The less I write the less I have to say.

I know I say this before every post I post after it’s been awhile, but this blog has been neglected since my birthday and has grown a long, long beard.   The beard is so long I think I see some hairs starting to creep down below the screen.  Not cool.  I think the less I write, the less I have to say on this little slice of internet heaven that is my own.  Again, not cool.  This is valuable space that people would love to have.  Ok, not really but whatever. 

Anyway, what can I tell you that’s interesting?... 

Did you know that I was getting new/used kitchen cabinets?  Well I was and I was super pumped about them.  My friend’s mom was gutting her kitchen and offered me her solid oak cabinets.  So after measuring and looking at them, I decided to take them.  Well long story short, after four pickup truck loads of hauling cabinets and putting them into my garage, I decided that they weren’t going to work after all.  Too much time would have to be invested and they maybe wouldn’t have looked right in there anyway.  So after discussion with some other peeps in my circle, I decided that I was just going to keep the cabinets I have and do some updating to them.  I am kind of excited about it.  It’s going to be a long project but will hopefully be worth it.  I plan to start it after vacation so that will HOPEFULLY mean that my blog will be back in business in the New Year.  There is also another change to it that I have been thinking about making to the blog so stay tuned for that, too. :)

Did you hear all the ruckus about the Holiday Train that made a stop in Cottage Grove?  It was kind of a big deal and was the only stop in the country that had a free little concert to go along with the stop.  There were three acts: The Claytones, Take 6 and Sheryl Crow.  Drew and I went and it was cold, but it was also really fun.  We were about 15 feet from the stage—I could literally see the pattern on Sheryl’s mittens.  Sheryl played for an hour and the other two acts played for about a half an hour each.  It was a pretty sweet gig.  Nothing like a free concert in CG to kick off a Saturday night! 

I just pulled my camera out of my purse the other day to find the battery completely dead (surprise, surprise).  After I charged it I looked at my last pictures taken and they were the pictures I took during pumpkin carving!  That means it’s been almost two months since I’ve taken a “real” picture.  That’s pretty unacceptable in my book.  I need to get on that in the New Year, too. 

Since I slacked in the real camera department, I’ll leave you with some pixelated cell phone shots.  (I have since upgrade my phone so hopefully my next ones won't be so rotten!) 

Have a Merry Christmas and a Wonderful New Year!  Thanks for being a blog reader.  :)

Turning 32 and New Teeth

While I should be cleaning my messy house on this Sunday morning, I am going to blog for a second instead.  My house has been neglected for the past two weeks due to birthday celebrations all around.
I turned 32 last week and it was wonderful!  I was spoiled with great gifts by too many people.  I'd be lying if I said I didn't love it!  Having wonderful family and friends is a great problem to have.  :)
My mom and I have very close birthdays so we always have a combined birthday party of some sort that involves great food and great company.
My birthday itself was a two day celebration hosted by Drew.  If you follow me on Instagram you may have seen some flowers, a fancy restaurant and an up close and personal view of the Minnesota Wild game.  I also got a few other gifts.  He went above and beyond--I am one lucky girl!  Turning a year older was fine with me.  :)

I wish I would have used my regular camera for this shot, but I had my phone ready for some Instagram-worthy shots and never got out the old Sony.  Apparently IG has come first to real photos. #badhabit  Anyway, this is the view from our seats in row two!

My birthday continued on Thursday with a little gift to myself...new teeth!  Last time I blogged, I left you with that non-flattering picture of me and my gnarly stubs of teeth sticking out.  Well my temporaries were replaced with the real deal and I seriously could not be happier with them!  No more gray gum line, no more fat, chicklet-looking teeth, these puppies are as good as real!  If you ever decide to knock out your front teeth and need crowns put in, I HIGHLY recommend Great River Dental in St. Paul.  Have Dr. Rozinka fix you up--you won't regret it!  Ashley told me he was a perfectionist and he totally is.  This isn't the greatest shot in the world, but maybe you'll get the gist!

Alright, it's time for me to start my house cleaning and try to figure out what to do with the 6 foot piece of furniture I bought at a barn sale yesterday.  I'll keep you posted!  Oh and just so you know, since the birthdays are over and the Retail Gods are pushing Christmas in your face extra early this year, I too have hopped on the bandwagon...I have my Christmas playlist playing and my "flannel" scented candle burning.  Have a good week!

Another Photo Challenge, Pumpkin Carving and Spooky Teeth!

So in the midst of my yearly photo challenge, I was asked to partake in another photo event.  I was honored to be asked to take my mediocre photography skills and take Niall's 18 month pictures.  Of course I love shooting pictures of my little gem, but I knew that any 18 month old on the move would be somewhat difficult to get some decent shots of.  Turns out, they didn't turn out so bad.  He sat still for long enough for me to get some nice smiles and I even got him to say 'cheese' for me.  Below are some of my favorites.  I think these out of all of them I took capture all aspects of his personality the best.  :)

How was your Halloween?  I never get many trick or treaters around my house so I still have an almost full bowl of candy sitting on my living room chair begging me not to eat it.  Although I didn't get many kids to see them, I think my pumpkins were the best on the block.  Drew was bound and determined to get some sort of ski logo carved onto his pumpkin and since he "hadn't carved a pumpkin since he was 12", his skills were tested and somewhat failed when it was time to carve skinny part of the Nordica logo.  Oh the shame.  Thankfully some toothpicks saved the day and it didn't turn out too bad.  The other two faces were carved by yours truly.

And now for the really spooky (and maybe gross) part of this post.  I am getting my two front crowns replaced!  13 years ago I knocked out two of my front teeth in a rollerblading incident and ended up with one root canal and two crowns.  The crowns looked great in their day but they were starting to show their age and I figured it was high time I got them replaced.  So on Halloween, the most fitting day for this procedure, I went to appointment 1 of 2 to get my crowns replaced with the newest, latest and greatest technology in dentistry (according to my sister-in-law, the dental assistant).  If you look real close at this before picture, you can see my front tooth is somewhat larger and fatter than my other tooth and you can see my gray gum line.  That will all go away after these new crowns are in.  I know for a fact I had never been so excited to go to the dentist last Thursday!

And now for the 'during' photo:  This is what I looked like in the dental chair for a good half hour.  These are my real teeth that are underneath those crowns.  I guess this is what shade of yellow my teeth would look like if they were never touched by a toothbrush!  Disgusting, huh?  For now I have temporaries on that resemble my old crowns (minus the gray gum line), but in a week from Thursday, I will be good as new!  I will make sure to show you another before and after shot because I know you are dying to know.  I will leave you with this image so you can have a nice mental picture of it all day long!  Hopefully when I am famous someday this image won't surface.  I guess I'll take that chance.  Keeping it real is what it's all about, right?

Have a great week!

Oh and one more thing before I go; my four legged brother turned 6 on November 1st.  I snagged this picture of him with his birthday gifts from my mom's Instagram account.  Happy Birthday Rizzo!

30 Day Photography Challenge - Day 30

Day 30: Self portrait.

Wow I can't believe this is the last day!  These past 30 days flew by.  I can't believe this is over.  It's been fun--thanks for stickin' around through the good, the bad and the ugly!
Confession: this self portrait shot below was one of 90 that I took of myself.  Yes, that's 90.  Ten away from 100.  It's a bit extreme, I do admit but it had to be done.  I got a lot of weird shadows, double chins, fake smiles and blurry eyes on those 90 shots.  This shot isn't the best one, but as I was looking at all 90 options, this one, along with a few others really stuck out at me.  By looking at this picture, I think I know what people are talking about: I do in fact, look like my mom!  I had to remind myself multiple times while scrolling through that I was actually looking at pictures of myself and not her.  Anyway, I think this one really looks like her for some reason so I am posting it.  :)

Have a SPOOKY halloween!

30 Day Photography Challenge - Day 29

Day 29: Black and White.

Trick or Treat?  I may or may not have eaten three pieces on the way home from buying these tonight.

30 Day Photography Challenge - Day 28

Day 28: Flowers.

Who said they had to be real?

30 Day Photography Challenge - Day 27

Day 27: From A Distance.

30 Day Photography Challenge - Days 25 & 26

Day 26: Close up.

Day 25: Something Pink.

All three pink, all three found in the bathroom and all three are used at least once daily.  :)

30 Day Photography Challenge - Day 24

Day 24: Animal.
So I had my camera outside with me after work, hoping to catch some squirrels in action, but was having no luck.  Much to my surprise, the neighbors cat who happens to be taking a liking to me and my yard lately, was out doing his/her thing so I pounced (pun intended) at the opportunity.  I have no idea what this cats name is, I just know that it meows a lot and seems to like my front step.  Here it is using the yard as a scratching post.

30 Day Photography Challenge - Day 23

Day 23: Sunflare.

Did you guys see this sun today?  No?  Me neither.  I had to swipe this generic sun picture from some sight on the internet because the sun wasn't out today.  Another bad luck day with sun-related pictures. I did technically take a picture of my computer screen, so it is actually a photo of mine...it's just a photo of a photo that isn't mine.  Please don't try to download and sell this masterpiece--I know it will be difficult not to, but please try and hold back.

30 Day Photography Challenge - Day 22

Day 22: Hands.

30 Day Photography Challenge - Day 21

Day 21: Faceless Self-Portrait.
I could have pulled a Kim Kardashian or Lady Gaga and posted a picture of my butt for this photo; that seems to be the thing to do these days.  However, I don't think anyone would want to see that so I opted for shooting the backside of the other lump about three feet above my rear end, instead.

WARNING:  Clicking on the Kim Kardashian or Lady Gaga links will give you nightmares.  I don't recommend it.

URGENT!!!

I interrupt this 30 Day Photography Challenge to bring you some breaking news!

AP NEWS WIRE: 2013. Oct 21 12:36 PM CDT
HASTINGS (AP) Facebook was down early this morning and may still be experiencing some minor glitches.  I hope your food supply is high and the batteries in your flashlights are fresh--the world may stop spinning.  Everybody please go into panic mode because the World is currently in a state of Code Red.

Ok, in all seriousness... That blurb did not actually come from the Associated Press, I of course crafted that one up, but still.  In all reality Facebook was and maybe still is experiencing glitches early this morning.  I know this because a big portion of my job requires me to be on Facebook.  When Facebook wasn't cooperating with me for about a half an hour this morning, I decided to take matters into my own hands and figure out what was going on.  So I did the most logical thing:  I went to Twitter.
I logged onto Twitter, searched the hashtag "Facebook" and wouldn't you know, the answer to my question was in front of my eyes, about 1000 times, in 140 characters or less.  Who knew that Facebook being in a state of semi-limbo could cause such a fuss.  I grabbed a few screen shots of the twitter feed for proof.
Allow me:

Believe me, this bunch of tweets was just a small portion of the tweets out there.  Did you notice that actual, real-life NEWS channels were tweeting this garbage out???  One tweet (not shown) actually said that a NATIONAL news station in the UK actually talked about the story ON AIR.  Either it was a really slow news day over there, Princess Kate wasn't anywhere to be found so they could photograph her 'post-baby bod' or Facebook is truly taking over our lives.  We need to get a handle on this.  It is really sad.
My favorite tweets of course are the ones who are making fun of the fact that FB was down.  Like when Rob Johnson or @RobOnTheRun said: "#Facebook down?!! How will the girl who didn't talk to me in high school flood my news feed with pics of her 4th daughter's beauty pageant?!" and when Mark Arum or @MarkArum said: "#Facebook is down.  I have no way of knowing if my friends took their kids apple picking or pumpkin picking this weekend."
Hopefully Facebook will be back online soon so we can get on with our lives, jobs and so that Zuckerberg and Google can continue to take over the world one LIKE at a time.

30 Day Photography Challenge - Day 20

Day 20: Bokeh.
The definition of this is where the object in the front is in focus and the object(s) in the background are out of focus.

30 Day Photography Challenge - Days 18 & 19

Day 19: Something Orange.

Day 18: Your Shoes.

Jeans day at work on Friday, so you get my work shoes along with my jeans.  

30 Day Photography Challenge - Day 17

Day 17: Technology.
Are they computers?  Are they phones?  Who really knows.

30 Day Photography Challenge - Day 16

Day 16: Long Exposure.

30 Day Photography Challenge - Day 15

Day 15: Silhouette.

This photo always gets me.  I am horrible at it.  Don't judge the bad photo or the fact that I had to tweak it a bit in Photoshop to make the shadow a bit on the dark side.

30 Day Photography Challenge - Day 14

Day 14: Eyes.

In other news...I broke down and turned my heat on today.  Sad.

30 Day Photography Challenge - Days 12 & 13

So I had a little goof on day 12.  First of all, there wasn't much of a sunset due to the very overcast afternoon.  Second of all, I was at a wedding on the evening of day 12 and wasn't able to go outside  to even see if there was a sunset.  So I had to cheat a bit.  I took day 12 & 13 photos both on day 13. Please forgive me.  :)

Day 12: Sunset.

Day 13: Yourself with 13 Things.

Not the most flattering photo, I admit.  But if you dare to look close, there are 13 mini pretzel rods shoved in my mouth.  Needless to say my lips were pretty dry after having those shoved in there while I tried to capture the winning shot.

30 Day Photography Challenge - Day 11

Day 11: Something Blue.

For Rory.  No One Fights Alone.

30 Day Photography Challenge - Day 10

Day 10: Childhood Memory.

I was racking my brain today, trying to think of what I could photograph for today's subject.  I was at a loss.  I happened to go into Target over lunch and what happens to be on display right at the front of the store??...Cereal from my childhood!  And in the vintage packaging to boot.  I swear my grandma always had Count Chocula on hand whenever we slept over.  That and Fruity Pebbles of course.  :)

30 Day Photography Challenge - Day 9

Day 9: Someone You Love.

30 Day Photography Challenge - Day 8

Day 8: A bad habit.

If driving nearly 80 mph in a 65 mph zone while taking a photo isn't a bad habit, I am not sure what is.
Keep in mind that I don't normally take pictures while driving (that is pretty much as dumb as texing in my book), but for this instance, I just had to.  Speeding is a horrible habit that I have.  Thankfully I have yet to get a ticket *knock on wood*.  I'll be sure to let you know if I ever do get one.

Disclaimer: This photo wasn't taken with my Sony -- I broke my own rule.  I forgot my real camera at home and using the camera on my phone was the only way to document this scene.

30 Day Photography Challenge - Day 7

Day 7: Fruit.