Ghost photos

Last night, Joe and I went out for dessert with our friends Bob and Mary. We filled our faces with cheesecake and coffee and then we headed to a local cemetery for a little photo shoot.

But look what we got! A bunch of creepy ghost photos!

Bob and Mary's ghost kissing...



Mary with a weird looking ghost behind her...



Joe appears to be kissing a ghost in this one...



Here's one of Mary standing beside a monument, look at those ghosts looking out from behind it!



And lastly, look at the strange apparition in this one...



How did we do it? Joe figured out how to take these photos using a long exposure and very small aperture on the camera. The trick is to use a small aperture and around a 10 second exposure. Once he hit the shutter release, he would count to 3 or 4 and then the ghost in the image would leave the frame, allowing for the background to be exposed in the shot.

For example, in the kissing photos, he would push the shutter release, count out loud to 4 and then the ghost would run out of the frame and the solid person would stay perfectly still for the rest of the shot.

Another trick is to do it either at dawn (ya right) or dusk when there's not too much natural light available. With the long exposure, it's very easy to over-expose the shot. It was almost dark when we took these photos.

There wasn't much post-processing involved. I think he just changed the images to black and white (or sepia in some cases) and cropped them.

You could certainly achieve the same effect in Photoshop, but it was much more fun (and easier) to do it with the camera.

I don't think you need a DSLR to do this. As long as you can adjust the length of the exposure and your aperture on a point and shoot, although it may take some fiddling, I'm sure you could do it.

What fun!

I ♥ thrifting

The past few days have quite successful in the thrifting department. I've been to Value Village more than once and my neighbour and I went to some great garage sales on Saturday morning.

I don't have photos of everything yet, but here are some of my deals.

Some of my garage sale scores include an older kitchen timer (25 cents), some pillowcases (25 cents) and some great divided plates (part of a bundle of stuff that I got so maybe 25 cents for the lot).



Now, when Joe saw the plates he said "What on earth are THOSE for??", he's not as convinced that they are cool as I am.

I have great plans to paint my kitchen this summer. I want to paint the cupboards white and use red as an accent colour. The whole kitchen needs to be gutted and re-done but I've decided to play up the fact that it's a 50's or 60's kitchen until we can afford to re-do it. I thought these cannisters from Value Village were perfect ($1.99 for the set).



I got so me great books (for me and for school) at the sales too. Some brand new bubble bath, a jug and a bunch of stuff for my backyard which I'll photograph soon. I've spent less than $20.00 and I certainly had a trunk full of goodies!

Apron

Okay, so did I mention my knee is a mess? I think not. Here's the scoop. Three weeks ago I started walking every morning for about half an hour. I was doing 2.5 km a day. Not a speedy walker, but I wasn't doddling. Then, last Sunday I woke up with a VERY sore knee. It did not seem to be getting better and on Thursday (when I couldn't even walk anymore), Joe took me to the hospital for an x-ray.

Nothing appeared on the x-ray and the doctor said it was "muscular" (whatever that means). I'm taking ibuprofen and tylenol (together said the doctor) and it's not getting worse, but it doesn't really seem to be improving (much). The thing is, now it doesn't really seem to be my knee anymore that's making me limp. It feels like my calf muscle is VERY tight and sore.

This must get better soon.

Anyways, I sorted through yesterday's fabric jackpot and I've kept about half the fabric and have bagged the rest up for my Mother.

Then, this morning, I decided I HAD to make an apron and dug up my copy of Bend-the rules and away I went.

Now. Did I dig into my bag of fabric from yesterday? Nope. I headed straight to the bags that I'd set aside for my Mother and came up with this:



It's cute. I like it. I am going to use it. However, like everything else I sew for the first time, there are mistakes. I've never done gathers before and I sewed the waistband backwards and was too lazy to fix it. The waist isn't pretty, but I think the apron is.

Maybe I'll go dig through my Mother's bags (he he he) and see what other fabric I can turn into aprons.

Oh, and Happy Mother's Day Mom!

Seventy dollars

Oh my. I just got back from a garage sale of sorts. I saw the ad for "quilting and yarn sale" online early this morning and new I had to go.

Seventy dollars later, this is what I got, and trust me, the crappy photos do not do the haul justice!




This is one of the bundles ($10.00 each, I might add!)



Fat quarters were $.25 each. Why didn't I buy them all?



I got NINE pillowforms, a bag of buttons and a stack of quilting magazines as well.

Good grief. Time to go sort.

Patchwork bag

On the heels of my patchwork pillow, I decided to make a patchwork bag based on this great tutorial.



I have no idea what I'm going to use it for, but it's cute!

Believe it or not, I sewed!!!!

I KNOW it's been forever since I've done ANYTHING interesting (besides getting married). This morning Joe trotted off with his buddy to go geocaching and I hit my sewing room early.

I'm not even really sure what possessed me to make a pillow, but I did.



I love it!

I'm Married!

This post is for my Mother, Dianne, and my dear friend Lera who have both NAGGED ME TO DEATH TO UPDATE MY STALE BLOG.

Joe and I were married on March 16th at 5:00 pm at the Graceland Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas.



We weren't alone. My Mother and two of her friends flew down for the big event, two of my Mom's friends who were vacationing in Arizona came (Hi Dianne!), Joe's sister, her friend AND my friend and her boyfriend came. Eleven of us all together.

Let me say this. We were ALL so impressed with the staff at the Chapel. They were professional and made us feel like we were the most important wedding they ever had. And Elvis??? Good grief!! He was absolutely INCREDIBLE! So incredible, that I think I was crushing on him.




We went to the Grand Canyon, Red Rock Canyon and Hoover Dam while we were there. We ate more food than I've ever eaten in my life and spent more than our fair share of money in the casinos. We are already planning a return trip.

I have done NOTHING on the crafty front. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. In fact, I'm still working on processing hundreds and hundreds of vacation and wedding photos. I am having so much fun with Photoshop.

MAYBE I'll have something crafty to show soon.