10 posts tagged “sunset”

Happy July, everyone!  Where is time going?  Thanks to my country cousin, Country Cinderella, for a tip about Art Fire.  It's another place to sell handmade creations.  I got my shop up and running last night, but it needs a bit of refining.  I have to get a banner and correct a couple of typos.  I was tired last night.  I'll let you know how it goes. 

 

I was doing some more experimenting with white balance settings last night.  This is what happens when you have your camera set on auto or whatever to take a normal shot, then change the white balance to tungsten.  Amazing!  This is a wine red day lily. 

 

This one isn't in focus, but I love the color. 

 

I had stayed out late last night waiting for the sunset, then I got so preoccupied with white balance shots, that I almost missed it!  This one would be better if I lightened up the foreground a little bit. 

I think I know what I am going to post for this week's Photo Quest, but first I need to go fix my Art Fire shop. 

I spent more time today downstairs in my sewing room working on another table runner.  I was going to quilt the one I finished last night, but didn't have a piece of batting that was large enough.  So I started putting together another pink and purple one.  This one is going to be done in the barn raising pattern.  It's amazing what you can do with triangle blocks! 

I happened to look outside as I came upstairs to start dinner and saw a rather interesting cloud/sun combination.  I think this picture turned out good.  It is actually taken in color. 

 

It almost looks like it could be a picture of a full moon.  It had been cloudy most of the day, but not that day.  I didn't edit the brightness, contrast, or saturation.  All I did was resize. 

I made a fantastic quiche for dinner tonight.  Maybe it was just because I'm finally feeling better and food finally has some taste!  I made brownies for breakfast this morning.  I ate one, late this afternoon.  Too sweet!  It has been days since I've eaten anything with sugar in it.  Fruit is just right. 

Now I need to get my Photo Quest photos edited and loaded.  See ya in a few!

I didn't get outside with my camera today.  I did take this sunset shot last Friday.  The clouds and contrails were interesting. 

This morning we went down to the city to attend Grandparent's Day at the school our granddaughters attend.  It was nice to see them again.  We hadn't seen them since they were out here this summer.  We also went by their house so we could see their little brother, the one I took care of last year.  He is so grown up now!  Of course, he didn't have any idea who we were.  He would give us kisses, but that was it. 

We came back home this afternoon, and I went to work on my computer again.  My printer still won't turn on.  Thank goodness I don't have to have a printer very often.  I was trying to print so information about long distance phone service.  We have been with MCI, but we are thinking about going with someone else.  They cut off our long distance service last night, so we are just going to leave it that way. 

I would like to go with HughesNet so I could get a high speed connection for my computer, and we could use Vonage for our phone service.  Does anyone out there use this arrangement?  Do you like it?  Having a high speed connection would be so nice.  And not having to share the phone line would be nice, too. 

My hubby has been begging for tuna melts for dinner, so I fixed them tonight.  Last night I fixed a new chicken recipe.  I've already thrown out the recipe, but the chicken was really nice.  This is the second time I have purchased Harvestland chicken at Wal-Mart.  It is a natural product with no hormones or steroids.  It is a little bit more expensive, but it is worth it.  The chicken breasts were individually wrapped so you could just toss them in the freezer if you didn't want to cook all of them.  The whole chicken was so well wrapped that it wasn't dripping like they usually are.  

I didn't get any quilting done today.  All this computer stuff is a pain.  I hope I have most of it figured out.  Still gotta see what is going on with my printer.  I tried a live chat this afternoon, but that didn't work.  Think I'll wait until tomorrow to try it again.  May try calling the people I bought it from. 

 

Wow!  Working for five days in a row makes it hard to keep up with my blog and my neighbors!  I got home early on Saturday, and still had enough energy to take my camera outside.  Lady was nice enough to pose for me, no cropping or zooming!  Look how green the grass still is, and it's October already.  Still no frost here, although it was in the low 40s one morning. 

 

You can see fall coming in this photo of the lake.  It not blatantly obvious, but you can see the subtle changes in the grass and the trees.  The water level in the lake has usually dropped by this time of year, but this year we have had enough rain to keep it almost full. 

 

I have cosmos in my flower bed by the house, the they look so much more stunning with the lake in the background.  Part of it is just the lack of clutter, and then the color contrast is perfect. 

I got quite a bit done today.  I finished my laundry that I had started a couple of days ago, and dug up several plants that I had in my flower bed that won't survive a frost.  I also brought my big plant stand back in the house along with three or four of my big house plants.  I'm going to leave my Christmas cactus outside until it gets colder. 

I also worked on a fall table runner this afternoon.  I had machine appliqued leaves on it, and today I finished the stems, and free-hand quilted it.  It turned out pretty good.  I had never tried doing anything like that before.  I'm going to have to look for some border fabric tomorrow.  I'll try to remember to take a picture, too. 

 

 

 

 

I was going to stay out a few more minutes and let the sun get a little lower, but my batteries died and I didn't have any extras with me. 

Work again tomorrow, then I'm off for two days.  Yeah! 

I haven't had a chance to take any pictures outside since Sunday. Here's another shot of the sunset. 

Work was fun today.  I finally figured out my own version of a daisy.  I think it is really cute.  I put it on a chocolate iced cake with white borders.  Very impressive!  I have gotten much faster at putting the basic base icing on a cake.  I can whip out three of four of them in 15 minutes.  I have some basic original ideas that I can put together in just a few more minutes.  But when I really get into makes swirls and roses, I can spend 30 minutes or more on one cake.  Wish I could post some pictures.  I am really proud of some of them.  Others need a little more work, but it gets easier every day. 

I go to work at 9:00 tomorrow, but I'm tired, so I think I'll hang it up for today. 

 

There isn't very much color in the trees yet, but you can tell that fall is on it's way.  When I got home tonight, my hubby and a friend  were out fishing, so I picked up the camera and walked down to the lake.  I played mostly with zooming in on stuff.  I didn't want to get off the road to take any pictures. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was 6:00 already when I left the house for the lake, so the sun was getting low in the sky.  I'm not sure what settings I was using to get the focus on the cosmos. 

I did one cake differently at work today, and it really turned out nice.  It was a Transformers "kit" that was supposed to have an added layer of icing that was supposed to look like flames.  It was very time consuming to do, and never looked that good anyway, so today I tried just spraying the flames and it worked great and was so much faster

I also tried making the new High School Musical cake this afternoon.  It has a perfect 5 point star on it that we are supposed to make free hand, with icing.  Mine was a little lopsided, so after supper tonight, I sat down with a piece of paper and figured out how to draw 5 point stars free hand.  I'll have to make another cake like that to see if I can do it with icing! 

 

 

 

 

I love this reflection of the walnut tree.  It has already lost most of its leaves.  

 

It wasn't long before the sun was going down fast.  Here's our house and garage up on a little hill so we don't have to worry about flooding.  We planted all the trees in the picture except the walnut tree.   

 

I came on up the hill and walked over the the fence on the west of the house.  This was taken looking out across the soybean field with foxtail growning by the fence.  I got down on my knees to get the weeds in the foreground.  I always thought I liked vividly colored sunsets best, but I'm beginning to change my mind.  Since I started taking pictures of them, I like the ones like this one with the more delicate colors fading into one another. 

I don't have to work tomorrow, so I will try to catch up with my neighbors.  I'm also going to try to finish the table runner that I have been working on.  I still have enough apples for another apple pie, so I may do that, too. 

I didn't make it to Mass today, so I hope this fine fellow was praying for me!  He was crawling all over my hummingbird feeder, so it was easy to take his picture. 

I went back inside to cut up a couple of cantaloupe from our garden, then noticed that the sun was setting.  So I grabbed my camera and went back outside to see what I could come up with.  It was really hazy to the west and the sun was setting like a big orange ball.  I like this shot in black and white. 

 

All three of these photos were taken on Saturday, July 27 at about 8:00 pm.  We had gotten 3 inches of rain last week, so everything is nice and green.  All shots were taken with a Canon Powershot A540 in auto mode with the flash turned off. 

I planted these wildflowers on the bank of the lake this spring.  The sun was setting to the right of this shot.

 

I walked up to the end of our gravel road to get this shot looking back over the shed to the west. 

 

Within a few minutes, the sunset had changed as the sky got darker. 

Here is one of the pictures that I took last night of our sunset.  There were only a few clouds, so it wasn't too impressive. 

 

I used my photo editing program to change this sunset picture to sepia.  I like the color it makes the sky. 

 

Here are my entries for Photo Quest #18 - black and white.  I enjoyed the challenge once I figured out how to take black and white shots with my camera. 

This landscape is just to the east of my house.  I'm standing under a huge sycamore tree in my yard at about 7:30 tonight. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some grass seeds leaning through the fence. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I really like this old wooden fence post in black and white. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's the same fence post as in #3, this time looking to the north through the barbed wire fence.  Clouds were starting to move in from the west.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The same fence post, this time looking to the west.  The sun was streaming through a break in the clouds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another shot of the sunset, this time through the trees in our windbreak. 

 

I have one more shot that I wanted to enter, but I can't get it to load.  As I was walking back to the house, a small bird flew into the crabapple tree and started chirping.  I actually got a picture of him with his beak open.  Oh, well...

 

 

 

 

 

Here's my bird.  It was getting rather dark by this time. 

I had lost my connection to the internet.