weekend awaits
another week has come and gone. I am going out of town this weekend to spend some time in Iowa. Hope it’s sunny everywhere because it’s about darn time the weather started shaping up!
a few thoughts before i go….
i know it’s not corn season but this is what i think of when i think of Iowa. gobs. and gobs. AND gobs of corn.
And as i’ve mentioned before, i love beer. i do. lots of kinds. I’ve decided i love it because i am addicted to carbonation. More than beer i love bubbles! One thing that is happening this weekend in Iowa is that Millstream Brewery {which is a small local brewer in the Amana Colonies} is tapping their Maifest keg. yahoo! I’m packed up and ready to g0, complete with 3 empty growlers that will come back to this chilly state full.
that is where i’m headed. where breakfast is all you can eat family style. yum!
Have a great weekend! Very excited to work on some more portraits and web updates when I get back. Stay tuned…
new new new.
It has been 20 days since my last post. Yikes. I’ve just not felt in the mood to write. You know the feeling, the ‘Hmm, i didn’t do anything special today. Why would anyone else want to read about it?’ as well as one that seems to be happening more frequently, ‘Phew. Is it bed time yet?’ It seems I’ve been keeping quite busy in recent weeks but now I am coming to a calm. I have a weekend unplanned and some photo and scrapbook stuff to catch up on. {As well as gobs of sticks to pick up and bundle in the yard, laundry to put away, dog hair to vacuum {yeah, ick} and new ‘stuff’ to explore with my NEW vehicle.}
I am finally breaking my silence about my latest and greatest {and most expensive EVER} purchase. I bought a new car! Well, it’s not totally new, but it sure does feel like it! It’s a Mazda Protege 5 and it purs like a dream. I still hold my Montero near and dear to my heart because it got me all the way through college hauling me back and forth from IA to MN countless times and even moved an apartment for me. She still sits in my driveway {mostly taking up space and hauling my dog to and from the dog park} but we might have a use for her, we’ll see.
That is me {complete with work ID badge} and my new beauty in all her glory pre that ‘first drive to work’ event. I love it! It vroooms like a spry young car and it makes me look a little flashy. And the best part? It has a sun roof! I honestly don’t know how I lived without a sun roof before. It is probably the greatest thing I have experienced {in vehicle form.} I am able to throw my hands up like I’m on a roller coaster {while still maintaining complete control of the motor vehicle, of course … 10 and 2 at all times}. I also get a kick out of planes landing ‘over’ me while I drive home from work. A jumbo jet. Directly outside my window. More precisely? Above my window. It’s a little thrilling.
In other news, plans are well underway for the ChocoHound ‘free photo weekend.’
I’m at this point I’m tentatively planning on the last weekend in May and a weekend in mid June. I’m speaking with my coordinator tomrrrow {aka, the owner of the land} and if everything goes well I’m also planning on maybe a fall weekend? If you would like more information, as I mentioned in the last post about this, just send me a message via my website … www.chocolatemooseimages.com… or here on my blog and I will gladly give you more details as they arise. Oh, it will be so much fun!
On a more photographic note, in doing some reorganizing of my pics, I found some fun photos that haven’t made it to blog form yet.
More from White Sands, NM. I think no matter where I am, I will always love sunset. The light changes to the most beautiful colors and it is such a soothing end to the day. Farm – City – Home – Park – Anywhere … it is delightful. Hmm. if I was a poet or had any skill at all in the art of beautifully assembling words, I might be on to something.
The following set is also from White Sands. Pre sunset. Post sunburn. I do love my ‘tidy-clusters’. They make so many things so much easier to display!
This is just a favorite photo of Mur and I. It has a movie feeling to it, which i think is my favorite part. Course I’m not real knowledgeable on cinema photography but I’d say this photo would be in the running for a couples version of Thelma and Louise. No?
And finally, a shot from Paris. I know, New Mexico to Paris? “I don’t see the connection.” It’s true, there really is no connection. I was just going through photos and felt especially nostalgic over the silhouette of my traveling companions. Oh Pari, how I wish you were more accessible than a small fortune and an 8 hour flight across the pond.
To keep you totally caught up on my ‘to dos’…
* I made a second trip to New Mexico at the end of March for work. It was nice to be back in the ginormous state of NM again, but to tell the truth, I only really saw the airport and HWY40. I stayed at the Route66 Casino and Hotel for 3 days and while the sound system was great {yahoo Paul} the ability to smell like an ash tray from just walking to the restaurants, the inevitability of eating out every day as well as the inconvenient proximity from Albuquerque got to me a bit. I was ready to come home!
{but as a side note, the trade show was great! lots of really nice people who were thrilled to see us there.}
* In other news, we’ve had several visitors over the last few weeks which has been a delight! It seems we are usually the ones that visit so it was a welcome change of pace. Come one, come all. We love people!
*Last weekend we felt ambitious in the backyard and spent a good 8 hour day cleaning up leaves, chopping down ‘trees’ and breaking up sticks. It made a dent in tidying our wilderness abyss and also used muscles in my legs I didn’t know existed. Ouch.
*Right now in the house: Roux is fast asleep after a sprint around the yard and I am waiting for chicken to thaw before making a salad and snake bite.
Have a lovely rest of your weekend and I will leave you with a few photos of my great friend’s kitty cat… and a turtle.
Atlas, because he’s a spunky kitty which is not really my mood right now, but I wish it was…
And the turtle because he was slowly but {most definitely} surely crossing in the middle of the trail and yes, I almost stepped on him. Cheers to a long {and ambitiously active} life.
a kitty named Balloo
On Friday, while sitting at my desk catching up on the latest from some of my favorite photogs, it occurred to me that I really like the look of various blogs. I like the way images don’t seem to float by themselves and instead they are more ‘clustered’ together cohesively. I decided that no more would I have a boring looking blog. I like to call this the ‘tidy-cluster.’ The name comes in part from my love of peanut clusters and in part from the literal way images are displayed. Now I can’t take sole credit for this ‘invention.’ While I did make my own templates and designs in Photoshop, I have been inspired by various photographer’s blog displays. Exhibit A:
For a while now I figured these neat shapes {such as the rectangles and squares shown above} that photographers’ photos were jammed into were at their disposal because they had fancy blogs. You know the ones. The fancy customized ones. Because of that I would just drool at my computer over these artsy looking blogs with the understanding that mine would never become this. Alas! I have found the solution! After a lot of trial and error and bonding with the ‘shape tool,’ I have created my own set of ‘tidy-clusters’ to further that artistic vision that only can go so far with a floating image.
Let me reintroduce you to Balloo… again. Balloo has been posted on here a couple times now, but she made the cut again because of the mood in these pictures. The colors in these photos makes me think of Summer. And by my clock it should be summer now. And since it’s clearly not by the snow storm we had last night, I am living vicariously through several images of Balloo with her bright pink collar, the warm tones of her surroundings and the lovely bright light filling the room. Go ahead – click on her! The ‘tidy-cluster’ looks far more impressive at a larger size. This project has occupied about 5 hours of my time, and for that I am thankful! I feel accomplished for a Sunday evening even though my pup feels slightly neglected.
In conclusion I just want to ask Mother Nature to take pity on us chilly folk in the North. Where is this so called ‘Spring’? It’s April!
sunshine…. cats… airplanes
It is sunny out! I woke up this morning and the doom and gloom of the last week had passed. How delightful. Sunshine, you betta stay in town!
Once again, I am leaving my state behind to head down to New Mexico. And I couldn’t be more excited! I know I just got back from a vacation {well, i guess it’s been over a month} but I could honestly use some time away from the office. I’m going down for a trade show this weekend {per my other job} to chit chat about our products and meet some friendly clients. Lots of talkin’, walkin’ and eatin’!
I thought because I was going back down to New Mexico, I would post a photo via New Mexico in February. The little orange guy at the top is Bandit. He is the feline of our good friends that live down in that perpetually warm state. Their excellent backyard is filled with all kinds of plants and critters that the kitties just love to play in!
And one more! I love this series! It come from White Sands park and is quite characteristic of how our trip went: crazy and sandy!
Choco Moose, signing off. See ya when I get back!