A Rancher's Best Dog is Not a Dog

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid960594369?bctid=1716406566

I just opened an e-mail from Lyn and I had to share the link.

I love animals so I think this is pretty impressive.

Take a look at this video and see what you think...

Photography Fun

I took this picture at the Kuyper’s ranch over Memorial Day weekend.  The old abandon truck just caught my eye and I wanted to do a black & white with it.

I have always loved the old black & white photos.  I can look at Mom & Dad’s photo albums and old postcards from my grandparent’s days for hours just taking in the detail instead of the color.  I remember my mom taking a photography class when I was a kid and I wanted to take pictures so badly.  Back then the cameras were way to complicated for kids but that just made me want to do it more.  I remember her class did a shoot with black & white film and I thought it was so cool!  I always wanted to take pictures of old barns in black & white.

Of course I am much older now and I adore my digital camera.  I must say that I love my computer more because of the photo manipulation I can do.  Talk about spending hours looking at photos – I can get lost in my thousands of photos I store on my computer.

I had an opportunity to play with this picture of the truck today and here is what I came up with…

All I used was the photo manipulation tools on my blog and I came up with a variety of shots.

Black & white with a little photo paper, crop and tilt

Polaroid anyone?

Sepia – looks like fire in them there hills…

This is with color pop

Emboss

Reflection

Photo Paper with sharpen

Warmed up the color and rounded the edges.  Now it looks like one of those old 110 pictures!

Black & White is still my favorite.  I do think I will dabble in the sepia a bit more now.  Maybe I will someday slow down and stop to take those old barn pictures – sepia would be perfect for that.

Off to Newport, Oregon for a QUICK Field Trip

I am still not sure why I volunteered to chaperone on the 5th grade field trip to Newport, Oregon but I have pictures to prove my insanity.

 This is the bus Hunter and I were on with Mr. Hite’s class.  Mrs. Fletcher’s class was also on the field trip and they were on a second bus.

We left about 7 am on May 27th and came back about 7 pm on May 28th.  The trip was about 7 hours each way with a lunch stop and all.

One of our stops was the Newport Aquarium.  This is Hunter & Austin feeling starfish & other sea animals in the tide pool.

This is a picture of the jellyfish in the beautiful blue tank.  This small tank lit up the whole room.

This is the ginormas Alaskan King Crab.  I imagine these things could put a good pinch on a person.

The cute little puffins were outside in the aviary.

This is the two boys looking at the fish going underneath us.

And this is one of the tunnels through the tanks.  You can see the window in the floor.  Boy, I got some really weird reflections with my flash…

Of course we had to pose at the picture taking station in the gift shop.

And the second station…

Outside the gift shop was this aggressive little garbage picker.  He was as fast as lightening coming in and out of those trash cans.  He was sure eyeballing all of the fudge coming out of the gift shop!

At then end of the outside exhibits there are a bunch of statues the kids can climb on.

The next big event was going to the Newport Pool…

Here are some of the kids playing water basketball.

And then we have Mr. Jim Hite on the rope swing – here is the swing…

The roll up for the dive…

And the finish!

You would think that all that swimming would tire them out – yeah, right!

We overnighted at the Newport National Guard Armory in the gym.  Pizza for dinner and basketball or a movie for fun before bed.

On Friday morning we all woke up early so we got some time on the beach before our next stop.

  We were just slightly down the road from the lighthouse and some fantastic tide pools.

We arrived at the tide pools and the tide was somewhere around –2’.  This is a picture of Seal Rock and there are seals with their little pups out there enjoying the sun.

The kids had a class to teach them about the different sea animals in the tide pools and they got to explore and look for them.

Lots of pretty starfish, clams and mussels all waiting for the tide to come back in.

And one last look at the seals.  See the little pup off to the left?

Once class was over at the tide pools we got to do a little shopping in Old Town Newport.  Of course we had to get a huge bag of salt water taffy!  And we had to see the sea lions.  After a latte and a little walk about town we climbed back on the bus headed for home.  We did have lots of excitement on the way home though.

We were just coming up on the last passing lane before Sisters and the other bus was pulled over by a state trooper!  It would seem that someone had a little road rage trying to get somewhere on the eve of a 3 day weekend – poor bus driver!  The bus driver and everyone else on the bus were fine but some really big butthead called the cops and said that the bus driver cut him off at the end of the passing lane – yeah right!

I say “poor bus driver” because that little gal will never live that down in a small town like Prineville where everyone knows her.

Hopefully, the kids forget over the summer…

The Final ATC for Awhile

The final ATC was based on “Nature”.  I decided to use a flower since it fit the criteria, it was easy and I have so many of these flowers in my stash.

I used purple cards stock embossed in my Cuttlebug for the backing, a little graphic word art on a 1/2 circle, flowers from the $ Store and a little bling from my stash.

Here is what I received in return…

Does anyone know what this is?

Well, let me get you all filled in on this project that almost made me a bald person...

Hunter was required to do a 3-D replica of a colony in May for his class with Mr. Hite.  The kids were required to draw a map of a colony and then do a 3-D model that looked exactly like his map.  We will just say that he go a little carried away with houses when he was drawing.

Of course this meant scrapbook supplies to the rescue!

First of all I had to use that hefty cardboard that I had saved from our screen printer packaging.  We started out with popsicle sticks for the houses but they were very time consuming and painting them got really old very quick.  I decided to use my Sizzix Big Shot Die for Mini Milk Cartons and I cut out houses of different colors. 

Of course the houses lead to trees.  We ended up putting 3 different types of trees on here since I had the Sizzix dies.  The rest was constructed out of toothpicks, glue and glitter.

 Hunter did a really great job painting, labeling and folding.  He even had a field of corn (yellow) , a field of beats (purple) and a field of carrots (orange).  I think it turned out well but much bigger than we ever anticipated.  It would be a challenge to get this into school...

I decided that there was no way glue would hold everything so i went back to my scrappy tools.  I got my Big Bite and we punched holes in everything at the bottom - even the little popsicle houses!  After that, I just whip stitched everything to the cardboard!

Hunter made it through 5th grade as a straight A student but we don't know what grade he got on this project.  All I can say is that I am glad that it is over and I still have my hair.  More of it is grey but at least it is still there!

Where does the time go?

Good gravy – it seems like it was just yesterday that I bombed a bunch of blog material in here.  I am going to start updating this afternoon.  So much has happened in just a few short months so I have a lot to report…stay tuned :-)