So-So Sunday

I really didn’t know what else to call it lol. This is more of things I forgot to write in the last past post and then things I thought I’d write this morning anyway.

• I’ve decided to skip the first fair. Boo! I know. BUT….because I’ve let time get away from me once again, there is/was no guarantee that I would get my prints back in time for it. I didn’t want to sign up and then have nothing to enter. That said, I will spend the next week or two choosing images for the August fair. I want to say I can enter up to 3. I have to re-edit my choices because I can’t have a watermark on them. That is grounds for disqualification.
  
• The “Boot Leg Fire” is now over 280,000 acres and 22% contained. It isn’t a threat to us, but we are getting a considerable amount of smoke from it. The smoke is so bad today that you can see it hanging just above the corn field out back. And you can smell it. It’s harder to breathe today too.
  For us here, there is the threat of high based showers and thunderstorms. Last I saw too, this had the potential for winds as well. Not what you want to hear. With how hot and dry it is, the risk is high for more fires if the thunderstorms actually do fire up.
  
• We actually got to go to some yard sales yesterday, once we finally found some. It’s funny when we aren’t looking for them, we find one after another. But when we are looking, they are like a needle in a haystack. Found a good stack of board books for Grasshopper. She’s going to be thrilled. While we did finally find some, I didn’t come home with much. 3 new to me tops, a book, and a small wall shelf that I will probably spray paint. Not sure where I’m putting it yet. It’s a bit on the heavy side, so I don’t want to use it for my original intention. And I’m a little afraid to hang it up on the wall because of the weight of it.
  
• I was supposed to be doing Camp NaNoWriMo. But I just didn’t have the bandwidth to commit to writing like that. I mean, yeah I know, it’s Camp so I can set my own goal for the month. I just didn’t feel like I could do it. In all honesty, I forgot it was even that time until like a week later. I did though have the vaguest spark of an idea. So I am going to sit with it and see if anything comes of it to maybe use for November.
  
• I am just simply heartbroken for my neighbor. He lost his wife of 63 years on July 5th. She died in his arms. They were together for 65 years in total. I only got to know her briefly before dementia set in. And then it was hard for her to express herself. In her obituary, they had a picture of her from when she was young. It was easy to see why he fell in love with her. She was such a pretty lady. I’ve only known them for the time I have been living here, but you could just tell that they had one of those rare kinds of love. The kind that speaks volumes without them uttering a word.
  If you are the praying type or vibe sending type, could you please send some up for Mr. C. He can sure use them.
  
• The plan today is to (hopefully) go spend some time in my “art cave”. I am going to try to attempt to do Insight with Shiloh Sophia. I’ve wanted to take one of her classes ever since I discovered her a few years ago. Someday I hope to have the funds to participate in one of her classes like Legend, but then I don’t know which one I would want to take besides all of them. But it’s one of those I need to hit the lotto things.
  I also want to dive into the repeat of the Kaleidoscope taster week. I missed it the first time around because of being so busy. And I still need to sit down with the Inner Alchemy Cards class. Let’s put it this way, my list of art things to do is fairly long and I don’t have enough hours to tackle them all and I don’t know which ones to dive into first sometimes. Though, Insight has to be at the top as it’s only available for a limited time.
  
• I’m still gathering things to put in my “commonplace notebook”. I’ve got scraps of paper and index cards everywhere. I haven’t been able to decide just which of my notebooks I want to use. I have several candidates for the project. Put that in my list of things that I want to dive into. I still have a small list of crochet projects on deck. By small list, I mean I used a small notepad to write them down on so it wouldn’t look so overwhelming LOL.
  
• I could probably keep writing, but that’s not going to get me into the “art cave”. So I’ll end this post and well catch you all up next time. Have a wonderful Sunday!

Thursday This & That

• June was crazy busy!
  There was lots of running around. With changing my name in all the places. Finding a place to get the vaccine I wanted. Putting together a wedding in weeks rather than months.
  
• Rescue Mom and I made ALL the decorations for said wedding. We made the table center pieces and the bridesmaids bouquets. Then we had to be there early (like 8am early, on one cuppa coffee early LOL) to set everything up for the
  big event. I honestly don’t know how we pulled it off. We had also put together all the “thank you” boxes.
  Can I just tell you….people suck sometimes! We busted our butts to put this together. She spent a small fortune on the things we needed to make table arrangements and bouquets. Y’all….artificial flowers are stupid expensive! We were told to expect 50 people. Maybe…MAYBE 20-25 showed up of those that RSVP’d. And then….no one even took a “Thank You” box.
  We were so stressed to get this right and well people suck. So grateful though that the bride and groom were pleased with our efforts and the results.
• Let me tell you too that it was so damn hot. The venue was very pretty, but they didn’t have a cooling system worth shaking a stick at. Shop fans were actually brought in to try to help move the air and cool it down some. The high that day was supposed to be 108! I can’t recall what it actually go up to, but it was pretty close.
  Do you know what the vibrations from shop fans do to pictures? I never expected that the vibrations would distort the air so much. The closer I was to one of the fans, the worse a picture turned out. And some there was no way I could fix them. I wanted to cry when I got them off my camera. I did end up with a few good ones though. Just not the ones I had hoped for. But it is what it is. Hopefully, the photographer got some better shots.

• We are still VERY hot. We broke a record on how many consecutive 100+ degree days we’ve had. Since this has begun, we have had an odd 98/99 day here and there, but not many. Today might be one of those odd days, but we have more triple days coming and no real end in sight. On top of that, we’ve entered our 5th season. SMOKE! And it’s bad. We’re getting the majority of it from the “Boot Leg Fire”. It is one of 68 (?) currently active wildfires burning in the US. It is only 7% contained and is 227,234 acres. It has been burning now for 9 days. I’m not sure if it’s this one or not, but I heard that one of the fires could end up burning into the fall. The active fire map also shows a lot of fires up in the Idaho panhandle. Bottom line is that it’s hot and dry with no end in sight. We need rain, but this cycle just will not break.
• I don’t know if I will make the entry deadline for the first fair. It’s next week and I don’t even have my photos ready. I have to have the ones I would enter printed to the size of 8×10 or 11×14 and then mounted on either matt or foam board. So far, it looks like every place I am looking at has a 10-14 day turn around. And since Costco has done away with their photo center, I’m not sure where to go. I did ask in a local photography group for some suggestions. I was told the usual places Walmart, Walgreens, and a couple of independent places.
• That said, while I look for a place to possibly get them printed and mounted here are the ones I am considering choosing from:
  

• These are a selection of my most recent ones. I wish I could access my old hard drive for my older photos, but then maybe I’m just giving myself too many options. I’m also considering one of my river ones. If I can’t make it for this up coming fair, then I will just focus on the next one in August. I am trying to choose ones that I would frame and hang if I wanted to. I’m not a bug person, but that grasshopper was just too perfect to not photograph.
  
• I almost talked myself out of entering completely. I was so discouraged by what happened with the wedding photos. Between the heat and the vibrations from the fans and kids running around which made the floor shake. I don’t feel like I am a good portrait photographer. People aren’t my strong suit. I do have a couple of favorites though, the above being one of them. I think though, I’d rather stick to nature.
  
  If you had to pick two photos…which would you choose?