A trip to the Garden

Georgia and I are headed to the Chicago Botanic Garden today, after we have a hot breakfast somewhere nearby (I'm scoping things out now).



We hope to have a day full of running around with our cameras, enjoying the weather (please cooperate!), and having a few laughs (or more). I'll be posting my results later this week on vivid.



UPDATE: This has since been postponed to next week, due to our crazy Chicago weather. But I'll be sure to share pix after we visit!

Lovely snapdragons and such

I know I'm constantly singing the praises of Trader Joe's, but there's a reason for that. One big reason (besides their wonderful pretzel bread) are the gorgeous flowers. Every time I go there, I find a new selection to choose from. I've gotten everything from irises to carnations, and have never been dissatisfied with the quality. Plus the prices are great—these snapdragons were $5.59 per bunch (I have a bunch of white and a bunch of pink here). Most of the flowers run around $5 a bunch, and even the pricier ones, like lilies, are still a deal at $7 and some change per bunch.



And yes, that's this print...



...in the background on my living room wall. I love looking at its pretty colors whenever I walk in the room.



And I just finished placing an order at Michael's for this print (above) to be custom framed as well. It's going to look like this.



It's an odd size and large, so unfortunately I can't just grab a frame and mat off the shelf and do it up nicely.



These lilies were on my display table for over a week, but were starting to lose petals, hence the purchase of the snapdragons. But then I realized there were a few flowers that hadn't opened yet and the lilies had some more life in them, so I just swapped the lilies over to the tv stand, and the snapdragons to the display table.



And of course these mums were on the tv stand, so they had to move upstairs to our bedroom. Pete probably wonders why I've gone so flower crazy, but they're cheap and pretty and I have lots o' vases for them.



But I couldn't resist this pretty iridescent vase from Target. The color in the very first photo in this post is more accurate. It's normally a $40 vase (which I would never spend on a vase like this) but it was marked down to $9.98. Quite a bargain, eh? And the custom framing job on the black and white image was half off. Oh yes, I am forever finding great deals on the clearance shelves at various stores, as well as having become a coupon-weilding fiend!

Macro Monday

See another macro shot here.

(Sony Alpha 100, Sigma 35-128 mm lens)

Fun with Flowers and Textures

I've been playing with my pictures, instead of saving them as lo res images for uploading to Flickr. Bad, bad Chris! But I had some fun. I'm new at this so the results are perhaps not the greatest, but they please me to no end. See the tulips here. And I promise I'll be posting pix of the rest of the flowers soon.

A fond and heartfelt thanks to Char for imparting her texturizing wisdom to me.

UPDATE: See all the finished flowers in square here.

Flower finials

This was my spring-ifying idea for the hold backs Pete installed for me on Thursday. They originally had a flat-end finial, which were fine, but nothing special. So I improvised and used clip-on flowers. I'm deciding if they look nice or just goofy. Those are my cheapo-beapo (as Nic says) gold curtains from Wal-Mart. I moved the blue and green ones into Pete's manly music room, a.k.a. the spare bedroom/office.

Here are some other nice hold backs.









I'd love to upgrade to something fancier when I have the money, but for now, the 99¢ flowers are fine.

Lovely irises

My current fresh-cut flowers (they were out of peach blossoms at Trader Joe's).

Wow, I'm really liking that table I bought for displaying my pretty vases and flowers. The flowers really, really make the house (and me) happy, and things just look more elegant.

From my honey

Aren't these pretty? Pete got them for me yesterday for Valentine's Day. There are so many that he had to use two vases! He snuck over to Jeanette's house to have her help him arrange the flowers, and even borrowed a vase from her (the larger of the two). (Sorry, the pix were taken with my iPhone.)



And how about that awesome card? He knows me well. I love dogs and I love pink feathers, so this card is right on target! For the record, I got him a card with two prairie dogs kissing, so we are both dorks with stuff like that. I also got him some DVDs about prehistoric stuff, so he was happy about that. And we capped off the evening by gorging ourselves at Red Lobster. Well, he gorged—I was pretty restrained, since trying to lose weight and all—but oh, it was good!



Here's a close up of the flowers. Yes, they are on top of my Magic Chef 1000 stove, which is still sitting in my living room (the link is from an ad featuring our actual stove, but we got it for waaaaay less than the price listed). One of these days we'll get a nice house and hook that baby up. It's too cool to just sit around holding flowers and books and such.

Anyhow, hope you had a happy Valentine's Day too!

Rainy blue flowers for a rainy blue day

I took this picture two years ago when I first got my Sony Alpha 100. It had recently rained and I was eager to play with my new toy. So, I grabbed my gear and worked my way through the forest preserve by our old house, taking my time to photograph flowers, bugs, and trees. I dragged my tripod around with me everywhere, and I trudged through brush and mud to get as many images as I could. These pretty blue flowers still sported a few fat raindrops from an earlier afternoon shower, and I worked quickly to capture the look before the sun emerged and dried things out.

I was very frustrated today because I saw many photographic possibilities, but I was without a camera, except for the meager one on my iPhone. When I was at my parents' house this afternoon, I saw lots of delicate flowers outside full of raindrops, but I had nothing to shoot with. Shannon lent me her camera, but for some reason I couldn't quite capture what I saw in my mind's eye. At one point I bent over to take a picture of some frilly pink flowers and I accidentally stuck my head in a gigantic spiderweb. I kid you not, it had to be about three feet long by two feet wide. I STILL feel like I have web fragments in my hair. Eccchhh.

Anyhow, hope you're having a drier weekend than we are here in the Chicago area. I hear there's more rain expected Sunday. Oh goody!

Macro photography

Since I'm planning on getting a new compact digital camera (I'm seriously thinking of the Olympus Stylus 1010 in blue), I'm particularly interested in those with macro capabilities. My Sigma 28-135mm macro lens is wonderful, but it only has macro capability at the 135 focal length. I like the dedicated macro capability of the Sigma Zoom Super Wide Angle 18-50mm lens, but it costs a pretty penny, so I have to save up for it.

Anyhow, Georgia has been a little shutterbug since she got her Canon A470 a few months ago (just as I knew she'd be!) and has been producing some very lovely macro photography. Check out the flower images she captured. I love not only that she got such close up photos, but also that she composed them in such a unique and interesting way. The colors are so vivid that they pop.

The green caterpillar was shot by her brother Nate's recent lady friend, whose name I have forgotten at the moment. It's a truly stunning image, and I'm sooooo jealous! She also has quite the eye for photography.

Well, I can't wait to get my new compact camera so I can start playing with the Macro and Super Macro modes. And yes, I'll definitely be outside this weekend taking tons of flower and bug pictures with my Sigma-enhanced Alpha....

(Photos courtesy of Georgia)

Delicate flowers from Amelia

These were given to me by my very fashionable four-year-old little niece, Amelia. Aren't they pretty? Yesterday Amelia had on a white tee shirt, a hot pink silky skirt, and red glittery shoes. She has the best outfits.

A few weeks ago Amelia had on two different shoes. When asked why, she said she couldn't find the matching shoe to the stylish black mary jane she was wearing. So she borrowed a shoe from another pair (a funky leopard-printed, pink-bowed pair of flats), and that problem was solved. Love it.