Another day, another walk with Dad. This time Bechtel Park. Can you see the goose in the first picture?

Dad and I went to the Huron Natural Area in Kitchener on Saturday. I took my DSLR, my point and shoot and my phone.  What a gorgeous area to take pictures.  I saw some herons but they were flying and I didn't get any shots of them but I will definitely be going back to try again. Next time I want to go really early in the morning as the evening light is not so great for pictures over the water there, looking into the sun sucks! 

Went our yesterday and replaced my missing cache. If you haven't tried Geocaching yet, get off your butt and go.  It is so much fun!  Here is a link to the site. Everything you need to know to play is here:  http://www.geocaching.com/

I have placed 2 caches, one in Marsland Park and one in Rim park in Waterloo, Ontario. They've been found and re-hidden a bunch of times..dozens in the year since I placed them.

I took my camera with me as my sister and I have a photography challenge each week or so and I wanted to get some shots in for this weeks landscape challenge.She created a new blog for our challenge. You can find it here:

http://thesisterwars.blogspot.ca/2013/04/friendly-competition.html

We would both love to hear what you think

Here are some of my favourites from yesterdays shoot:

Duck (female Mallard, I think)

Canada Goose

Man on a bridge

Red Twigs and a Blurry Creek

My sister
http://tabor6pack.blogspot.ca/ 
and I are taking an on-line photography course to learn to use our digital SLR cameras.  Here is our first challenge: to take a close-up picture (without a macro lens).  We emailed the pictures to her kids and mine and they now have to vote on the one they like best. She has four kids and I have two but my two have girlfriends so we are even.  Well, maybe not even, I scare my kids more than she scares hers!


Here they are:

                                 Dog Mustache

               Candle in a Mirror

A Room of My Own

Shawn finally moved his bed out of his old bedroom and I took the room over. I put a computer and desk and shelves and a filing cabinet and printer in there.

Here actually. I am sitting in here now just loving this room. I hung all of my published stories up and some of my art work and it feels like my room now. I still have art to hang and stuff to put away and organize but I am progressing well.

I am moving my Lladro figures in here so I can look at how beautiful they are. Jim and I bought them when we were in Spain a thousand years ago.

I went to dinner at my friend Lynda's home last week and she was telling me about an amazing organization called Evergreeners.  It's a network of people who provide a bed and breakfast to travelers. The cost is ridiculously low, $15 per couple gets you a bed and breakfast the next morning. You offer the same to anyone who wants to stay at your place for a night or two while they travel.

Here is the link in case it's something appeals to you. Oh, you have to be over 50 to join.  Ah, the perks of antiquity!

http://www.evergreenclub.com/

Anyway, it gave me an ideas for a story which I am currently writing. Well I was until I took a break to post this blog. 

Stars!

I talked about an idea I stole from my niece Amie in my last post.  Well here it is!  The first is a picture of one I made for a friend and the second is one I am working on.

Here is the link to Amie's blog so you too can start making one! 

http://craftalibi.blogspot.ca/2011_12_01_archive.html

WARNING: Once you start making stars, it's very hard to stop!

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Picture It!

I'm very excited.

We celebrated my birthday on Saturday. Jim and the boys and their broads took me to dinner at Swiss Chalet, my favourite restaurant. Yes, I'm a cheap date.

I got a Canon Rebel T3 DSLR for my birthday. I have been wanting a DSLR camera since my sister got one a couple of years ago.She takes hundreds of pictures every week. 99.9% of those are of her adorable kids.  My kids are grown and refuse to stand still to let me take a picture of them so I am more interested in artsy fartsy photography and you really can't do much of that with a point and shoot camera.

It came with two lenses and a camera bag and a memory card. I just finished taking five on-line classes so that I can use it in a mode other than auto. What's the point of having a DSLR if you aren't going to use manual settings and mess around?

It's late at night but I had fun learning about aperture, shutter speed, ISO, metering and white balance. I understand it tonight but will I still get it in the morning?

It was hard to practice all of the new things I learned in the kitchen at night, I think I would see the results better with natural daylight streaming in the windows. I want to test it out in the morning.

I want to link to the BLOG where I took my camera classes.  She is a fabulous teacher!  If you have a DSLR and want to learn about it what it can do, have a look at her BLOG:

http://www.itsoverflowing.com/photo/

I don't think that I have ever added photos to my BLOG and not sure I have a clue how to do that.  I'll give it a try and see if I can show you some of my homework pictures.

These two pictures demonstrate what I learned about aperture. The first one was taken at F5.6 and the second at F36.  I love the blurry background of the first one. Kevin and Ashley got me the flowers for my birthday.

Well that's enough for tonight, I'm off to play Words with Friends for a little while then to bed.

Take care of yourself and remember, you are enough!  I'll explain that in my next BLOG, it's an idea I stole from my niece, Amie.