details

I enjoyed being able to take pictures this past weekend at a neighbors baby shower. I was able to focus on some of the details and practice with my camera. I am enjoying this too much!  

The shower was held at her sister's house who also lives in our neighborhood, so I did not have to drive far! I made a personalized basket for her with things from her registry and other items that I found that she would need when she brings home her baby. I also scrapped a simple card for her to go with her color theme. I did not take a pictures of the basket before I left, however, her photographer at the shower took a picture of me with it coming through the door. The photographer and I connected and exchanged numbers. She's a SAHM who does photography and wants to get back into scrapping also. 

My basket and card were a hit. I am known for making custom baskets for friends when they have showers to fall in with their theme. I really enjoy personalizing it for the person.  The funny thing was when she was handed my basket and card, she knew it was from me and she told everyone that she was wondering if I was going to make her a basket because she has seen the baskets that I have done for other friends and neighbors! I was tickled to death, because I knew she was expecting a basket too. 

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Yeah for....

Technology!

We were able to see the pictures and retrieve them with a card reader. This card reader pulled up all of the pictures that I had ever taken with this camera from the memory card, deleted and all. I think that it is awesome. It is a little thought provoking though. It goes to show that even when you think something is deleted, it really is not!

Thank you Gracies Mom and Deanna for informing me of the sites to download the programs! The only thing that I needed was a card reader and it worked! We loaded the card reader onto my laptop since we had his apple sitting until we recovered the photos.

I hope to have the pictures up on a slide show in a day or so. I prefer to load the pictures on to my husbands computer with a disc into his iPhoto for the slide show since it is easier do set up slide shows with the iPhoto.

Lessons Learned....

I wanted to share some pictures from our family vacation at Myrtle Beach the week of the 12th. I took about 375 pictures during our vacation with family. I should have made my slide show when I downloaded the pictures, and I would still have them. When we returned, I down loaded all of the pictures to my hubby's Mac on last Monday into Iphoto.
I did load about 5 pictures on my FB account and I will share those, since that is all I have.

On Thursday, my husband installed a program on his Mac that was given to him so that he could look at our neighborhood's security camera's and not have to use my PC to monitor the activity at the amenities in the neighborhood. Needless to say, when he installed the program there was some sort of glitch with running it and the program kept running. He made an appointment and took the computer to the Apple Store to have the techs look at it. Unfortunately all of our pictures from June and July that he had not backed up.

However, the pictures are somewhere on the computer and we will probably have to pay several hundred dollars for a recovery specialist to find the missing pictures and all of the data that we had. So, hopefully, one of hubby's co workers will be able to retrieve everything so that we will not have to lose the recent data put on the computer. If not, we are waiting on one of the locations that the Apple store recommended for a recovery specialists. The Apple store did not wipe it clean on yesterday so that we would have an opportunity to have a recovery specialist to recover the data to try to recover the recent information saved on the computer.

Let this be a lesson learned to all, to immediately back up all of your pictures instantly when you download them. I am praying and hoping that are our pictures will be recovered by the specialists. I was one of the main persons taking pictures of everyone at the beach and I captured so many beautiful shots of everyone during that week. We had so many family members present that it would be a shame to lose all of those pictures.
Besides that, mostly everyone was relying on me to email or send the pictures out on discs so that they could print their own pictures. This was truly a hurtful lesson to learn on my behalf. In addition, I was in the process of putting our family vacation into our profile for the adoption agency. It is really a shame.

1 John

1 John 5:14, 15

And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us:

And if we know that he hears us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have petitions that we desired of him.

Practice makes

perfect....and I need a lot of practice!

Here are a few practice shots that I took last night with the camera. I have not ventured with all of the different settings yet. However, I am practicing with a few of the settings and it will take some time. I am enjoying the practice.

We went to a Best Buy in a neighboring city/county to pick up a large memory device for the camera last night and on our way there we saw a mini carnival in one of the mall's parking lot. We decided to stop by and snap a few shots to test the camera out. We took the pictures from the parking space beside the carnival.

I kept it on auto settings for most of them because I was not comfortable with the other settings. I love the picture of the ferris wheel and the sky. It was about 9:20pm last night when we took these pictures.

I will not continue to subject my readers to practice pictures. I posted these as a point of reference for myself over the next few months as my photography skills improve. I am sure that the pictures that I will post will gradually improve over time.

New toy

Mommy has a new toy...

I wrote a post back in January titled " I need a Big girls camera" after trying to take pictures from across a banquet room and missing good shots at an event that I attended. I was beyond frustrated, and that was the straw that broke the camel's back!

I spoke to a few photographers (Jodi, thanks for all of your help too) and began my research in January after the event and my research continued through February and March. I made a decision around late February on Canon.

I decided to wait to purchase it during the summer months since we were still finalizing all of the adoption process costs during the winter. A new camera was not at the top of the list since we had just purchased a brand new camera last summer that I had not yet learned to use proficiently. However, I will still use my Sony Cybershot because it takes excellent pictures for a tiny camera with 10.1 mega pixels, opitical zoom 5x, smile shutter and wide angle lens 28mm. It is easy to put in my pocket or purse whenever we go out and it has really been wonderful having it with us to journal our adoption journey with pictures. However, it can not give me the flexibility of what I need for taking pictures from a distance.

My new toy arrived today and I am beyond thrilled! I am glad that I was patient because I was able to get what I wanted. Now, I will have to be patient with myself and learn how to really use this camera. This is one toy that will not collect dust!

I love planting flowers

however, I do not enjoy the heat!

We spent today planting the flowers in our landscape beds and pulling weeds that grew through the landscape fabric and rocks! Gotta love the southern bermuda grass.

Long story short, we were supposed to have a residential landscaper pull the rocks out and put down a tougher landscape fabric and kill the existing grass growing up in the bed. However, he was in the process of hiring another worker to replace one and he could not do it. We held off on planting the flowers back in May because we knew we anticipated having the work done. It looks like we will wait until the fall to have it done because we were kind of tired of waiting. I guess it is hard for these landscape companies to keep good help too.

We spent most of the day out in the sun planting my flowers in the landscape edge, pulling grass from the bed and trimming the bushes. As my father would say, "Yes, I have a farmers tan" from being in the sun for most of today. I still have a few more flowers to put in, but at least we have bulk of it completed.

This crape myrtle tree is special to us. My parents

brought tiny twigs to me with a little rootball Dec. 2004 when they came and spent the first Christmas in our home. All of them have grown. We cut them back every year and they grow taller. They brought me three when they came. Two of the trees grew and survived and the third one did not. The next year, I brought one more from my parents home and it is doing well. I have three beautiful crape myrtles that are flourishing. We take pictures every year. It is hard to believe this was tree was just 3 sticks and so tiny that they brought it in garbage bags and it took off like a weed. My mother enjoys giving me the little crape myrtles that pop up in her yard from her mature ones.

The potted flowers have taken off since early June!