More Backyard Adventure Photos

Time for another installment of Janine's backyard! These were all taken within the last week or so:

One of the prettiest sunsets I've ever seen...it looked like a painting.

Female Cardinal

Male Cardinal...there are so many cardinals in my area but they are SO quick, I can never seem to get a really nice photo. I'm ok with these, though :)

Mourning Dove...now these guys are a lot more relaxed than the Cardinals. They just hang out on my back fence and watch me watching them :)

The same Dove a minute later, just after self-grooming and a ruffling of the feathers. It's amazing how they can make themselves look so much bigger than they really are!

That's it for now...the kid and I are attempting to grow some veggies, so I may post pics of that later on. I hope everyone has a wonderful week.
♥

Nature Reserve Photos - Eagle, Alligator, Dragonfly

Apparently I didn't get quite enough picture-taking yesterday morning...I went back to the Marshall Hampton Nature Reserve yesterday afternoon. I only planned on staying for a little while but it turned into two hours! I took a different trail this time; one that winds around a lake:

See the lake on the left? This trail goes all the way around it. I love this place!

"Hi there. I'm going to eat you if you don't get that camera out of my face." This alligator had such a weird ball-looking thing at the end of his nose! But I think his eyes freaked me out the most ::shudder::

Pretty little dragonfly :)

Yummy wild berries...yes I know they were yummy because I ate a couple after checking them for spiders and stuff :)

Black vultures...they look like old men with their wrinkly necks!

My favorite photo of the day...I've never been able to get a good shot of an eagle but he was just chilling out at the top of the tree posing for me :)

♥

Foggy Morning Visitors

Yes, it's another "Foggy Morning in Janine's Yard" post...are you excited? I'll pretend that you are :) This time I caught some little visitors! Plus I found some kind of seed pods around the back fence with visitors of their own...I've never seen such brightly colored bugs. 

These were all taken over the past two mornings...I pulled an all-niter last night working on orders so I'm going to leave you with the photos and get some sleep ~.~

♥

Nature reserve photos

My son and I went back to the nature reserve Sunday morning and it was a perfect day for it. We spent five hours hiking, with a 20-minute rest for snacks, and only covered about half of what there is to see.

We meandered off the trail a few times to go exploring and got a bit lost...but some of the weird stuff we saw off the trail was worth it! There were scatterings of bones here and there...and these were BIG bones. I don't know what kind of animals they were...but there was even a tooth still lodged in part of a jaw bone (last photo below). Kind of freaky but really interesting!

Cactus flowers

Wild grapes just starting to grow 

The only mushroom we saw all day 

Strange tree roots...these were at the base of many trees off the trail. They looked like something you'd see in a cave and we really couldn't figure out how they would have gotten that way.

Freaky tooth and jaw bone...the tooth itself was a little over an inch long.

We're definitely going back soon to cover what we didn't get to see today. And we'll plan things better next time so we don't get lost :)

♥

New discovery!

My son and I discovered a gold mine late this evening...a nature reserve with 6 miles of hiking trails...almost right in our backyard!! I had passed the sign with the word 'reserve' on it many times and always meant to check it out (it looked to be private property from what I could see), but tonight as we passed, the kid noticed that there was a small parking area and the fence was OPEN.

We got there a half an hour before closing, but tomorrow's plan is to load up the backpack with water, snacks, and camera and head out there early. These are two of the shots I got before we left.

I can't believe this place has been there this whole time! It's been so long since I've been anywhere like that; I was like a kid running from one area to another, "Oooh look!" "Hey, there's a lake!" "OMG look, a little island-- what kind of birds are those?!"

I can't wait for tomorrow. Do you sense a photo-heavy post coming soon? :)
♥

A morning of snail shells and Spanish moss

I went to the lake this morning; my backyard was not exciting enough for photos :) Here are a couple shots from my excursion:

These snail shells were about as big as my fist and I'm kind of glad the snails had moved on... they probably would have freaked me out being so big! But the shells were so beautiful and almost lonely there with no one to protect anymore.

I'm really not a big fan of Spanish moss...it's EVERYWHERE here in Florida so it lost its novelty pretty quickly, plus it's usually full of little bugs. But the sun had just come up and the way it lit up the moss hanging from the trees -- well it was lovely.

I took a lot of shots of the sunrise and of flowers that I had never seen before but I'll save them for later :)

Have a wonderful day! ♥

Studio photo dump - and BACK UP your stuff!

Hello! So I had a computer malfunction this evening and didn't get everything done that I wanted to. Those lovely Windows updates can really wreak havoc sometimes...I spent about two hours trying to get it past the restarting point, shutting it down again and rebooting in different safe modes only to have it get stuck again. On the last reboot it finally gave me a "repair disk" option...yes! That's what I want, repair whatever's broken! It seemed to work *crosses fingers*. Royal pain, but it was a good reminder to back up all my stuff.

One of the things I wanted to accomplish this evening was listing the new mushroom cap sewing pins in my shop...unfortunately, to put it bluntly, I'm pooped! Writing the descriptions and taking the photos will have to wait until tomorrow.

In the meantime, I thought I'd show you what I've done in the studio recently...major re-organization. Things have grown since the days when I could store all my wool in an over-the-door shoe organizer! I put up this shelf and added some canning jars that someone from my old job was nice enough to give me. I really like being able to see all my colors at once, and they show me what is stored in the bags and drawers beneath.

I also got my photo table set up...it was becoming too time-consuming to set everything up and then take it down again whenever I wanted to take new product photos, so I cleared a spot in the studio and dedicated this area to photo taking only...something I have been wanting to do for months. In case you're wondering, the light tent is a cheapie that I bought on Ebay. It folds up into itself and becomes its own carrying case with pockets (the pockets and the handle are in the back when it's set up), which is pretty neat! It came with the two small photo lights you see on the left, but they aren't very bright so I have to use them both on one side. I use G.E. 'Reveal' bulbs in the other lamps; they come closest to daylight without being ridiculously expensive.

This tired pup is off to bed now so I can get a fresh start tomorrow on finishing what was supposed to be done today! Let's just hope Windows doesn't have any more 'helpful' updates for me.. ;)

Wonderful start to the weekend

Happy Saturday!

I woke up to the most beautiful, peaceful foggy morning today. Before I even put on a pot of coffee (wha??), I grabbed my camera and went outside.

What a great way to wake up!!

♥

Hello Out There! =)

It's the end of January already...looks like my resolution of blogging more frequently has already hit the skids! Where does the time go? Well for me, part of the time since my last post was spent discovering Pinterest. It was a little confusing at first but then it quickly became a glorious time-suck =) I'm over there as janine200 and while I don't have a whole lot of things 'pinned' yet, I have really enjoyed looking at all the goodies that other people pin to their boards.

I've also been working on some new designs for the shop, there are so many ideas in my head and not enough time to finish (or even start) them all! I did make a new bird's nest ornament, and I got a little creative with the photography--I used natural twigs and pods I found on the ground outside of my dayjob as little props, and then I brought the pic into Photoshop where I played around with lighting and curves to give it a bit of a washed-out look. To me, it looks more like an art print than a product shot and I love how it turned out! Happiness!

 Other things I've spent time on lately: I needle-felted some new mushrooms for pincushions, and spent some time dyeing ostrich feathers. I love the look on people faces at the office where I work when they ask, "What did you do this weekend?" and, grinning like an idiot, I answer, "I dyed ostrich feathers!" =) More on that to come in another post, I'll take some photos next time I dye a batch and show how (and why) I like to color my own.

That's it for now, it's time for me to head to bed (I've got Stephen King's book Bag of Bones on my nightstand calling my name). I hope you all have a wonderful, happy week! ♥

Nature Collections

Happy Labor Day Weekend!

Recently I was inspired by some Flickr friends who photograph their nature collections. So today I gathered a few things and started shooting.

The snail shells were found outside my office building last week after all the rain we had (which caused some chuckling by my co-workers as I ran from one shell to another like a little kid..."Oooh! Here's another one!")...the willows are needle felted, and the embroidered bag is my first try at sewing a drawstring pouch, finished yesterday.

All the snail shells, grouped together (after a thorough cleaning, of course!) I actually discovered one of the small shells *inside* a bigger shell while cleaning them...bonus!!

One more shot of the pouch, with the snails "spilling" out:

Looking at my pitifully small collection (and the fact that I was ecstatic to find snail shells at work) makes me really miss the woods and forest areas I use to play in when I was growing up...I miss the ferns, the moss, the acorns...wild strawberries, bright orange salamanders, queen anne's lace, clovers....

I must find some woods around here that I can visit soon.

I hope everyone has a happy holiday Monday!

♥