Saturday, August 28, 2010

Flower Picture

I am so excited! Now that my camera is finally working I went outside this morning and just took some random shots to check it out, make sure it was working correctly and to make sure that the focus is correct, etc. I took this picture of a little bitty flower that is in a planter on my back deck. Once I cropped it, I was amazed at the detail. I think I'm going to love this camera.

Friday, August 27, 2010

New Camera

After all the worrying about my camera, for some reason it started magically working today. Yay! I'm really happy about that and I hope it lasts. I don't know why is wasn't working before, but I'm pretty sure that it is my inexperience rather than anything being wrong with the camera. My first photography class is tomorrow and I'm really excited and looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to learning how to take better pictures, learning about composition and taking more artistic looking photos. I brought my camera to work today with the intention of taking it by a camera shop after work to see if they could tell me what was wrong, but after it started working, I took a few pictures around my office.



Thursday, August 26, 2010

Peaches


This week Eddie found some really nice peaches on the mountain. Last night he canned them and they are so pretty in the jars. I love peaches. It's one of the few fruits I really like. I've never really been a fruit person. I just don't eat fruit, don't really like it all that well, plus given a choice between a fruit and another type of sweet, I will usually pick the sweet. And this should all be the other way around. I've gained some weight this summer. Not something I'm proud of and certainly something I need to work on. I'm sitting here right now feeling fat and bloated. I'm just sick of it, so I'm going to have to work on losing this extra weight. It's not good for me and makes me feel miserable. I just have to figure out a healthy way to do it that I can live with from now on. I think that's part of my problem. I haven't been able to find a way to do it that I can adopt as a lifestyle change. I'm afraid my diet needs a major overhaul. Trying to lose weight is really hard because someone is always telling you that you have to give up something that you love in order to lose weight and keep it off. And what's worse, if I feel like I have to give it up for good that just makes me want it even worse.

I've decided to take a photography class this semester at the community college where I work. Since I work there I can take it for free. I bought a Canon Rebel XS camera on eBay. It was a deluxe kit, brand new and it included the carrying case, camera body, 18-55 lens, picture card, I can't even remember everything that came with it. I'm really dumb right now because I have no clue how to focus. I couldn't get it to take photos in the auto mode, which should be the easiet thing to do with any camera. All you do is point and shoot. Not so with this one. I guess there are some settings or something mysterious that I need to learn. I hope I can figure this out. I hope my camera is not a lemon. Maybe it's me that's the lemon since I can't figure this out. I'll be sure to let you know how this goes.

By the way, the picture above was taken with my trusty FinePix camera that's just a regular point and shoot. If all else fails, I'll use it for my class, but it doesn't have as many options for shooting flowers and landscapes and stuff like that.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Costume Designer for PBS Film Dolley Madison

Watch the full episode. See more American Experience.



You can watch Dolley Madison online at this link.

Monday, August 09, 2010

Ponds Cold Cream


I've been reading an interesting book called Summer at Tiffany by Majorie Hart. I bought it awhile back because I thought it looked interesting. It really is interesting. It's about 2 girlfriends who go to New York for the summer and get jobs at Tiffany's. It's about their experiences and it talks about all the movie stars they saw come into Tiffany's. There was Judy Garland and Vincente Minelli when they got married and Marlene Dietrich. I'm sure there are more, but I'm only halfway through the book. I want to rush through it because I can't wait to read the next thing, but at the same time I want to take my time reading it because I don't want it to end. It's actually a true story written in a fiction format.

There is one thing in the book that got me started thinking about Pond's Cold Cream. There is a scene in the book where one of the girls was trying on an engagement ring and she says "I'm engaged!" like the glamorous model in the magazine ad: She's engaged, she's lovely, she uses Pond's. So then that got me to looking for the ad, which I found and then reading about Pond's Cold Cream.


That led me to finding this vintage video on Youtube about how to remove makeup with Ponds. I've never tried it, but I just might. My skin is oily, though, so I'm not sure I should use it, but I think there is a Pond's Cold Cream for oily skin called Pond's Refreshing Cream. Everyone has talked about their mothers and grandmothers using it all their lives and what soft, smooth skin they all had. I need soft smooth skin really badly. My skin is badly damaged with scars from childhood chicken pox and teenage acne. Plus, I have big pores. I might think about trying the Pond's and see what happens.