost missed pulling into our driveway earlier tonight because we were oohing and ahhing about how good they looked :)

And, if you're ever planning on getting blinds yourself. I recommend paying to have someone measure them, but installing them yourself. If I had done my own measurement, I would have apparently measured the wrong thing (my windows are more complicated than newer houses, though, I'm sure). But the installation? 4 screws per blind and no exact measuring. The measuring cost us only $35, but they wanted over $100 for installation. For four screws per blind! No thanks.

Winner!

I took the above photo when John and I went on our vacation to Salt Fork State Park earlier this year. I entered it (and a number of other photos) into their annual phot contest - and I won First Place in the Park Activities category!

My prize is a two-night stay at an Ohio State Park resort, as well as free breakfast for two! Exciting! You can see all the winners of the contest here.

Two More Photowalks

The most expensive news in the Jacobs/DeBacco household as of late is that our furnace needs to be replaced. I've had a quote from one place, and am trying to find a second place to get a quote from that's both rated highly on Angie's List AND a Carrier dealer (I figured it was better to compare apples to apples, and my research shows that Carrier is a good, solid product).

In other exciting news - my blinds have arrived! I can't remember if I mentioned that mom & dad gave me money for my birthday to put towards blinds for my living room. A much appreciated gift, the money the gave was able to put a huge dent in the cost of the blinds - especially because the ones I wanted were on sale for 15% off! The blinds arrived today, which I only know because I went home for lunch. I'm not sure when we'll have to time to hang them because I have a Sleep Study tonight, and then we have a house warming party for one of John's friends to go to tomorrow.

Anyway. Let me catch you up on my photowalks. I'm using a different slide-show service now because the flickr one wasn't working very well for me anymore. The upside to this (besides just the fact that it works) is that you can see the title/description of each photo. The downside is that the photos aren't as big. But maybe you'll like that? *shrug*.

Photowalk 44 was on my birthday! John had asked what I wanted to do that day, and I suggested going to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, since my friend Michelle worked up there with the animals. She was able to give us a "behind the scenes" tour, and I was even able to hold a skunk (so cute!) and feed an otter! Very exciting stuff. My favorite photo from the day is below, but you can see the entire slideshow here:



My 45th photowalk was at a metro park near my house. I went in the hour before sunset and it was just beautiful. My favorite photo is below, but you can view the entire slideshow here:



Btw, if you're interested all in my tips about photography, not only is there iffles.com to read, which I run myself, but I've also been writing articles for Digital Photography School. There's no easy way to find the ones posted by me, because for some reason, I'm still showing up as a "Guest Contributor", even though I'm no longer a guest contributor, but a "staff" writer. *shrug*

Returning to two favorite parks

On my 43rd photo walk, I returned to two of my favorite parks to get pictures of them in the fall. Goodyear Heights Metro Park:



... and Firestone Metro Park:



You can see the whole slideshow of those photos here. (note: I've been having issues with the slideshow lately and it sometimes doesn't work. If it doesn't work for you, and you really wanna see the photos, you can go here, but you'll have to click on the thumbnails to open the photos.

Also. John got me flowers for my birthday. Three red roses...



...and two white lilies (one of which hasn't opened yet):

This is why I go on Photowalks

It hasn't always been easy to get motivated to go on photowalks once a week this year. But it's photos like these that make it worth it:







I haven't finished editing all of that photowalk yet (my 43rd of the year - less than 10 left! Crazy!), so gimme a few days for the slideshow. I just couldn't resist posting these few a bit early.

I love that you can't tell from the photos that there was some big family reunion or something going on all around me. Looks quiet and peaceful, doesn't it? ...it wasn't :)

New Layout + Lots of photos

First of you, you may have noticed that I switched up the layout around here. I just wanted one that stretched so that I could post photos from flickr without them getting cut off. It makes my life a lot easier.

Second. The weekend before last I got a chance to go visit E and her family while the 'rents were there, too. We all went to the pumpkin patch. My favorite photo is shown below but here is the slideshow (I've been having issues with flickr's slideshow lately. Hopefully it works for you.)



Btw, it's really hard to get you guys to all look at the camera at the same time - so the ones where you're sitting on the hayride? Those are actually more than one photo edited together - and you're STILL not all looking! This is why I don't want to become a professional photographer :)

Anyway, after the pumpkin patch we went back to E's house and the kids dressed up in their wonderful Halloween costumes. My favorite photo is below, but here's that slideshow.



This past weekend, I went on a photowalk to a local metropark. My favorite photo is below, but for a ton of fall photos, check out the entire slideshow



And finally, for the record, I order prints of my photos quite a bit. It's really cheap to add more prints to an order, since it's the shipping that's the most expensive. If you want prints of ANY of my photos, please let me know. I don't upload the full size versions to flickr, so you're not going to get the highest quality unless you ask me anyway, and so you might as well just let me do it for you so you can save money!

Keep in mind, too, that the photos you're seeing in the slideshow probably aren't the best quality photos either - first of all, flickr does some compressing when you upload them, so they're often not as crisp and clear as the actual photos that I have, and more importantly, when you view the slideshow, flickr makes the images full screen (or, at least relatively full screen). I don't upload full size pics, though, so the higher your resolution, the worse the photo will look because flickr is stretching it out.

Salt Fork State Park

Finally! We've been home for almost two weeks and I finally finished editing and posting my photos. No sneak peeks today - you have to actually go to the slideshow to see the photos. FYI, there's a few photos that I edited slightly different, so if you think you've seen one of the photos twice and therefore think it's back at the beginning, you're wrong - the slideshow actually stops at the end, it doesn't start over, so keep watching until it stops! Anyway, here they are!

Another Photowalk Catch-Up

oh dear. Someone really needs to remind me when I forget to write in here!

Remember when I posted about the opportunity I had to write for Digital Photography School? Well, I got to write a second article, too. Both articles led to a lot of traffic on iffles.com, the photography site I created and run. Not only has the exposure been great, but I've also been asked to become a regular writer for DPS, which means a small second income and more exposure. I'm excited - albeit a bit nervous! - to do it.

The last photowalk I left off with was the one of the new Akron football stadium. Keeping with the sports theme, I picked PNC Park as my next Photowalk. My favorite photo (seen below) was actually taken on the walk to the park. To see all the photos from that day, view this slideshow.



Next up was a walk downtown. I picked a random place to park and walked around an old building that looked to be a victim of a fire and down to an old Goodyear building. My favorite photo (below) was of the lock on the gate outside the Goodyear building. The entire slideshow can be seen here.



It's hard to pick a favorite from the next photowalk, where I went to Cuyahoga Valley National Park to Brandywine Falls. Ted and I used to go here a lot, so it was weird to go back alone, and I also hurt my back during this walk (I have no idea how, but by the time I got home I could barely move). One of the photos from the falls can be seen below, and the whole slideshow can be seen here.



I was sick for my next photowalk, so in an effort to preserve energy, I just walked down to the shopping center on the other side of the train tracks, and walked around back to get some more urban shots. Funny, my favorite shot (taken in the parking lot), people seem to think is from a beach! You can see that photo below, and the entire slideshow here



The next two photowalks were taken on vacation when John and I went to Salt Fork State Park - where we had an amazing time, by the way. I'm going to wait to post those until ALL the Salt Fork photos are edited and you'll get one really long slideshow :)

Cheese & Crackers

Got a shot of John and I using the pretty plate, mom! I think cheese and crackers taste better when they're on pretty plates.

Getting more famous every day

I recently got an opportunity to write an article for a great photography website called Digital Photography School. Check out 7 Photography Projects to Jumpstart your Creativity!

Photowalk Catch-up

Oh dear. I'm really far behind in posting my photowalks over here. I think the last I posted was when I was on Connecitcut.

So, shortly after getting back I went to Firestone Park, which has a pond called Little Turtle Pond. I stayed there to watch the sunset. You can see those photos in this slideshow. I got two of the photos printed up as 8x10s and this is one of them:



After that I went on the World Wide Photowalk - where people all across the world went on organized photowalks on teh same day. I actually wasn't really happy with many of my photos, and I didn't win any awards... You can see my entire set here, though this photo of a door is probably my favorite of the bunch:



Then I went back to where I went on my first photowalk - the Sand Run Metro Park's Big Bend area. You can see that slideshow here. The walk was pretty miserable - muggy, foggy and very buggy. I guess this is my favorite photo from that bunch... once again, that walk was not my best work:



The next photowalk was downtown. I love walking downtown Akron. Lots of buildings and textures and angles - you can see them all here. While I love a lot of the detail shots I got on that walk, I think my favorite was this shot of the new part of the Akron Art Museum:



Next was another miserable, hot, and buggy photowalk in Sand Run. This time I went on a few different shorter trails, and you can see all the photos here. Once again, still not my best work, though I did like this photo:



Last, but not least, I got to go on a tour of the new football stadium for the University of Akron - their first football stadium ever! I had a blast taking all these photos, so it's tough to pick a favorite, but this one gives you a good sense of what the field was like:



I'm sure most of you know that my dad was in town recently and we went to the Indians game, and then later I met up with him for a Pirates game, so stay tuned for pictures from both of those events!

New Oven!

Sorry I haven't written much in here. After launching iffles.com, I found that what little time I seem to have for writing goes there.

However, I know mom'll be excited to see the new oven(s)... so... here it (they) are:

 

 

We LOVE it. It's soooo much nicer than that old piece of crap we had. I'm so excited about the dual oven (believe me, I thought it was dumb until I started researching it, too: you can 95% of the stuff you cook in the smaller upper oven - the only thing it seems the lower oven is needed for is roasts, hams, turkeys, etc... and, uh, I don't think I'll be cooking any of those anytime soon), but really what I'm most excited about are the stupid features: knowing exactly how hot the oven is any point in time, flat burners, more than one big burner, a timer, a clock, WINDOWS and OVEN LIGHTS! I can see what's in the oven without having to open it! And, of course, that I finally have matching appliances! This should tide me over for a while until I start really remodelling... one day, one day...

Check out this collage I made of some of the features of the oven.

(yes, I'm this excited about an oven. I told mom it must mean I'm old now.)