Backyardigans

Last weekend we really wanted to go camping. None of the camping sites around here are open yet though, and would be way too cold anyway. Down here in St Geezy it is already in the mid 80's. So we decided to camp in our backyard. We built a fire pit in place of a tree that was removed, and set up camp!

Roasting a couple of weenies.





Here are a couple more weenies!


Then it got dark. I have been really wanting to try out some long exposure night photography. This was my first attempt. Even though they did not turn out to be the greatest photo's EVER, I am still so excited about them.

Now the cool thing about this type of photography is all of the things that the camera captures that you cannot see. So when I was setting up these photos, I couldn't see most of what you see in the photographs. Looking though the view finder I could see pretty much just the fire, and Cody's legs, and the top arch of the tent. When the photo was done processing, so much more appeared, you can now see the trees, the tent, everything.



This one of us is my favorite. The light in the background made the trees glow BRIGHT green, And the sky is awesome.

Then it was time to try star trails. It turned out really grainy and there is a lot of noise and atmospheric light in the photo, and I wanted the stars to turn out brighter, but it was good enough for my first attempt. This is about a 17 minute exposure.



When it gets warmer I will be spending a lot of time up at my parents house in the middle of the night attempting to capture star trails as you can see billions of stars up there in nowhere-ville. And whenever we go camping, Cody will be sleeping and I will be outside taking pictures. (Pretty much a summary of our lives, haha)

These Days...

Here are some photos from around my house.

I felt like my dining area needed a bit more Spring-ness. These bottles are mostly from my grandmother's collection. This was a very low cost decoration. I had the bottles already, all I needed were some flowers from Michael's (on sale, of course) And the jars with candles idea I got from Pottery Barn. I just bought the jars and candles from DI and the moss and rocks from the dollar store. Totally cheap and looks great.

The yellow chairs were a DI find. They were ugly white and natural oak and we made them yellow with red showing through the distressed effect we did. Everyone who sees them says something about how when you spend time and work on refurbishing furniture, you want it to look nice and new, not weathered. But I really love how they turned out. So much better than our scary 1970's vinyl ones.

Wood.

Our yard is a menace. So we had a ton of dead branches cut off of our trees (we have over 50 trees in our yard. I tried to count them once and I lost track) and some trees and stumps removed. And so, we were left with lots and lots of wood! Sadly, for Cody, they only cut the trees into very short pieces, so he can't make furniture out of them or anything, but we do have a TON of firewood now. And our yard now smells like fresh wood. It is heavenly. Sort of like Christmas mixed with camping. Cody has been fulfilling his destiny to become a lumberjack and chopping the wood just for fun.

I wasn't actually doing any real lumberjacking. Just wearing this cool hat and looking like a tough wood cutting person. Also, from this I got a lot of sap on the seat of my pants. Cody is doing his "Hey, I'm a lumberjack" face.

Messing with the Macro

This weekend a lot of our roses bloomed. We have the greatest roses in our yard. I noticed that we have a lot of aphids though, so we bought a container of lady bugs to take care of the problem. I didn't want to buy poison because A.) It kills the bad bugs and the good bugs and B.) It was a lot more expensive. Also, ladybugs are simply cuter. The container supposedly had 1500 bugs in it.
We followed the instructions, releasing them after dark and after watering the area. They all just kind of... fell to the ground. This was back on Friday. Those dang bugs are still sitting on the ground, crawling around in the dirt and leaves. It's like the were born in their little container and are just used to crawling around under their little wood shavings. We even spent a lot of time putting some of them onto the leaves and rose buds, and they would either just sit their like they were stuck, or they would crawl around and fall off. Stupid bugs.

Last week I noticed a very big ugly spider on our back porch. He wasn't hurting anything, but then I took this picture and tried to research what he was. The closest thing I could find was a Hobo Spider, and those are really poisonous, so we decided to kill him. I always feel really bad when we have to kill stuff (see mole and scorpion), even if they are pests. We sprayed him and I felt so bad for making him suffer! He was dang ugly and had HUGE black fangs, but he can still feel pain. Haha, anyway, here he is.

Babies Babies Babies

I am usually trying to get the Husband to agree to having children immediately. I'm always looking out for cute little curiosities that I cannot pass up because they will look just so magnificent in my future child's room. But there are moments in between those times when I am thinking about something non-infant related.

But lately my brain has been inundated by baby fever. (Gosh dang it. Now I have that Hanukkah Fever song from The Soup permanently stuck in my head!) My sister just had a little boy, and I recently found out that my freaking awesome sister-in-law is preggers. She and my brother have been attempting the stressful and not fun process of in vitro for quite a while and we have been praying like mad for them to have a baby, so this is very happy blessing. I am SO excited for them!

So because of all of this baby mania, Mr. Black and I have been discussing it pretty seriously. I am obviously good to go on the whole thing. He however, being the careful and responsible and dang cute individual that he is, wants to plan out all the details. It seems he would like for us to go to some kind of family planner who can tell us "how to get all of our ducks in a row" before attempting parenthood. As in spiritually, financially, health-wise, insurance-wise. Does anyone know how we can do this? Someone we can talk to or a book we can read or your own personal advice? Anything would be helpful as we are clueless in the ways of baby.

For now I am trying to figure out what to get Brother and Sister-in-Law for their tiny baby. I know it may seem early to some, but I started planning next Christmas's gifts in January. I am a gift giver. I LOVE planning out, shopping for, making, and wrapping presents for people. As soon as someone gets engaged, or knocked up, or put on my family Christmas rotation list, or pretty much ANYTHING else, I am thinking about what to get them. I just love it. So what to get them? I really really want to make them something.

Here is a onesie that I made my cute friend Randi for her baby whom she named Jude. (They are Beatles fans and also, awesome.)

So what shall I make them? (Hint, hint, Elisa, I know you're months and months away from giving birth, but I'm going to need you to come up with baby nursery decorating ideas so I know what to do!)

I found a baby mobile at the thrift store months ago that had little bears on it. I bought it to see if I could baby (oh my heck, I mean MAYBE. See what I mean? Wow. I am THAT bad!) make something cute out of it and sell it on Moxie Owl. I have been trying to come up with a creative idea of what to make it into. I was thinking of hanging felt owls or woodland creatures, or rain clouds on it. I wasn't sure what I was going to do. Today I thought of just the thing though! I will be working on it this week and hopefully it will turn out to be the cutest mobile ever, and then I will just have to keep it. Or it could be a disaster. I will share the results soon.

P.S. I am no longer "obese" according to the BMI calculator. Just over weight! Woohoo!