An Awesome View of Life

Straight Up One of my favorite places for lunch in New Ulm is  Lola's .  The combination of the periwinkle tin ceiling, brick walls, art, track lights and the shrubbery make for some unusual photo ops.  And as we all know the more unusual the happier I am.  (: For this shot I just set my camera on its back and shot blind.  Sometimes the best way to shoot. I'm just about out of good photos from my trip to New Ulm so I need to get my act together and start shooting something new that is good.

Just hangin' around. While sitting on the back patio this caught my eye.  The neighbor's clothesline with beach towel, shirt and pants.  Probably way too much information but... All I was hoping for was nothing out of the ordinary going on in any of the windows of the other neighbor's house.  ha!

Chalk it up to... my strange creative eye?  This is my view of a "Today's Special" chalk board.  It was extremely old and ornate and I chose to photograph only the chalk.  This was also taken while in New Ulm for the weekend.  I am taking photos every day but I have so many I'd like to share from my trip.   

One of the Cool Kids. My 40 year class reunion was this past weekend.  Saturday night was the "official" party but on Friday night we had an "impromptu" get together at Turner Hall.  This freezer door was in the main entryway.   While standing at one end of the mosaic tile my thought on this whole scene was -- "If I follow these tiles to the freezer door will I become one of the cool kids?"  Said more with a bit of ha-ha because after all it IS a freezer door.  (: I guess I never really cared if my classmates thought I was cool or even noticed me at all.  I was who I was, not always happy with certain aspects of being me at times and not always accepting not being one of the "cool" kids but I think we all at some point in our lives want to be someone or something different than who/what we are.  I was extremely quiet (not necessarily shy), very unique and fairly smart.  I had good friends that were pretty cool just like me.  (:

First Impression While in New Ulm I made a quick drive out to the Minnesota historical site Harkin Store .  It sits half way up a hill and is a fairly impressive building.  As I climbed the stairs to the store what I saw first was the moss growing on the roof.  Of course I did.  Then I realized the roof was some kind of stone. Most people would have seen a slightly less skewed version of the photo below.  And of course I would take a photo of a historical site from a slightly odd angle.  (:

The view from the top... The stairway that I posted a couple of days go leads to the top of Hermann the German where you can see this spectacular view of New Ulm.  It was raining so there was a bit of haze and fog but it just added to the beauty.  And yes I climbed to the top and through that dang little trap door opening.  It wasn't as bad as I remember.  (:

Its 4 a.m. There was a wonderful thunderstorm this morning.  I stood in my hotel window watching the lightening and saw the rain shining in the streetlight. I took 80 photos today.  15 of which I thought were good.  It was a tough decision but the first photo I took of the day at 4 a.m. won out.  

Stairway to... My first evening of a long weekend visit to my hometown, New Ulm, MN.  Class reunion weekend. Finally.   When I first got here I had a message on ancestry.com telling me new information had been added about my great grandmother Anna Olson Langdon.  My cousin Mark had added a copy of her newspaper obituary.  We have been looking for more information on her sister Susie for awhile and her married name along with her husband's name were listed.  Of course I couldn't just wait until later (like next week) to start my research - I had to start immediately.  Which meant it was almost too late to take any photos once I looked up from my laptop. This is the spiral staircase leading to the top of Hermann the German - in what little sunset there was. And the mosquitoes were horrible. But I did find tons of great information.

Bicycle built for two? Another photo from my quick trip to the city yesterday.  Just kind of cute. Almost perfect as well. (:

Summer in the City My youngest and I made a VERY quick trip to the city this morning.  In ten minutes I took 15 wonderful photos.  This is by far my favorite.   When in the city, I always look for alley shots.  We don't have alleys in the 'burbs and having always had one growing up they still fascinate me.  Strange I know but what can I say. Eventually I will move away from Minnesota, at least for the winters.  But this city will always have my heart.  I just realized I will ALWAYS have these photos to remind me of my awesome view of Minneapolis.

Blurred vision When I first uploaded these photos I thought they were all totally out of focus.  But in each of them I found something very appealing.  The top one is the one I like the best.  I like how it is in focus on one side of the photo and continues out of focus across the photo.   The middle photo shows the detail of this bush. I love you can see the thorns.  And yes, it is my "go to" thing to photograph.  But I've been extremely under the weather for the past 28 hours or so and making it to the front porch was about all I had left in me tonight. The bottom one took me awhile to see what I had actually focused on.  I just love the colors in this one.

Chillin' on a Sunday night.  I got the last Nordeast in the house.  Yay!  And the hubby was grilling chicken, asparagus and taters.  Perfect end to a hard working weekend.  

Not sure... who took this photo.  But it is MY camera so I am claiming this piece of randomness.  (:

Splish Splash  This was fun to do.  I wish the sun would have stayed out from behind the clouds a bit longer but these still turned out pretty cool.  Another lesson in manual settings on my camera. The next photo looks like there are drops of water on my camera lens but I wasn't that close to the sprinkler.  Pretty awesome, huh? The water drops on the plants and not being able to see the sprinkler make the bottom photo rather unique.

Bubbles in the park The last of the photos from Sunday's excellent adventure that I will be sharing here.  The hard part of photographing these giant bubbles was getting them in focus before they broke.   The young lady below made this bubble and then chased it down so she could blow on it to keep it in the air.  It actually hit her in the face a few seconds later and broke. And this one is focused on the trees in the background instead of the bubble.  It's still a nice photo though. (:

Under the bridge

Wild Flowers Isn't that a 70's song?  (: Just a quick walk along the mighty Mississippi tonight.  Dang the mosquitoes are horrible!  Beautiful, cool, breezy evening ruined by those little pests.

Power squared A couple more photos from yesterday's excellent adventure.  These are probably my favorite photos of day.  This power tower was spotted long before we got to it. I knew what I wanted this photo to look like and that I wanted it in black and white - only. The sun was such a perfect addition to this photo.  The photo below is perfect. (:

Blind shot My hubby and I went on a bit of an adventure today. We headed to the  St. Anthony Main  area of Minneapolis today.  We have lived in the Minneapolis area for almost 40 years and have never been to this part of our lovely city.  It was totally amazing.  The weather was fabulous and the walk along the river and across the  Stone Arch Bridge  was so much fun. When we got across the bridge we found the  Mill Ruins Park  where this photo was taken. I couldn't actually see what I was shooting at so it was funny when Isaac was in the photo (bottom left edge of the circle). I think I will create a Facebook photo album of a few of my other favorites.  Not all of them but a few.  (:  It was so good to get out of the house and to NOT be sewing today.  

Collaboration After another long day of sewing (ugh!) it took all of us to pull off a meal this spectacular. (: Awesome ribs, corn muffins and my world famous potato salad.  Okay maybe it's just famous in the Midwest?  

What WAS she thinking? This isn't totally clever but I like it.  I slept until 10 this morning and worked my butt off sewing the rest of the day.  This was the best I could do considering.  Considering what?  I'm not really sure.  ha!

Crazy, busy... Busy, busy day of sewing.  I'm trying to be ready to go out of town for a few days so need to keep my nose to the grindstone.  So you poor people who follow my blog are stuck once again with a photo of the flowers in my yard. The best part of doing totally mundane sewing is it gives me time to think.  I have a thought about a fun photo project which I may have time to work on once my class reunion is over.  I'm posting a request for some help with this idea but I think I got most of it figured out on my own.  

Honor and Respect Today our community said a final farewell to a wonderful man, Paul Perez.  Big Paul to my family.  He had the biggest heart you could imagine.  If you lived here and your children were involved in sports, your family knew Paul.   He coached football, basketball and baseball.  He refereed or umpired in all of these sports as well.  He also held some official position in each of these community sport organizations. My oldest son had the honor to ref basketball with him and be his son's friend.  My youngest son and both daughters had the honor to have him referee their basketball games - to the best of his ability. (:  And my husband had the honor of being his friend and giving him grief as a basketball coach while Big Paul reffed. Isaac would give Paul grief about a bad call and Paul would always say "Sir, if you don't sit down and be quiet I will have to toss you from the game."  They would both laugh and the game would go on.    

A little too late... The sun was too low in the sky when I took this.  If it had been taken even five minutes earlier the chair's shadow would have been much better.  I will come back another day and do a much better job.  (:

Untitled Since I can't think of a really clever title for this photo I'll leave it untitled.   An Amazon.com package arrived today with this wonderful bubble wrap in it.  The first thing I thought was "photo op".  (:  This isn't very clever or creative but it is what it is.  ha!

Tiger in the Jungle Two years ago I planted about 200 flower bulbs.  Last year we had a few new tulips and some iris grow but nothing else.  Some lilies DID grow but the rabbits like to eat those so we never had flowers just stems.  This year we didn't have any tulips but about 10 times more iris.  The lilies the bunnies normally eat actually bloomed but were on the end of stems without any leaves.  (: There is one flower bed that is almost always weeds.  It is over run by creeping charlie and a variety of other invasive weeds.  This year we just let the weeds take over.  But among the weeds are bunches of these beautiful lilies.  I guess now I have to go out and weed so they can continue to grow.  ): This one was tucked under a "volunteer" tree with just a tad of sunshine hitting.  Pretty, pretty.

Blue Reflections This was on our family room ceiling this afternoon. The blue in this was so cool.   This is the sun reflecting off of a blue Dell laptop.  

Caught Bug and cotton caught in a web.

Partial Self Portrait? I love this random "selfies".  Are they more fun when I don't realize my reflection is in the photo I am taking?  I don't think so.  I did my best to keep only my camera and hand in the reflection.   This is my very, very dirty front door.  I'd like to say I try to keep things clean around here but there are more important things to do.  Like kissing my grandbaby!  ha!

Textures I love all of the textures in this photo.  A little of this and a little of that.

All that jazz Another photo from the Food Truck Fair.  There was a great little band playing.  Again, it was so very crowded so this was taken from quite a distance.