Weekly Header Challenge - Carnival

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Craver VII 

Fishing Guy 

Katney 

Imac 

Lew

I'm joining in the group above for this weekly challenge.

Click on the other participants' blogs to see

what they've come up with!

Theme ~ Carnival

Chosen by Lew.

I do not have any pictures from a carnival.  I haven't been to a carnival in years and years.  :/

So, this will have to suffice.  Last week, our city's weekly farmers market became a festival!  The usual farmers market expanded to include all sorts of booths, many representing local restaurants, and it became, officially:

Taste of Bolingbrook

Yes, it wants to be Taste of Chicago--that famous food festival drawing tens of thousands.  But this isn't too shabby, drawing upwards of 30,000 people.  Or at least that's what I heard the estimates to be.  For the weekly farmers market, they normally close off two blocks in this open-air Promenade; for this special festival, they made the top and bottom of the letter "I" with the extra booths.

Here is the full image of my header, which pretty much sums it up at either end of the street:

No rides, no hoopla, just a fun time with Fernando and our youngest, Thomas.  Enjoy the pics!

Famous Daves' free food!

I spotted my neighbor at the cupcake stand!

I had to take several pic's at this booth -- Cali Girl Cupcakes.  (The brownie was incredible.)

My favorite produce booth.

More food.

Mongo and I!!  (He's from BD's Mongolian BBQ, a great restaurant.)

Although it's not a carnival, we had just as much fun!  And we went home with some fresh produce and a few treats as a splurge.


Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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Weekly Header Challenge - Chaos

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Craver VII 

Fishing Guy 

Katney 

Imac 

Lew

I'm joining in the group above for this weekly challenge.

Click on the other participants' blogs to see

what they've come up with!

Theme ~ Chaos

Chosen by me.

So, this week's theme popped into my head, and without a second thought I officially sent it out to our Headbanger group.  Wellll, then I started looking for images.  That was a bit tougher than I realized it would be!  Here are my images for this week's theme.  First, the header, full-size version:

Yes, the motion blur is deliberate.  Settings:  ISO 200, f/6.3, 2-second shutter speed.  I took this image for a photography class, where the weekly lesson was about motion blur.  I had the camera on a tripod so that things would be in focus, and the only blurred objects would be those in motion.  We had friends over, and several of the guys were playing a complicated board game (Settlers of Catan, an awesomely fun game!).  It was pretty messy.  In the midst of that, little Emma came wandering into the frame with my purse slung over her shoulder.  I got the effect I was after--lots of things going on in the image, with the blur showing all the movement, and thus creating the effect of action.  I like the slightly chaotic feel to it.

On to some other images.  When we moved our computer hutch from the family room into the front living room, I snagged a photo of the hodge-podge of wires underneath the desk:

It's pretty scary to me when Danny and Thomas decide to take the computer tower completely apart and clean it out.  What if they don't get everything back to where it's supposed to go??  Look at all those little pieces of real important stuff!!  Aaaggghhh!  However, since you're reading this, you know that the re-assembly was successful.  They're geeks, after all.

Our garage is definitely chaotic, and has been cleaned up since the taking of the below picture.  ;)

I hesitated to show you all the "chaos" in my house from time to time, because, well, messy stuff is rather embarrassing.  So I also included the "after" images, where everything was cleaned up and put back, and is even neater and more organized than before!

The contents of my mud room pantry.

An organized and pretty pantry!

Here's our basement; the food storage area is called our Bomb Shelter.  I don't have a good "after" picture, so you'll have to trust me that it's all neat and tidy.  That's why I take these before pictures, y'know.

The boys' bathroom--a very scary place.

Ahhh, neat and clean...for about an hour.

Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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Weekly Header Challenge - Water

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Craver VII 

Fishing Guy 

Katney 

Imac 

Lew

I'm joining in the group above for this weekly challenge.

Click on the other participants' blogs to see

what they've come up with!

Theme ~ Water

Chosen by Mac.

What a great theme for the middle of summer!  I have a large pool of images to choose from.  (Pardon that pun.)

Here's my header, in full image form:

One afternoon on Winter Bay, on Lake Bonaparte (NY, Adirondacks), these boys were waterskiing.  Of course I had my camera with me.  I have never in my life even attempted this sport, but it is sure fun to photograph!  A few frames later:

Wipeout!

Here are some more water images to cool you off this summer.

Fountains are great sources of water images.

Ducks like to swim and play in it.

Dogs love the water, too.

Of course, people love the water in summertime!

I love the water, too, especially at sunset, on the dock at Lake Bonaparte.

Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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Weekly Header Challenge -- Pup

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Craver VII 

Fishing Guy 

Katney 

Imac 

Lew

I'm joining in the group above for this weekly challenge.

Click on the other participants' blogs to see

what they've come up with!

Theme ~ Pup

Chosen by Craver.

This was a rather difficult theme for me, since we don't own a dog.  Since I didn't have time to dig through my photo archives, I decided to post these few images of a "pup" belonging to friends of ours.

Say hello to Sweet Pea!

She was one of my first pictures taken at the M. home that June afternoon.  We had come to make over the original friendship garden we had helped build a number of years earlier.  Since I'm sharing about the garden, I may as well show you a "middle-of-the-job" picture (forgot to take a "before" one!):

We had weeded what we could, then laid down landscaping fabric.  We had to cut the fabric out around each plant that was already in the garden, then held all the fabric down with staples.  This is what we should have done when we first started the garden, but I didn't know about doing this until last year when I built mulch pathways in my own vegetable garden.

Sweet Pea wanted me to play ball with her.

Alas, I had to get to work.  We donated our leftover landscape fabric plus the landscape pins (or staples), and we were left with a very small $20 budget for mulch.  This was no problem, however, since we knew about purchasing mulch in "recovery bags" at Lowe's--this store sells any "broken" or open bags that have been placed in recovery bags, and they sell them half price.  We came in 48 cents under budget, and were able to mulch the entire garden.  You can see below that we bought whatever mulch we could find at that great price, and it ended up looking like a patchwork.  But, that will fade with a few months of weather!

Onto the pup of this story!  J. found two frogs in the yard, so she had put them in a bucket.  At the end of the day, it was time to release the frogs.  Sweet Pea, being curious as Boston terriers can be, came over to investigate.

She had fun chasing the frogs around the garden, even hopping after them into the weeds!  I'm sure the frogs were traumatized.

And that's the story of an afternoon in the life of Sweet Pea!


Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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Weekly Header Challenge - What Is That?

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Craver VII 

Fishing Guy 

Katney 

Imac 

Lew

I'm joining in the group above for this weekly challenge.

Click on the other participants' blogs to see

what they've come up with!

Theme ~ What Is That?

Chosen by Tom.

I love how you can interpret this question in two ways:  What is that?  and What is that?  Subtle differences, though I think they both mean the same thing.  Here is the full image from my header:

So, what is that???  Well, here is the image in 180 degrees:

This was at a wedding reception, and I had taken a few pictures of the bride dancing with her dad.  When I turned around to look out of the window, I saw the reflection of all those hanging lights, and snapped a few pics.

Here are a few more images where you might ask, What is that?
 

Close-up of my homemade mango salsa.

A new rhubarb leaf.

That's it; just a few images for you on this busy day!  (Friends are blessing us with a trip to a White Sox game tonight--it'll be a triple date with a few kids thrown in!!)  See you later!


Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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