Closing Out The Year

I had to shoot one last experimental picture before the decorations came down.  I would like to do this again with a bigger tree, but overall I'm pleased with the effect.

I had .60 off a gallon of gas with my Stop & Shop points, which made my fill up under $2/gallon. First time since the early 00s.

Cheapest fill up in 14 years.  HOLLAH!

New Years Day was beyond lazy.  Well.....for hubby and the dogs anyway!  I worked on my new laptop, did laundry, made pasta fazool, finished putting the decorations away, prepped blog posts and put the Christmas cards in my scrapbook.  Before the decorations were completely done, I found that starfish ornament in my craft room, courtesy of Ms. Peepers.  She just loves that starfish.  I picked it up to put away but she was standing there so I bent over and offered it to her just to see what she'd do and she gently took it from me.  So cute.  But I didn't want it to get ruined so I took it back and put it away in bubble wrap.  

"Mama! Can I get a scritcher?"

I just love that sweet face! February will be 12 years since I got her.

How Was Everyone's Holiday?

Hard to believe Christmas has come and gone.  This whole year flew by.  I never did get the chance to go to Sandwich and shoot more lights.  The weather was pretty rainy for a week or more.  

I did mess around more with my camera and the lights though.  These were taken with a slow shutter speed and ISO while zooming.  Should've used a tripod but didn't feel like digging it out.

These are the outside lights on the rail.  I like this one.

I had one day, right before Christmas when I was so busy in the kitchen that my feet were screaming by the end.  I made sugar cookies, gingerbread cookies (no pics though), 4 large loaves of cranberry bread, chicken soup and a crockpot full of kale soup.  

Just for grins I drizzled the four different coloured icings on the teddy bear sugar cookies.   I think I like the effect of the drips on the paper as much as on the cookies!

Christmas Eve was very stormy.  We went to Hong Kong Island to get Chinese food around 5 pm, and by the time we got home, all hell broke loose with torrential downpours and wind.  I took these pics close to 10pm.  Nothing like a great, stormy night for Chinese and the 'A Christmas Story' marathon!!!

Rain on the deck

Finally, I was reaching the end of my rope with the incessant commercials.  Target, Big Lots and KMart win the prize for most annoying and repetitive ads.  Wells Fargo, on the other hand, brought me to tears every time I saw their ad.  I wrote to them on their Facebook page to tell them their ad was a big winner.  Imagine my surprise to see this response to my comment:

I have no pics of Christmas Day.  I was busy in the kitchen making deviled eggs and apple crisp, then we went into town to visit our families and came back home to finish prep for my stepson & his girlfriend who spent the afternoon with us. I'd picked up deli trays - one of shrimp and one of meats/cheeses - plus I also made potato latkes for Samantha because she is Jewish.  It was quite the food spread, lemme tell ya!

The 26th we crashed hard and watched TV all day and I coloured nearly 4, pages.  But yesterday we went up to Plymouth so that I could finally get some new walking shoes, which of course I had to try on first.  I will only wear Saucony as they are the only ones that fit.  Since we were in the area, I dragged Russell to JoAnn Fabrics and Crafts.  He bought me a bunch of craft supplies, plus these awesome, warm, punk rocky socks.  They came with a plain black pair too.  They are soooo warm.  

And how was everyone's holiday?

Christmas Lights Bokeh 2014

Following the tutorial found HERE, I attempted to do another bunch of bokeh pics with the lights.  My smallest paper punch is a heart shape, so I used that.  I also tried a star punch but it didn't look like anything much.  The heart kind of looks like moths!!

 I accidentally left the flash on for this picture which came out looking pretty cool and kind of dreamy.

Kitchen window without the flash.

Some of the lights look like pizza slices.  Love how the star came out.

This is actually one of my fave pictures that I've shot of Christmas lights.

Christmas Lights Bokeh

I pinned this picture on Pinterest awhile back and totally forgot to try it last year.  I decided to give it a whirl. Looks easy, right?  Just cut a design in the center of a circle, tape it on your lens and shoot.  

Me being, well, me, (i.e., impatient and never one to read directions first) I cut out a circle with a design in the center, taped it to my lens and shot a couple of pictures.  They didn't come out good at all and I deleted them.  Then I went back to this original picture, HERE, and decided to read the comments under this picture.  Most people that tried this effect were not successful based upon the photograph.  In the comments I discovered a link HERE on how to do this correctly.  

To obtain these results you need a tripod and to manually focus and control the shutter speed.  You also need to build a little 'hood' for the camera lens (with cardstock taped around the outside of the lens).  The first circle design I tried was a heart and I shot directly at the tree lights, but I didn't control the shutter.  They look more like triangles than hearts!!

Upon closer inspection, the heart that I cut was not very good at all, and looked like a triangle.  So I cut a new design, a 3 tiered tree and the results were much better.  Again, I just used the 'flash off' setting.  I did try a shot using 'bulb' but it really made no difference except making it brighter.  

I think with some practice, and a better template - perhaps a small hole punch design - this would be a cool way of taking Christmas light pictures.