I found the perfect pantry!

On our final build, we have a walk-in butler pantry with a pass-through to the kitchen plus a space to slide the coffee pot & toaster back out of view.

The making of Chancing the Brown Mountain Lights covers for CC Tillery

Chancing the Brown Moutain Lights is the fifth book in the Brown Mountain Lights series.  The colors on this one are my 2 favorite colors, despite being told bu the hubby that you can’t have 2 favorites. The sister duo authors wanted to continue using the one photo I took of Brown Mountain from the first book, and just make changes to the colors and adding a second foreground image composite.

Lightroom versus On1 RAW 2021

Wondering why I haven’t shared my 51st birthday waterfall pics yet? This is why. I can’t do anything with my RAW photos without making more of a mess. If you’re not into photography this is one post you can just skip.

Summed up in one line “I like almost everything better about Lightroom except renting it, but I’m trying to switch to On1“. I’m aware that my initial opinion is likely biased because I don’t want to learn another program. I’ve had different On1 offerings since it was On One somewhere back around 2015, but fell into using Lightroom and Photoshop more often with On1 as a plug-in instead of a stand-alone. Many of their programs can be used either way. And, to be fair I use programs until they won’t work any longer. So either one, On1 Raw 2021 or Lightroom subscription would both have a slight learning curve. I just prefer to concentrate on shooting than sitting in the office working!

Went South for what felt like a vacation

I bet when all this is done the word “staycation” will be stricken from the dictionary.

We all get cabin fever and we all hit our limit.

Architecture and thoughts about the flu, hair, and a few other random rants on home building.

So this turned into a long post on over 3 subjects. I’ll color code so you can skip what is of no interest. 🙂

Shoot-it-while-you-can (circles, food, broken glass, and an orchid)

I was originally saving that headline for an old building that I knew would not be there for long. I decided to use it for this post.  Our word for CCoH February was  “circles” I can’t remember what or if I shared any?   Here are a few pics for that.

The camera club, like everything else, is on hold because of the pandemic. I missed the deadline for “juxtaposition” anyway, even though that meeting was canceled. Now I can add “learn Zoom” to my to-do list before the next meeting this month.

A tailgate 30th and Easter thoughts

Since I work from home, my self-discipline to get up and get stuff done has not changed all that much, except the amount of photo and book cover jobs coming in has slowed basically to a stop. We have been working in the yard more than normal. We usually buy stuff for the yard and garden. This year we’re transplanting and moving stuff around. Figure may as well take care of what we have already, and when I work in the yard, I have two things to show for it. It’s good for me and our yard looks better. Win-Win. If we’re going to be  at home, our home and yard may as well look the best it can.

This year I decided to take a walk around the yard and see if we have any volunteers I can cultivate and move to where I’d like them later. I was hoping to find some fast-growing maple trees but as of yet, without the leaves out yet, I wasn’t sure what the young trees were. I did clip a straggler off the bottom of one of our maple trees to root it. I wish it was from one of the red ones but it was a wild maple that turns yellow. Still looks nice, grows fast, provides a place for squirrels to escape the outdoor cats.

I’ve been trying to add sorting and organizing to the days. I have been doing pretty well emotionally with the ‘safe at home” though. I’m not quite getting to everything, but just taking each day as it comes. Some are productive, some, not so much.

Staying at home away from people is right up my alley.

However, I do miss being able to get what I want for the weeks’ groceries in one darn trip, but other than that and worrying a bit about my older friends and family, and watching church online…. things are not that different in the Maxwell House.  I do wish the media and experts would just say “we don’t know” instead of guessing. I had to laugh about the letting people out of jails to stop the spread, when the prisoners were in jail, they were contained but let’s make the decision to let them out and tell the to self contain. Obviously, they’re good at following laws. SMH. Buncombe county blows my mind. Tests sites closed because of not enough test and/or they don’t want you out if you’re sick to see if it’s covid you have symptoms for that brought you out to be tested. Just stay at home unless you can’t breathe, but don’t be around anybody just in case. They may as well say “we don’t want to know how many have it.”

I’ve been trying to get a photo of the turkey in our yard all fluffed out. The husband came in and said the male attacked his truck tire and chased the truck so I needed to be careful walking to the mailbox. So, I went out with my camera. I got more than I bargained for. #turkeynuggets

We went for a drive and I laughed when I saw a cow pasture with the cows all spaced out funny. Apparently, they were told the 6′ rule too.

My Valentine knows me so well

Hubby and I planned on going to SC for Valentine’s Day. It’s been, I think last Valentines since we had a regular actual dinner date, but anybody can do those 🙂

The making of Chasing the Brown Mountain Lights cover for CC Tillery

Chasing the Brown Moutain Lights is the fourth book in the Brown Mountain Lights series.  The colors on this one came together so nicely.  The sister duo authors want to continue using the one photo I took of Brown Mountain from the first book, and just make changes to the colors and adding a second foreground image composite.