How I wish these pink beauties bloomed longer...

Alas, they bloom once a year for about 3 weeks. Unlike their purple counterpoint, which blooms 2-3x per year and for several weeks each time. Funny, eh?

I will never grow tired of looking at this...

even when my beloved canyon changes from my favorite hue of green to brown.

Thistle Thursday

“A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind.” ~ A. de Saint-Exupery

Oh yeah - I'm a total wine connoisseur.

In recipes that call for "cooking wine?" I don't use no stinkin' cooking wine. I use the real thing! And how do I go about choosing just the right wine for the recipe? Well, since you asked ... I choose the proper wine based upon a few considerations: a pretty label on the bottle, perhaps a quirky design detail or two, and whether or not it's on SALE. Following are some of my more recent acquisitions:

So. Knowing what you now know about me ... which of the following bottles do you suppose I contributed to my parents' pretty wine refrigerator?






Hmmm.... cute, quirky, cheap. Check, check, check. :-)

Foolin' Around with Photoshop...

Hey! Did you know you can use Photoshop to get a tan ... without all that UV exposure, skin cancer risk?!? ;-)

1 Chronicles 16:8-12, 23-36

Oh give thanks to the LORD, call upon His name;
Make known His deeds among the peoples.
Sing to Him, sing praises to Him; Speak of all His wonders.
Glory in His holy name;
Let the heart of those who seek the LORD be glad.
Seek the LORD and His strength;
Seek His face continually.
Remember His wonderful deeds which He has done,
His marvels and the judgments from His mouth...

Sing to the LORD, all the earth;
Proclaim good tidings of His salvation from day to day.
Tell of His glory among the nations,
His wonderful deeds among all the peoples.
For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised;
He also is to be feared above all gods.
For all the gods of the peoples are idols,
But the LORD made the heavens.
Splendor and majesty are before Him,
Strength and joy are in His place.
Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples,
Ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.
Ascribe to the LORD the glory due His name;
Bring an offering, and come before Him;
Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.

Tremble before Him, all the earth;
Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved.
Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;
And let them say among the nations, "The LORD reigns."
Let the sea roar, and all it contains;
Let the field exult, and all that is in it.
Then the trees of the forest will sing for joy before the LORD;
For He is coming to judge the earth.
O give thanks to the LORD, for He is good;
For His lovingkindness is everlasting.
Then say, "Save us, O God of our salvation,
And gather us and deliver us from the nations,
To give thanks to Thy holy name,
And glory in Thy praise."
Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel,
From everlasting even to everlasting.

Words cannot begin to describe the beauty of this day.

Of course, the day after this beach extravaganza, the weather totally changed, and we've had clouds, wind and sporadic rain ever since. Weird weather here. But for that day? Glorious.

Anyone in the mood for a little Scrabble?

A dear friend called out of the blue desiring a friendly game of Scrabble ... at the beach. Here's my opening move (bonus 50pts!!) and the board at the end (for those who care about these details...)

And here's the view from where we were playing.



It's a rough life here in SoCal.

(ps. Photography note: these were taken with our small p&s camera (and spiffed up with Lightroom). Because we were hauling down 2 chairs, a table, an icebox, an umbrella, sand toys, and the game, I didn't feel like additionally juggling the big camera.)

So. What does religion look like in YOUR neighborhood?

photo credit to the Big Dude, who shot this ostentatious vehicle on the sly with our p&s camera

The Lizard Chronicles

Every mom of boys has a Creature Keeper on her kitchen counter, doesn't she? DOESN'T SHE?!?

He keeps me company when I cook dinner. ;-)

Hey, Mom! Look what I found in YOUR kitchen sink!!!!

Don't worry - the boys set the little guy loose in the great wide wilderness of your front yard, where he'll have a much better chance of survival than in your sink.

Ever wonder what SIX busy boys look like at the end of a full day at Legoland?

Wonder no more.

Lego Racers...

See my poor, despondent child. The same one who cried when he got wet on the pirate water ride??? Here he's almost in tears because he doesn't want to go on the cars he just asked to go on (now picture me getting more than just a little bit exasperated!).

Being the bad, mean Mommy I am ... I forced the issue and "made" him ride the cars...






Poor kid. Clearly, he had a miserable time on the ride. ;-)

The Grass withers, the flower fades....

Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart, for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and abiding word of God. For,

"ALL FLESH IS LIKE GRASS,
AND ALL ITS GLORY LIKE THE FLOWER OF GRASS.
THE GRASS WITHERS,
AND THE FLOWER FALLS OFF,
BUT THE WORD OF THE LORD ABIDES FOREVER."

1 Peter 1:22-25 (quoting Isaiah 40:6)

Legoland + Boys = a Match Made in Heaven

Happy.

Happy.

Happy.
This soaked lady and her 5yo son who begged to go on this ride and couldn't wait til Daddy arrived to take him on it and then cried when he got wet??? NOT so happy.

ORANGE.

Orange, a close relative of red, sparks more controversy than any other hue. There is usually strong positive or negative association to orange and true orange generally elicits a stronger "love it" or "hate it" response than other colors.

So, do you love it? Or hate it?

I admit: I'm a little partial to it. :-)

Laguna Beach

Art Shark!

The museum galleries (left) and the forgeries (right)


And the original works of art. I think this will be quite a fun game once we get the hang of it.

More Beach ...

Mother's Day cont.

Darcy's the Bomb!! She redesigned my blog and made it beautiful. Now she's hosting a contest; the prize is a blog makeover package!! Go check out the details...

I had to include this photo larger so you could see my Eldest Dude's addition to my cup. :-)

Back in the day, did George Lucas remotely have a clue ...

that three decades hence little boys (and bigger boys) everywhere would still be battling it out with plastic light sabers?

Thistle and Pollen and a Bee, Oh my!

Summer has officially arrived in Southern California

Here's the weather in my 'hood, the view from my room...

It's known as "May Gray" and "June Gloom."

Stick Farm

[note: images & content today are contributed by The Big Dude. And he did such a good job, I might let him make guest appearances in the future, too ;-) ]

Have you ever been to Home Depot? Maybe Lowes? Ever wonder where they get all those sticks to sell? Wonder no more…they grow them on a ‘Stick Farm’. Anyone who has driven the 5 between Oceanside and San Clemente, CA has probably seen this one pictured above…Acres and acres of sticks… The uniform arrangement of evenly spaced rows and columns is mesmerizing as you drive by. My husband says that the on-shore breeze and year-round sunshine make this the ideal location for growing sticks of this size. He says that this variety is too big to be used for popsicles and too small to be used in construction so they will probably be used to prop up tomato plants or bell peppers or something…and he’s usually real smart about these kinds of things.

The Dude Combines Math & Mozart

A tactic to encourage mathematical brilliance or just a device to drown out fraternal distractions?

Hmmm ... or a device to encourage fraternal distractions??

Photo Tutorial...

of what NOT to do.

Firstly, and foremostly, when taking photographs of your darling son(s), make sure you have him/them remove his/their hand(s) from his/their crotch BEFORE hitting the shutter button. "Duh!" you say? I forget this simple tip more often than I care to admit.



Secondly, put your manually selected autofocus point (you guys do manually select your autofocus points, don't you? If not, immediately read up on these in your camera manual and start using them!!) on the thing upon which you want to focus. In this photo, it would have been nice if I had focused on either my darling husband's or my darling son's happy, delighted face, not my neighbor's white porch bannister in the background.


So, to recap: hands off the crotch and focus on the right spot. End of lesson. No need to thank me.

"I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers." ~ Claude Monet

Call on God, but row away from the rocks. ~ Indian proverb

Or, in other words, "Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you." ~ Saint Augustine

His Name is Sticky.

Because the Big Dude rescued him from a glue-y rat trap at work. And, oh yeah ... that cricket was not long for this world.

Another Contrast/Sharpening Example

This time the example is from one of my earlier, favorite-ist Canon Rebel photos:

Before


After

Traipsing Down Memory Lane...

and a little talk about contrast.

So, my friend Leslie, photographer extraordinaire, asserts that digital images are really not ok until you finish them off with a little work in Photoshop (or, in my case, Lightroom). She says all digital images are in need of a little contrast boost and usually a little sharpening. And she's smart about picture stuff, so I listen closely whenever she shares her golden bits of wisdom. To show you what she means, I've posted below 2 images. The photograph is from our Joshua Tree trip back in 2005 (the Little Dudes all look so .... little!) and was taken with our 5.0 megapixel point & shoot Olympus (the camera we used before dipping into the DSLR world with our Canon Rebel in 2006). The first image is SOOC (straight out of the camera). The second image is the same picture with just a bit of contrast added (and a slight vignette). A little contrast goes a long way. And it makes me look tan. I mean, it actually depicts how tan I really was. Yeah, that's what I meant.

There you have it. Now, go forth ... add a little contrast ... and conquer.