Category Archives: Photography

Adventures in Photography!

Good afternoon!

This past Saturday, it was such a beautiful day that my sweetie and I packed up my new camera, remote control, and tripod, and headed out for a few hours to practice taking photos with my new camera! I had had my heart set out on going to the Union Street Railroad Bridge, which is an old river-crossing train trestle that was converted to a nice pedestrian bridge just a few years ago!

We knew that this was an old bridge, but were surprised to see that it was originally built in 1912. We were literally walking across history! 🙂

This is my lovely assistant, AKA my sweetie! He was happy to just people watch and soak up the sun on this absolutely GORGEOUS day!! 🙂

There were actually a lot of people out enjoying this morning, but we got lucky and I almost got a free and clear shot of the walking bridge without pedestrians! 🙂

The outside of the trestle.

I just love the way the metal crisscrosses and all of the details of the rivets! Industrial chic?? 🙂

This is the old wooden foundation. You can tell that there have been many recent repairs, but it is just so cool to look at!

The Willamette River.

I am soooo in love with the curve here!

Thanks to my new remote control and tripod – I now actually have the ability to show up in some of my own pictures!! 🙂 Jason has a way of just keeping me laughing!! 🙂

I really do love this man!! 🙂

I know that I still have a loooooong way to go on learning how to use all of my settings on a my new camera, but I am determined to figure them all out!! ISO, white balance, timing, flash vs no flash, etc, etc! In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed these pictures and hopefully, over the next year or so, I can keep growing and learning as a photographer and continue to share my progress pics with you! 🙂

Here is to a FABULOUS day! 🙂

If you want to have a different life, you have to live differently!!

A Girl With Too Much Time On Her Hands!!

Good evening!!

My sweetie has been work every night for the past three weeks, so needless to say someone has WAAAAAAY too much time on her hands!! This evening, I ran to our local super center, whose name shall remain unnamed!! Picked up a whole plethora of toiletries, house supplies, and jammies – some women turn to chocolate when they are lonely, I turn to shopping for jammies!!

ESPECIALLY SCRUMPTIOUSLY SOFT JAMMIES!!!

Is that just me? Or is there anyone out there who also needs a therapist!??? 😉

Anyway, since my sweetie is working in town, my habit this week has been to stop by his worksite and take him a healthy snack and visit with him for a few minutes while he enjoys his snack! THAT has probably been my FAVORITE times of the week!! I dream of someday having a child, and being able to take little him or her out to daddy’s job site and share some goodies and memories with him in that way!! So, I feel like I got a bit of a taste of that future this week!!! Tonight’s snack was some skim milk – his FAVORITE!! Some clementines AKA Cuties – so yummy!! and a bit of beef jerky, which is really great and easy way to get some protein in for us post bariatric patients.

After I met the gentleman he is doing work for, a very nice man, I zipped on home and made a big pot of a lean-ground-sirloin-chock-full-of-vegetables-and-beans kind of mixture to use to stuff baked bell peppers! They are currently baking in the oven, and they are making the house smell so delicious!!! I will top with some skim milk mozzarella and they will be ready to serve!! I know my sweetie will LOVE those!! Those are one of his FAVORITE of my meals!!! 😉

My official plan for this evening after I finish blogging tonight will be to spend some quality time with the new Country Living magazine that came in the mail today – one of my NEW magazine subscriptions!! I figure that if I were to get my magazines via subscription then it would save me money, so I immediately subscribed to FOUR magazines!! EEK!! I hope I have time to sit and really read them all!! Oh, at least I will sure have a hell of a lot of fun trying!!! 😉

Before I go, one quick word on all of the pics in this post. These would explain why I called tonight’s post, “A Girl With Too Much Time On Her Hand!!” because while I was waiting for the bell pepper stuffing to cook, I decided I would spend some eh-hum…”quality” time playing with my camera!! 😉 HEE! HEE!! 😉

Man, I could really use some more girlfriends…any volunteers???? 🙂

Anyway, I can hear the oven beeping at me, telling me dinner is ready!!!

With that…

Here is to a FABULOUSLY ARTSY evening!! 😉

If you want to have a different life, you have to live differently!!

The Salem Oregon Train Station

Good evening!

Yesterday, after work, I had some time and I decided I would make good use of it by going down to the Salem train station. It is one of my absolute favorite buildings in all of Salem, matter of fact, if it weren’t for the fact that it is right next to the train tracks, I could imagine myself and my sweetie converting this building into our home.

I did a little bit of reading this evening to see what I can find out about this building, and I discovered that not only is it on the National Historic Registry, but it is actually the third train station built in this location, the first two having burnt to the ground in both 1885, and 1917.

This building was actually built in 1918, and is one of only 5 of the original masonry buildings that still exist on the original Southern Pacific West Coast Line.

Although quite small on the inside, at least from where I was standing, there are some really beautiful architectural details on the inside of this building too. I especially loved the light fixtures, which there were two of, hanging from the high ceilings of the depot.

The outside isn’t too shabby either! There was a massive restoration project done by the Oregon Department of Transportation that was completed in 2000. The style of this building is called Beaux-Arts-style.

There are so many architectural details to see, that I walked around this building 3 times catching new elements with my eye and camera each time I circled the building.

It was such an amazingly sunny afternoon, and I was absolutely struck how vividly blue our normally grey sky was. It was quite breathtaking.

Another fun fact about this building is that Amtrak rents this building from the government for only $1 a year, in exchange for building and ground maintenance. Isn’t that amazing??? I think that is PHENOMENAL!! 😉

Here are some more of those great architectural details. I am absolutely in LOVE with these pillars, have been since I was a little girl, but it was only by taking these pictures that I was able to notice the detail at the top of these stately columns.

See what I mean? And I just adore the molding around the top of the building too. They don’t make buildings like this any longer!

These are the original light fixtures. They are ginormous! And although I don’t really show it well here, the arched windows are really quite astonishingly beautiful!

Here is some more detail at the base of the pillars.

Finally, here is one of the front corners of the building! I had so much fun investigating this lovely piece of Salem’s history.

I literally drive by this building every day, and I almost forget that it is even there. This experience has inspired me to make an effort to purposefully go out and find out what other great buildings from history are out there just waiting to be rediscovered!! Who knew history could be so fun!?? I can’t wait to see what I find next!!

Have a FABULOUS evening!!! ;-)

“If you want to have a different life, you have to live differently!”

Mom, I’m Bored!

Good evening!

I am sitting at home this evening!! I had some plans that fell through this evening, and my sweetie is still out working.

All I can manage to do this evening is sit here and think to myself, I am soooo bored!! Do you remember what would happen when you told your mom that you were bored when you were a kid? I know that my mom would have told me to go outside and play, then she would have locked the screen door, and I would not have come home until the street lights came on! Man, those were the days!!!

Anyway, I have to-do listed, journaled, arted, visualized, read, cleaned, organized, and planned myself into an exhausted stupor!! 😉 I am ready to have a nice quiet evening, it would be nice though if my sweetie would get home. It sounds like he has been having a bit of a rough day! He could use some babying from his lovely wife – er…uhm…that would be me!! HEE! HEE!! 😉

So without much more hubbub, I thought I would share some more pictures of some of the buildings in the city that I have always enjoyed looking at…

Here is one of the buildings at Willamette University!

Here is the Reed Opera House!

I am not sure what this building is, but I have always loved it!

Another random picture!

and finally one last picture from one of the buildings at Willamette University!

Whew! I feel much better now!! No more boredom!!

Have a FABULOUS evening!!! ;-)

“If you want to have a different life, live differently!”

Having a FABULOUS Day!

Good afternoon!

I am having such a FABULOUS day, that it made me feel froggy enough to want to share how my day has been going since I decided to start a revolution in my life!! 😉

Here is something I texted to myself after having completed the first portion of my walk this morning:

“WOW! I feel AMAZING!! I just spent the last 1/2 hour walking from my old High School all the way to one of my first places of employment, downtown – and all I can say is WHOO! HOO! My sweetie was very surprised I made it down to him so quickly!! We are now at one of the local Starbuck’s where he is playing on his computer and I am thoroughly enjoying a nice large glass of ice water!! I am not sure what to do now, but I am having the hardest time holding still now. Who would have thought that the act of expending energy, would actually give you energy? What a good day!”

After sending this to myself, I tried really hard to hold still and read a little, and I just couldn’t do it – hold still that is. So, I decided to walk a little bit further. I ended up spending the next hour or so walking everywhere I could think of just taking pictures like a maniac! It was soooo much fun!! I finally had to have my sweetie come pick me up because my camera battery had died, and my back up was dead too! So, here I am now at home, at least for a few hours before we go out to dinner with a girlfriend of mine this evening! I can’t wait!!! 😉

Here’s to having a FABULOUS day!!

“If you want to have a different life, live differently!”

Hangin’ at the Manse!

Good evening!

I have had a pretty good day today!!

Had a yummy brunch with my sweetie!
Got all of the laundry done in the house – which if you would have seen our massive pile of dirty clothes, you would have realized what an AMAZING accomplishment that was!! 😉
Helped my sweetie pain on a Victorian doll house for a little while! (He has been contracted to refinish one for one of his clients!)
I have read a little in a romance novel I have been reading!
I have watched one too many episodes of tele off of our Netflix!
Had a GIANORMOUS, but extremely delicious dinner with my sweetie!
and am now sitting in my living room enjoying my family, while the Christmas lights are on, my sweetie is writing, and I am getting ready to spend a little too much time on Pinterest!! 😉

Talking of Pinterest, is anyone else as completely addicted as I am???? Oh-em-gee!!! I can open it up and start rifling through pics, and before I realize it 2 hours have passed!! I am sooooo ENAMORED!!! It’s all good though! I have always loved collecting photographs of all things inspiring – I have about 15,000 different pics on my computer – I know, a little obsessive, right?? But I have been collecting photographs online for about 5 years, so n average of 3000 pics a year – I can handle that!! Maybe I just need to be a photographer so that I can start collecting some of my own inspiring shots!!! 😉

Talking about photography, I am getting ready to sign up for an online photography class. It is not your typical, technical type class, but more about how to take more artistic and expressive pics using whatever kind of camera you may have available. Right now I have a normal point and click, but someday soon I hope to have a real big-girl-camera, with lenses and everything. WOULDN’T THAT BE AWESOME????? Oh man, that idea just jazzes me SO MUCH!!! 😉 I can’t wait!!! Anyway, the class is given by Darrah Parker, and if you click on her name it will take you to a page telling about her class. I can’t wait!!

Anyway, I just noticed the time, and realized it is later than I thought it was (it is about 8:45 her, and I am an early to bed kinda gal!!), so I am going to skee-daddle to get ready for bed!!

Have a FABULOUS evening!

My Weekend!

Good evening!

I thought I would take some time this evening to share some pictures that I was fortunate enough to take from my relaxing/rejuvenating overnighter at the coast!! We got the opportunity to spend the night over in a little tiny town called Neskowin, Oregon.

Here are all of us girls! Jennifer, Ronita, myself, and Lynette! We are standing on the balcony of the beachfront condo!! (Neskowin Shores.)

Check out this SPECTACULAR view!!!

Next up were manis and pedis!!! These are mine fingers! 😉

These are Lauren’s!

This is Megan waiting for her finger and toenails to dry!! This is the pose of the PERFECT LAZY DAY!! 😉

Here is Lauren waiting for her digits to try too! She is just getting so big! 😉

After sufficiently drying, it was time to go down to the beach and get some playing done!!! 😉

The KIDDOS!! Morgan, Jason, and Megan! We were all so wet and sandy when we got back to our apartment, but we really had such a FUN TIME! 😉

Morgan investigating the barnacles!! Heaven forbid if he actually touched one though!!! HE SCREAMED LIKE A GIRL!!!! EEEK!! 😉

This environment was so beautiful, it put me in such a zen place.

AAAAAAH!!

I can NOT wait to get the opportunity to visit this mini coastal town again! It really was such an invigorating overnighter, and it came at the MOST PERFECT TIME!! Jason and I have decided that this is our new coastal vacation spot!!

Tomorrow, when I will be blogging again, it will be from Madison, Wisconsin – yep, more computer training!!! WHEW!!! I will be heavily medicated, because I still HATE flying, but I am going to pretend that I am on an adventure!!

So, until then…

Have a FABULOUS evening! ;-)

A Random Sunday!

Good evening!

I have come to the point in my book-loving life that I have too many books, and not enough time to read them all! Not to mention, some of them were given to me and I have NO idea what they are even about. I need to get two comfortable reading chairs and place them in my living room so that I can get some more reading time squeezed into my days! All of my friends and family think that I read all of the time, but really, I only read about 1/2 an hour before bed every evening. I wonder if that fact would surprise any of them??

Well, Jason and I are getting ready for our association’s annual garage sale, which is coming up this weekend, so I am doing my part to help get rid of any miscellaneous things in the house. Apparently Jason is going to be placing a whole TON of his things from his storage unit out for sale, which will be good, I think! When Jason and I lived in the old house, we used to hold 2 or 3 garage sales every Summer, so keep the plethora of belongings at bay was much easier than it is now!!

I have been dreaming about our farm that we hope to have some day. I have made an appointment with my mortgage broker for this Tuesday to find out what kind of options I have for either getting out of our condo, or refinancing so that we can pay a lower mortgage payments every month. I haven’t refinanced for the last three years, and I know my credit score has gone up, and interested rates have gone down. SO, hopefully I will hear SOMETHING good!! just as long as she doesn’t tell me that we will be stuck in this condo for the next 10 years – UGH!!! 😉

As for today? Well, Jason and I started early this morning, with the stereo playing some happy music to make our chores a little more fun!! I just LOVE having a clean house!! Then I had pulled out my mother’s no-bake cookie recipe that I had misplaced, but found this week, and decided to surprise Jason by making him a batch of those. They are so much easier than I remember, and still DELICIOUS!! Needless to say he was PLEASANTLY surprised!!! 😉

So, tonight, I am going to finish going through some of my books, set out an outfit for tomorrow. Oh, on a side note, I have to text Chris (one of my co-workers) every morning to make sure that she and I are not wearing the same thing – it happens a lot!!! 😉 So, I have started to setting out my clothes every evening, so that I am ready at a moments notice if I have to change anything!! LOL!! What we do for our friends!! 😉 and then I am going to climb into my freshly made bed this evening and catch up on a little reading before I fall to sleep!!

Have a FABULOUS evening!!! 😉

PS: By the way, all of these pictures were taken by me while my sweetie and I were having our morning breakfast of steel cut oats – YUM!! 😉

Drive in the Country!

Good afternoon!

My sweetie and I had the very fun excursion out today!

Well, where to begin? I woke up early this morning, and I spent some quiet time reading my favorite blogger magazine. It got me inspired to go out and take some pictures, and so I talked to my sweetie and we rounded up the girls, and we all went out for a ride out through the countryside.

I thought it would be fun to share some pictures of our outing with you!

The first thing we did was that we decided to head out towards farmland so that we could day dream about our little farm that we hope to have someday!! I think Jason is thinking actual farm, and I am thinking a large cottage with a small plot of land to go with it, but this drive helped use verbalize some of each of our dreams and wishes for our dream home!

This farm was my absolute FAVORITE of the day! I could completely see us refurbishing this one and moving right in. Well, minus the two bulls that were in the front yard – EEK!! 😉 If we ever have any animals, besides dogs, we agree that we could handle chickens – WE THINK! 😉

One of my favorite things about the country is all of the different textures that nature has to offer! It is like an amazingly intricate quilt! I am just in awe of God’s amazing-ness!!

I love that these homes are all tucked far from the road, and a distance from each other! I bet you could run around naked outside here in the evening, and no one would even know it. Ok, maybe not me, I am neon white after all. I am sure that I would look like a crazy, fat beacon running like a crazy-person in the night!!! Wouldn’t that be a sight??? LOL! 😉

Isn’t this vineyard just lovely? The Pacific Northwest is becoming known for their wineries!! and even though this isn’t the berry orchard that Jason and I dream of, there is a small part of us that think a little vineyard would be very romantic too!! 😉

Aren’t the cherries just picture perfect??? I picked these up at a little farmer’s market while we were out on our drive!

Here is one of those bulls I was telling you about earlier. My sweetie was brave enough to take a picture of for me. (I ran back and locked myself into the car!!) I was sure that if I got too close to the fence that it would somehow break through the fence and bite me or something!! LOL!! Jason and I both got a good laugh over that one!!! (but secretly I’m still a little sacred!) 😉 I didn’t want the bulls to get angry, thinking we were stalker-paparazzi or something!! 😉

This wheat wasn’t swaying in the breeze AT ALL!! I have never seen wheat hold SO STILL before!! I had a moment of, “Wouldn’t it be fun to run through this wheat field?” Until Jason reminded me of snakes. “Hmmmmm….no thank you!!” (How exactly am I going to make it out in the country??? 😉

The day was hot, clear, and absolutely BEAUTIFUL! 😉 These small purple flowers practically sparkled under the noon-day sky! I just HAD to stop and snap a picture!! 🙂

Here was my second favorite farm house of the day!! It looks like it needs some love, and I am sure it is haunted!! My friend, Chris, swears that all old buildings are haunted, and I am SURE she MUST be right about this one!!! 😉 Even though, it is still a very pretty haunted house!!! 😉

These colors are just so vivid, this rich, lush green against this deep blue sky. It was quite spectacular!!

Oh, and to top of our lovely drive, Jason took me to this little farmer’s market, that I had never been to before, and they had the most delectable strawberry shortcakes! They were sinfully delicious, made with ice cream. I had never had a strawberry shortcake made with ice cream before! and the fresh strawberries just finished this perfect desert off! They were pure goodness!! YUM!!

Man, what a GREAT day!! I had so much fun visiting with my sweetie, seeing the great outdoors, all while hanging with my girls!! I can’t wait to see what we do tomorrow to beat the heat!! I will keep you posted!! 😉

Have a FABULOUS evening! 😉

The Many Faces of Happy!

Good evening!

Man, WHAT A GREAT WEEKEND WE HAVE HAD!! Whew! Sorry for shouting, I just had to get that out of my system!!!

Well starting at the beginning, Friday Jason and I went over to our friends’ Rachel and Kevin’s, who we hadn’t seen in the LONGEST TIME!!! We met up, and the guys cooked us girls a very healthy barbecue dinner of grilled chicken and vegetables! YUM!! (YOU GUYS ROCK!!!) After dinner, Jason and I had fun playing with their adorable daughter, Alyson, the four of us spent the next few hours catching up and playing a very competitive, and comical game of Apples to Apples. I am happy to announce that although Kevin won first place, I am very happy to announce that I came in from last place to snatch up second place!!! We had the most AMAZING fun, and I can’t wait to get together to do that again soon!!! 😉

Saturday I met up with my girlfriend, Dawn to do some second hand shopping, at a place called Big Gals Consignment, why the heck haven’t I been shopping in that place for years!?!?!? It is AMAZING!! Clean, high quality clothes at a REALLY, REALLY great price!!

Anyway, after our trip there, we went to another place to see if we could find the perfect wedding dress for Dawn, and we weren’t having too much luck, that is until we finally decided to go to Nordstroms! It was not 5 minutes after describing her dream dress to me, that the sales lady brought in EXACTLY what Dawn was looking for!! It looks stunning on her, and made her light up with happiness, AND it was the BEST PRICE!!! WIN! WIN! WIN!! – I was VERY GLAD to be a part of that!!!

Before we left Nordy’s, I had to head over to the MAC counter to pic up something, you know me and how much I am a MAC girl!!! The lady who was helping me there had the most stunning eye make-up complete with gold glitter, and the most amazing false lashes, so Dawn and I decided to make an appointment to come back the next day and have a makeover ourselves with an emphasis on a smokey-eyed wedding look for Dawn, and a diva-like dramatic eye look for myself, both looks including learning how to apply false lashes!

We then met back up with the guys downtown for a nice lunch over at the Wild Pear, which has THE BEST FOOD!!! I had to mention that, because I am going to share pics of that place later in the week – their decor is STUNNING!! If we doubled the width of the place, I could just live there!! I am just sayin’! 😉

So, today was the day of that appointment and Dawn and I headed over there to get our new looks done, we were so excited, and Sammy was there to entertain us and take all sorts of pictures for us!!! I would like to say that everything went perfectly, but that would be too perfect wouldn’t it. Let’s just say that Dawn and I both had two different people doing our makeovers, and mine was phenomenal and Dawn’s was, well…let’s just say that we are going to schedule another makeover for Dawn again, but this time with my sales lady – Lacey!!

Even though things didn’t go exactly as we had planned, we had a lot of fun, and after getting back to Dawn’s place, where both Errin and Jason were busy visiting and watching movies (oh, did I mention, our makeovers took a little over 2 hours???) We fixed Dawn’s makeup, applied makeup to Sammy, which, by the way, made her look like she was 25, so that was kinda freaky – but you’ve gotta know that Sam LOVED it!! 😉

After begrudgingly leaving Errin and Dawn’s so we could head home and get some laundry done so that I didn’t have to go to work naked tomorrow (you are welcome Chris and Julie!!!) Jason and I picked up a little something for dinner, rented and watched Red Riding Hood, which was a little lackluster in all honesty. All-in-all I think that has been one pretty GREAT two and a half days!!! We have had a ton of fun, and Jason and I are really blessed with really great friends, and even more blessed that we get the opportunity to spend some quality time with them!!!

Anyway, Jason and I are getting ready to head upstairs for some quiet time before going to bed this evening!! If only EVERY weekend could be filled with as much friends and fun as this one has been, I think our lives would just BUST AT THE SEAMS with JOY!! 😉

Have a FABULOUS evening!! 😉

Beautiful Creatives

Empowering your juicy life!

Category Archives: Photography

Adventures in Photography!

A Girl With Too Much Time On Her Hands!!

The Salem Oregon Train Station

Mom, I’m Bored!

Having a FABULOUS Day!

Hangin’ at the Manse!

My Weekend!

A Random Sunday!

Drive in the Country!

The Many Faces of Happy!