Sparkly Shiny Glittery Pretty

I bought these flower/snowflake embellishment thingies before Christmas. I thought I might put them on a scrapbook page (except I haven't scrapped in months) or a card or a picture frame. I haven't decided what to do with them. I just like to look at them. They're so sparkly and shiny and glittery and pretty. The photo doesn't do them justice. Maybe I'll shoot them again with more light shining on them so the sparkle will show up more. Or I'll just keep looking at them.

Pink tulips

I love pink tulips.

Not my best Photoshopping job. Pretend you can't see that the edges of the tulips aren't seamless where I toned down the yellow background. :-D

Winter "festival"

I've been in a photo slump lately. Nothing's been inspiring me. Then I noticed in the newspaper that there was going to be a winter festival this weekend, with ice sculpture creations at the local ski area today from 9 to 3. I thought it would be a fun thing to photograph and get me out of the house and lift my spirits. I was expecting all these ice sculptures in the snow with the green of the surrounding pine trees as background.

Yeah, not so much. My friend and I got there at about 10:30 and saw this:
Oh, but wait. There's a sculpture. Lovely background, eh?
Oh, look, another sculpture...that's exactly like the other one.
There was also this guy. He was pretty cool. But he was behind a wooden barrier so I couldn't get a full unobstructed shot.
And that was it. I wish I'd had the wizard's crystal ball to tell me not to waste my time.
Winter festival: pfffft!

Shaker building

An oldie from this summer:

Neglected hobbies

My neglected hobby is stamping.
I used my fisheye on this shot since my 24-70 was in for repair. (It just arrived home from the Canon hospital, though!) I already have a hard time using my flash, and the flash with the fisheye was extra challenging.

Tops of re-inker bottles:

Teacup

Since my stepsister moved to Switzerland she was getting rid of lots of stuff, and when she came to visit at Thanksgiving she brought this little tea set for my DD. All it needs is a little lace doily.
Playing with turning a photo into a sketch in PSE:
Shot with my 100mm macro lens. I am really missing my 24-70 these days. Did I tell you all that I broke it and it's at the Canon Service Center? I dropped it on a ceramic tile floor--I am an eedjit.

Mr. Blue Sky

Anyone remember that song Mr. Blue Sky by ELO? I was an ELO fan back in the day. Back in the day when I was 10. I'm pretty sure Out of the Blue was my first album purchase. I remember being in the record department of a discount store with my big brother and picking out that one and the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. My brother disapproved of the Saturday Night Fever choice. He still disapproves of my music choices more than 30 years later. He checks my kids' iPods to make sure I'm not influencing them too much.

I have ELO and Saturday Night Fever on my iPod now. I have a whole playlist of some of my favorite songs from when I was a kid in the 70s, which include:
The Night Chicago Died--Paper Lace
Convoy--C.W. McCall
New York Groove--Ace Frehley
Billy, Don't Be a Hero--Bo Donaldson and The Heywoods
The Locomotion--Grand Funk Railroad

What I don't have is Delta Dawn by Helen Reddy or any of (my first true love) Andy Gibb's songs. I see a visit to iTunes in my near future.

I really wasn't planning on writing about 70s music, but I saw the sun and blue sky today (yay!) and "Mr. Blue Sky" popped into my head when I was titling my post, and off I went. In fact, I'm listening to Mr. Blue Sky right now.

We're supposed to get more than a foot of snow tomorrow so no Mr. Blue Sky tomorrow.