Raking Up Night Exposures

These shadows came to me one night when we got home late. I haven't taken any pictures at night before, and none of them turned out decent anyway, but I couldn't stop myself from trying to capture these shadows.


About one hundred shots later, I ended up with these three photos. They are dark, and they are night shots. Tracy, can you see what you're doing to me? I even chased shadows at night! How is that for a nut case?


I remember when I was younger; I played with my own shadows! Now, I'm an old woman playing with whatever shadows I could find. This was the shadow of my rake that was left in the corner of our driveway.


I haven't figured out how to take night pictures yet even though I have night shot mode on my camera. I tried it, but it didn't work out as I had hope.

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Red Cloud For Luck

Yesterday we had sun but it only lasted for a few hours during the afternoon, but it was enough to give us some colors though.


It started out with these colors in our neighborhood when I had to go fetching my laptop back from the shop. Everything worked fine now, but all my settings, bookmarks, and favorites were gone. It's all right though since there weren't anything seriously wrong with my laptop.


After I retrieved my laptop, I went home and saw these reddish clouds hanging behind the trees. The color was just amazing, and beautiful.


Watching the sky has become a part of my day. I can tell when it's about to snow, or rain, or stormy. Well, my prediction is just as good as the weather man sometimes, and you know how that goes.

See more Sky Watch photos here!

Snowy Day on Dried Flowers

These are the beautiful dried hydrangea flowers in the summer and spring. Can you tell how many inches of snow they had on them? Quite a few inches! These row of hydrangeas grew next to the building, so the heat helped them staying in great shape.


I like dried flowers as much as fresh ones. All through the tough weather, some of the hydrangeas remained like these ones you see in the pictures. They had a light beige colors, mixed with off white, and just very wonderful to see.


These hydrangeas were huge, and I think you can still see how big the flower heads were. I love these flowers for theirs different colors, and blooms.


Can you guess what this flower was? It was my white cone flower! I think this is called the skeleton of the flowers. Some of them stayed like this, but others already felt off.


Here is a different view of the cone flower! I love when the snow came down and covered this whole head. It was amazing to see the total cover-up like this.

On a different note, I'm currently having problem with my laptop, and am working on an old computer so it's much slower than a turtle. I will visit you as soon as I can after my laptop is fixed, cross your fingers, pretty please!

Bad Day to Have a Dead Battery

This week has been quite a challenge for me. First off, on Monday we got about 6-8 inches of snow, and JoJo had a day off from school. In fact, according to the news there were more than 300 schools closing across the State.

However, my nephew, Roco is in private school, and he has no day off. I went to pick him up in plenty of time, and made sure to count in the un-expected problem on the road. JoJo and I got to the school and waited. When it was time to go retrieving Roco, I turned off the car, and that was it! My car went dead!

Creative Commons-Photo Source

I called AAA for a jump, bought a battery, and had it installed. The technician did the oil change as I requested, and gave my car a thorough diagnosis to see if there were any other problems. He then suggested that I should get a brake job done.

Well if that wasn't enough to make a bad day, I also got stuck in the snow bank when driving out of the parking lot! A kind man who drove a blue Chevrolet Silverado came to our rescue. I went home and got on repairpal.com to look for an estimate on the break job that I have to consider. For those that live in Dallas, you can check out Dallas auto repair if you ever have to price for a service.

Blue Sugar Jar

This blue heart sugar jar was found at a local thrift shop. I like to go to the Salvation Army to look for collectible like this. It is not only save me money, but I found unusual items at little cost.


Thrift stores are now a hot place to shop for many families since they can stretch their money further. What I found out is that if you go there on a certain day, you can even get 50% off your purchase.

When you walk in a thrift store, look for the sign by the front register, and it will tell you what sticker colors will get the additional marked down for that day. For example, this blue heart jar came in a set of three pieces at $4.99, but they were running a special on yellow tag, and so I only paid half of the amount. What a steal, isn't it?


So far I only had time to explore the kitchen area in thrift stores, and what I found there was quite surprising, and amazing.

What about you? Do you shop at thrift store?

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Coat Hanger

The sun shone through my mudroom's window, and gave me this shadow of the coat hanger that we had by the back door. Usually, this coat hanger was full with, well coats, but on that day the children were out and the hook shadows were interesting to see.


This coat hanger was about 9 years old already, but it still remained in good condition. Never before did I think about taking picture of a coat hanger, but since I pay more attention to my surrounding, everything seemed to be more interesting!


Shadow is great to see, and noticing different one is even more exciting. I am going to have lots of fun this coming spring.

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Vacation in Style

For us Michigan dwellers, we are so looking forward to spring break already! Many people are going through "cabin fever" phrase by now, and high school kids are making plan to go South for their spring break.

If I have a chance or can afford a trip, I wouldn't hesitate to take a journey to an ocean sight somewhere. However, my children both have their break at different times so we will be unable to make any plan this year.

For those that planning a get-away this spring break, I found a website that offer luggage online. They offer Hartmann Luggage, Tumi Luggage, and Delsey Luggage, and free shipping. If you don't feel like going from store to store to look for a suitcase, then this site is the place to browse through.

Organizing your trip ahead of time will make it more enjoyable and less stressful. It is only 6 weeks away before some schools and colleges around here go on spring break. If you are going away, plan it now, and have a great time travel.

Since we can't go anywhere this year, my oldest son may decide to come home for a visit, and spend his time here.

How To Make CMF Ads Work for You

Many of us bloggers sign up at various places with a purpose of earning pocket money. I am guilty of this. I read a few articles or posts on how others monetize their blog, and off I go to sign up. Then I will spend time pulling my hair out because I don't know how to make it work properly for me.

However, I recently learned how to make CMF Ads work out for me. After their latest introduction to Spikes and their lower paid out price, I decided to check into my account. There I found that I have accumulated more than $3. I was happy of course because I didn't really do anything with it after I signed up.


To make a long story short, I poke around this new Spikes, and decide to explore more. I create ad campaigns for my blogs, which will allow me to advertise my sites on other blogs if I so choose, and I follow a ritual of visiting my CMF Ads account almost every day.

• After I sign in, I check for Spikes in my dashboard
• I click on those blogs to visit
• I check the statistic of my blogs, and buy Spikes for the one that needs traffic (30 cents for 75 clicks, 20 cents for 50 clicks, and 10 cents for 25 clicks). I earn 10 cents for every 50 blogs that I visited.
• I bought some advertising campaigns for my blogs.

A week later, I notice a big different in my CMF account. It is not the money part, but it is the advertising requests from other bloggers on my sites. Before, I can barely fill the two slots on my blogs, now I have five slots and around 27 advertisers for each site.

After I remove EC, my traffic plummets but I was happy with my decision. I didn't want to spend lot of time online dropping 300 EC a day. With CMF Ads, I can visit 50 blogs, use the money that I've earned and drive traffic to my sites.

So, have CMF Ads worked out for you so far?

Creamy Color Daisies

I came across these creamy color daisies in my archive, and they screamed to be featured. Through hundreds of photos, I only have three pictures of these daisies, and love this soft, eggshell/creamy color daisies. They stand on their own merit of grace.


I love the look of a field of flowers, any flower, and this photo has that feel for me. These daisies are just very pretty, and today these creamy color flowers seem to be enough to cheer me up with snow flurry outside my window.


I have seen these daisies in hot pink, yellow, purple, orange, red, and white, and they are all very vibrant colors, but these creamy ones hold their own distinction.


I play around with this last photo since it is a bit blurry! I add texture and crop the unnecessary part of the picture to feature one main flower. It comes out very nice, I have to say.

Have a wonderful day and visit Outdoor Wednesday!

Affordable Web Hosting

When it comes to technology, I am a slow learner, and always dragging behind with frustrating feelings of inadequacy. As soon as I thought I've mastered one tiny part of it, I found there are many other things that I need to catch up.

Cell phone alone is enough of a puzzle to me. All I need from a phone is to be able to make phone call, not learning about blue tooth, synchronize, or anything else. You can tell, I'm an old log in the mud. I grow comfortable with what I already knew.

Photo from webhostinggeeks.com

When looking to buy a domain for my website, I have to spend time surfing the internet for a reliable, supportive, and trust worthy web hosting. Now, according to Wikipedia, web hosting means a company that provides space to host data for their clients, typically web pages. I had some general ideas in this area, and understanding it a bit more.

If you ever want to have check in this type of business, I suggest checking out the Best Blog Hosting. You will find a wide range of information on this page, and if you still have doubts, you can read their customer reviews. They have an average of four stars rating.

How To Make a Snowman With an Old Sock

My son came home from school with this cute sock snowman below, and told me to make a post about it. I promised him that I would, and that was about three weeks ago.

Today, I made good with my promise and post this idea and tips from JoJo.


Gather Your Materials

• One good long white sock (you know, from the pile of mismatched socks bin), turn it inside out
• 2 google eyes
• A piece of blue ribbon or any color that you like
  
• Sparkle glue in blue color, or colored marker
  
• Sparkle glue in orange color
• A rubber band
• A black marker
  
• Rice

Put Your Snowman Together

• Fill the rice up to the heel of the sock
• Fold the cuff down to make the top hat
• Tie it off with a rubber band
• Tie with the blue ribbon to form the bottom body

Decorate Your Snowman

• Use the blue sparkle glue to make the buttons on the snowman's body, by hold it down for a few second to create a large dot.
• Use the black marker to draw a smile on his face
• Use the orange sparkle glue to make the nose
• Glue on the google eyes
• Personalize with your child's name if you want to
  

I hope you enjoy today easy and fun project from JoJo. Have fun and have a great Monday!

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Gates

I have some shadows of gates on Belle Isle Island, near and around the Conservatory. The shadows were crisp on a sunny day when I was there.


It is impossible to walk by when I saw this shadow without taking pictures. The gate's shadow merged into one with the fence behind it.


On this side of the fence, I didn't see the gate's shadow anymore. It seemed to disappear into the fence, and leaving me puzzled.


Turning to my left, the other half of the gate's shadow was so clear on the concrete, even with a stain on it, the shadow was still wonderful.


I like the general look in this picture. It showed a beautiful clear blue sky in the background, and winter trees. As you can see, there were not many visitors to the Conservatory on that day either, which was great for me to take time and be as weird as I could be.

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