Miscellaneous Monday

So many photos, so few memes.
{...wait...that's not right.}


But I do have a handful of extra shots from last week that never made it into the rotation.
Most are from Thursday's trip to the farmstead.



This little guy was sooooo cute!!!
{if someone had told me I could take them all home, I'd have done so in a heartbeat!}





...one if by land, two if by sea...
This was one of several lanterns in the dairy barn.
and I liked it, so I took a picture.





They also have these gorgeously green well-style hand pumps with cobalt blue basins beneath as their wash station near the goats.
{beauty is in the details...except you can't really see them here.}




and who could ignore the giant red barn?!
{well, no one, because that's where you enter. ;)}
Check out that weather vane, too!




And this one....there's a story here...

My husband and I had gone out to stake up our tomato plants in our backyard one evening when we caught two bunnies nibbling away at the new growth.
{stinkin' bunnies}
But instead of running away as fast as they could, they ran a little bit and stopped.
So I ran to get my camera!
When I came back I apparently made "ridiculous clopping noises" with my flip flops {so says my husband} and scared them away. They ran under our wooden gate and I had to go see if they stopped again.
Which they did! One was about 6 feet from me, so I carefully crouched to the ground to get some shots.
I managed to take a few super blurry ones and then the bunny started hopping toward me!
Closer and closer...
{why oh why did I grab my 70-300 when the 50 is what I needed?!?}
And then as if that wasn't crazy enough, this gutsy bunny starts running at me!

What do I do?
I flinch.
A bunny made me flinch.
And he ran away for real this time.

Not long after all this, his buddy figured out that his friend was gone and came out for the shot above.

PS - If you have an interest in handmade items, then Celeste at French Onion Finds has you covered! At her brand spankin' new blog she showcases beautiful items from Etsy. And it just so happens that her first post includes one of my photographs. ;)

At the Farmstead

Yesterday I took the kids to a local children's farmstead. 

We go multiple times per year. {because it's free!}

But this time we fished. 

I hope my children know how much I love them, because slimy wiggly worms and my bare hands is not my idea of a good time. Let alone putting them on a hook. But I manned-up and did it!

{When we were all done, I set up the shot above. I absolutely love it.
...the old pole, the pale of worms, the ducks, the wooden bench, the weeping willow...
I couldn't have asked for better props!}

{for this shot I ran PTM's Heart and Soul action x2}

    

However, I must not know how to put a worm on a hook properly, because the fish would eat the worms right off the hook with ease.

This is the closest we came to a catch.

They also have little goats that can be bottle fed.

So we did that too.

This guy was a bit ornery...but you probably already knew that by the look in his eye.

You can't tell from this shot, but he was standing on a tree stump...which made it much easier to nibble at people's shirts!

     

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

This is a photo from several weeks ago.
It's just taken me until now to share it...


Before:



After:



I really didn't do too much to this shot. I removed the Hy-Vee branding from the blue roof and then ran a seventies/vintage action on it.

For some reason baseball shots just seem to need a bit of 70's added in for it to feel right!

Carousel Dreaming

Y'all have no idea how long I've been waiting to get this shot!!!
Carousels aren't exactly a commonplace thing around here...well, they will be this weekend I'm sure...but anywho, there's one at Kaufmann Stadium where the Royals play. It's part of a pretty cool kid's zone where they have a splash park, mini golf and batting cages in addition to the standard playground equipment.
(and you have to pay through the nose for each and every one, but at least walking around is free!)

The whole kid's zone area closes down sometime around the end of the 7th inning, so I headed over shortly after the 7th inning stretch. I'm glad I waited because the sun was already setting and the crowd was pretty light around the carousel. ...I got there just as they closed the line, which was perfect timing if you ask me.




As a side note, I'm sponsoring several prizes/giveaways this summer.

The one that is currently underway is:
June's Quarterly Top 5 - get more details and link up at Amber's Articles, Click It Up A Notch, or NapTime MomTog - the prize sponsored by me is any one 11x14 print from my shop! But there are two other fabulous prizes as well!

Plus one more is starting next Tuesday and there are two more coming up in August!
Be sure to Like me on Facebook to keep up with all the action. ;)



         

Before & After - Bench

I shared a clean edit of this bench a few days ago for Scavenger Hunt Sunday.
I know the focus is off - and not in a good way, but I really like the image all the same. Today I wanted to share a much different look for this image.

Before:




After:






I use PSE 8 to edit and may have done the following:
(please note that my memory is awful and these steps are not necessarily in order...or accurate.)

1. Add some kind of Kim Klassen texture...I think.
2.  Adjust hue to be a bit more red (this I know I did!)
3. Possibly lightened midtones with levels.

Fluffy Towels & Pretty Irises

This is my grandparents' bathroom. It's painted a vintage carnation pink and my grandma even has mint green towels to complete the retro feel! I personally enjoy retro spaces, but what makes this even better for me is that my great grandma - this particular grandma's mom - also had a vintage carnation pink bathroom. It brings back such sweet and loving memories and I can only hope and pray when my own children are grown, they will have similarly fond memories of their great grandma.

I'm also linking this shot to Texture Thursday because of those towels...boy, were they super soft!!

 




And below is my entry for Pixel Perfect's Before & After:

Before:




After:







Step 1: Run PW's Boost action, merge visible
Step 2: Run PW's Heartland action, reduce opacity to 75%
Step 3: Increase saturation to +66, merge all and save

Pool Time

Recently we had our roof replaced, thanks to a crazy hail storm a couple months ago. And at some point during the roofing process our glass patio table top was shattered. The company definitely made things right (seems like we're on a roll with excellent customer service lately!) but for the time being we have no furniture for our deck.

And the kids are lovin' it!
Because it means that we now have room for our small blow-up pool! I don't think there could be a better spot for it - our deck gets the morning sunlight and then is shaded in the hot afternoons. Plus, we have hangers for plants attached to our house, which serve as perfect spots to hang the swim suits out to dry! ;)










And since we normally do not go swimming, we really don't have any pool toys to speak of, so the kids improvise. An air pump, for example, can easily be turned into a water gun!



...of course, plain ol' splashing is always a fine choice.






This last shot is my choice for Foto Friday's action theme!