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):