Scattered Thoughts . . .

Laying out the tile and some dimensional lumber for the fireplace... A week or two ago I wrote about a new home renovation project... designing, building and installing a little fireplace. This fireplace will be a relatively simple gel-fuel fireplace which does not require any flue whatsoever. This project entails upgrading an entire wall of our living room so, as usual, this project is a bit more than my health would like to tackle... but I'm hoping to be successful with this project which entails getting it finished before Christmas. First, I started working on our primed steel front entry door.  It is a 15-lite door so calling it a 'steel' door can be misleading.  It is a nice door but isn't so nice looking with its factory gray primer.  I've been saying for a few years since I installed this door that I would like to finish it to appear as though it is stained wood.  Since this front entry door is part of this wall sharing the fireplace, I decided to tac

Although about six months have passed, I am going to go ahead and share a couple of photos from our garden this year.  Of course, our garden is now buried in snow but, for a few short months every summer, our stone paths are lined with very photogenic wildflower gardens. The variety of flowers we typically grow each summer is pretty colorful, lush and amazing.  Of course, these wildflowers attract all sorts of birds, grasshoppers, crickets and bees. If I am having a quiet, but slow morning, I tend to grab my camera and head to the gardens to find things to photograph.  Every now and then I get lucky and find a few flowers which aren't blowing in the wind or a cooperative insect or bird. Here are two photos I just recently found sitting in a folder on my computer which I thought would be nice to share...   Hope you enjoy!

Shot through our laundry room window... and through some frost on the window! Well, Christmas is upon us but we are so far behind in everything that I highly doubt the Christmas Spirit will catch up with us until sometime in January or February.   We did manage to get some Christmas lights strung up outside.  We don't have as many as anticipated, but we have enough.  Actually, very few of our neighbors have any Christmas lights this year... our street is unusually dark. Very strange... perhaps we are all in the same boat this year... Stringing up Christmas lights outdoors was a bit frustrating this year. First off, the weather was frigid. That always makes for a frustrating time. Next, approximately 1/2 of our Christmas lights went into the garbage this year because they were no longer lighting up. Frustrating, huh? We ended up using all of our indoor light sets just to fill some of the emptiness outside. So, now we need to get out to buy some Christmas lights for indo

Once again, I was up later than I should have been last night scrolling through one of my external hard drives full of photos. I think I stumbled across a few complete sets of photos of the babies that I never posted nor even processed for printing nor viewing!  In another set of photos from this past April, I found a funny photo of Mackenzie.   If I remember correctly, I was having a hard time getting her to smile so I stuck my tongue out at her...  trying to get a laugh or at least a little snicker...  she mimicked me rather than producing a smile... I also realized that I have hundreds of photos of our trips to Lake Groton over the past few years that are still just sitting in folders on these external drives.  I'll have to get to those photos one of these days too!  More importantly, I really need to send a large batch of my photos to one of my professional printing labs to have some beautiful prints made...  My to-do list is entirely too long and I have far too little

Sometimes...  hmmm...  actually, quite often...  I forget about some photos I shot and they get lost on one of my many hard drives full of photos.  Then, on nights like tonight when I find myself scrolling through photos on my drives, I come across a really nice photo. Tonight I came across this photo, above, which I shot during the summer of 2012.  I shot this photo through our open kitchen window.  Our neighbors have a few bird feeders in their yard so we usually have birds feeding outside our windows facing our neighbor's home.  The problem is opening the window slowly enough and quietly enough so that I don't scare away the birds. Capturing good photographs of birds is tough.  It is especially tough with smaller birds like this one.  Even larger birds such as swans, geese and ducks can be difficult to capture.  Smaller birds can be extremely difficult. Getting close to these birds is almost impossible so that means you must arm yourself with a big, long lens.

Although the wall is difficult to see behind all these Christmas presents, we are building a gel-fuel fireplace for this wall between the door and the window.  We will be covering this entire wall in library paneling matching the interior door at left. Today I started working on our newest home improvement project... Building a gel-fuel fireplace with an attached shelving unit for our entertainment components. This project also involves upgrading the entire wall with custom library-type paneling to match the fireplace. Today I started the project by clearing off the entire wall.  I also cleaned and primed the new front entry door.  This door is a steel, 15 lite door currently adorned (sarcasm) in its factory primer coat. Today's priming job is simply an undercoating for a grain-like appearance which will show through a brushed-on wood stain topcoat. In the end, this door should look like a beautiful wood door. I've used this same technique on a few other doors in the past

The kids came over again today on this long snowy Thanksgiving weekend.  (I just realized that I had also written just a few short months ago about a snowy Memorial Day weekend... will we ever catch a break?) The grandchildren spent some time this afternoon out in the backyard building a snowman with Grammy. Their attention was split between building the snowman and the sailboat sitting under a few inches of snow.  Eventually, their attention went to the kayaks standing tall and strapped against the house. Those boats seem to constantly call their names whenever they visit.  Today was no exception. A note of interest here:  I was the same at my grandparents' house... the boats always beckoned... I can still smell that home on the water and hear the waves lapping at the boats, dock and bulkhead. There is just something excitingly intriguing and special about boats, trains and airplanes... especially to kids. We did the usual "Sunday dinner" at the house this evening.

Who doesn't want a fireplace in their home?  A fireplace conjures up feelings of warmth... physical as well as emotional... beautiful architectural details... the faint smell of burning wood... the crackling of the fire... the playful dance of the flame... and a place to hang your stockings at Christmastime. Fitting even a small fireplace in a small home can be almost impossible though.  Fireplaces take up valuable real estate in any home.  Actually, fireplaces often become a major feature in any room and can even be monumental in size.  Even small fireplaces sometimes just can't fit into small homes... or can they?   Preliminary sketch... We have a small home.  Okay...  we have a really small home.  We have only three adults in the house but it is a tight fit.  It is such a tight fit that we are having difficulty renovating the house. Where do we put all the stuff that is in the room we want to renovate while we are renovating? It is like those little sliding tile gam

Flash photography has always been a thorn in my side.  I'm not alone though.  Most people have no clue how to properly shoot photos using a flash and that includes most photographers! Whenever we think of "flash photography" we picture a photo, any of millions of photos, that look like there is a big spotlight shining on the subject.  The background is so dark and underexposed that you can't see further than about ten feet in front of the camera.  These kinds of photos are terrible and have always bothered me. There is nothing 'warm' about them... there is nothing exciting about them... you can't even tell where the photo was shot... and they almost always cause the subject to frightfully resemble that "deer in the headlights" look. To imagine the types of photos I am referring to, think of the last time you tried to shoot your friends at night... you are in a beautiful location with warm lighting throughout the room... there is beauti

Whenever I upload photos from my camera to my computer after a day of shooting, I am always excited to sort through the photos.  This is when I set up another folder so I can move the "keepers" to their own folder.  If I am satisfied with the photos I consider "keepers", I consider the shoot a success.   The reasons why a photo doesn't end up in the "keepers" folder can vary greatly.  Sometimes the composition isn't what I had in mind.  Sometimes focus is off or there is some blurry camera shake.  Sometimes the exposure is off enough that I've clipped highlights or shadows.  Other times the results are just not what I was hoping for when I shot the image.  It is these photos which just didn't meet my expectations that I find I need to revisit after a few days, weeks, or sometimes months. I find that if I take a break from the photos and then come back to them later, I see things differently. I just went through the photos from Adam&#