This is the day...

where I have that thing called a birthday. Yes. I did that today. 

So, because it was "my" day, here's what I did.

7:55 am Got up, showered, dressed

8:25 am Went in the kitchen and got a glass of water and heard "Happy Birthday, Mom!"

8:30 am Read my annual lovely birthday poem from Pops

8:40 am Opened some lovely birthday presents and cards from the Treekids

9:10 am Dropped Blossom off at Playschool

9:25 am Heard the birthday song from Geemah & PopPop (my 'rents) on voicemail

9:27 am Called the 'rents to applaud their rendition of the classic

9:55 am Ate bonbons, read a good novel, took a nap (oh, that was just day dreaming, I guess)

11:30 am Hauled Bud and Branch to Playschool to pick up Blossom

11:50 am Arrived at home to serve chicken nuggets and apple slices while watching Tinkerbell

1:00 pm Saw many emails wishes for a happy birthday (thanks to you facebookers!)

2:00 pm Tried for another birthday nap but had to add a bit of clean up nagging to the mix

3:00 pm Fielded a few birthday phone calls

4:25 pm Took Bud to baseball practice and Branch and Blossom played on the playground

6:00 pm Ate supper with Pops and the Treekids at the local Mexican eatery

8:00 pm Said good night prayers and tucked in the Treekids

8:30 pm Birthday phone calls, again

9:25 pm Saying hello to you all on this blog

9:30 pm Saying good bye to you all on this blog so that I can go watch a dvd with Pops.

G'night. Here's to April Birthdays everywhere!!

What is that camera!?!

I use a Nikon D40 these days. Last year about this time, I had a point and shoot Kodak Easyshare C633. That camera had a little run-in with me, Branch, a snowmobile, a big slope, and the need for Pops and my ornery facebooking brother-in-law to get us out of our predicament. That is a long story that I don't want to relive, but the point is that the LCD screen broke and I had the need for a new camera. I had been wanting a DSLR when I got my point and shoot but it didn't work out then.  So, after the little guy broke, I waited 2 1/2 months for Mother's Day and was so excited that Pops and the Treekids were wanting me to have my camera back!!  So, I decided upon the Nikon D40 after talking with a nice gentleman at a camera store. It is a great camera for a beginner and amateur. Well, that is me!!  So, I have been messing around with it for nearly a year now and I love it. 

At Christmas time, I purchased (with some exciting Christmas Monies!!!) my zoom lens. It is a Nikkon Nikkor Lens. Its letters and numbers are:  AF-S DX VR Zoom - Nikkor 55-200mm f/4-5.6G IF-ED. I do NOT claim to understand what ALL of that means, but I will share what I think! The AF means it has AutoFocus capabilities. The DX means it is for a digital SLR (single lens reflex) camera. VR means that it has vibration reduction, so that all the hand shaking on holding a heavier lens is reduced some. Zoom- Nikkor 55-200mm means that it is a zoom lens!! It has a focal lens from 55 (the longest zoom on the kit lens) to 200 mm (a nice amount of zoom for taking pictures of kids from the other side of the lawn). The aperture is determined by those f-stops... f/4-5.6. Aperture is a complicated bit of information that basically determines how much light is being let into the camera lens. The rest of the letters? No clue. I love this lens, though!! I often have camera and lens envy, though, when I see a reporter for a local newspaper. Ooooo... THOSE are some zoom lenses!!

Anyway, that is the skinny on what I work with when I take pictures. It is a pretty basic beginner/amateur camera. It is pricey, but not so pricey that you couldn't save for a bit and get yourself one, too! Now, I thought I would show you something that would demonstrate a bit about why I love that lens so much!

Here is the comparison of the picture that I actually took at the safari the other day and the cropped image! I posted the cropped image. I wanted to show the eagle not the house! So, because the Nikon D 40 has a fairly decent chip size I can crop and it doesn't get so fuzzy. (Ok, that is a technicality that I don't know if I have right.  The guy at the store said something about the chip that will turn the image into all the pixels and how it has a nice one in the D40... so, that contributes to being able to either take the picture as it is and blow it up to a nice big wall sized photo OR crop it down to a tiny portion of the picture and just show that online... either way, it works.)

On the left is the Straight Out Of Camera Shot. The specs for this photo (if you care and want to know all of this technical jibberish) are:

shutter speed 1/250, aperture f/5.6, focal length 200mm, ISO 200

On the right, is the cropped picture of the same photo to its left. You can see that the fuzziness of the grasses is more pronounced, since it wasn't focusing on the grass, but instead the eagle. If you look closely at the left, you can see that the grasses on that photo are also fuzzy.

We had gone to the safari last year in March and I took a similar photograph with that old Kodak. I scrounged around and found it. The specs for this photo are:

shutter speed 1/1637, aperture f/4.8, focal length 18mm, ISO 140

I cannot crop out the eagle without losing the size of the photo! I have done all things equal. I end up with a tiny bit of a stamp of the photo. Kind of a whole different looking result, don't you think?!?!

Here are two more examples from our last trip to the safari.

I really wanted to be able to take a picture that I could crop and get that tongue! So, I ignored the rest of the body of the giraffe when I was framing the shot. If I centered the head and tongue, I would have more space to work with when I was cropping to get that tongue. I was amazed by the giraffe tongue. That flopping tongue was far more interesting to me, this time, than the length of his neck and the height of the entire beast!!

Giraffe: shutter 1/250, aperture f/5.6, focal length 200mm, ISO 200

Branch was liking this bear with his "huny pot" and I wanted to get a nice shot of him. I zoomed in as far as my lens would allow and new I would have to crop later. So, I just worked with what I had and took my "scissors" to the picture later!

Bear: shutter 1/400, aperture f/7.1, focal length 200mm, ISO 200

Any thoughts or comments? I am learning... tell me what you think! Also, please tell Pops to buy me the super-duper zoom and the macro lens, too!!!

Violet Treats

I ran out of time making these treats for Little Flowers. So, you have to know that they took MUCH longer than the ones I did for Blossom's Treat Day at Playschool. Getting the Skittles just right without dropping them as I was going... grrrrrrr.

They are basically the same kind of thing as the cake pops, but instead they are made like mini cupcakes dipped in candy melts!  Learn more at Bakerella.

I then used purple and yellow Skittles on top before the coating dried to form a pretty little violet. (Please use your imagination!)

I tried the recipe differently this time. Last time I used 3/4 of a tub of frosting mixed in with the cake crumbles to form the cake balls. This time I tried the whole tub like Bakerella suggests and I found it much harder to work with the cake mixture. It still tasted delicious. But, it was significantly more messy. I will go back to a smaller amount of frosting.

Up next... Camera Info and such.

Coming soon...

I have been having many questions about my camera, lenses, etc.  I will post about all that good stuff soon... Right now I am making treats for our Little Flowers meeting this afternoon.  AND, yes. I am going to be doing "over-the-top" treats. I just can't help myself. Remember the "cake pops" I made for Blossom's birthday? Well... I am working on some similar treats. Our flower this meeting is a violet... so, I am incorporating that in my fun... So, I will post pictures of those and will update you all on camera details!! Wish me luck on making violets out of Skittles!!