It was pre-Ferris and Simone and when we still rented a house on the west side of town. We stayed at my brother’s house for a week with their two dogs, who were 40-pound puppies at the time. Neal and I worked long hours, and the dogs were NOT happy about being in the crate all day. I can’t even begin to explain how tough it was. I had a mental breakdown by Wednesday from lack of sleep and bawled my eyes out. Neal spent the last two nights by himself so I could get a good night’s sleep.

It was such a disaster that Tad avoided asking us to watch them for about two years. Seriously.

Well, he asked us if we could watch them this Friday night so they could attend the 30th birthday party of his best friend. I really couldn’t say no. I had no good excuse, plus I really think I need to learn how to watch my brother’s freaking dogs for at least one night. I put on a brave face and said that we would do it.

And I’m happy to say, this time went peachy. They are older now. They sleep more. They listen better. In fact, they were kind of boring, HAHA.

Mom and Dad live so close, so they brought us pizza at Tad and Amanda’s house. Neal and I gave them a Guitar Hero concert. My Dad LOVES the dogs and when they kept whining, he knew exactly what they wanted – cuddles.

After Mom and Dad left, the dogs pretty much passed out.

Oh, I forgot to say, the gray dog is Bella, and she’s a Weimaraner. Meadow, the spotted one, is a German short-haired pointer. Here’s the deal with these dogs, if you can’t tell in the pictures — THEY ARE BEAUTIFUL. You walk these dogs (although, I really can’t because they pull my arm off) around the neighborhood and drivers almost crash staring at them. They are truly beautiful dogs. And super sweet. All they want is to be with you. My only issue is that they don’t realize they are 60 pounds. Meadow always wants in your lap, or lie on top of you. Well, when she does that to me, I can’t breathe, HAHA. But I’d rather her be overly friendly than mean.

OK, so the next morning, I staged a little photo shoot.

For more dog pictures, you can visit my Meadow and Bella album on Flickr. (Amanda, you can order these from that site, I believe, if you want to).

Anyway, I’m so happy it went well. Tad and Amanda do a lot for us, so I think we should be able to help them out. Even if we only watched them one night, HAHA. Hey, baby steps….

ETA: Amanda informed me in her comment below that the dogs are 75 to 80 pounds each. Geez! No wonder I can’t breathe when they lie on me! HAHA!

I’ll give you a break from kitty pictures today and post some pictures Neal has taken recently.

A couple of weeks ago, before the snow fell, he also took some shots of my outdoor plants. Yes, they are dead. Yes, they are still in their pots. I told you before I had a black thumb.

This is mainly just us playing around with the camera, getting used to it. The cats were tired of being our guinea pigs. Dead plants can’t complain. And we have plenty of those at our house.

It’s cold outside.

I hate the cold.

It sucks really badly.

I sort of failed, because I did run to Target with Neal, but other than that, I think I’m well on my way to staying inside the rest of the weekend. It’s awesome.

After work Friday, I made a quick stop at the grocery store and then came home. I read this blog entry about homemade granola, so I decided to try my own. I really love vanilla nonfat yogurt and granola, but granola is expensive and I’m never quite sure what’s in it. I like the idea of putting in exactly what I like. I did alter her recipe a bit, so here’s what I ended up coming up with:

1 3/4 cups old-fashioned oats

1/2 cup chopped almonds

1/2 cup craisins

3 Tbsp. maple syrup

1 Tbsp. honey

1/8 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1/8 tsp. nutmeg

Directions: Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Mix the oats, chopped almonds, craisins, vanilla, salt and spices in a bowl. Then, mix the maple syrup and honey into the oat mixture (I used light syrup, and I also zapped the honey and the maple syrup in the microwave for 10 to 15 seconds so it was easier to mix.) Then spread the mixture onto the parchment paper and bake for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Then, let it cool. It’ll harden and then you can break it up in small pieces and store it.

This had such an awesome flavor. It wasn’t too sweet, but had a great nutty flavor from roasting it at a low temp. The craisins are great, because the tartness really cuts the sweetness of the syrup and honey.

And mixed with vanilla yogurt? Oh boy, this was so good. I don’t think I’ll ever buy granola again.

Yum!

Saturday, I took pictures of sleepy Simone.

And cute Ferris:

And then he decided he wanted to eat the remote.

After Neal and I got back from Target, I decided to make this recipe for Chocolate Sour Cream Cake. I like cakes made with buttermilk and/or sour cream. I had most of the ingredients on hand, and I really wanted to try out my new bundt cake pan I got on sale at Ross a couple of weeks ago. This cake turned out great. It smelled amazing and was really pretty.

And the taste is GREAT. Really moist. Chocolaty (is that a word?) but not too chocolaty. Also, I really don’t like super sweet cakes, and this is definitely not too sweet. It was really easy to make (except now I realize that I didn’t cream the brown sugar in with the white sugar and butter; for some reason I mixed it with the dry ingredients, HAHA). But anyway, I definitely plan to make this again. Some sort of coffee liquer glaze or something would be perfect on top.

He admittedly told me that he did little post-shot. He cropped some photos and did some color correcting, but photojournalists (that work in the newspaper medium) do not alter photos, other than cropping, so that’s not really his thing. I was fine that Chris didn’t alter them, because I really like them how they are. Also, it’s a canvass for me to play around with on Photoshop now.

So with that said, here are the products of my playing. The first photo will be SOOC (straight-out-of-camera) then the altered one after that.

I know I’ve posted a photos from this series of shots before. We had time to kill before the ceremony and found the kids’ play room in the church. I title the above photo “Who says her bride can’t have her cake and eat it, too?” HAHA! I crack myself up.

So, what do you think? And please, click on the photos, because a new box will open up with a larger version of the photos.

Anyway, so click on the photos, check them out, and let me know what you think! And if there are any photos you guys want me to play around with, let me know!

Well, I’m going to tell you anyway. My goal has been to do at least one thing each night. See, I usually come home, make dinner, and then watch TV and surf the Internet. It’s pathetic. Neal gets home late a lot, so I lose track of time and all of a sudden it’s 10 p.m. and it’s time to watch Nip/Tuck and go to bed (season premiere tonight! Whoo hoo!).

OK, so last night I took all the ornaments, lights, etc off of the Christmas tree, and then Neal took it out to the curb when he got home (sad!). So tonight, I vacuumed up all the needles, and then went through our magazines/catalogs and threw most of them out. I feel really good about this “a little each night” thing. My mom recommended visiting Fly Lady’s web site, so I’m going to peruse it and see if there are any good tips.

OK, so you know I told you I was going to work on some photos in Photoshop? Well, I have some to show you. I started with…. who else…. ME! Here’s the SOOC (straight-out-of-camera) shot.

And here’s what I came up with:

Do you like? Not a huge difference, but an improvement, I would say.

Here are some more:

SOOC

And then one of Ferris:

SOOC

I know the changes are small, but that’s the goal, right? To make little tweaks to just boost the photos? My next plan, to play around with some of my wedding photos. If you’ve been on the edge of your seat to see more pictures from the day that Neal and Megan became the dysfunctional married couple they are today, stay tuned!

And hey, if any of you have organizing tips you’d care to lend me, feel free to comment! Thanks!

OK, so I’m not sure I can compete with adorable puppies barking, but what about cute Simone cuddling in my robe? Will that make you stay and read my blog?

Ah ha! That makes you stay, right? Now I have you in my clutches and you have to read my meaningless drivel, HAHA.

Anyway, not much to post about. I do want to tell you that I saw a really cool woodpecker with a red head sitting in my neighbor’s tree out back. I grabbed my camera and stuck on my longer lens and got some shots. I’m not sure how well these are going to translate online. But this was a really cool bird!

Do you see him? He’s kind of in the middle in both pictures.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Ack! So excited! I’m crossing my fingers we get out of work a little early so I can wrap presents. I might be light on posting the next couple of days, but I’ll try to make up for it this weekend. Merry Christmas Eve!

So last night was no different, and we both opted for hot chocolate. We were watching TV and I looked over and Neal was taking pictures of his hot chocolate. I laughed at him, and even made fun of him to my brother today. Then I came home and saw the picture he took.

And I gasped at the coolness. Yes, the coolness. I’m not sure what other word to use.

Simone tried to get an unathorized treat today. Instead of shooing her away, I took pictures.

Neal didn’t let me take anymore pictures of Simone licking the sour cream container. Since adult cats are lactose intolerant, we didn’t want a mess on our hands.

See, my family has this thing about Friday night pizza. When we were younger, my parents always ordered pizza Friday night. They said they’d feed whoever showed up, whether it was our significant others, friends, family, etc. I always loved knowing I’d have something to do Friday night, and it was always fun.

While we are busy a lot now and can’t make it over every Friday, we’ve been trying to head over at least one night a month.

This time was no different. We had tons of laughs and ate some good, greasy pizza. Of course, I had to show off my new camera. My sister-in-law, Amanda, made a pumpkin roll for dessert. It was delicious!

And then I took some pictures of my parents’ cats.

God. I love this camera.

I’m still getting used to it, but slowly, I’m understanding the controls and all the things the camera can do. Of course, I can set the thing to automatic and snap away, but I’m really trying to understand everything and be able to do a lot manually.

Neal took some pics of Simone before he left work this morning. I think he did a good job!

Tomorrow, we are heading to get our Christmas tree, so I’m hoping to take some really fun pics. Have a good weekend!

I used my old camera to take a picture of my new one.

And here’s my new baby, a Nikon D60. Neal and I scored a huge deal on eBay. Everything’s new, and I got a boatload of stuff along with the camera. Two lenses, two cases, two tripods, lense filters, software, etc. Here’s a pic of the box of goodies.

I also took a shot of my old Nikon 35mm camera that my parents got me back in college for photography class.

OK, so now’s the time. You want to see the first shot I took with my D60? Do you? Do you?

Introducing….

Buddy! How cool is that pic?

It was dark when I got home so I had to use the flash, which was a bummer. I’m really looking forward to using natual light. But anyway, here’s some shots I took of the cats. I’m now completely head over heels in love with my camera. Neal should be jealous.

And here’s Neal and I.

So there you are. Oh, and click on each of the above photos. A box will pop up with a large size of the photo, and I think you can see the photo quality better that way.

I’m a little overwhelmed with all the options on this camera, but I’m really looking forward to having a blast taking photos. I’m sure I’ll make some fun stuff in the kitchen this weekend, just so I can practice food photography. And in honor of this day, I made a new blog category for “Photography.”

OK, I’m off to take 50 million more pics of the cats that I don’t need…