My Life, my photography, my passions
Took this at the HyVee grocery store in Lincoln Nebraska. The produce department is a vast array of photo opportunities when there isn’t anything interesting during the brown, drab month of February and March. I love red peppers in my food, especially sauteed chicken or pork, just makes a colorful addition to a dish. Other than that a pretty quick picture today.
My daughter picked up this Victoria Secret “Give the the Shimmers” Sparkling Body Powder at Bit’s and Pieces and I instantly thought, it’s gotta be my photo of the day. Fun pink glittering powder in a bottle with a super soft feather brush.
It’s more of a novelty for her dresser, but I think I need to try it sometime.
Photoshop Notes: normal action layers, bumped up the contrast and decreased the brightness. Sharpened the feathers a little. I’m going to play around with some curves and effects later. This will make a good subject.
Brody seems so happy, and he is, happy to destroy any squeaky dog toy that comes into the house. If you read his previous toy escapade, you will see he is quite the toy enthusiast and he’s at it again, another dog toy test, another day with fluff littering the living room. Mighty Dog Toys are promoted as being tested by tigers (watch videos here) and encourages the consumer to rethink durability.
I signed up to be a toy tester with MyDogToy.com to save money, they are half price if you agree to review the toy on the website, now it’s become a challenge. I hope the feedback I give VIP Products will learn actually create an indestructible dog toy. Wouldn’t that be wonderful.
This has been the best squeaky dog toy so far. I liked it because it was big enough to grab and pull away from Brody without getting near his mouth. The Mega Gear Ring was much easier to play fetch and throw, I loved it and I think Brody even loved the big size. The Ring seemed to fight with him as he ran and he carried it various ways with his head the middle of the circle. Tried to get various pictures, but he moved too fast.
The outside fabric was quilted and prevented him from pulling all the outside cover off. That frustrated him to no end, he could only rip one square inch of fabric at a time. Mighty Dog Toys goes to great lengths to attempt to make their toys durable, and for normal dogs, or even persistent dogs this would work, as you can see below VIP Products tries really hard.
Seven Rows of Stitching Each toy’s seven layers of material are sewn together with two rows of linear stitching and two rows of cross stitching. The four rows of stitching are protected with an industrial grade luggage material that is sewn 3 more times. Seven Layers of Material Three layers of 600 Denier industrial grade material, three layers of plastic coating and finally one layer of soft fleece. All seven layers are rolled together and then sewn with a one inch cross pattern to prevent layer separation. Protective Webbing Additional industrial grade luggage material is sewn around the outside edge with three rows of stitching to cover and protect the first four rows of stitching. Squeaker Safety Pockets Each Squeaker is safe and quiet because they are sewn into a nylon safety pocket beneath seven layers of material.
It took Brody almost 2 hours to penetrate and release fluff. This is the longest of any dog toy I’ve ever gotten him. Then it was only one of four compartments.
This was great! He literally exhausted himself. The last compartment wasn’t breached for almost six hours. He eventually tore and ripped holes in the fabric, but threw and tossed it around for the next couple of days.
We had a lot of fun with this one, and if I had taken it away after a few hours, then given it back later, it would of latest for days.
Photoshop Notes: Top picture, which really is my “photo of the day “, normal action layers, but I erased the background in the upper left of the cabinet and Xbox controllers, it was distracting and messy
It’s a giant pink inflatable pig! He lives in my living room and is used as a bouncy chair, similar to how an large 3 foot exercise ball is used. Not for exercise, but to sit on. This carnival prize was won for my daughter at the Cass County Fair several years ago and I really do think it’s an exercise ball inside considering how sturdy it’s been. Pig doesn’t have a name and he’s starting to deflate, notice the saggy bottom, but keeps getting blown up because he’s a favorite.
The boys have a deal, whoever get’s “pig” has to use the corded Xbox remote, the person with the seat gets the cordless. See getting to sit on “Pig” is a privilege and that means you don’t get the good remote. First thing that I hear before an Xbox game is started with a group of boys is, “Where’s the pig?”
Now excuse me while I bounce on pig.
I don’t know why I procrastinate in posting to my 365 Blog, I really do take pictures everyday. But, I seem to wait until the end of the week and post everything at once and try and catch up. This leaves me with an empty blog for several days and my statistics crash and burn. Since I’m goal oriented and like to challenge myself the decrease in viewing numbers is not a pretty site. So now I’m going to spread out the posts to just once a day and do a better job of twitter updates and lets see how that works.
Today is another recipe. I had teenage boys over for an Xbox Black Ops party last weekend, which means they stayed up until 4 am, something like that. It also means they slept until almost noon. To help wake them up I prepared an breakfast egg and sausage casserole. Not only is this is easy to make, but it’s a great way to use stale Italian/French bread and there are so many variations that you can create your own variety every time.
I used a silicon pan, just got this last year, haven’t decided whether I like them or not. I’m a traditionalist and silicon cookware doesn’t have the rigidity of metal. But there are benefits, as I learned from the Shakin N’ Bakin blog, silicon bakeware doesn’t need to be greased or oiled and it cools down quickly after being taken out of the oven. It’s also not supposed to stain, but mine did. I do have a few other pieces I’m going to try out. I’ll let you know how I like them.
Ingredients
Directions
Cube the bread and place in the bottom of a casserole dish, layer the sausage pieces, cheese, and vegetables, until ingredients are gone. Sprinkle each layer with salt, pepper, dried mustard, and sweet basil. Scramble the eggs and milk in a bowl. Slowly pour over the layered ingredients making sure to soak the pieces of bread. Bake in a preheated 350F oven for approximately 25 minutes or until the eggs are set.
Photoshop Notes: general layers and resizing, brightened and added slight contrast. Biggest edit was cleaning my stove on the computer. Thought it was clean, but had grease splatters from cooking the sausage, so I cloned out the spots.
