Tangled Yarns

Finally, some much needed rain!  I love rainy days...the sounds, the smell, the feeling that everything is being cleansed and freshened up...especially in the spring.  The grass seems greener every day, and you can see the budding leaves growing bigger and bigger.  Yay for spring!

Things around our house have been rather nuts lately...hubby and I have both been dealing with some health problems which have resulted in multiple trips to the hospital, which aren't over just yet.  While waiting to pick Jared up from an appointment yesterday I snapped a few pics with my phone...first a sweet pimpmobile...

I didn't get to see the owner, I figured he was either an old guy/original owner or a young punk trying to start his career as a mack daddy!

Just some rainy views through the windshield...

I was happy to sit and watch the rain while I waited...even the puddles kept me entertained with the endless circles spreading through the water as the raindrops hit the ground.

Drip drip drip! Love it!

I needed to get out of the house and get some fresh air, to get my mind off of all of the things I was sitting and worrying about.  So I went for a little drive and wound up at Capilano and Gold Bar parks.  It was really really windy, but I didn't mind for the most part, I wore a warm coat and liked feeling my hair whipping around my head.

The skies were nice and blue, dotted with big fluffy clouds that the sun would hide behind every few minutes.  I decided to try doing some HDR pictures, although I knew I had 2 things against me: 1. no tripod, and 2. too windy.  I tried it anyway, bracing my camera on a corner of a bridge handrail, but the wind was what made it impossible.  For an HDR to work well it helps if there is no motion in your pictures!  This is what I got...you can tell that wind had the clouds moving pretty quickly.

That led me to try and "fake" some HDRs when I got home later and was picking out which ones I wanted to edit.  (By "fake", I mean that I am making exposure adjustments during editing, rather than while I'm taking the pictures.)  Here is one of the pictures used to compose the shot above, unedited...

And here is a "fake" HDR, made by adjusting the exposure settings of another similar shot in Lightroom and combining 3 of those adjusted pictures...

I think it's a pretty reasonable facsimile! It still pulled out the colors, highlights and shadows, and looks pretty decent compared to original I tried.  I did a handful more of these and am going to post them over in my photo section, along with the other pictures I took.  I did see some trees that were starting to bud, and some pussywillows, but I want to see more green, I am ready for spring.

On the weekend I spent some time with my nieces, who were at my parents' house for a few days.  The weather was lovely, and we even had a weiner roast on Saturday afternoon!  Although a lot of snow has melted over the last couple of weeks, there's still a lot left...but in a bit of dirt under a big tree in the backyard, my niece found a ladybug!  She was quite excited. 

It sounds like our spring-like weather will be interrupted by the 5 - 10 cm of snow that is forecast for tomorrow, but by Friday it's supposed to be 8 degrees, so that snow won't last long. I'm sure I'm not the only one looking forward to green grass and budding flowers and leaves, but it's a bit too early for spring...we need a few more weeks of snow so that it's not another dry summer!   

So I made my muffins, a day late, but done nonetheless!  I couldn't find the recipe I was thinking about, but I found another one that looked good.  It's actually a recipe for a loaf, but I have a wonky oven and have never had much success making loaves.  It seems to be at least 25 degrees off and has a really really hot spot, so I never know how long to bake things, and loaves are just one of those things I can't seem to make good guesses on.  Anyway, here is my finished product!

I got the recipe from allrecipes.com.  After reading a bunch of the comments with the recipe, I altered it to increase the peanut butter to 1 cup instead of 1/2 and used 4 bananas instead of 2.  The main comment I based my changes on suggested baking them for 25 minutes at the same temperature as with the loaf directions, but with my oven, I had it around 25 degrees lower and they were ready in about 18 minutes.  Oh I also added some chocolate chips instead of walnuts.  I found the flavors on the mild side, and not overly sweet, but they are tasty!  I used organic peanut butter, so had I used regular peanut butter the taste would probably be a bit stronger and maybe a little sweeter.  All in all I'm happy with them and will probably make them again!

I feel like I have been neglecting my blog.  It's not entirely true, I do check in at least once a day to see how many visitors I've had and whether there are any new comments.  What I don't do a lot of is post.  After a little umm..verbal altercation, let's call it, a couple of months ago, I feel like I need to censor what I say so it won't get taken the wrong way or out of context.  At the time my initial reaction was to think I should stop posting altogether, but after a few days I told myself I wouldn't let it affect what or how often I wrote, but obviously I have.  I guess I could still pick topics to write about that have nothing to do with me or what I might be up to, but I don't really think that would get me to post more often right now.  I seem to lack the motivation for that, and for a lot of things really...haven't been leaving the house other than when I have to, no trips around town to do some photography, no walk around the block for fresh air...can't seem to finish (or start, for that matter) a baby blanket I'm making as a gift, and it couldn't be an easier pattern so that's no excuse...there I go being a ball of sunshine again.  I suppose pointing out the things I'm not doing isn't really going to help me feel any better about it! 

At least I'm looking forward to the coming weekend, hubby comes home, photowalk on Saturday, and I think the weather is supposed to be pretty decent.  What's a photowalk?  Check out the info on my hubby's website, and feel free to join us!  A few people have asked me what kind of camera I use, it's a Canon g10.  As I'm getting more comfortable taking pictures off of the automatic setting, I find myself thinking about borrowing Jared's camera to try out a DSLR, but I have yet to do it.  I  haven't used my own camera for a little while, so I have to re-learn what it was I thought I understood from our last photo forays first :)

I think one of my tasks tomorrow will be to do some baking.  I used to bake a lot, but haven't done much for quite a while.  I mistakenly thought we were low on bananas for the bunnies so I bought more yesterday, and now there are a few too many!  I came across a recipe for peanut butter banana muffins last week so I might give that a try, if I have everything I need for it.  If I don't, I probably won't feel like running to the grocery store for the third day in a row!  Unless of course, I use it as an opportunity to stop at Timmy's for an iced capp on the way home!