Saving Photos and a Ribbon Tree for Froufrou Friday #6

Isn't this adorable? Well, read on.

Recently a blogger was lamenting that her photos on Photobucket were deleted because she had reached her limit. I mentioned that she could upgrade to PB's paid account. I did several years ago because I believe nobody does it better than Photobucket. She asked why should she pay for something that is free. The answer was pretty obvious to me: you have unlimited photos for a $25 a year upgrade and they don't get deleted. You also have no ads, which is very important to me. I'm extremely visual and ads vie for my attention, and I like to stay focused on the task at hand. So I pay for the service of not seeing my photos deleted when I've reached the "free limit" of photos and not being distracted by ads.

But the biggest reason is something that happened to me about 5 or 6 years ago.

I joined an image hosting site recommended to me by a man who was making a template for me. It was Image Link or something like that. (It's been so long I've forgotten their name and I see one on the internet now, but it doesn't sound like the one I used unless it's been bought.) I really liked that site and entrusted my photos and icons for the template to them.

But one day my photos and icons wouldn't upload to my template for eBay. I was so ignorant about those kinds of things then, but have since diligently educated myself in the workings of computers and websites and HTML, etc. I contacted the owner who was doing this as a sideline and just happened to spend most of his time playing baseball! We emailed several times and he found out that the money he was paying to his server was not being paid to the place it should have been going. In other words, they went belly-up overnight. That cost thousands of us to lose our photos and icons overnight and to not be able to retrieve them. (I had deleted them from my Mac—stupidly, of course—so they were gone forever). The server was somewhere in Australia and there was nothing to be done about it here in the U.S. So I lost some valuable things, valuable to me anyway.

I then found Photobucket. I've been with them ever since. They've been extremely helpful to me and very reliable. Of course, I now save them on an external HD and on CDs so I doubt I'll ever have that problem again. Friends and others have recommended other sites: Picasa, Picnik, Picturetrail, Free Image Hosting, Webshots and a few others but I'll stay with PB. I like them and I don't think anyone does it better than they do. And I certainly should know.

So what's it worth to you to never lose your photos? For me, the $25.00 a year is one heck of a deal. I have nearly 7,000 photos on PB. That's not much by some standards but it sure is enough that I'd hate to lose them!

And I don't get paid one penny for saying these things! That's how much I love them.
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I just couldn't resist! I had to make another ribbon tree. This one is smaller as I had to cut a branch off our dead pear tree. I love it, and it's for sale here.

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Join in!

Rescued!

Remember the candle ring I rescued from Love Bunny's garage sale earlier this month? Well, here is what I did with it. Easy peasy! Cheap straw wreath I got at 1/2 off at Joanns, white tissue garland and the candle ring. I pinned everything on in seconds. Yep, I broke the cardinal rule of crafting—NO HOT GLUE. See what you can do!
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Random Thoughts:


The other day I took my car through the car wash and just loved the new one that we used. It's new to our town and it really cleans the outside extremely well. But the best part was that I could go inside the wash and pick my nose without anyone seeing. I'll bet all of you reading this understand that! ;-)
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I was reading an article on line recently about Guantanamo and found it very enlightening so I salute those military men who have to guard the terrorists. Did you know that the faces of the guards cannot be televised or photographed? Did you know that they cannot wear name badges for their own security also? Did you know that the terrorists can pray but we can't here at any public function? Just how mad does that make you? They can have prayer but your child in school cannot bless his/her food before eating it.
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Ooooh, and get this one: The EPA is thinking of banning lead in bullets. Yep, they don't want a criminal to die of lead poisoning if the bullet doesn't do the trick. Sad but absolutely true.
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Back in 1963 or 1964 hubs and I had our 2 children and we needed a car. Ours had broken down and was not fixable so we went to the local Dodge dealer after seeing an ad for a new Valiant. It cost $2,000 for that brand new Valiant, but we couldn't qualify because we were in the military and were so lowly paid. I hope our troops today are better off. I would gladly give a tiny bit more tax if they men who guard and defend this wonderful country would be exempt from paying any income tax at all—federal or state. God bless those fighting men!
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I should love to have this said about me when I depart this earth:
She'd been so beautiful for so long that nobody really listened to her. They were overwhelmed by the visuals.
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Some people just love shoveling manure over the seeds of truth.
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Human beings are a precious resource.
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Do not be fearful of life's decisions.
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Editing Your Photos

Surfing the blogs the past couple of months I've seen some photos that are incredibly wonderful and then some that could use some assistance. I'm happy to give you a few pointers as some women have asked me to do. Ooh, not much, just a few tips, so let's talk about editing them first. I'm on a Mac with iPhoto but the editing tools are all the same: exposure, contrast, saturation, definition, highlights, shadows, sharpness, adjusting red-eye, de-noise, temperature, tint and maybe a few others in different programs.

This first photo was just as it was coming off the camera. As you can see in the adjust box on the right, it is at the starting levels before I do anything. Rose bush leaves are a bit dark.

This is the photo after I edited it for clarity. Taking a look at the Adjust window on the right shows you what I did to bring it into a more beautiful photo. Very first thing I did was lighten the shadows. Then I gave it a little definition and sharpness, but I gave it a WHOLE lot of highlight to bring out the petals and leaves more. (This also works wonders on lace to add a lot of highlight to it and when taking a picture that involves a window in the background. Try it on your photo editor next time and see what a difference it makes. Photobucket, Picasa and Photoshop all have these settings.) Then I go for the exposure and contrast. That's the way I like my photos to appear. I use natural light outside but most of the time I'll have my flash on. Even inside I have my flash on with the house lighting on also. It's very difficult to get good pictures in this north facing dark house so I need all the help I can get. I almost always use my flash. Understand also that a good camera is essential for good pics. I think the biggest problem I've seen is the photos are usually so dark or a lot of yellow and orange cast (from incandescent lighting) in them because they're using the flash with a setting that shouldn't be used with a flash. Try using your flash with the Auto setting on your camera. See how that works. That's pretty much the setting I use the most. I have a Canon Rebel XSi. There are better cameras and cheaper cameras but this one does an excellent job for what I want. I've also made these screenshots a bit bigger than normal for my blog so you can see them more clearly. I'll post this whole blog post to my tutorial on my tutorial for blogging and photography.

This is a screenshot of the photo editor up closely so you can see how much editing I did. The tabs on there are all to the extreme left when I started. By sliding them to the right, as I did, you can see how much I edited each one. I didn't touch the Temperature or Tint on these photos. You can absolutely do this in any program I mentioned above. Viewers want to see the photographs. As I said above, the Highlights tab I use almost excessively. I edit in this order: Shadows, Highlights, Definition, Sharpness, Exposure and Contrast. After Contrast, I sometimes go back and work on the Exposure again. This is what lightens the photo the most—dark to light. I very rarely touch the De-noise or Saturation. You can play around with these if you want to see the effect it has on the photo but I doubt you'll use it much, if at all. The saturation feature is kind of neat when you want to play with the color a lot to get various different looks. Just play around with it and see what happens. Sometimes it's a great deal of fun.

Now, this is a photo taken in the family room just as it came off the camera. See how dark it is.

If you look at the photo editor, you can see where I've ONLY applied the highlights feature. See how it brings out the lace better? I've done nothing else to it at this point.

Now, here is where I got serious in the editing. Check out the editor on the right and see how much I lightened it, took out the shadows, adjusted the contrast, sharpness and the definition. See the difference from the first photo of the window with the banner on it and the bottom photo here?
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Boise Old Homes Part #1

One day recently I asked Hubs to take me on a walking tour of the North End of Boise. He agreed although it was 95° that day.

Shade trees galore so that you can almost not see the house, but it was pretty anyway.

This one was so adorable, but even though these houses are old they're still in the $300,000 to $400,000 range.

The bay window on this one struck me.

The quintessential porch.

Porch swing and a box of geraniums. This one was for sale at $375,000.00—marked down!

An old barn right in the middle of this drew my attention for its architectural naivete.

Large old craftsman-style house.

Now how in the world could I pass up a pink trimmed house? This was so quaint, neat and adorable I had to show you.

This is very similar to houses in the northeast part of the U.S. because it sat almost on the sidewalk.

Same house, side view.

This house is absolutely more stunning in person than this photo. Just gorgeous. Looks like a wealthy family would live there.

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Shopping My Garage Sale for Pink Saturday 9/4/10

Welcome to Pink Saturday once again. Remember to visit with Beverly of How Sweet The Sound and view all of the participants.

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Remember the garage sale we had in July? Well, I do and I also remember rescuing a couple of things I'd forgotten I had. This little pink and white plaid blanket was one of them. How could I get rid of this I ask you? It's so sweet, and I just may throw it over the back of the new slipcovers.

It looks as if some young girl may have stitched her initials on a small piece of cloth and then attached it to this blanket.

I just couldn't sell it or give it to the thrift store so it remains in this house looking for a spot to rest. KME, I wonder who she was. Sweet embroidery.

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Random Thoughts:

Sherry from Country Wings in Phoenix said "A piece of art inside our home. Who would have thought that banners once used for sales and birthday parties would become a piece of art inside our home?" She's right. We now view them as art. I love the way she put that. What a wise and thinking woman she is.
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I went to a restaurant recently and most of the items on the menu were spicy. I've never been fond of spicy foods and less so as my body ages! Even the salad dressings are jalapeno, spicy, hot, etc. I just want a salad with vinegar and oil, or a steak with seasonings that won't make my mouth a flame thrower. What is it with everyone wanting hot or spicy even on their burger, sandwiches and salads, for Pete sakes?
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And speaking of restaurants, they are many moms and dads that are trying to fool us into believing that their kids don't usually act like brats at restaurants and home. I don't buy that for one minute. Personally, most of the kids I've seen are right up there with the monster in Alien. Terrorizing the patrons, running around like brats. The parents are chasing and threatening them but you can tell it means nothing to them. They know their parents and know nothing will happen. But each parent tries to make us believe they get discipline at home. The proof is in the way they run through the restaurant. I've been there also, MOMS, and my kids got taken out and bottoms paddled. They either sat there politely or they were marched out to the car.
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I was listening to the radio on the way to Boise recently and heard a man talking about Finland. It was recently listed as the best place to live. Let me give you some facts about this.

They have little of the technology we have here.
They gasoline/petrol costs about $6.00 a gallon.
They live in log homes with tiny rooms.
A load of bread is $4.30.
A liter bottle of water is $3.75
Simple small log home with 5 bedrooms can cost $1,100,000.
Schools are free.
University is free.
Medical care is free.
They are charged an exorbitant rate of taxes with an extra VAT of 23%!!
A fast food hamburger is $4.50
They have one of the highest tax rates in the world.
One man said "Our schools, universities and health care are free." Oooooh, no they're not. He's paying exorbitant taxes for that "free" stuff.
Ohhh, and also they have an enormous rate of alcoholism in Finland. I kind of guess that says it all right there, huh?!

I love the USA, a country founded on Christian principles. It is by far the greatest country on earth and I and my family can attest to it having been many places in other parts of the world. I get upset when I hear people bashing this country or longing to live in an exotic country that they dream about being good and wonderful. Give it a try sometime and see how fast you return to the good old USA! It's a God-given country for freedom of religion. I could go on and on but you'd be bored.
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The truth is never popular.
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With that I'm going to give you some eye candy, chicks!
My personal favorite.



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