Sunday walk and Inspiration from my garden...

This past weekend, Auckland has had some wonderful weather.... so after a lie in on Sunday, reading the morning paper.... Hubby and I decided to go for a walk.... that we ended up at the coffee shop was just coincidental!!! ..... It was warm but not too sunny.  Normally when I go out for a walk I wear my trainers and stride off... leaving him dawdling along behind... but yesterday I decided to wear the jandals and saunter along with him.  Very pleasant I tell you.  I took the camera along with me as I wanted to gets some flower photos.   I adore taking photos close up of wonderful coloured flowers.  Didn't see too many flowers but captured a series of photos of the walk.  We went right from our place down to Murrays Bay - the bay with the wharf on it... and then walked along the pipeline to Mairangi Bay.  After the coffee and a scone we back-tracked and headed home.   Such a nice way to spend some time together.

Back home I did get a great photo of a flower in the garden.  It is such a vibrant colour combination that it inspired me to make this card.  I had watched Dawn McVey's video the other week, showing how to make the flowers and the colours of the real flower decided me to give it ago.  A while back Lucy had made some text background that she sent to me, so this was my base - I used the nestie to cute out the 5 scallops needed, sponged the Dusty Concord ink over the back and the edges and followed Dawn's instructions.... found the perfect yellow button for the middle... The design is one I used last year - makes a lovely card, using one of my favourite HA Stamps...

Yesterday afternoon I also managed to make the Anniversary card for hubby for our 32nd anniversary on Thursday... had to be a bit sneaky as he was smooching around... I sent him outside with the travel brochures to look for hotels and sightseeing trips for our overseas holiday and that kept him occupied for most of the afternoon.  This is what I came up with  - inside it says " May our life journey together never end... all my love"    I think he will like it...
Thanks for stopping by.... hope your weekend was as happy and fun as mine.  Take care

Photo card

Photo card
Originally uploaded by turleyfamily(Dawn)

This week the challenge at Hero Arts is to use a photo on your project. I have used this photo in the past and had a copy printed out on plain paper. I wanted a simple card where the photo was the main focus so I cut it down and matted onto kraft after distressing the edge with walnut stain ink. I stamped the sentiment from HA CL129 and mounted to the cream cardstock. Finished with a dotty bow. Simple but I think it looks effective.

Engagement photos

Got home from the trip away - full of a cold - coughing and spluttering to find Emma had sent some photo via email to me. One of her and I and then one of the three of us. I am going to get some professional prints done so I can update my photo frame. I am really pleased with the photos. We had a great day.

Our few days away were interesting. The hotel in Taupo was lovely - nice meal, toasty warm bed and then a lovely breakfast the next morning. Peter gave me a double CD of Simon & Garfunkel. He had looked at getting tickets to the concert but they were over $300 a seat so thought the CD was the next best thing. We listened to it on our way down to Levin.

His Mum was not looking too good when we got there, but the next day - being her birthday - she was very bright. She had lots of visitors and cards and flowers. However it did tire her out and yesterday she looked shattered. His sister, too, was not well. She has started her treatments - we took her to the hospital on Monday, but she had another seizure that night. Luckily not bad and she was back home by just after midnight. So we managed to get away on time. That meant we managed to get through the Desert Road in the middle of the island, before the snow came. This morning's news said it was closed due to snow. We could see it was dark and looked like snow was on the way.

Today I am just pottering round at home. I am too sick to go to work as I can hardly talk. My throat is very sore and my cough is awful. I've got a doctor's appointment tomorrow so hopefully nothing too serious - just a cold I hope.

Think I will spend some time this afternoon visiting my favourite blogs and even doing a card or two.

Thanks for visiting.

White Balance - Lisa's tutorial

I thought I'd see what I could do with my camera taking photos of the card I did tonight. It was cream and white colours - a total lift from a card I saw on Flickr done by rosigirl123 -see here
I had been reading Lisa Spangler's tutorial on white balance adjustments. My camera is Fujifilm Finepix E500 and I couldn't follow her instructions so got out my owners manual and had a read - not that that made much sense to me either. But decided to have a bit of a play.

First off I took a photo with my camera fully on Auto - just point and shoot mode. As I was using a window at night it didn't turn out too good.


Next I went into the manual controls and found WB - I used the auto choice which gave me a better photo -

Once I upload to Flickr I edited the photo with Picnik which made the photo sharper and clearer. I still don't really understand quite what I am doing here - so it will be going back to Lisa's tutorial and re- reading to see if I can follow it a bit better. Still I feel that using the manual adjustments to the WB (even though I used the auto ) did make a difference.

Now if I could only get the photos to sit where I want them in this blog......
Anyway thanks for looking - any hints you can give me would be appreciated....