Bling time

Who wants some bling? Girls all do, right? Apparently, somewhere near Broadway in New York City there are crown stores full of beautiful tiaras at very reasonable prices and when a gal I know heads to to NYC she likes to shop there. I was the lucky recipient of a tiara for my birthday last year, and last week when planning a trip to NYC my friend put out the "Who wants a crown?" callout on facebook and ended up needing to pick up ten tiaras. I guess we all want to be princesses!

We have no tiara stores in Salt Lake, but it seems we are not lacking bling, sometimes found in surprising places. On Saturday while running errands I stopped at the IFA (Intermountain Farmers Association) store, and there I found more bling than I've seen in forever.... sparkly western belts, rhinestone necklaces, and if you were kid, or a gal with very small feet, glitter toed cowboy boots in pink and blue and silver! I guess country gals like to be blingy princesses too!

Oh, and while you are at it, you can buy some baby chickens, or maybe a rubber pirate chicken.

Happy Places...

A late Friday afternoon/evening trip with my nerdy birdy friend April to visit a few of my happy places, Crystal Hot Springs and the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. It was a rainy day. Rain is quite welcome here in the drought worn west, I know that in the past this dry section of the refuge pictured below has actually been a wet land. The good news is the birds are back. We stopped an watched a flock of ibis in a alfalfa field on the road to the refuge. I couldn't get a good picture, as the birds are so flighty, but it was so fun to watch the dark heads bobbing up and down all over the field.

Heron, stilts, avocets, pelicans, blackbirds, cormorants, greebs ducks and geese were plentiful, almost better than seeing them was enjoying the cacophony of bird sounds that greeted us when ever we stopped and got out of the car.

Another nice thing... no bugs, so we were actually able to enjoy our time out of the car!!! White Faced Ibis - I wish I could have gotten a better picture of all activity in this field!!! American Avocets - I never tire of these! and thy were noisy And we are always thrilled to death to see a Sandhill Crane!

My Son, the Skate Boarder

Matt at the Eureka, CA skatepark in 2010.

My goodness.... it has been forever since I posted anything... and not for good reason, I actually have a full list of things I've meant to post.. cool pictures from another trip to Eureka, adventures on a trip to in Zion, Brighton snow sculptures, Northern Utah Adventures, amusing things I have found here and there... It seems like after a few days have past it is 'too late' to blog the things that capture my interest... hmm perhaps I should backward blog them all.

 But here, before it is 'too late' I want to blog a fun thing from last week... Not my life really, but my son's, but it made me smile! This is my son's adolescent fantasy come true. He spent every warm weather moment of his childhood on his skateboard (How many times did I hear "Watch me ollie Mom!"?), or watching skate videos when the weather was bad, and he and his friends were constantly filming their tricks and making their own videos. Now, finally, at age 25 he debuted in his first 'pro' skateboard video last week. He's at minute 8:01, just one quick trick (nothing fancy he told me), but his name is in the video. He said he didn't even realize he got filmed that day.

   http://snowboarding.transworld.net/videos/fakie-bigspin-the-movie-3/#zKGMi0FBks4XDHsa.01

More Lunacy

Yeah... I've been howling at the moon again....

Lunacy

I did it again.
I watched my second ever and second this year lunar eclipse early this morning. Not as spectacular as the eclipse in April, as the moon seemed further away, less bright and a bit obscured by wispy clouds, but I was still glad I got up at 4:30 and went out on my deck to see it. Once again I attempted a few pictures, this time with my new lens and remote shutter release, but, alas, all I got was a small blurry moon... working on night photography definitely needs to go on my 'to do' list.

Reflections of Autumn

Fall has come to a favorite spot of mine, Willow Lake. Since discovering this little gem of a hike a few years ago, I have been determined to make it up here with my camera when the leaves were changing, but have been sidelined by a bad knee or unlucky enough to miss-timed when to expect the colors. I had reason to believe this was 'the week', but I had spent the week recovering from surgery and by the weekend, as I began to feel better, instead of hiking weather we had a dreary weekend of rain predicted, making me afraid I might once again miss my opportunity. But when a window of blue sky opened up Sunday on this otherwise very rainy weekend I suggested to my friend, "Let's go!", and he resoundingly said "Yes!" and off we went. Apparently this was my lucky year!

As frequently happens I've had a hard time deciding which pictures to post, so here is my indecisive collection of similar, yet different shots.

I wrote a little haiku to go along some of these pictures...

Autumn reflections

Leaves of green fade to yellow

Summer slips away

Eastern Sunsets!

The sun rises to the east, and the sun sets to west. We all know this,right? But tonight as I was leaving Bear Lake, where I spent my Labor Day weekend with a friend, I saw the most glorious eastern sunset. Beautiful pink rainbow sky, it truly looked like the sun had set on the east side of the lake. I sent the picture to my friend and joked about the sun setting to the east. Being a scientist he had to tell me that that the sun didn't set in the east (duh! LOL) and that I was really seeing a reflection. Besides being a scientist my friend is also Japanese, and he told my that the Japanese name for this phenomena is 'yuuyake'. Being a scientist type as well I had to do a little research, as I knew no simple English word that described this... what I found out was that the dark blue band just about the horizon, is the "Earth Shadow" , and the pinkish rainbow of reflected light is the "Belt of Venus". I found a nice explanation of the phenomenon here. Fun new knowledge for me tonight!

Weather the storms....

....and sometimes life gives you rainbows!

Ka Boom!

This is a bit out of order for me, as I still need to post a northern adventure story and I have some southern adventures to add as well, but last night was the 4th of July, and I decided to see what my new camera lens could with fireworks. I'm a lucky gal when I remodeled my house many years ago we added a deck which gives us some nice valley views, so we can see lots of fireworks off in the distance on 4th, and on a year when the the country club does fireworks, a nice display right on the edge of my neighborhood. Last night I decided to set up the tripod and try some bulb exposures and see what I could do. Fireworks are tricky, as you don't know what they will look like as they launch, and they are so ephemeral that hitting the shutter at the right moment is a bit of crap shoot. Using bulb exposure is just a guess... a 1 second exposure? More, less, who knows? My camera is slow to process dark shots, so I would often miss a chance for a good shot while waiting for the camera to finish. I took a bunch of lousy pictures, had a few OK shots, but it sure is nice to get a shot that stands out screaming "I'm the one", as this one did!!!

Eureka!

Another trip to the near ghost town of Eureka, Utah. This time for beadmakers retreat to Tintic Inn Bed and Breakfast with W.A.L.A (Wasatch Area Lampwork Artist) Just like on my rehab adventure we were treated to the Eureka tour, where we got to go inside and poke around the relics in the old abandoned buildings. Lots of interesting old things are squirreled away in thase dilapidated building.

We also got to poke around the mine a bit. Lots of rusty old artifacts there too.