Happy Holidays

Marvin is slowly turning into a grown up kitty, he’s over 10lbs now and a whole lot of fun.     He loves to cuddle at night, insists on playing fetch and allowed us to put a hat on him long enough to capture some pretty cute pictures.       It became our Christmas card for the year, and I must say one of my favorites ever.    We are grateful to Unconditional Love for this little guy!



 

It's been a long time.....

Wow I completely lost track of time and this blog!    It's been quite a while since I blogged anything here or on the craft side.     But I think it's time to get  back to it.     And what better way than with some kitten cuteness?    Memorial Day weekend we welcomed Marvin into our lives.   He was just under 2lbs when we brought him home and ~7-8wks old.     I was hesitant for quite a while to get a new fur child after loosing our precious Pixel back in early November.   But once I was ready to go and look there was no turning back.   I still miss Pixel everyday, but also can't imagine life without Marvin, he's already brought so much joy and love into the house in the almost 3 months we've had him now.   He's growing so fast and has more than tripled since we brought him home crossing the 7lb. mark!  The couple pictures are from the day we brought him home.   The later ones are more recent.    

 

Halloween Flashback 2012

In keeping with tradition here's a picture of me as a kid all dressed up for halloween.    I'm not much of a fan of the holiday as an adult, but as a kid my mom would go all out with our costumes.   Here I am in 1984 as a red crayola crayon.     Happy Halloween!!   

Spring in Arizona

 

 

 

Hawaii October 2011

I've been completely behind in updating this blog. I still need to add photos from our amazing trip to Australia last year. But for now here are some photos from our trip back to Hawaii last October. This visit we decided to give Kauai a go. I'd been with family so long ago I barely remembered and Kyle had never been. A couple of friends went at the same time and it was a wonderful trip!

 One of my absolute favorite photos of the trip is this one of Kyle. He is such a kid around the ocean and loves it so much.

Again playing with my macro converter.   :)  

No trip to Kauai is complete without waterfalls!

And the highlight of the luau, the fire act. 

Playing w/ Bokeh

I love the bokeh effect. I've always looked at other peoples pictures and gone I want to do that. I never really had a camera/lense that I was able to achieve the blur I wanted. But about six months ago I got a 50mm portrait lense that I am in absolute love with. So this Christmas I decided to give it another try. Here are a couple.

Macro Gerbera Daisy

Macro Thistle

I love the bright color of these blooms. These are a couple of my favorite, I love the dew still visible.

Macro Critters

We took a hike over the weekend and my husband was sweet enough to indulge me in multiple stops along the way to "play" with my camera. Some of these I wish came out even better, but I'm working on it and it's fun to capture the small things sometimes.

Macro Fun

I have a macro adapter and I wanted to play around with it a little since I haven't really used it yet.   Here are a few of the pictures I took just testing it out.    Definitely fun! Can't wait to keep playing.

Replacement camera, new lens

My canon rebel t2i was stollen a couple months ago so I've been camera-less since. We finally got the insurance payout and I could finally replace it. I also got an additional lens I didn't have before (for my birthday!). I got a Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM Lens, which I have fallen in LOVE with. I can't wait to use it more!! I'm looking for excuses to keep pulling out the camera. Here's one of our kitty with the new lens, I love the bokeh in the background!!

NJ-NY Trip Part 3 - NYC

Sunrise over NY City.   We stayed in Jersey City on the other side of the hudson river.   It was cheaper and had a view of the city.   A win - win.  






Our first full day we headed out to Liberty Park to catch the ferry to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. The crown tours were all ready sold out so we settled for the pedestal (besides we'd done the crown as teenagers).    She was spectacular, although smaller than I thought.

We continued on the ferry to the NY side which dropped us off at Battery Park.    From there we headed to ground zero.    The memorial construction is currently underway so the site itself lost any impact that it would have had initially.   We looked through the small temporary memorial, and visited Trinity Church.  Later during our visit we would stumble by firehouses in neighborhoods with memorials for those lost out of that house.    Those were hard.  

From there we took the subway up to times square square and headed to find Crumbs.  We found it, hehe.    I had to admit those were some seriously good cupcakes.    I mean these are really crazy cupcakes.  

On our way there was a huge commotion that turned out to be Jennifer Aniston shooting a movie.   Kyle captures this snapshot!

We then tracked down lunch at a place a coworker recommended.    Then we headed to the top of the rock.   What an amazing view of the city.    It was totally worth it.   

We tracked down the rockefeller center skating rink,  but it was being set up for something.   The tree was decorated by still covered by scaffolding and awaiting the big reveal.   By now we were getting pretty tired and still needed to figure out the transportation back to the hotel.    So we started heading the right direction, and stopped in greenwich village.   We stopped in at a pretty cool bar so Kyle could enjoy a few drinks.    We then looked around the neighborhood a bit and headed back to the hotel.

The view at night from our hotel.

The next day we got up and headed to central park.   We went by the dakota hotel where lennon was shot and then had a wonderful lunch.     We then headed back to the hotel, picked up the car and headed to the brooklyn bridge.    We walked about halfway across (it was brutally windy, half seemed more than far enough).    Then it was off to the airport to catch our flight home.    

  

NJ-NY Trip Part 2 (Philly)

We decided to drive through Philadelphia on our way to NY. We'd both been in our early teen years and wanted to see the city with adult eyes. Besides the ridiculous security check points (I'm truly not sure what they were trying to prevent. Non secured areas were close to any of the points of interest, so... I'm not sure how security helps, but I guess it's a show of force.)    It was interesting to see the historic sites again.

 We were also there around lunch time and had the best food from food carts. Kyle had to have the Philly cheesesteak, I opted for the egg roll truck (which by the way was out of egg rolls?). I'm not entirely sure what I ordered given the language divide, but OMG delicious... It was chicken in a sauce over rice, and WOW was it amazing!!! It would be worth a visit to the city just for that again.

Lastly we took a quick pass through the Mint exhibit before heading toward the big apple.



Outside of Independence Hall

Liberty Bell

Independence Hall Under Restoration




Next....   NYC

NJ-NY Trip Part 1

I've been downright terrible about posting in a timely manner when we've got pictures to share. I seem to be pushed to publish when I know I'll have more coming soon. In any case these pictures are from a work / pleasure trip to the east coast. I needed to go back to NJ for work, and since Kyle's schedule permitted he came along with me. We were crazy and took the red eye to NY on a Saturday night, and got to the hotel at 11am on Sunday beyond tired. We rested some and then decided to venture out to Atlantic City.

Here's the atlantic ocean behind us, from the atlantic city boardwalk.

Our last night in Atlantic city we decided to head to the Tropicana for dinner. We ate at Cuba Libre and OMG yumm!! It was one of the best meals of the trip. Inside the Tropicana it was all decorated for the holidays complete with a snow maker pumping out snow from the ceiling. I loved it!!!

Next up...... Philadelphia and NYC.