3 Quarters Today

My Life, my photography, my passions

365project

Day 110/365: Portrait Professional, Before and After

by

Day 110: My daughter
Day 110: My Daughter

Thanks to this project I have met new people and advanced increased my post production skills with Photo-shop and new programs. Portrait Professional is a program I found and I absolutely love it!

My daughter doesn’t really need any help looking beautiful, I think she looks that way everyday. But, there are those teenage days when you have shiny skin and blemishes seem to pop up overnight when you least expect them. This program magically eliminates blemishes, decreases shine and can even go so far as changing eye color.

Although meant for professional photographers doing glamor shots, magazine shoots, it’s can provide just enough adjustment to give an extra edge to photographs. I’ve talked to professional photographers who take senior pictures and they swear by it and say it’s definitely the best program they have ever used.

Tomorrow I take a self portrait and see what if the program can take ten years off my face.

Day 109/365: First Flower of Spring

by

I’m so excited! On a gorgeous warm sunny Saturday last week I cleaned out the flower beds and look what I found. The first flowers of spring, a spring crocus! Yes, it takes little to get me excited, but this is a sign of spring, a forecast of what is to come, warm days, sunny skies. Oh, spring! Oh happy day! Next will be the daffodils and then my favorite spring flower, tulips.

Winters’ Spring Flower

Disclaimer: This image was updated a week later when it SNOWED!! What the heck? It’s officially spring according to the calender, no more snow!

Photography Notes: Used my camera in the shadow and snow programed mode and didn’t have to do anything post production other than resize. Did use my new MCP Action to quickly created the frame. Its the free Facebook Fix, side by side. This one you get by going to their Facebook page.

I’m Not the Only One Who Hunts For the First Flowers Of Spring

It seems I’m not the only person who gets tired of winter and looks for the hope of the first blooms of spring. Here in Nebraska it is the spring crocus that appears, in other location the first flower may be a bluebell, or even a skunk cabbage. What is it in your location?

I like to plant a small bowl of crocuses and have them on the dining room table. These are small enough they don’t get in the way and since I don’t have a green thumb I don’t care if they live all year round.

Hirts Gardens Delft Ceramic Bowl with Purple Crocus Bulbs and Indoor Fragrant Growing Kit

First Flowers of Spring

Four Indications That Spring Is on the Horizon

Crocuses are also among the first flowers of spring in a variety of colors including blue, yellow and white, the association said. Early flowers need to be hardy because of the changing weather patterns in the spring. “Since snow cover can still be …
How to force branches from flowering trees & shrubs to bloom indoors

Waiting for the first flowers of spring, especially in regions with heavy snow cover, can be a major exercise in patience, but with a little bit of work, your home can have flowers in every room. From the classic forsythia and pussywillow, which are …
The first flowers of spring

I have just picked a posy of the first flowers to bloom. You can delight in a jar of them, and in searching them out at the end of winter. There are cherry plum with tiny, bright flowers which have the scent of almonds, and primroses smelling of only …
The first flowers of Spring at Flower24hours flower delivery shop

Spring is finally here at London florists and flower delivery shops, bringing with it an abundance of new blooms, from daffodils to tulips. These flower varieties are one of the first flowers of Spring on Flowers24hours site: http://www.flowers24hours …
Beautiful Early Blooming Spring Flowers That Are Just As Anxious For The …

Now that it’s March, we’re ready to kick off spring, aren’t you? Yes, we know there are a few more weeks until it’s official, but we’re all about welcoming the season into our lives earlier. And one of our favorite ways to do that is by keeping an eye …
You Can Grow It – Planting bulbs

BOISE — Don’t you love it when those first flowers of spring pop up after a long, cold winter? Now’s the time to plant those spring flowering bulbs in your yard. Today on “You Can Grow It”, Jim Duthie share some information about bulbs, and a few tips …
Specieswatch: Snowdrop

The Flower of Hope or common snowdrop, Galanthus nivalis, is showing itself in gardens and will soon be attracting visitors to woodlands and churchyards, where these first flowers of spring can grow in carpets of white. When it occurs in such profusion …

 

Day 108/365: Shopping for the Wedding

by

Day 108: A Bridesmaid Prepares

Shoes , check, purse check, Alfred Angelo Bridesmaid dress, check.

Gather the groom, gather the bride, let the wedding commence.

Now that I have past the 100 day mark I think I can confidently enter the Post a Day challenge. Therefore I’m promising to make use of The DailyPost, and the community of other bloggers with similiar goals, to help me along the way, including asking for help when I need it and encouraging others when I can.

If you already read my blog, I hope you’ll encourage me with comments and likes, and good will along the way.

Photoshop Effects: Ink Outline filter, this is quickly becoming my favorite photo.

Faith, It’s Not Just Black and White

by

Sometimes faith is shades of gray. As some of you know who have been reading my blog my mother died in January of 2011. It has taken years to go through her things and absorb the life I never learned about. There are some things I still don’t understand, family history I don’t know. But through her death God opened a door.

Faith is God stretches beyond all comprehension
Faith, it’s not just black and white…

Although she made sure my brother and I were baptized, attended Sunday school and church every week,  it was only out of duty and respect to my God Mother Granny Turcotte. After we were confirmed, she never stepped foot in church again. The topic of religion and faith often brought a scornful look to her face and I never knew why because my faith has always brought me a great deal of comfort.

I grew up in a small country church, Grace Episcopal in Broad Brook Connecticut, and God brought me to the Lutheran church in college. My church home now is Missouri Synod Trinity Lutheran in Murdock Nebraska.

Not only did my Mother cut herself from God, but from family and friends. She didn’t think it was important to create relationships with relatives and her children. I rarely saw any of my aunts and uncles who lived in Oklahoma and California. The few cousins I knew as a child drifted as I got older.

There was one family member that consistently and faithfully maintained contact, a niece, my cousin Gail. I found saved cards, photos, and letters in my Mothers desk of an older cousin I never knew and never met.  In February a forwarded letter from Gail arrived in my mailbox, so I reached out with the news of Mom’s passing, including my email address. An email arrived a  week later.

Here is where God’s grace and divine intervention becomes apparent.

Chicken Soup for the Soul: Devotional StoriesChicken Soup for the Christian Woman’s Soul:

Gail and I learned quite a bit from each other the next week.  Her Mother (Mom’s sister) was also not religious. We lived very parallel lives and had similar experiences and troubling childhoods with both of us having a difficult relationship with our Mothers.

During the normal course of telling each other about our lives Gail stated that she is a faithful member of Missouri Synod Trinity Lutheran Church in Woodward Oklahoma. This news brought goosebumps, tears to my eyes,  a lump in my throat, and a prayer of thanks to God. How can this be a coincidence? I believe it’s not.

What does it mean? I don’t know. But I do take comfort in this has to be a sign, a message, an indication of God’s hand in our lives. Acknowledgment that to everything there is a purpose. Wait and the message will be revealed. Listen and hear God’s word in the world around us, from the people around us.

Better yet, when you find yourself in church pray for your family, your friends, those who have lost faith, who are lost. The Lord Jesus Christ will find them and guide them home. Gail’s Mother, my aunt, and the last of the five brothers and sisters, died last week. I truly believe our prayers that were delivered up to God were received and now our Mothers are safely and lovingly in the arms of Jesus and are at peace.

 

Related Articles

Day 106/365: First Encounter With a Marine Drill Instructor

by

USMC Recruit Family Night

In just a little under four months I will have two sons in the United States Marines. My youngest, a high school senior, is in the delayed entry program and got a little taste of Marine boot camp during last week during Family night for the Lincoln Nebraska recruiting station. A visiting drill instructor from San Diego put them through their paces and had them sounding off like grunts in no time.

My youngest son  leaves for boot camp in July. He’s the one on the far right with red tape on his arm (gave blood at school earlier in the day, his 7th pint) For a better understanding of what they went through in ten minutes here is a short video below, might want to turn your volume down for this.