Who?

Yesterday my friend Kari and I went to the MOA to see the HGTV Property Brothers.  I am sure any HGTV Junkie will know who these brothers are but for those in the back, these guys are identical twins that have a show on HGTV.  One is a realtor and one is a contractor.  They take people looking to buy a house and help them find one...but with a little twist.  The couple will tell the brothers (Jonathan and Drew...Jonathan being the longer-haired, contractor in the plaid shirt and Drew being the realtor in the shirt and tie) what they are looking for in a house and what their budget is.  Most people have super high expectations and a lot on their "checklist" that they want.  Drew and Jon will first take them to a house that meets all of their requirements but unknown to the future home buyers, is way out of their budget.  The brothers are basically giving them a reality check and saying "Listen, you want all of this stuff but can't afford it.  Why don't we find you a fixer-upper that we can modify to meet more of your needs and wants."  This is where Jonathan comes in with his eye for opening up walls, renovating kitchens and everything in between.  He takes the run-down homes and does a computer generated design of what a couple of the fixer-uppers could look like.  The couple then picks one home and Jonathan gets to work.  It's a fun show and the brothers are cute together and even cuter together in real life.

Kari and I stood in line for about an hour, got a wrist band, waited for another hour and then the brothers came out and spoke for about a half hour and then signed autographs and took pictures.  I had them sign a paint sample swatch for me just to be a little different. 

 I also may have brought Jonathan something special...I gave him a before & after picture of my bathroom renovation project and on the back I put a picture of myself and said something along the lines of: "Jonathan, this is for inspiration for your next bathroom renovation.  Check out my blog (insert link here) to see more pictures (or just to drop me a line...I am also single!)."  It's a long shot but you never know!  They claim they answer all of the questions they get through their Facebook and Twitter accounts...I wonder if this counts as a question and if they will take the time to visit my blog...  :)

#26Acts

So you know how I'm now on Twitter?  Well after the events of the past week, I haven't been happier that I joined.  Tomorrow will mark a week since the horrific tragedy that struck Sandy Hook school in Connecticut.  It is still so hard to believe and tears still come to my eyes when the adorable faces of those innocent children flash across the TV screen.  With tears of sadness has also come tears of joy.  Ann Curry, the NBC news correspondent, is one of the people I follow on Twitter.  I am not sure why I started following her months ago, but I did.  Shortly after the Sandy Hook tragedy, she tweeted out a basic suggestion:  "Imagine if everyone went out and committed to 20 acts of kindness for everyone child lost in Newtown?"  The response has been overwhelming to say the least.  People started tweeting to her what they were doing as random acts of kindness and then she would re-tweet those tweets.  These re-tweets from Ann started filling up my twitter news feed and I find myself checking twitter more often just to see what people were doing for strangers everywhere.  People then suggested changing it to 26 acts, one for every person that died at the school that day.  It is so cool to know that although we may not see it for ourselves everyday, there are good people in this world that are willing to make a difference for the better.  One of my favorites that I've seen is a guy that said he got on the city bus and he told the driver he wanted to pay for the next 26 people to board the bus.  The driver looked at him and simply said "Ann Curry follower?"  If you haven't heard about #26Acts yet, I am sure you will soon.  Newspapers and TV stations have started picking up this story because it is spreading like wildfire.  I myself did one random act yesterday and plan to do more.  If you haven't heard about this yet, check it out, you won't regret it!  And because I feel it's part of my duty as a semi-"published" writer (ha ha, - as if), I am spreading the word and encouraging you to do at least one random act of kindness for someone in the near future.  You'll love it.  I promise.  Check out this link and this link to get your heart all warm and fuzzy.  And see just a glimpse of Ann's twitter feed below:
Again, Merry Christmas!

what i've been up to

I can gladly say that my computer room is back in somewhat working order!  I am no longer laying on my stomach on the floor to type blog entries which my back could not be happier about.  I will give you the rundown of the project when it's all said and done but in a nut shell, here's the deal so far:  Three paint colors (one which was actually applied to every single wall, one that was tested in a few spots and one that was finally the final one) and three 5'x8' rugs later, I finally have made peace with this room!  Now I just have to hang some stuff on the walls, get a piece of furniture or two in here, lay the rug down and I'm good to go!  I didn't feel like digging for any "before" shots of this room, but here is as it sits right now.  As I type I am patiently waiting for my 3M Command Nails to adhere to the wall so I can hang up some pictures.  I spent literally probably and hour and a half total trying to decide how to hang things and how to hang them symmetrically and proportionally on the large empty wall.  Math can be so tricky!

 

Even though it's not 100% complete, I LOVE this little corner.  I braved Ikea (after my very first trip to that store I swore I'd never go back) and picked up those shelves the other weekend.  I hate to admit it, but the store has grown on me a bit.  Not that I will go there all the time, but I won't avoid it like the Plague anymore.

Anyway, more on that room once it's complete.

I have a new position at work that I love.  It was time for a change of pace and although a good friend of mine left the company and I took her spot, I am very glad I was given the opportunity to learn something new!

It's almost Christmas!  Wow, I can't believe it.  Time flies.  Our family is doing something a little different this year that I'm excited about.  My Grandpa always said that instead of gifts we should go serve food at a shelter or give gifts to a family in need.  So in memory of him this year, we are taking the money that we would have spent on gifts for him and buying for a local family in need.  I am sure he would be proud.  :)  It will be sad and just not the same without him around the tree with all of us this year and I will defiantly miss reading his funny way of writing out the tags in his all caps handwriting as my aunt Kris and I gather all the gifts from under the tree and pass them out: "LEIANNEEEEE"...."KIMMY"...."TIMMY"....."JEFFREEEY"...."ASHLEEEEE"..."KRISEEE"
I wonder how he would have written out Niall's name - I am guessing something like this:  "NIAAAALLL".

And now for good measure, I recent picture of my little Ni Guy and my Christmas tree in all her glory.  Merry Christmas and Happy Shopping!

Splle chek

Sometimes I wish the computer was always smarter than me.  We all know that computers are only as smart as the people who program them, but I wish sometimes they would go above and beyond.
Tonight my oh so-smart-brother texted me a quote from my own blog.  I read it and immediately knew why he was sending the quote.  In my "bloopers" reel from my October photo challenge, I meant to write the word "barely" but wrote "barley" (as in, another word for 'beer'), instead.  If the computer was smarter than me, he (or she) would have read the entire sentence that I had typed and realized that the word "barley" didn't make sense in the context it was placed in and made the red squiggly line under it.   But since the brains behind Apple and Microsoft have yet to make the computer think like a human, we will never know until someone points it out to us, that we used another name for "beer" instead of "barely".
If you are having dejavu right now, don't be alarmed, I have written about this before.  And if you dare to go back to that post, I will tell you my friend's emailing skills haven't gotten any better.  We have yet to talk about a couch again, but she now has the bad habit of spelling the word Vikings with a 'c'...as in "Vickings".  After multiple months of her doing it, I finally called her out.
Please feel free to pass along any future spelling mishaps you may run across on my blog.  I don't claim to be an English major so it actually gives me a nice laugh when my stupidity is pointed out.  Please don't correct my punctuation though, I know that's probably way off the charts when it comes to errors!

You did what?

Last night my friend Jessie and I did the unthinkable.  We waited in a 3+ hour line to get a book signed by two of our favorite bloggers.  Have you heard of the blog Young House Love?  No?  Well I highly recommend going to it.  In a nutshell they are a 30 year old husband and wife who started a blog a handful of years ago.  It started like my measly blog, a few followers here and there with mainly family and close friends checking in on them.  Well their blog exploded and now gets over 5,000,000 (that's million if you're counting the zero's) hits a month.  Their blog is all about DIY (Do It Yourself) around the house and they occasionally throw in posts about their life in general.  They are self-taught DIY-ers and learn as they go and they share it with the world.  They both eventually quit their full time regular jobs and now they make a living writing their blog.  They have written a book and last night they made the West Elm store in Edina a stopping place on their tour.  To say Jessie and I were as giddy as two school girls waiting for the cute boys at recess would be an understatement.  I'd be lying if I told you that we WEREN'T somewhat rehearsing what we would say to John and Sherry once we got to the table to meet them.
I surprisingly wasn't as nervous as I thought I was going to be once I got up to the table but I made a huge nerd of myself by doing the following:  I had a specific thing in mind that I wanted them to write in my book so when John took my book when Jessie and I got up to the table, I said something like "oh John, I have something in mind that I want you to write".  Then I said "It seems so weird to call you by your first name, like I actually know you or something."  They both laughed and then John said "That's OK, most people call me by my first name."  Anyway, the four of us shared a little laugh, they signed both of our books and and we took a picture with them.  They were so nice, it made me like their blog that much more!  Oh and the signing was supposed to go from 6:00 to 8:00.  From the time the doors opened, it took us until just about 8:00 to get our turn and their was still a line out the door when we left a little after 8:00.  I would be willing to bet they didn't turn anyone away and were at the store signing until at least 11:00.

Some snaps from the night:

The backs of Sherry and John through the window.

 

Jessie and her book.

 

Young House Love cookies.

 

Me and my book and cookie.

 

Jessie and I.

 

Us and the celebrities!

 My signed book (kind of obvious, I know).

Bloopers!

Some may argue that the bloopers at the end of a movie or show is the best part of the whole movie or show, right?  I totally think so.  If I ever get the chance to make a movie I will be sure to have a blooper reel while the credits roll.  How else do you get people to stick around to see who gets credit for the lighting and craft food services on set??  By showing bloopers of course!  Granted people might not actually see the craft service people's name scroll across the screen because they will be too busy laughing at the outtakes, but still, it's nice to know that people may have caught a glimpse.  Anyway, the bloopers from my 30 Day Photography Challenge this year aren't nearly as entertaining as say watching Matthew McConaughey (while shirtless) screw up his line for the 10th time in a row, but I'll show you anyway.  Like I said in my last post, through this 30 day challenge, I took about 400 pictures in total.  400 pictures and I only picked out 30 halfway decent ones??  All signs point to me not making a career out of professional photography.  Anyway, here are a few bloopers in all their glory.  Some could maybe call them creative (like in the first one, I could have totally played it cool and acted like I meant to cut half my face off while shooting my self-portrait), but I'm being real here...shots shown below were not supposed to happen; hence why I call them bloopers.  Enjoy!

 Why yes, I totally meant to cut off my face in the day 1, "self-portrait" shot.

This "from a high angle" shot on day 5 would have been cool if it hadn't been taken out of a car window while going  50mph and getting the bottom half of the picture all blurry.

Half my face and apparently Rizzo wanted the toy of his that I was borrowing.

A bad habit from day 8, or a nice shot of my pale knuckles??

Do not adjust your monitor...this picture is blurry.

The ghost of silhouette's past.

Ironically, this is how my head feels after being on hold with Comcast for 20 minutes only to finally get someone who barely speaks English and is able to fix your problem with the simple click of a mouse.

I hate to even admit that this was an attempt at a "bokeh"(crisp foreground with blurry background) shot on day 20 .  It would maybe classify as a cool picture if not for the fact that it wasn't supposed to turn out like this at all!

One of the many attempts of trying to get the perfect "close-up" shot on day 26 of that delicious cookie!

 

30 Day Photograhy Challenge - Days 29 & 30

That's a wrap!  407 photos, 14 blog posts and 30 days later, my 2012 30 Day Photography Challenge has come to an end.  Thanks for stickin' around.  I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!

Day 29:  Black and white.

 

Day 30:  Self-portrait.

30 Day Photography Challenge - Days 27 & 28

Day 27:  From a distance.
 

 

Day 28:  Flowers.

30 Day Photography Challenge - Days 25 & 26

Day 25:  Something pink.

Is it Day 4 again???  Nope!  I just got new gloves!!  Ironically, on day 4 of this years challenge, I photographed my green dish-washing gloves.  Remember when I told you that I had duct tape on one of the fingers because it had a slice in it?  Well they were replaced almost two weeks ago and cross my heart, I didn't even remember when buying these pink gloves that Day 25 was "Something pink" and that on Day 4 I had photographed my green gloves.  It just happened to fall that way.  You know I was excited though when I checked the Challenge Schedule on Day 24 to see what Day 25's photo was and saw that it was "Something pink" and then happened to look over at my dish rack and see the new pink gloves in there, right?  Yes, you know it's true.  I am dorky like that and proud of it! 

 

Day 26:  Close-up.

Not to toot my own horn, but this may be my favorite picture of this years challenge so far.  It could have something to do with the subject I chose for the close-up, I'm not sure...Either way, here she is in all her glory.  A home made chocolate chip cookie made by my friend & coworker Scott.  Seriously, he should be a baker in his next life; look at how perfect that is!  He brought me two cookies today at work and I saved them both for an after work treat.  I opened the baggie on my way home and as I downed the first cookie and started plowing through the second one, I had to stop mid-cookie and put it back into the bag.  It dawned on me that this chocolaty goodness would make a perfect close-up shot for today's photo.  Was I right?  I think so!  And in case you care, after I got the shot I liked, I shoved the remaining goodness in my mouth in one bite.  So much for savoring. 

30 Day Photography Challenge Days 23 & 24

Day 23:  Sunflare.

So I am totally bummed about this photo.  Last year on day 23, the Sunflare turned out to be one of my favorite photos of the entire challenge.  I must have really bad luck this year because on the day I needed clouds, there was hardly a cloud in the sky and the day I needed sun there was absolutely no sun to be found.  Don't get me wrong, I know the sun was actually somewhere, that's why we were able to see in daylight without having lights on, but there weren't any sun rays.  The sun was hidden behind rainy clouds all day long.  So once again, I had to improvise.  You have to look real hard, but looking up at this light in the ceiling, you can see what may look like a representation of a sunflare.  It's kind of like tanning in a tanning bed rather than tanning outside; you get the same effects, but you are just inside looking up at artificial light instead of the sun.  Ok, that probably made no sense whatsoever, but you get the idea, right?

 

Day 24:  Animal.

This is getting ridiculous.  Once again, I had to make something up for the photo today.  I guess I shouldn't feel too bad...this is in fact my challenge and I really don't have to follow the rules if I don't want to.  I still feel kind of bad though.  Anyway, since I wasn't around any animals at all today (yes, some may argue that humans are in fact animals, but that's a whole other subject that we won't discuss today) I had to resort to this.  This is actually a photo that I took today, but I wasn't actually in the presence of this peacock today.  This is a photo taken of another photo.  The peacock photo was taken during my San Diego trip in March of '11 and I took the picture tonight of my computer screen while I had the peacock photo window open...hence the pixels that you may be able to see on the picture.  Either way, it's still a pretty sweet picture that I should do something with rather than just having it stored on my computer for years on end.

30 Day Photography Challenge - Days 20, 21 & 22

Day 20:  Bokeh.

Once again, bokeh is a pretty technical term.  Way too complicated of a word for my vocabulary.  It means the object in the foreground is in focus and the background is out of focus.  This shot is almost as difficult to capture as the Long Exposure shot on day 16.  But, after many, many attempts, I got one that's close.  Here's a flower in focus and its vase out of focus.

 

Day 21:  Faceless self-portrait.

Sunday night couch time.  Ignore my painting sweatpants--I had been working on a computer room-related project earlier that called for these pants.

 

Day 22:  Hands.

 

These hands belong to my mom.  Who knew that just a couple short hours after taking this photo, that right hand would bowl a 500!  Way to go Mom!

30 Day Photography Challenge - Days 17, 18 & 19

Day 17:  Technology.

So many buttons...so little time to care about what they all mean.

 

Day 18: Your shoes. 

 

Day 19:  Something orange.

Coming straight from PANTONE®, the King of Color, you don't get any truer Orange than this!

30 Day Photography Challenge - Days 15 & 16

Day 15: Silhouette. 

Since I have to be glued to my office chair for 8 hours of the day, wouldn't it be just my luck that the evening I needed some sunlight to take a silhouette picture, the sun would say goodbye before I got home?  That's what happened so I had to improvise.  I had my friend Kristi over and with Thomas Edison's help (and a little Photoshop work), we were able to get this shady photo in.  Not the best in the west, but it'll do.

 

Day 16: Long exposure.

Unfortunately I had to improvise a bit on this shot too.  As I stated last year, this photo challenge was probably meant for people with mad photo skills and have big fancy cameras that allow you to control basically everything.  I unfortunately don't have the pleasure of having a camera like that so I had to wing it.  I did turn the camera to "manual" mode but I couldn't control the exposure time, so I just did what I could.  This was the scene on my kitchen table when I got home from work today.  The sun was shining so nice on my fall table that I just felt it needed a good picture.  I love the shadow that the flowers are casting.  It feels like the perfect blend of summer and fall, don't you think?

...and in other news, congratulations to my friends Kari and Miguel who had their adorable baby boy today!

Cruz Delgado came into the world today at 3:08 pm.  Congratulations Kari & Migulel!

30 Day Photography Challenge - Days 11, 12, 13 & 14

Day 11:  Something blue.

Pretty fitting since I still am still laying on the floor typing on my computer, meaning my computer room isn't put together yet.  I used this stuff to tape off baseboards, etc. while painting the room, only to realize I dislike the color and have taken all my baseboards off so I can replace them.  Long story.

 

Day 12: Sunset.

This is by far, the worst picture I have taken for the Photography Challenge to date.  I blame myself and the fact that I totally forgot about taking the picture until about 7:30 at night.  I was lucky to pull even this off.  It's dark, it's blurry, it's all around bad.  My apologies.

 

Day 13: Yourself with 13 things.

I had a couple ideas in mind for this shot.  One was pretty lame and one was OK.  In the end I decided this was the most random.  I posed with 13 of Rizzo's toys.  The most fun was gathering the toys and making him "stay" while I positioned HIS toys and took a picture of myself in front of them.  He must not have had his listening ears on a couple times because he actually got into one of the shots while the self-timer went off, stole a toy and ran with it.  :)  Oh and no, that's not my long, dark hair hanging down my shoulder, it's part of his skunk toy.

 

Day 14: Eye(s).

Yes, yes, this is technically supposed to be an "eyes" (plural) shot, but I thought this shot with just one eye in it turned out so much better.  If you look real close, you can see the trees from outside the window reflecting in the eye.