shot in April and May. I'm trying my 85mm f1.8 lens and I'm starting to love it.
I should always listen to my photography instructor Karen Russell's advice. She told me (and the other participants at her Shoot From The Heart photography online course) that you should shoot at least a month with a new lens to get the hang of it. And she was so right! I'm starting to get the feel of how this fabulous lens performs.
Just random shots in random order
We celebrated our 30th anniversary on Feb 12 with friends from far and near.
It turned out to be a beautiful sunny day against all odds - it snowed in Rome two weekends in a row which was unheard of, and it happened right before the anniversary! We had a great time, went to the restaurant with a rented bus, had a beautiful lunch, came back home and danced to the best of 70's and 80's disco music until midnight.
Here are a few shots of us, the decorations (most of which I made) and the best and the most beautiful cake ever.
Franco and I on the way to the restaurant
I made a paper flower bouquet cutting book paper with a diecut machine and adding black and red flowers using decorative pins. Ecological and lasts forever:)
I sewed the crepe paper streamers for the house. Pininterest and Youtube are a remarkable source for tutorials.
We put 30 black, red and silver helium balloons + the "I love you" balloon in the living room. Loved the effect.
Bought inexpensive metal buckets, spray painted them black and silver, used some red bead strings (from Christmas) and made crepe paper roses which I pinned with wooden skewers to the florist sponge (placed inside the buckets) and got ecological, beautiful and inexpensive center pieces for the restaurant.
Painted and sewed the place cards
I made a big card where all the guests wrote something for us. A nice keepsake.
The cake was made by my friend who makes beautiful AND delicious cakes. They are not only goodlooking but they also taste fab. The idea of the pile of packages was mine but she elaborated the concept.
Happy 30th Anniversary to us!!
Continue with my everyday photos:
9/366 - I knitted a huge scarf for Valentina for her birthday
10/366 - Nowhere without prosecco. This was on our flight to Athens
11/366 - Practicing with the self timer. Hubs was a good sport
12/366 - Saw this at the flea market in Athens (Monastiraki). I should have bought it!
13/366 - Helping to button up Elina's wedding dress
14/366 - The center piece at Elina's and John's wedding reception
15/366 - All the Christmas decorations are back in their boxes ready for next year
16/366 - Valentina's b-day present for me
17/366 - Sushi dinner. Luv sushi!!
18/366 - For Andrea's birthday we hid presents on his chair and under his plate
19/366 - Planning the seating arrangements for the anniversary reception
20/366 - Franco is checking on and pruning the vines
More later. All the 365+1 photos are unedited.
On Friday at noon it started snowing in Rome. For the most part of the day it was slushy. During the night it started snowing, and I mean really snowing and we woke up Saturday morning to this:
Andrea's nectarine tree :(
One of our lemon trees
Our neighor's mimosa trees
Franco cleaning his car
The cypress in front of our apartment building
Neighbor's palms
No train or tram passed all day Saturday.
And then also the kids came out to admire the snow.
Valentina is ready for a snowball fight.
Andrea getting ready... (Franco decided not to participate and I was the photographer)
And here goes:
Daniele and Valentina against Andrea
My gloves are perfect for taking pictures, not so good for making snowballs
Here they weren't "fighting" anymore
Then it was time to make Frosty the Snowman
Here he is in all his glory. I guess he was a success since a lot of people came to take pictures of him!!
Last time it snowed in Rome like this back in 1985, the day I went to the hospital to deliver Valentina! It has snowed a few times during these years but just for a little while and then in a matter of minutes or an hour at the most, it melted away. This snow has stuck now for 48 hours! I hope it melts asap. I don't care for snow, I hate cold weather and we have our anniversary reception and party coming up next weekend. We do NOT need any snow! Actually it would be disastrous! Let's hope for the best.
I've started a couple of year long projects. Yes, me. The whole year. Let's see how long that lasts...
The first is 365+1 photos or A Photo a Day 2012 on facebook with my friend Lisa from Australia and the other one is Becky Higgins' Project Life.
I've taken photos every day whereas I'm already behind with the Project Life, but I'm not stressing. I'm just happy that I started it and it seems to come along actually quite well taking into consideration that we took a 5 day trip to Athens on the second week of January and after that I've been busy planning our 30th anniversary on Feb 13 with friends coming from Finland, Belgium and Greece other than from Italy. But I'll tell about the anniversary in a couple of weeks' time. And I will show you photos of my PL layouts as soon as I get them photographed.
Here are the first 8 photos of the 365+1 photos:
1/366 - New Year's candle
2/366 - New Year's decorations
3/366 - I do gel nails every 4 weeks
4/366 - Christmas present from Valentina and Andrea. Makes the long walks on the treadmill so much more enjoyable
5/366 - Preparing for Project Life
6/366 - My new earrings
7/366 - Andrea made a cake for Valentina's birthday. Half of the cake mix ended up on the floor.
8/366 - Yummy bruschetta
More to come in the next few days.
Just random pictures and random thoughts in random order about the cruise:
- probably the best cruise ever craft-wise. Loved ALL of Tim's projects
- couldn't have hoped for a better travel/craft companion than Chiara (elsewhere known as Maria)
- the weather was gorgeous - just some clouds and some showers which were actually welcome
- liked the Royal Caribbean better this time (last time our waiter sucked!)
- loved room service (for breakfast)
- I still don't like eating at Windjammer
- love shopping onboard AND onshore
- I still like Carnival better
- impeccable organization as far as Tim's classes were concerned (as always)
- met Elsa and Roxie, my new best friends from Florida and Texas
- made 117 ATCs to trade
- very little interaction between the two groups probably due to different class times and our later dining time
- beautiful ports of call; hubs and I raided the stores:) Well, I raided, hubs strolled along.
- Portofino onboard was a fabulous surprise
- the ship's "house champagne" comes nowhere near Prosecco
- our waiters and cabin attendant were excellent
- didn't spend too much at Mario's Market place - speedy shopping at Michaels and Joann's prior to embarking may have had something to do with it;)
- took less photos this time but I am quite pleased with them
- Chiara and I had 8 evening wears - one for each night and one "just in case"
- got a head cold from the darn air-conditioning on at full blast - especially in the dining room
- the staff at Royal Caribbean deserves kudos - they sorted out problems for us that hadn't been taken care of beforehand and some that occured during the cruise
- better not put the key card close to iPhone or other electrical devices - learned that first hand
- I hardly ever eat desserts but couldn't resist all the yumminess
- cool ice show - Franco didn't like the magician and his tricks...
- some ladies assaulted the Market Place as soon as the doors were opened. Geez what manners!
- bought the most beautiful carryon onboard - it pays to be nice to Hubs :)
I finally edited the rest of the photos of Valentina's photo shoot which we did two months ago...
You can find Part 1 here if you're interested.
Well, better late than never.
Without further ado, here are the shots that made the cut.
This is one of my faves of the day.
This has not been edited other than sharpened and resized for the web. She is slim but here she looks way too skinny!!
Ok, here I forgot to do something about the shoulder of the tank top. Oh well...
This is another fave of mine.
Last Sunday Franco, Andrea and I went to a Strawberry Fair in Nemi, a small village in the Castelli Romani area some 20 km southeast of Rome. This was the 78th time they had the fair.
It was fun. Got to see the parade with the flag throwers and the "fragolare", the women in traditional strawberry picker's costume, had some yummy strawberries even though not as delicious as I expected. Well, it's been a bad strawberry year in Italy they say. We strolled a couple of hours on the main street of this tiny village - it looked like the only street - looking at tiny shops and kiosks selling anything from strawberries to lavender (next week is the Lavender Fair, maybe we should go), from porcini mushrooms (or penny buns) to handmade lace, from crafty jewelry to salami.
After a couple of hours it was time for us to leave since we were headed to one of our favorite restaurants nearby and we chose just the right time to leave: it started pouring after 10 minutes and it never stopped until the evening.
fragolare some 50 years ago
greenhouse strawberries
wild strawberries
They start young!
bobbin lace making
Liked the dress without the hat
No village fair is not a fair without some yummy salami, prosciutto and sausages. I think this was Franco's and Andrea's favorite spot in the village.
And a couple of photos of me and Franco taken by Andrea who's turning into quite an awesome photographer. The last photo is taken by Franco.
It was such an honor to be asked to create a layout for this week's color combo at The Color Combos Galore.
Happy Thursday! May sure flew by, didn't it? We're rounding out our month of May flowers with another fantastic challenge.
This week, we have a cheerful palette, and our Designer's Challenge is Focus on Product: Use numbers on your project, as inspired by the numbers on the flower vase.
We are thrilled to have Helena Virpi join us as our Featured Member this week! The inspiration she provided is so artsy and beautiful!
This is one of the photos of Valentina's photo shoot at the end of April that made the cut. I took close to 700 photos, deleted straight away about half of them and have edited 15 so far! I'm planning on editing maybe other 15 and that's plenty! Actually I'm extremely pleased with the photos.
Use numbers on your project:I misted the background with Yellow Daisy and Key Lime Pie Glimmer mists using a KI Memories lace cardstock with numbers as a mask, stamped around the edges with Studio 490 "Art by the Number" background stamp, then added Tim Holtz's ruler ribbon underneath the photo and the number 1 in the title. There are also numbers on the ticket where I wrote the journaling.
I also used flowers as my inspiration from the Inspiration Board. They are fussy cut from an old Scenic Route paper (West Spain Street of Sonoma collection) that I still love! I cut out the outer border of the flowers which was too dark red and distressed them a tad with white acrylic paint.
Added some depth with strokes of paint and with gessoing a piece of a gauze on the background ...
...and looping some twine on the bottom. The final touch was given by flickering black acrylic paint on the background.
Had a photo shoot in the park near our house with Valentina a couple of days before she left for Tokyo again.
Had a lot of fun and learned a lot (the bright sun is not a photographer's friend).
Here are some of the photos I've edited so far.
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