Blue sky, everywhere.

Just a couple'a pictures I took of the sky last week. These were around 5-ish pm!

One of my favorite things about North Carolina is that it's very flat (at least out East) and the sky is so visible. In fact, when we first moved here, it was one off the things I remarked on first... I just kept saying, "It's so open! It's so flat!" over and over! Then again, coming from suburban DC where there is stuff everywhere, it was expected to be a shock I guess. :)

My matching cats.

Just some recent photos of my cats I took over the weekend.

Kerrigan:







Finnegan:

Photo Meme - Part 1 of 2!

I'm breaking this up into parts so I don't bombard one post with lots of images. :)

Krysten wanted to see my favorite thing about my home! This was really tough because there's so many things here I love... but I narrowed it down to two. ;)

Thing #1 is our giant garden tub. It is huge!! One of my favorite things is taking a bath in the morning when the sun is streaming through that window... so relaxing.

Thing #2 is the back porch. Weather permitting -- it's been REALLY hot this summer so I haven't been able to sit outside as much as I like. (You can totally see my butt-print in that chair, though.) I really enjoy sitting outside in the early evening with a book or magazine, it's SO quiet and relaxing here. The cats love it too, but more for the unobstructed wildlife views. ;)

Jessica was interested in our dishes! And my favorite coffee cup! And I've got both!

Our dishes are fairly simple; black. The plates have a sort of zebra design on them, and there's also a set of mugs that match but I didn't pull them out.




My favorite mug! It's huge and comes from Edmonton, Canada; Matt got it for me when he was on a meeting up there. I love bears. :)



Gnetch wanted to see what was in my fridge! Augh, this picture is SO boring, as we really only keep what we need and not a lot of extra junk!




Zzz... zzz... milk, yogurt, juice, oh, and some marinating steak on the left there.

The outside of the fridge is much more interesting!



And Jenny Matlock wanted to see my morning cup of coffee. I generally don't drink coffee in the morning because sometimes it makes me wackadoodle but when I do, I like to go with this...



It was SO hot out when I bought this iced coffee, and it took everything I had not to drink it all on the way home... willpower!!! Where I grew up there were Dunkin Donuts on every corner, so I am a huge DD fan. :) And of course, I've got some donuts in that bag... lemon filled and chocolate covered!

I've got a busy work schedule for the next two days so I may not post the other half of this until the weekend. But we'll see! Otherwise I'll be trying my best to stay inside, because the humidity here is really starting to take a toll on me... ugh. No likey!

Happy Friday! Many photo memes are here!

Before I get to my photo memes, I have to let you know something amazing.

Last soccer-related babble for a while, honest.

Today? The Netherlands beat Brazil. BRAZIL. Yeah, only the South American soccer kingpin. It was such an amazing game to watch! Brazil got a goal early on and my hopes were crushed -- as they sort of had been when I learned we would face Brazil -- but as the game went on we managed to get two goals and finish them 2-1.

I was shrieking, jumping, hiding behind my hands, running around behind the couch in small circles, and flailing a lot! My throat was sore and I was so amazed and overjoyed that my team came through. We went out to lunch and I wore my Holland jersey and people kept asking us about the Netherlands game and it was fantastic that Americans are really noticing soccer. Okay I'm done with that now, really. :)

Time for photo memes! I have two today. The first one is Tazim's brand new project...

This week's theme due to the impending holidays, is "Iconic Things About Your City/Country". I was going to post some more Wilmington city photos but then remembered I had one better...

It's the Capitol building!

I got the chance to hang out in Washington DC this February while Matt attended a conference; it was snowy and ginormously cold but I managed to go to the Botanical Gardens, and when I realized how close I was to the Capitol, I had to get my nearly frostbitten bum over there for a photo. It really is HUGE close up, and there were all kinds of tours there and kids sledding on the lawn.

At first I was REAL excited, because I thought, hey, maybe Mister Obama's in there! No Sami, that's the White House. .... Oh. This is just where the government meets and stuff? ... Hmm. Still cool, though!

And looking at this photo makes me chilly.

Okay. I'm going to give you a little warning. This week's photo? ... Kinda creepy.

Well, I don't think it's creepy. Some people might, though.

While I was editing it, I had to ask Matt for a bit of Photoshop assistance.

(It's been a while since design school.)

And when he saw it, he said.

"... Whoa. That's kinda freaky."

See what I'm doing here?

Giving you space.

So all of the sudden, on your Google Reader, you don't suddenly come upon ...

... A creepy photo.

I had a lot of fun with this.

And I promise I'll stop taking creepy photos. For a while.






Yay! See? Not so creepy. And also, this is not a tribute to Twilight. Bad werewolf-thing.

Am I a zombie? Have I been chewing on my fingers all morning due to the match, causing mass destruction? Have I run headfirst into a brick wall? Have I had an unfortunate Spaghetti-O mishap??

This was taken in my bathtub because I really wanted the tile as my backdrop. I like the 'clean' feeling it gives the photo, almost like a crazy house. And I also learned something about ketchup that no one else would know, because no one else is wackadoodle enough to leave ketchup on their lips for minutes at a time. It burns. After I washed my face off, my lips tingled for about half an hour. I realized tomatoes were acidic after I worried my lips would fall off for the sake of art, and all turned out well.

I also realized I like ketchup much more as a condiment and less as a main meal. It's very thick and overpowering on its own, and I didn't much care for it smeared everywhere. Yuck. Blargh. Egh.



All right, before I go I have two more photos to show you. They are much friendlier! Remember all those flower seeds I planted a month or two ago?

I have flowers!! My cosmos are in full bloom and I have about 10-12 yellow and orange flowers right now, with more buds on the way. The marigolds are just doing something bizarre and keep growing in snake-like waves, but they are leafy and green and pretty nonetheless. I'm delighted that flowers I planted actually turned into well, you know, flowers.

And this last one is a stuffed sheep that Matt bought me a few weekends ago. He is amazing and flat and soft and yes I'm almost 30 and still love stuffed animals. ;) Have a good Friday night y'all!!

Wordless Wednesday - Don't Step on the Third Rail.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I may or may not have had too much to drink last night. Now I have that feeling, you know, the one that feels like a bunch of heavy soggy lukewarm bandages are wrapped tightly around your head. That one. Blaaaaargh.

So I'm leaving you with a photo for Wordless Wednesday while I try and go get acclimated to my brain again.

Not the best photo ever, and would likely benefit from some editing, but it's somewhat old... Most underground DC Metro stops look like this one! I was at the Smithsonian stop, waiting for my train.

Shiny, shiny pictures!

Yup, it's back. I'm back in the saddle again. (Not unlike that awful screechy Aerosmith song.) After a two week absence I'm ready to go, and I'm beyond thrilled with my results for this week.

Oh, if you haven't the foggiest what I'm babbling about, a trip here may make things a bit easier on the ol' brain.

Anyways, I'd had a pretty solid idea in my head for photo three for quite some time ... you see, there's this soccer thing going on ... what, you didn't know? Well I'll be! But there is a soccer thing going on. It's pretty big time. And I wanted to base my photo around that.

I'm rooting for a place called the Netherlands. Where's that? Uhh... you know, Holland. Huh? You know, up above Germany? Amsterdam? Ahh, now you know, that city. Holland. But that's not why I'm rooting for them, they have some superb players on their national team and... blah blah you really don't care about that part, huh...

Less talky, more Oranje!





I really really really enjoy this photo more than words can tell. (You know you want to see it bigger, don't you? I think you do. As always, BTW, you can click the photo to go to its Flickr page, read more comments by me, and comment on it there if you have a Flickr.) This actually wasn't what I had in mind at all for my finished product, and I took it more as a 'goof off' photo than anything serious at all. But when I uploaded them I saw this one and was like .... yeaaaah... that's totally the one.

I learned a lot about photo editing with this one; I did most of it myself with the exception of one Photoshop action, and I'm extremely pleased with the end result. I kind of look like I may eat your face off but I won't, promise.

... Oh! I'm wearing my Netherlands orange kit jersey! KNVB stands for ... *deep breath* ... Koninklijke Nederlandse Voetbalbond, which if not in Dutch would mean the Netherlands Royal Football Club, or something of that ilk. The lion that's sticking his tongue out and not smoking a corncob pipe is their mascot. Holland is obv Netherlands. I'm wearing eyeblacks of the Dutch flag; they feel a lot like those Biore pore strips. And the soccer ball I have is a miniature replica of the Jabulani, which is the ball the World Cup uses in all of their matches.

I'm sure that's more than you wanted to know about the Dutch national team. But hey, trivia...

My hair also had a metric crapton of product in it to get the pigtails right because the heat index here is still hanging around the 500's, which generally means the frizz of doom. Now my hair is crunchy, but it was all for the greater good!

Also, did you know I have a real live orange vuvuzela? That didn't make it into this photo? But may make an appearance in my vlog next week that I've decided to do? Did I just spoil my surprise??... :)

And one outtake from this week also:



I learned a lot about skin editing here. A -lot-. I also learned that my camera is not kind and picks up every pore, freckle, and bit of sunburn I've got. (I also learned a lot about cloning out all the stray eyebrows I had, because yeah, the camera saw those too. Eek.) I even left a few freckles so I wouldn't look like a department store mannequin! Huzzah!



I also want to say that my awesome and super-creative blogfriend Tazim is starting a new photo meme as well...

I am unreasonably excited about this because I love things, and if you love things and taking photos of them I really encourage you to join because it will be full of love and things and amazing happiness! Okay, the end. But really, I am looking forward to this project a lot. :)

Happy weekend y'all! Stay cool and out of the way of the Dutch, because we're going all. The. Way!

Is this week over yet?... It is?? WAHOO!!

Man oh man, what a week it's been over here. Between court hearings and ferrying documents around from bank to lawyer and back again, and job interviews and sinister monsoons trying to attack our house... it's been eventful, folks.

Apparently our home warranty didn't cover our garage electric being busted because it was a lightning storm (hmm), so Matt rolled up his sleeves and ... fixed it himself! Something about a plug with a fuse in it and some wires and shazam! Good as new. (Can you tell I'm sooo not mechanically inclined?)

And my job interview went well today! I'm not going to say it went GRRRREAT! because I said that about the last one and I got the lovely 'thanks but no thanks' email. So we'll see if I get called back next week!



Here's my photo for my 52 this week... I need to start planning ahead for these more, but I blame the hecticness of the week, and the bad weather! Boo, hiss, weather!!

You can click on it to go to the actual photo page. I snapped this real quick after my interview today; the lighting was crappy because a storm had suddenly decided to roll in -- oh boy! -- so there's a little more noise in the photo than I would like. I wanted it to have a little bit of a faded vintage-y look so I did what I could! Voila. (PS - if you ever see those shoes somewhere, even if they're only $15, don't buy them. They hurt and are really just for looks.)

And a fun outtake of my photo shoot... did you know I have the most giant white cat in the WORLD?! Because if you didn't...

AAARGH, HE'LL EAT US ALL!! I took a bunch of photos of me squeezing my marshmallow-like cat, and once I uploaded them, I realized in every single one of them ... his butthole was showing. No, really! So I used the rubber stamp tool to clone it out and replace it with fur! HAH! Take that, unsightly cat butts! You are no match for the cloning tool.

But anyways, I've started a list of ideas that I'll use for future shoots. They include ketchup and old champagne bottles and my feet, but not all at the same time.



I hope everyone has a FANTASTIC weekend!! I've gotten a little behind on blogging, so I'm going to play catch-up and respond to some comments. We have a community BBQ on Sunday that I'm looking forward to a lot, tasty food and meeting our neighbors... I wonder if they'll have pulled pork?? A gal can dream! ;)

Berry pickin'! And recipes, too!

So today, to celebrate Memorial Day, we went to take advantage of a local farm chock full of our favorite blue fruit..

Blueberries!

We have a great little place right up the road where you can pick your own berries, and blueberries are in season. I love picking my own, so we took a little field trip this morning to get in touch with nature and enjoy some fresh, local produce.

Blueberries are one of the best-for-you fruits out there! Thanks to Reader's Digest, I'm able to tell you blueberries have the following health benefits:

• Good source of dietary fiber.
• Excellent source of antioxidants.
• Provide some vitamin C and iron.
• May help protect against some intestinal upsets.
• May protect against urinary tract infections.
• Anthocyanins may help protect against heart disease and cancer and may help prevent memory loss.

And, they're freakin' tasty! I didn't bring my camera along, so you don't get to see me with a bucket strapped to my waist, or skipping merrily down the rows and rows of berry bushes.

But you do get to see the end product...

FOUR pounds of berries! (Carrying them around my waist as we picked them was great cardio!) So, what do you do with four pounds of berries?

You make the most epic blueberry muffins ever.

I'm going to share with you my recipe for the yummiest, cake-iest, most decadent muffins I've ever made. It really is the best recipe I've tried yet. Here's whatcha need:

1 cup fresh blueberries
1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1/3 cup milk

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and line your baking cups with paper liners.

Combine your flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder until well mixed. Add your vegetable oil, egg, and milk and mix with dry ingredients until just moistened. Your batter will be VERY THICK!! It's supposed to be; it holds the fruit in place in the muffin cups so all your berries don't sink to the bottom of your muffin.

Fold in your blueberries gently and then fill your muffin cups right to the top. Since the batter is so thick, I used my hands for this step, but you could use two large spoons. I was able to fill 10 of the 12 cups on my tin, so if you want more, you can double the ingredients.

Bake for 20 minutes, and voila!

SUPER tasty. You could make these muffins with anything; blackberries, cranberries, chocolate chips... and you can bet I'll try this with chocolate chips!

And after that? Yanno what I made?

Blueberry iced tea.

First I made a pitcher of regular iced tea. (I like Lipton cold brew!) Poured myself a big old glass when it was done, into the blender, along with a handful of blueberries. Blend on puree. Voila!

You can leave the skins (like I did) or strain them out; personally, I find them v. tasty. :)

And that, my friends, is fun with blueberries! Hurrah!!

* * * *
You may or may not have noticed that I switched the comments on this blog to the Disqus system; I LOVE it because I'm able to comment back to the commenter right here in the comments, as opposed to email. So if you notice a different format when commenting, fear not, you're not in the Twilight Zone. ... Yet.

My new project ... has begun!

My friends, it is with unbridled excitement and fond delight that I present to you, my new project; something I've had in my head for some time but have now finally brought to fruition...




My 52 self-portrait challenge! It will all be hosted and set up on Flickr, so if you have an account, please add me as a contact, or come and comment on my photos once in a while! (My profile is here; it will also tell you a little more about the project and its name.)

Of course, I will also be posting my photos here as well, so you all can keep me motivated if you're not on Flickr! (I may need the motivation.. tee hee.) It will likely be on the Friday, Saturday, or Sunday of every week, so I can keep a semblance of a schedule with this. And each photo will link to the Flickr page for it, which will have a title for each photo, and more of a description and details there.

So, without further adieu, week one...

Just something simple and fun for my first shot! :) That is the comfiest scarf in the world, for the record. And it's really hard to shoot without a tripod and a remote. Maybe not hard, but tedious. So some accessories may be in order! ;)

Let me know what you think!! I have some photogenic issues -- I think I look goofy in most candid photos of me -- so hopefully this will help in getting over that. I'm enjoying the project already!

Mailbox at the Beach - An Excursion

It's no secret that I live on the coast. (Blog title sorta gives that away!) It may, however, be a secret that I live very close to Wrightsville Beach, about 5 minutes away and over the drawbridge. It's a cute little place, very cozy and home-y in the off season, and a perfect summer beach in the on-season. It's your typical coastal, island town.

Our beach has a mailbox *somewhere* on it. I'm not going to tell quite where, as it will add to the mystery. ;) But it's a mailbox with a set of wooden steps on a certain area of the beach, and there's something really ... neat there. I'm not going to give THAT away yet either, but you'll find out, as yesterday morning I decided to finally head out there and see if I could hunt this place down.

There really isn't much about this mystery locale on the internet, so what little information I had I'd gathered up from Google searches and a local magazine that published a small article on it last year. (Yes, I still had the back copy of that mag. And coincidentally enough, the local news also posted a small story on the mailbox that can be found when Googling now, although they don't give away the location! ;) So I grabbed my camera to document my adventure, hopped into the car, and headed out!

I made it! The public access was somewhat empty this morning, so I managed to get a shot of it. It was also REALLY bright out this morning, so I did a little post-processing on most of these photos so the colors would pop more. :)

Ahh, a nice clear sunny day! This area of the beach isn't a real popular 'touristy' area, so it was quiet, clean, and awesome. It's also not really 'tourist season' yet, so we'll see how it gets in a month or two!

I couldn't resist taking a photo of a few shells. :) I was also here to pick up some shells and sand for the winner of my giveaway, so it was a multi-purpose trip! Nothing wrong with digging around in the sand once in a while...

Ah, the beach! I love the beach! The water was pretty nice today, and I was wishing I had brought my bathing suit, beach chair, and book... maybe next time, though. I was here on business this time! And I had a ways to walk too...

This little guy was happy to point me in the right direction... and also to remind me, KEEP OFF THE DUNES! He was really noisy, and it was so funny to see him sitting on this sign, honking away, that I came up from the shoreline to take a photo.

Taking a break... aaaaaahh. I had been walking for a -long- time at this point! (A sidenote; after my excursion was over, I realized that I actually parked a lot farther away than I had to. Oops!) So I took a break to try and snap a photo of some relaxing seagulls. This guy seems kind of wary; actually, it was hard for me to get close without them standing up and walking away!

... Okay, almost there now... I think...

I knew I was almost there when the people started to dwindle to a few lone wanderers, and I stumbled upon this bird sanctuary. It was roped off, so I took this photo over the ropes. What a sweet place for the beach birds to nest... :)

Now I *know* I'm almost there, because I'm at the very end of the island! I took this photo across the inlet, of the big fancy houses on the other side! Aaahhh, that's the life. :) I was amazed how much bluer the water was here, likely because it's shallow.

... Okay... walk a little bit more ... turn around and ... !!

I found it!!!! Nestled in the dunes is a mailbox with a set of stairs -- they weren't always this short, the stairs used to be a full set, but the sand has covered nearly all of it. So now the steps are more of a seat. :)

And I have to admit, I feel AWFUL that I didn't get a shot from farther away of this, because it looks so cool. I turned around from taking the last shot of the sound to see this almost behind me, and I was overwhelmed with giddiness and almost childlike excitement that it totally slipped my mind.

It really was like a treasure hunt, because this place has been here for years but you really have to go a bit off the beaten path to find it, a little bit of an adventure. :) It was exciting and exhilarating to get out there and experience the sun and the sand along with searching for something iconic yet tucked away from the majority of people that visit the beach. Something special for sure.

But okay, back to the photo adventure!

You can see on the face of the mailbox door, it's scrawled with, "LEAVE A NOTE". And it has a cool starfish handle! The mailbox itself wasn't very large, probably a little bigger than my camera bag. I opened the door...

... and there it is! A notebook and pens, just ready for you to leave a note. :)

I don't know who exactly maintains the mailbox (although I have a hunch), but there is always a fresh notebook in here with some pens for people to write down their thoughts, pour out their hearts, or just draw a nice little picture. Here is what I wrote...

Not the most profound or mind-boggling, but it's true! I'll tell you though, earlier in the week I had worked up in my head what I was going to write in here, but once I actually got out here it all seemed to have fallen out of my head and so I had to go the impromptu route. ;)

The notebook is like a Postsecret, but a little bit neater I think. I sat here for about 20 minutes and flipped through the book, just reading. Some people had written pages upon pages of what they were going through at the time, some just a few words. Grief, sadness, fear and worry, to happiness, elation, joy and hope -- emotions spanned the gamut in this little book, and I couldn't resist photographing a few other entries.

It was nice that there really weren't a lot of people around (granted, it was about 11:00 am on a Thursday) so I could take my time and relax in this little haven. I had such a blast flipping through this notebook, and wondered who was collecting them all and replacing them with new ones... wouldn't that be fun...?

It's become something of a tradition to leave seashells behind at the stairs. This tree was covered in them, some attached by ribbon, some attached by string. Larger ones that couldn't be hung up were left on the sand and scattered around the stairs.

Here are some more shells, and the surfboard here... I don't know if that's always here, or if it was left recently. Either way, it's pretty neat. :)

Ta-da! This is the best photo of me I could get as a photographer without a tripod on a really sunny day! ;) I kinda like it, I think it mirrors the mystique of all of the notebook entries by only being a shadow.

All right, time to get out of here... wait, one more shot of the ocean!


Ahh, that's better! NOW I can go!

I hope you enjoyed my adventure of seeking out this little local treasure. I was happy to finally get out there and look for it; I had been meaning to for some time. And now that I know where to go, I'll surely be back for more in the future. And if YOU ever happen to be in the neighborhood, drop me a line, and I'll take you there! :)