Curious Cardinal

To see this photo in a larger size, click here.

I saw this cardinal while walking in a local park earlier this month. He was high up in a tree and acting really shy. I had to put on my bigger lens to get this close a view. This was the best angle on him that I could get. Most of the others show his lovely backside. He really was being shy and difficult.

I'm participating in Ruby Tuesday today.
Click here for more about Ruby Tuesday and to view other participants.

Which way should we walk?

To see this photo in a larger size, click here.

I'm posting this several days late because I hate the idea of missing a day in the ABC Wednesday challenge. Here's my W entry that should have been posted last week.

I took this while on vacation last year in Australia. We were at the Otway Fly Tree Top walk in Victoria. This if from the top of the tower -- 47 meters up -- looking straight down on the rainforest and catwalks. To give you some idea of scale, the people walking on the catwalks are probably about 25 meters above the rainforest floor. The plants on the rainforest floor are tree ferns.

We did this as a day trip from Melbourne. It was a long day, but well worth it, especially as we took the Great Ocean Road home.

P.S. To answer my own question about which way to walk: Can't go right, that's the way in. We could go left, but that will lead us to a  dead end. The middle is the way out.

I'm participating in ABC Wednesday today with the letter W.
Click here for more about ABC Wednesday and to view other participants.

Little Red Bartender

To see this photo in a larger size, click here.

Growing up, we had a unique Christmas tradition in my family. Every year, my parents would buy us a battery operated toy. Not a remote-controlled toy, just battery operated. Like little train sets, a dog, a police car, a helicopter. One in particular that I remember was a little bunny that hopped around chasing a carrot. Unfortunately, he, like many of the toys, didn't survive the years.

Part of our tradition was that these toys were always packed up with the Christmas decorations at the end of the season, not to be played with again until next year.

When we grew up and moved out of my parents' house, my Mom divvied up the toys between me and my sister. I still have mine, but haven't added to the collection. I think it's something that's more fun when there are kids around.

This little bartender in the photo was the inspiration for the family tradition. He was my grandfather's and dates to the 1960s. The martini glass and shaker have had to be repaired over the years, but when I last put batteries in him two years ago, he still worked perfectly. He shakes his arm, mixing the drink in the martini shaker, then pours it into the martini glass and takes a sip. Then his face turns red and smoke comes out his ears.

He's also the exception to the rule about the toys getting packed up with the Christmas decorations. I'm afraid to subject him to the heat and cold extremes of our attic, so instead, he resides in his original box in our living room bar. It's where a bartender belongs. :)

I'm participating in Ruby Tuesday today.
Click here for more about Ruby Tuesday and to view other participants.

Snowy cottage under overcast sky

To see this photo in a larger size, click here.

Overcast and snowy. That describes my skies today. After lunch, I pulled on my snow boots and went for a walk at a local park, hoping to catch some interesting skies. But the skies weren't doing anything interesting. The snow had stopped, but the clouds hadn't parted. I kept hearing planes passing overhead (it's next to the airport), but couldn't see most of them.

You can see what I mean in this photo. The building is one that I featured in a previous Skywatch two months ago. The seasons change...

I'm participating in Skywatch Friday today.
Click here for more about Skywatch Friday and to view other participants.

V is for Vertigo

To see this photo in a larger size, click here.

If I stare at this photo too much, especially at a larger size where I can see more detail, I get a sense of vertigo.

I took this photo a few years ago from the observation deck of the "Eiffel Tower" at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas. It's a long way down, isn't it?

I'm participating in ABC Wednesday today with the letter V.
Click here for more about ABC Wednesday and to view other participants.

My evil truffles -- mwah ha ha

To see this photo in a larger size, click here.


To see this photo in a larger size, click here.

I cook just enough to get by. Sure, I have a few specialty dishes for potluck dinners, but nothing spectacular.

I bake even less frequently. The one time of year I do attempt to bake, though, is right before Christmas for my co-worker's annual cookie exchange party. I love the event.

If you've never been to a cookie exchange, the idea is that you bake a preset number of cookies (for this party it was four dozen), then bring it to the party and exchange cookies with everyone else. Easy.

The first year I went to this party, I broke a cardinal rule and brought store-bought cookies that I served on Tupperware. They invited me back anyway. By the second year, I'd learned my lesson and even invested in a red holiday cookie platter specially for the event.

I experimented with a lot of cookie recipes over the years, but I'd never found a recipe that was a keeper until this year.

This year, it was the Oreo Truffle Balls. It's a What's Cooking America recipe that I stumbled on at the Chocolate and Tattoos blog. They're sinful. One of my friends has been calling them Haley's Evil Truffles.

Funny thing was, at the cookie party, a few people thought they looked store-bought. A big compliment on my chocolate-dipping skills, I guess, although I got a little sloppy with the white chocolate drizzle. That's what happens when I'm drizzling chocolate at 2 a.m. the night before, I guess.

The biggest compliment I received on them? The hostess at the cookie party asked me to make them again next year.

I'm participating in Ruby Tuesday today.
Click here for more about Ruby Tuesday and to view other participants.

The last candle

To see this photo in a larger size, click here.

For today's photo, I'm reaching back to last year when my nephew turned 8. It's a favorite of mine with the way the one candle illuminates his face, leaving everything else so dark.

This photo has been featured on this site before as part of a triptych, but this is the first time it's been featured alone. To me it has a different mood alone vs. part of a series.

I took this with my old point-and-shoot camera on automatic settings with the flash turned off.

I'm participating in Manic Monday today with the theme of Candle.
Click here for more about Manic Monday and to view other participants.

Full moon on the rise

To see this photo in a larger size, click here.

This was shortly after tonight's moonrise, just two hours ago. I was really happy to see it, and have my camera with me, too.

At about 4:20 tonight, @moryan Tweeted (on Twitter) that the full moon was going to be one of the biggest in the past several years, so right away I Googled the moonrise time and found that in Chicago, it had started just 10 minutes prior.

So I grabbed my camera and dashed around the office trying to find a view. I was able to turn out the lights in one of the conference rooms and start taking photos. Lots of them. It was a real learning experience. Some were blurry, some were boring, but I kept clicking. Unfortunately, there wasn't a really pretty backdrop for the moon. I kept the traffic in the photo to help give some scale. It's Interstate 294, in case anyone is wondering.

I think this is the most interesting of all the photos I took. Mostly because I like the color. Click here if you want to see the rest of the set. It's small. Only five photos.

I'm participating in Skywatch Friday today.
Click here for more about Skywatch Friday and to view other participants.

Three little Berners

To see this photo in a larger size, click here.

This photo is my most viewed, most interesting, most commented and most favorited photo on my Flickr account. As of this typing, it's had 6,612 views. Unfortunately, I didn't take it; my husband did.

The puppy in the center is our own Loki when she was 6 weeks old. We'd visited her breeder and were trying to figure out which little girl we wanted to adopt. So that means the other two puppies are Loki's sisters.

Taking this photo was not easy. It required puppy wranglers (aka me and the breeder) to keep putting the puppies back into position. They were rambunctious little critters.

In case you're wondering, the puppies are Bernese Mountain Dogs. They're a Swiss breed often referred to as Berners, and in Switzerland are known as Berner Sennenhund.

Loki has long since grown up, as this photo was taken in 2001 (a few digital cameras ago). Here's a link to more photos of her. 

I'm participating in the Thursday Challenge today with the theme 

"THREE OF ANYTHING".
Click here for more about the Thursday Challenge and to view other participants.

Underfoot Down Under

To see this photo in a larger size, click here.

Over a year ago we did a big family trip to Australia. My grandfather immigrated from Australia during the Great Depression and left behind four brothers and sisters who all had families of their own. We've managed to keep in close contact over the generations, but were long overdue for a personal visit. So, me and my husband, my Mom, my sister and her family all flew over there for a big family reunion in Melbourne.

Of course, we couldn't just visit Melbourne, so we added on visits to Ayer's Rock, Cairns and Sydney. We wish we could have stayed longer and seen more, but we didn't have enough vacation time.

Here we all are on the beach on Port Douglas, which is north of Cairns near the Great Barrier Reef. I'd ask if you had any guesses which were mine, but my sister, my Mom and I have very similar feet.

I'm participating in ABC Wednesday today with the letter U.
Click here for more about ABC Wednesday and to view other participants.

The old red barn

To see this photo in a larger size, click here.

It's surprising how many dilapidated barns there are on the drive between Chicago and Madison, Wis. I posted a photo of one last Friday, but here's another one that I took through the car window while passing at about 60 miles per hour on the expressway. Don't worry; I wasn't driving.

This barn is the classic red color, but it seems to have had some extra air-conditioning installed. As I was writing this, I wondered why barns are painted red, and Googled the question. Here's the answer I liked best.

I'm participating in Ruby Tuesday today.
Click here for more about Ruby Tuesday and to view other participants.

Little Santa and his lights

To see this photo in a larger size, click here.

I took a lot of random photos last year at Christmas. My camera was shiny and new and I was trying to figure out how to use even a portion of its features. Like the focus. I knew there was a was to tell it where to focus, but it was beyond me. I think I had to take this photo a dozen times just to get it to focus on Santa.

This year the challenge will be photographing holiday lights in the dark. I've been reading an article about it and I'm eager to try it. I just need to get my tree up first to give me something to play with.

I'm participating in Manic Monday today with the theme of Lights.
Click here for more about Manic Monday and to view other participants.

Creative Photography with Lines

To see this photo in a larger size, click here.

Last week after eating lunch, instead of returning to work right away, I drove further up into the restaurant's parking garage just to see what sort of photo opportunities might be lurking. We'd just had our first significant snow of the season the day before, and some of the snow was melting and seeping through the construction seams of the garage, causing these icicles. I thought this was a pretty intriguing view with the way all the lines of the building and the icicles interact.
 

I'm participating in Creative Photography this week.
Click here for more about the Creative Photography and to view other participants.

A brooding Thanksgiving sky

To see this photo in a larger size, click here.

For the Thanksgiving holiday last week, we drove up to my aunt's house in Wisconsin. On the way there, just outside of town, we saw this abandoned and rotting building and grain silo by the side of the road. I made my husband stop the car so that I could jump out and grab a few very quick shots. I thought the sky was a little moody and brooding in this shot, especially compared to the blue skies we'd left behind in Illinois an hour before that.

I'm participating in Skywatch Friday today.
Click here for more about Skywatch Friday and to view other participants.

Touching Thor's tongue

To see this photo in a larger size, click here.

Another summer time photo today. Back at a family get-together in August, Thor was laying near my little nephew, panting a little bit in the heat. My nephew got curious about this big mouth so near him, so he leaned over to investigate. Thor obliged by giving his hand a lick, which startled my nephew.

I'm participating in ABC Wednesday today with the letter T.
Click here for more about ABC Wednesday and to view other participants.

Setup for a fall

To see this photo in a larger size, click here.

On Thanksgiving, my nephews amused themselves by playing lots of dominoes. We played the traditional way of matching the dots on the tiles, and we played the really fun way of setting up a chain reaction domino fall, which made a big noise on the glass coffee table.

Here, my nephew has a chain reaction set to go. You can see his hand hovering in the background getting ready to start the action.

I'm participating in Ruby Tuesday today.
Click here for more about Ruby Tuesday and to view other participants.

Creative Photography gets Reflective

To see this photo in a larger size, click here.

The day that I took this photo, the conditions were so dreary, that the original photo already had a monochrome cast to it. So, I made the monochrome official by converting it to greyscale, then cropped it a little bit.

I like the way this photo has an almost 50/50 split, but yet the shoreline is coming in at a slight angle.

I dislike the hotel and power lines in the photo, but like that they're not reflected in the water, which makes it seem like two different worlds -- the real and the dreamy.

I'm participating in Creative Photography this week.
Click here for more about the Creative Photography and to view other participants.

A moment in the life of this blog and some linky love

To see this photo in a larger size, click here.

Wow, the first of the month really snuck up on me this time.

My top EntreCard droppers over the last 31 days are the following. Thank you to each and every one of you.

WindMill on the Hill
Foodie, Travel and Shutter Bug
The Junk Drawer
Photography by KML
Cromely's World
The Half-Life of Linoleum
Montana Moods
Blackholes and Astrostuff
Photojounalist!
Through the Lens

My top commenters on this site are the following. Thank you for keeping the discussion going. I appreciate every word you leave for me.

1. My Bug Life (27)
2. fragileheart (16)
3. Shinade (12)
4. Daisy (10)
5. Digital Polaroids (7)
6. Bob Johnson (7)
7. earthlingorgeous (6)
8. kml (6)
9. Lisa (4)
10. Bear Naked (4)

Other Miscellaneous blog stuff
Since I started this blog on Sept. 16, 2008 this site has had:

Total Number of Posts: 50
Unique Visits (Sitemeter): 2,768
Unique Visits (Google Analytics): 3,084
Pageviews (Sitemeter): 3,608
Pageviews (Google Analytics): 4,314
Number of Google Followers: 13

My 10 most popular posts so far are the following:

Red-hot glare
A clear day
Creative Photography gone Askew
Balloon Watch
Sky gazing
Rain
A city of neighborhoods
November Rain
O is for.. bOkeh visiOns
King of Autumn

Also in the past month, I added an Amazon Associate box to the bottom of the page featuring popular photography-related items, plus I added a Google Ads box in the lower right corner, and am hoping it sticks to photography topics. I'm not expecting much from these ad widgets, but since I was already signed up with my other blog, I thought I'd put them on the page.