Life’s Sweet Ordinary — through my lens

Well, it’s moving time. Thanks to all the time and effort from Jennifer Gilbert, my blog is now set up and settled in to my domain. There are still a few things that need tweaking. For instance I can’t seem to get the font changed and I don’t like how small my logo is, and I’d like to learn how to do a fading slideshow banner. Oh, and in the move, none of the comments have moved over with all the posts, nor have any of the categories or tags; so I’ll be busy adding those as I get a few minutes here and there. So goes the saga.

I’m learning so much about ftp, CSS, and style sheets that my head is spinning — but it’s something to keep my ol’ grey cells exercised!

Without further ado, please check out my new blog residence and let me know what you think. I will leave a final note of redirection for anyone who pops by down the road. In the meantime, I would be so pleased if you’d change your bookmarks, RSS feeds, or if you have linked to my blog. I hope to see you over at my permanent home — same blog, just a new address!

I’m so grateful to every one of you who has been visiting, commenting, and following my journey this past year or so. The only change is the address and a cosmetic adjustment or two Come on over!

I’m headed for the city today — a six hour drive. I’ll be back Tuesday. Thank you to everyone for your great suggestions about my watermark dilemma. Your suggestions worked as you can see, so I’m back in watermarking business ! A super special shout out to Jennifer Gilbert for the enormous amount of work she has been doing to help me rebuild my blog. She’s doing most of the work but I am learning a lot from her too. I’m really, really going to owe you Jennifer!

May you all have a weekend filled with the most special times with family and friends. As the lyrics of the famous Bob Dylan song goes, “The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind, the answer is blowin’ in the wind.” See you all on Tuesday!

Diane is a lifestyle photographer serving Grande Prairie & Northern Alberta. Visit Diane Schuller Photography.

This post is going to be short and sweet. Here is a prime example of why we should never ever judge anyone. You know the old saying, “Never judge a book by its cover.” Well please do click on the link I’m about to give you. It will be five minutes that will stay with you forever — I guarantee. Now please, you must see Susan Boyle.

{Top photo: an in-camera experiment || Bottom photo: a simple conversion to black and white done in Lightroom}

Flirt's "Fantasy Island": with light lemon icing & smothered in coconut

I promised more cupcakes from Flirt plus I thought I’d also share a few thoughts on spring north of 55.

In the blog world and on Flickr photos, everyone has been posting scads of photos indicative of their individual signs of spring — and for quite a while. They include bare streets!! (I wish), grass, budding leaves (what!), and flowers (you have got to be kidding, right!). As you can tell from my comments (hoping my humour is coming through!), we aren’t anywhere close to any of those so I thought it was high time I share the reality of living north of 55. You see, even though we had plenty of snow on the ground already, a huge blizzard raged in last week that added to the snowfall but it was the winds that caused drifts as high as 5 and 6 feet — that is NO April Fool’s joke.

We still have a few feet of snow on the ground, not a single tree is anywhere close to opening buds, let alone the perennials that are still buried beneath the snow and frozen in the solid earth. Yes, the first crows returned a few days ago and the Canada Geese are apt to arrive in the next week or two. But nesting — not a chance for quite some time yet. We’re beginning to get forecasts of days that will be above zero (single digits) but that doesn’t mean warm overnight temperatures. In fact, it’s uncommon to plant our gardens prior to the third week in May. Even at that we still get overnight frosts and need to protect our young seedlings or tender bedding plants after planting in May. There are a few exceptions to this but that’s primarily people who live in the city. It’s always warmer in the city because of the heat from the buildings and paved streets, not to mention that they don’t get the same effects from the blowing snow in winter (so snow melts sooner in the cities and towns).

Hansa shrub in my backyard before last week's storm -- now it's barely visible

Thanks to our neighbour, we no longer have to trudge through the deep snow or don our snowshoes to take our dogs for a walk down our driveway (our driveway to the back is approximately the length of two city blocks). On Sunday he nearly got his huge 8-wheel tractor stuck when he attempted to go through some of the deeper drifts but what a relief to be able to go outside and actually walk upright like normal people. You have no idea what a relief that is rather than slogging through deep snow trying to make new tracks each day. Needless to say we are incredibly grateful when he comes by!

getting plowed out -- but earlier in the winter before the heavy snowfalls!

All that said, there truly is hope for spring! It appears we are right at an important turning point. Hopefully from now on, the days will be warm enough to melt the snow and eventually thaw the ground. Spring is in sight even if it’s not actually here! I soon hope to begin reporting on the true signs of spring up here, north of 55.

Once again I’m responding to today’s post over at Shutter Sisters. Stephanie Roberts wrote a post about an exciting experience she had then ended it with this statement, “Show us something extraordinary today.”

snowdrift after the storm (that's a 6 ft high gate) behind the drift

Well do I have something most of you will find extraordinary. Living in such a remote and isolated area, I haven’t had as great an opportunity as Stephanie shared. But this weekend we experienced a raging snow storm with blizzard conditions producing a windchill factor of minus 50C (fifty degrees below zero). On the weekend I mistakenly told someone I thought the approximate windchill factor was about minus 40 but when I watched the news last night that’s when I learned the windchill factor had been minus 50 up here. This morning it is 37C below zero before any windchill factor — my weather facts and perhaps these images may well be something extraordinary to most of you!

top: during the storm; bottom: after

With these two during / after photos, note that in the top image, that bar is the top of our 6 ft. high chainlink fence! Yes, that’s how high the drifts were.

My apologies for the poor quality of these photos: my fingers were getting frostbitten and it was bitterly cold trying to steady myself in the wind and cold, not to mention trying to focus.

When it comes to photography, Shutter Sisters is definitely one of my inspirations. It’s also a great connection with other women who are passionate about their photography. Over the weekend, I was tickled to discover they linked to one of my images (the word “inspiring” in their first paragraph) in the post that announced the winner of the One Word Project (remember I joined in the project and chose the word “Open” as my inspirational word?).

Well Shutter Sisters is at it again. For the month of March, SS has chosen the word “Beautiful” to be the inspirational word for all members as we’re going about our daily lives, camera-in-hand. There are some great prizes offered too! Just in case you would like to participate (or be a future sponsor), I’ll link to the March One Word Project so you can check out all the details. It’s easy as clicking a shutter so I hope you’ll join in as well.

Beautiful: a husband still very much in love with and proud of his 'bride'

{This is a photo that I have done some post processing with: removing some of the brilliant colour to add a more aged effect, rather than converting to sepia for instance.}

Lomographic Holga Starter Kit