That’s how I roll.  Somethings I plan and take my time on, but really, I like to just wing it and figure it out.  Monday night after we finished our delish fish tacos I decided I wanted to go take pictures of the sunset.

Still learning how to use this uber powerful camera, I did a quick google search and an even quicker skimming of this article.  Grabbed the camera, tripod and hopped in the car.

I put the camera on Shutter Priority and just started shooting.  In my mind, I thought the canals would be a great unobstructed view of the sunset.  Stupid electric lines and towers!

Actually I like the way they turned out.  I think the wires and poles give it and urban sunset feel.

I tell ya though, this camera is giving me a run for my money!  My pictures are still turning out darker than I would like, despite me getting the light reader spot on.  Or worse, when I have plenty of light streaming into the room, but the camera says its not enough, but I can’t go lower than 150 if I am shooting a moving kid, and then the lens won’t go lower than 4.5.  Grrr I have learned though, that I would rather have a photograph under exposed, rather than overexposed (see below).

Thank heavens for Photoshop!  (although I did almost no editing of the sunset shots).

My All time favorite granola, over blueberry yogurt!  Yum.

Yesterday I upgraded to Photoshop CS5, that’s quite the jump from CS to CS5.  All sorts of new “stuff” in there!  During the install process I accidentally lost all of my brushes & actions (sigh.).  Just means I have to hunt them all down again.

Short of making sure I get both PW Action Sets, I can’t remember the rest that I had.  Do you have any go-to actions that you really like?  Please recommend some actions so I can build my collection back up again!

I need help picking a design. I am really leaning towards #4. Please tell me which one you like/don’t like and why.

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Option 4

(jaylee, you can stop reading right now as I know this will bore you to tears)

Let’s talk a little technical stuff. First of all I’m using copious amounts of bandwidth and frankly I’m not sure why, or what bandwidth really is. Any takers?

When I left the old blog behind in favor of the new one, I really changed my approach to blogging and my purpose. My goal was to make numbers and comments not really matter (but really, I love when you guys leave me comments, I get warm fuzzies). However, I really don’t check my stats that often, I checked them today for the second time- ever. I wanted the blog to be more authentic and less contrived, I wanted to accentuate the positive and beautiful in my life- not whine about how motherhood was/is hard (because I think we all know that).

So when I checked my stats today I realized that I don’t really know what I am looking at. My domain host offers some excellent stats software built into my Cpanel, but I really don’t understand it. What is the difference between “number of unique visitors”, “pages” & “hits”? From the little I googled I think that the “hits” number should be ignored as anytime anything is called off the server it gets a hit (so a hit appears anytime my header banner is pulled from the server etc.). Also, what are good stats? How many “page views” a day is considered good? When will the crafty marketers start calling?

One feature I love about my stats is the refers page, I love seeing where you come from to get here. I also love seeing which pages/posts get the most hits. I noticed that a high number of you subscribe to the comments feed. Does that mean you would prefer to hear back from me via the comments section? Since WP emails me your comments I’ve just been replying back to you in that fashion, should I reply back via the comments?

Here is a shot I took this evening. I took the kids to the nearby greenbelt to kick around a soccer ball (you know, because the whole motherhood thing is hard and they were driving me crazy) and ended up playing with my camera’s weak macro feature.