pummelvision

from the fine folks at pummelvision, my flickr life flashed before your very eyes:



pretty cool, no?

this year's carving

i decided to carve the traditional jack-o-lantern this year. i wasn't feeling particularly inspired, but i awoke saturday morning with visions of round, slanty eyes and a dramatic overbite with large fangs in mind, so that's what i went with. it was a great weekend all around, trick-or-treating with erik times two, lots of lab work also. life is busy! and little zanzi has been super active, keeping me company all the while.

18w4d - introducing zanzibar buck buck mcfate!

last day of summer flowers

the calendar says that it's fall, but it's almost 90F out there. what gives? bring on the 70F days and evenings in the 50s! i took some photos the other day, something i hadn't done in awhile. here are some cornflowers from my neighbor's yard and little yellow snap dragons from my own.











it was interesting to watch the bees push themselves into the "mouth" of the dragon, do their little bee-siness, and move along.

thinking about halloween already!

one of my favorite holidays. maybe my very favorite!

exciting times

i don't know if anyone reads this blog ... mostly because i never write anything in it anymore! well, i'm not really announcing this to the "general public" yet, but i'm excited and have to tell someone, so i am telling my blog. and if anyone should happen to read this, i guess that's okay too! :)

9w3d:

way behind

hmmm

seems to me i haven't blogged in awhile. and i started the year off so strong! maybe i'll catch up again one of these days. i've been taking TONS of photographs and have been enjoying playing with them in photoshop and i just adore the topaz adjust plugin! i have lots and lots of new flowers popping up in my yard. i don't remember having so many in years past, but maybe it's just that i wasn't really looking. these just came up this week:



they are called star-of-bethlehem. and i am captivated by these bluebells:



thanks to the kind folks on flickr for helping me to identify all of my beautiful blossoms! perhaps i'll dedicate my next post to logging and identifying all of the flowers that i have in my own tiny little yard in pittsburgh, pa!

experimentation

something new to play around with!

ooh

i like the way this one turned out!

topaz adjust

does some pretty cool things! still trying to decide if it's worth my $50 though. here's an example of some photos edited with the plug-in:

some stuff

this:



and then this:

miniature fakes

all of these are photographs of full-sized things manipulated in photoshop to look like miniatures. it's fun to play around with them.





















what do you think?

A LOT of snow

and ice damming, and water in our bedroom and dining room. heavy heavy sigh. bastards at njm won't cover any of the major damage. lots of tears today. self pity. and wine.

ominous

snow-rama 2010

in case you hadn't heard, we had a pretty big snowstorm here this weekend. i think our total was around 22 inches! we're all fine here, and peter's about to finish digging out our driveway so i can go down to the lab. obviously we didn't go anywhere (by car) yesterday, but i took a nice long walk around greenfield (our neighborhood) and snapped tons of photos. here's a mosaic i made with some of my fisheye pictures:



the skies were brilliantly blue yesterday afternoon, and with the snow these pictures fit quite well with the blue/white theme of my recent mosaics. i may need to create another with snow! i love that combination!

i know i've been behind on my blog again, but that's because we're just so darned busy! i actually started writing a post from last weekend. We went to the zoo and aquarium on saturday and then i took a quick trip to phipps on sunday, but i haven't finished it. maybe one of these days ...

the year in flowers

for 2010 i designed a calendar filled with photos of my flowers and had it printed at bighugelabs. they did an excellent job and it really came out beautifully.

so far this year ...

january


february


my father-in-law challenged me to do one of all rocks for 2011, but so far i have no interesting rock pictures. when the weather gets a little warmer i'm going to have to start scouting locations around the area with cool rocks!

another blue and white

this time, all flowers! i'm working on a more substantial post, but so as not to exit the blogosphere completely, here is a pretty picture that helps brighten up a dreary february day for me!

sleepy

so tired tonight, i'm going to bed soon. here's a pretty blue and white mosaic to look at for now:

entertainment

it was a BAD night with erik tonight ... no nap today, and at bedtime we had a complete nuclear meltdown. luckily peter very generously relieved me when i was about to totally lose it. erik has FINALLY settled down in bed, i have FINALLY settled down with a couple of glasses of wine, and i created this to amuse myself:

meh

i need to get out and take some photos!

wordles

there is the really cool website with a program that allows you to create word clouds from any text you type or paste into it. i've been having a lot of fun playing with it and making wordles mostly from lyrics to various songs, but if you're more creative than i am, you could probably make something really interesting. the website is: http://www.wordle.net/

here's an example of a couple that i have made.

this one is just text pasted from dean wareham's wikipedia entry:



and one from the lyrics of the luna song sideshow by the seashore:



finally, this one is from the lyrics to another day by galaxie 500:



i highly recommend that you go check this out, and share your results with me. i'd love to see them!

the other red squirrel

today i did not take my camera to school with me. today, on my walk from my car to the lab, i saw my little red squirrel friend but had no food to share with him so i didn't stop. and then, a little further down the road, i saw *another* red squirrel, this one a bit fatter and a bit bolder than the one i usually see. he came right up to me, obviously begging for some food. he sat only six inches from my feet so i of course whipped out my phone and took a couple of pictures of him - what a cutie!

another erik birthday mosaic

i wanted to update the one that i made yesterday so that i would have a photo of erik on january 20th each year, and also so that each photo would clearly show his face (yes, i am very picky!) ... this is what i came up with:



my little boy blew out his candles all by himself tonight!

happy 3rd birthday erik!

here's a mosaic i made with photos from each of erik's four birthdays. they were all taken on january 20th except for the last one, which i took at his party this past sunday (the 17th). i'll try to get a decent shot tomorrow and update it. hard to believe my little guy is 3 already! it's gone by amazingly fast, and i hardly remember what it was like having a little baby. he's such a big boy now!

party!

yesterday we had erik's third birthday party. it seemed to go pretty well, everyone had a good time. i'm not feeling particularly verbose tonight, so for now here are some pictures.

before the party:





funny faces:





opening presents:







cake time!



no one seemed to mind that he spit all over the cake while he was blowing out his candles.





i think the highlight of erik's day was listening to yo gabba gabba songs on unkie newt's phone:



then watching yo gabba gabba with maggie upstairs:



while others played wii downstairs:





more later ...