Cookies!

I probably don't need to announce this, because everyone everywhere is well aware that we've had quite the blizzard here today. But I will anyway. Here's a photo I took early this afternoon:

Brrrrrrr!

 

 

SO...After having a super healthy breakfast/lunch of bacon and eggs and toast (minus the eggs for me), we decided it would be nice to bake some cookies and take a lazy day. So, we started up the trusty old Explorer and braved the wind and snow drifts to get to the store and buy all sorts of good stuff for the cookies.

The first batch was these Hersheys Kisses ones...Pretty typical, I think everyone makes these. But they're sooo yummy and soooo easy.

71/365

Brian really enjoyed coating the cookie dough balls with sugar:

"We elves try to stick to the four major food groups: Candy, candy canes, candy corn, and syrup!"

 And here he is crushing up the candy canes for the next batch of cookies. All I know is that I need a bigger kitchen! Can't wait til the day comes when apartment living is over for good! Haha...

Big mess!

We also had some fun with the flour that went into the peppermint cookies. I was talking about how cool flour is, and Brian suggested I "sculpt something"...I was going to be boring and make a mountain, but he had another idea:

Ha! Flour angel! I actually used my fingers the same as your legs would when making a snow angel. Hehe...We're such nerds.

And these cookies turned out to be pretty amazing!

Now we have SO MANY COOKIES here and I don't know what we'll do with them. Traci, you better come here to get some to share with Craig, because I don't think Brian and I can finish them ourselves! Haha...And you know, you just CAN'T NOT make a ton of cookies when you spend a day doing it, right?

Yep, and in other news, here's a few shots from the dance last night:

69/365: Dance Light Silhouettes

With all the lights of Christmas around, it's hard not to play with bokeh as much as possible. I just love it, love it, love it.

And another...I promise, this "out of focus lights" phase will fade eventually. Til then, at least TRY to enjoy the colorfulness.

Anywho...It's been a great day. I love how blizzards make you slow down and just enjoy the day. Not sure what we're doing tomorrow (I think studying, mostly. Blah.) but I'll try to make it at least sound/look interesting with a blog post. =P

Black & White

If you didn't already know this about me, here's something I dislike: School Dances.

Especially in college. Tonight I'm sitting at DSU's Black & White formal. DSU Live is running sound for the DJ. I'm not doing anything (obviously) because we have some very excellent DSU Live members doing all the work already. Anyway...This thing started at 9:00 (actually a little later because the DJ was late due to terrible road conditions tonight...but that's not even the point)...People didn't start showing up until 10:00. And when they finally do show up, most of them are wasted.

I could go on and on, and I know I'm allowed to because, hey, it's my blog. But I won't. I just wish more people were capable of having fun without being drunk.

I do have to say, however, that the girls at my school are actually pretty good about being able to wear non-hooker clothes to dances. It's refreshing, after seeing some schools' dances and formals where it sort of looks like another Halloween party. Hmmm...

Anyway...Basically my night is sort of lame. And the alternative tonight was doing laundry with Brian. Honestly, I'd rather be washing clothes. And he's actually doing MY laundry for me, since I'm stuck here. What a sweetie. Haha...

How about some photos!!

69/365

I have to choose one of those to print off as my final photo project. Awwwww...Not sure which one I like the best, though. Help me out??

Christmas is in two weeks! Ahhh crazy! I am excited to go home and hang out and just be lazy and not worry about school for a while. Then I'll be in California for a week. Then I'll come back to school for my FINAL SEMESTER!! Seems impossible. Exciting, too. In other news, I'm thinking of changing my blog header image. Yep...Possibly tonight, since I'm here for another 3 hours......

Bokeh

NEW POST FINALLY WOOO!!

I feel like it's been a while since I posted, but it's really only been two days. I've been spending all my time on this painting, done in Photoshop. I believe it's CLOSE TO finished. I will throw it up here, just so you all can see it and give me feedback.

Looks better full-size. And her face is pretty cool close-up, too. The background is made up of a bunch of photoshop brushes, because I admittedly got a little lazy and didn't feel like drawing each little blade of grass separately. But the girl is 100% just paintbrush & smudge tool. It was actually lots of fun, but incredibly time-consuming. She doesn't seem to "fit" with her surroundings, but that was intentional.

Yep. Glad that's out of the way. It's due tomorrow morning, so I kind of worked that right down to the last few hours. Typically, those last few hours are my best times to work, but for this project I'm glad I didn't wait too long to get started. If you'd like an explanation of the painting, or any sort of info, just let me know. And 10 points to anyone who can guess who that is, and what her story is (excluding the people who I've already told, or who are in my class. Ha!)

Anywho...Today Brian and I had a nice afternoon lunch at Sully's. Love love love that restaurant. He got a "special" order (wasn't on the menu) and it looked way too good to NOT photograph:

Mmmmm! 'Cept eggs are icky sometimes.

And they had the cafe all nicely decorated for Christmas, complete with a tree and everything! We sat next to the light-bordered window.

68/365: Some nice bokeh for ya there! So pretty!

AND last night I almost went to bed without a photo, again. I was so busy with photoshop that I forgot all about everything else. So, again, before I hopped into bed, I shot what was outside my window:

67/365: Trojan Field through a frosty window. It's sort of cool looking. Or not. Sometimes I just wing it and hope it looks cool. Ha!

AND....For my wonderful cousin, Joni: I'm so sorry I forgot about Too Close Tuesday again! Here's the post for you. It's an easy one.

Good luck!

Busy day tomorrow. Class in the morning, then some classmates and I are going to spend the day in the art studio working on our drawings/paintings. And then it's the double-header basketball game. Pretty excited!

Action

Today has been quite a day. I'm still trying to shake this cold that I've had since last Monday. It seems to be slowly going away, but I'm still getting into some icky coughing fits every night before bed and then again in the mornings. Try to take it easy and stay out of the cold, but walking to and from school multiple times a day probably isn't helping. Oh well...Bring on the hot tea!

Today my photography class had the opportunity to shoot photos at DSU's women's basketball game. The man who does the "official" photos at the games was super generous and let us use his equipment. To sum it up, I thought it was pretty incredible. Definitely something I would love love love to do for Dustin's games. However, the price tag on the equipment is upwards of $1,000...Looks like it will have to wait a few years, along with everything else I want to get. Haha!

We had to take turns with the transmitters (I believe that's what they're called,) so I didn't get a whole lot of good shots. There's a double-header on Thursday, so we will have twice the amount of time to get our photos, and I'm sure less of the class will show up. I'm very excited to keep playing with this type of photography.

Here are some of my shots from today/tonight:

(I'm not sure which one I want to use as today's Photo of the Day...Please help me decide!!)

During class time we met at the field house and three of us (Travis, Jon, and myself) stuck around and practiced with the lighting. Luckily, the men's team was having practice so we had a fun subject to start with. This was one of my very first shots.

DSU Trojans!

Unfortunately, the side of the gym I was on to take photos was our defensive side. So I don't have the best shots of the Lady T's making points and stuff. Ha.

I was in an awkward place on the bleachers, so avoiding people's heads made for some off-center, awkward compositions. Next time, I will definitely be moving around and finding where the best angles are.

One of my favorites, for sure.

So yeah...It was a great learning experience. I just wish I had some sort of an income which allowed me to buy equipment to do this at Dustin's games. This guy had very powerful lights set at each corner of the floor. In some of my photos, it looks almost like they're playing outdoors, because the lighting looks sort of like sunlight. Very exciting stuff. I can't wait til the games on Thursday so I can keep playing.

Oh! Yesterday's photo is very similar to one I did previously. It's quite alright, though. Be expecting more like this, as I love love love the snow!

65/365: Only 300 photos left! Hehe...I can't wait to see what those 300 will look like. Anywho, the snow that fell early Sunday was so perfectly light and flakey. It's my favorite because if you stop through it, it flies out from under your shoes and makes your shoeprint look ginormous. However, it's TERRIBLE for making snowballs.

In other news, I've been spending ALL of my free time (besides updating this) on a digital painting for my Classical Myth & Media class. I've done digital paintings before, but they've always been based on photos, and usually just traced in ArtRage. This time, I'm basically doing it from scratch, and in Photoshop. First time EVER actually painting in Photoshop. It's turning out decades better than I thought it would, so I'm trying to just keep the vibe up and crank it out quickly, but beautifully. I will definitely be posting the finished product on here, so watch for that!

Doing his thing

Spent a few hours yesterday hanging out with Paul, Dan, and Tyler in the studio. Paul was recording some drum tracks for Dan & Tyler's band and he wanted me to get some photos of him "doing his thing." (I just made that up. He never said it...But I know he was thinking it. Hehe) I hadn't been in the new studio yet, so I was pretty excited to see how it all works. So here are a whole bunch of photos from the weekend:

I have some sort of weird love for finding reflections of people in things. One of my favorites, for sure.

Paul "doing his thing"

Dan waiting to play.

Whole bunch of knobs and sliders and things on the soundboard. Paul in the background "doing his thing."

He's good. And even better if you base a drummer's talent on how many sticks they break. =P

It was a pretty great way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Dan played the same song over and over and over and over and I don't know how he (or even we) didn't get sick of it. I shot a cool sequence using the continuous release mode on my camera. Might turn it into a GIF for him.

Nate and Cassie stopped by, and Cassie let me try out her 50 mm lens. She had told me about it earlier and I really wanted to get one, and now I really want to even more. The photo below is a quick shot I got with it. Nothing special, but I can definitely see a difference in quality. SO....Since Christmas is on its way...Who wants to buy me this excellent lens?

And since we were on campus and right next door to my favorite building, I tested out some HDR on beautiful Beadle Hall:

64/365: Beadle Hall...May or may not use this for my photo class assignment. Haven't decided yet.

And FINALLY (working backwards,) on Friday Brian and I did some Christmas shopping in Sioux Falls. Now I'm ALL CAUGHT UP, except for Brian's gift. We also ate at our favorite place in Sioux Falls. Who can guess where that is....?

63/365: My favorite photography trick. Hooray for lights!

OK! Now I'm back on track with the photos. I fall behind sometimes with posting. And the special Holiday posts will begin soon. I was going to start last night, but I wasn't in the mood so it wouldn't have turned out the way I am expecting. But they are coming! Enjoy this lazy Sunday!

Vans

62/365

Ollllld shoes. I'd been wearing these nearly every day for the past 3 years, until purchasing a new pair a couple months ago. Unlike most girls, I am NOT addicted to shoes. I remain faithful to the same pair of shoes until they are nearly worn down to nothing (in this case, there was a hole forming in the soles, soaking my socks whenever I walked through water; and the padding in the back was wearing thin, scraping up my achilles when I walked.) These things have been through everything with me. They've taken me places I never thought I would walk, and propelled me into opportunities I never dreamed of. They've also gotten me through tough days and put up with being thrown around in frustration from time to time.

Though I have retired them, I still slip them on every now and then, just for that old awesome feeling of REALLY comfy shoes. =)

Special Holiday post coming tonight/tomorrow. Well, special to me, anyway. Keep an eye out!

Bundled Up

I have 5 followers! What a fun feeling that is. Hehe...

I have something sort of special in my mind for the Christmas season regarding new posts. Once I get everything figured out, I'll get started on those. I can't believe Christmas is only 24 days away! I'm sort of sad, because Brian will be leaving to go back home on the 17th. I can't wait until they day we get to spend the holiday together. I'm still incredibly excited to be home with my family, though. =)

It's started to get cold outside! I think we're in the low 20's to teens now. I realize that in January/February, we'll be battling the below zero temps, but right now these teens feel mighty cold.

So, to show some love for the things that keep me warm on my walks to class, today's photo:

61/365: My hat and scarf. Love love love being bundled up in them.

Top Chef: All-Stars is going to be on soon! I'm such a sucker for competition TV shows. Definitely a guilty pleasure of mine. Going to enjoy some chai tea while watching it tonight.