Niagara Falls

Yesterday, Joe suggested that we take a little trip down to the falls and take some pictures.



I realized that I really like taking photos of people.



This couple had asked me to take their picture with their camera. Once I did that, I asked them if I could take a photo of them. They were very happy to let me.



These flowers were growing out from a cliff. I didn't quite get the effect I was going for and in fact Joe said they look far too cartoon-y but I like them.



Here's a shot of the American Falls. The boat in the river is "The Maid of the Mist" which goes right to the bottom of the falls.



At one point Joe asked me if I wanted to do something touristy. I had no idea what he had in mind and very hesitantly said "sure". He wanted to do the Journey Behind the Falls which involves taking an elevator to the foot of the Canadian Falls and going in a tunnel BEHIND the falls.

This is the view of the falls from the viewing station.



And the prettiest rainbow ever at the base of the falls.



The viewing station...



And me being a dork at the viewing station...



It was a great day. We had a lot of fun pretending to be tourists!

And more buttons...

So, I couldn't stop thinking about the bags of buttons I left behind at Value Village yesterday. I decided to go back today at lunch and re-examine them even though there really wasn't anything special in the bags that I bought yesterday.

Low and behold there was an even bigger, brighter, cleaner, prettier bag of buttons waiting for me!!!



When I opened it up I realized it was 4 smaller bags all in one.



What am I going to do with all these buttons?? I'm determined to use them.

I spray painted a tin can yesterday and glued a bunch of the white buttons from yesterday's batch to it. I used the boring white buttons that I normally would have thrown out with a few pink buttons thrown in for fun.



Voila! A new pencil/pen holder.

Spray paint and buttons make me very happy.

Thrifty Thursday

I had some very good luck at Value Village today.

I have a route when I go to VV. First stop is ALWAYS the sewing notions, but I have to go right past the Pyrex section to get there so I am always on the hunt for pink Pyrex for Lera (I've yet to have any luck in the pink Pyrex hunt).

The holy grail of thrifting for me is buttons. I love them. LOVE them. My heart skipped a beat when I rounded the corner today and saw EIGHT bags of vintage buttons!!!!! I gulped and started to do the inspection. I was NOT buying all of them. I settled on two bags that seemed to have the prettiest buttons in them.



My next stop is always the bedding/linen department. I got lucky today and found three brand new knit dish cloths for $1.99. Okay, two knit ones and one crochet one. I love these!



I already have a project in mind for the buttons. All I will say is it involves spray paint. I'm excited.

Mary and Bob get married

Our friends, Mary and Bob, got married on Saturday. Joe and I took photos for them.



Boy, did I ever learn a lot!



I could never ever photograph an event on a really hot day. Saturday was beautiful, but boy, were we ever hot running around taking photos, and it wasn't even hot out!



And I need to be more assertive when taking photos. There were tons of people snapping shots. As a result, most of my photos have everyone in it looking in different directions.



I also really think that formal, traditional photos aren't my thing. I really liked the "fun" photos that Joe and I took the best.



It was a super day. We had a ton of fun. We will be sifting through photos for days now!

Edit: I'm not a professional photographer and never will be. Joe and I took those photos as a favour to our friends Bob and Mary. We took some practice photos of them in the summer to help prepare for the big day.

With minutes to spare...

Joe and I are off to a wedding this afternoon. Our friends who are getting married are not hiring a photographer so Joe and I decided to offer our services.

It is a casual wedding so I decided I needed a "pretty" Simplicity 3-8-3-5 for the occasion. At my Mother's request, here's a photo (so she can see it).



I cut it out last weekend and have worked on it for about 15 minutes at a time (whenever I've been able to drag myself away from the Twilight books). I JUST finished it and ironed it.

We are leaving in an hour. Must run!

Stephenie Meyer, I love you, or, why I haven't done anything creative

Last Friday (one week ago) I was sitting at work (I'm a high school librarian) and I had a copy of Twilight sitting on my desk that someone returned. I had more than one student "ohhh and ahhhh" over it when they saw it sitting there. I decided to take it home for the weekend and read it.



Oh my goodness. I was hooked after the first chapter. By early Sunday morning I was kicking myself for not having brought home the next book in the series, New Moon.



Fortunately, I knew that New Moon was also sitting on my desk at work and I knew I could dive right into it on Monday. I did.

Without giving anything away, the second book took me a bit longer to "get into". I had only read about 1/3 of it until last night. When I got home from work (after I had put dinner in the oven) I started to read. I am almost done. I have an hour before I have to start getting ready for work and I think that's more than enough time to finish it.

Now, here's the problem...a student is reading the third book, Eclipse. He's a fast reader and I know he took it home last night. Did he finish??? He better have!!!!!

Geo-picnic

For the past 2 months Joe and I have been part of a team working on organizing and planning a HUGE geocaching picnic that took place on the weekend. It was a great success, in spite of the rain.



Joe camped at the conservation area Thursday, Friday AND Saturday nights (in the rain) while I VERY happily stayed home to take care of our senior dog. I went to the event on Saturday and had a super time. I took a few photos but spent most of my time helping Joe bbq lunch for 200 people.

Tonight will be spent unpacking three days worth of wet, stinky camping gear. Perhaps I'll lock myself in the sewing room for the evening.

dishcloths or washcloths?

Okay, on Saturday evening I was knitting my latest pair of socks when the urge suddenly hit me to knit something fast. I'm a slow knitter. I love knitting socks, but I needed a hit of instant gratification.

I remembered that I had a ton of cotton yarn leftover from my dishcloth knitting days and started surfing for dishcloth/washcloth patterns. It was THEN I remembered that months and months ago I had signed up for Ravelry but had never really looked around. Well. Let me tell you, that is such an awesome resource!

I quickly found a Grandmother's favorite dishcloth pattern and had whipped up two before I knew it.



Then, on Sunday, I needed to make another and found this pattern for a Chinese waves dishcloth. This one makes a really nice think fabric.



It doesn't end there (of course). Last night I knit this one using this checkerboard pattern.



And here they are in all their pretty glory.



I think two will become new dishcloths and two (the white ones) will become new washcloths. How exciting.

Also...I had to re-install Picasa on my work computer and I didn't know that there was a new-to-me version out! I love it. It allows you to easily put text on photos (as you can see). I look forward to playing with it a bit more.

The first (of many)

I could hardly wait to get to my sewing machine after reading Amandajean's awesome storage cube tutorial.

This was my first attempt. It's a little wonky, but that's MY fault, not the tutorial's!



I made the cube without the binding at the top and added it as an afterthought. I shouldn't have. I was lazy, sewed it with the machine and it's not pretty. Notice I took the photo so that you can't see the inside of the cube???

I'd make another one right now but I don't have any more cardboard. I think I'm going to be pushing cereal for breakfast around here for the next month or so!

Photo Walk

I survived the first day of school. Again.

I was exhausted at the end of the day and when Joe came home and suggested we go down to the local park after dinner to take some photos I cringed because all I wanted to do was flop on the couch.

We went, and it was fun. This first photo is my favourite. I'm really having fun fooling around in Photoshop, and since I have NO IDEA what I'm doing, it truly is fooling around.



I had some fun playing with shutter speed at the water fountain.



And although I like the idea of taking a photo through a hole in the fence, I wish that the view was a little more interesting.



And it was fun to play with this photo in Photoshop.



I really do want to start Project 365 again. My last attempt lasted about a week and then I got all bummed because I missed a couple of days and quit. I think I'm going to resolve to take more photos. Project 365 is a great idea but it's kind of like dieting, you miss a day or two and then you quit.

Pendants

I spent the better part of the weekend cleaning around the house and getting ready to go back to work on Tuesday after having 9 weeks off.

I hate Labour Day weekend, and it was especially terrible this year with Joe working 18 hour days.

Oh well.

The only fun/crafty thing I did this weekend was make some scrabble tile pendants using this tutorial.



They were fun and easy to do. The brown one on the far right is the only one that gave me issues. There was an air bubble in the glaze and when I tried to pop it it made a bit of a mess so I threw more glaze on it. It does look wonky with the sun reflecting on it but I'm sure I can wear it without anyone seeing the flaw.

I'm racing around this morning doing housework and I'm hoping that Joe will be home this afternoon so that we can squeeze a last little bit of fun out of the day before I have to go to work tomorrow.