The floods

Have you heard of the floods over here in Missouri yet? They are closer than I thought, but I did want to let everyone know that Mike and I are okay and won't be affected by the floods.

I heard that 370 was closed for a night this week due to flooding and that the one exit is closed off. 370 connects 70 to 270 to bypass some of the bad traffic on I-70 during rush hour. We never take it because it is out of the way, but I went ahead and took it home today to see the sights. I was surprised because I didn't think it was close to the river, but I guess it is. The Mississippi is just north of 370 by the Truman/Cave Springs exit and there are creeks that run off of it. Now the whole area is a lake. Here are some pictures i took with my camera phone. Sorry abotu the poor quality. I'd say I wasn't driving at the time, but that would be a lie. I promise I was careful and mostly aware of my surroundings. :)



Here is a map to show out of towners where everything is. If you came in town for the wedding, it was still a little ways from the reception.

We are so thankful we don't have to deal with these flooding waters and luckily we did make it an important point that our home was not located in a flood plain. With so much water running through the area, there are a lot of flood plains and even though they only flood every several years, that's enough to keep us away. We wish the best to everyone who is battling the rivers and hope that they are able to keep it at bay.

New Photo Site

Of course, if there is a new photo website I have to try it out! My friend Jenna told me about shutterfly's sites that let you share photos and let people upload their own pics to your site. Here is the address if you want to check it out! Right now I only have a few wedding and honeymoon photos, but plan to put more up!

http://frahlmanphotos.site.shutterfly.com/

My friend Flickr

I love take photos...I'm sure you all know that by now. I decided to put some pictures out on Flickr that I really like. Here is the link...

http://flickr.com/photos/54115788@N00/

Just for fun, I've put links from some of my pictures into photofriday.com. Its just a photo site that people enter links to their photos to and people can see them and comment on them if they want. I think its pretty fun.

Enjoy!

Christmas Time!

Christmas time is time for decorating Christmas Trees, singing Christmas Carols and making fun of the puppy that falls into the snow! :) Just kidding. Here are some pictures of Rou after the first real snow fall of the winter.

He's winking!

Check out how deep the snow is! Rouge didn't seem to mind though. I thought his paws were going to freeze off, but he stayed out there for a while.

Of course, I have to have some artsy type pictures to include...this first one is of our evergreen tree out back. It was so pretty with all the snow on it, but I didn't have the right shows on so I had to shoot it from the patio. I decided to add a few effects to the pic and this is what came out. I think its pretty.

I was trying to take some pictures of our Christmas tree without the flash on and it never seems to work. Its always blurry...so I decided...lets just make it really blurry and twisted the camera as I was taking the picture. Pretty cool, eh?

Shoppin the Photos

I am trying to improve my photo shopping skills and I'm not sure if its working or not, but I'm having fun anyways.

I took several pictures in Mammoth when we went there a few weeks ago and really liked a lot of shots I got. It is easy when the scenery is so beautiful! Here is a picture I took at Mono Lake. The rock formations are called Tufas and wikipedia tells me Tufas are "rough, thick, rock-like calcium carbonate deposit that forms by precipitation from bodies of water with a high dissolved calcium content." I just thought they were cool looking.


I decided to turn it into black and white because there is so much contrast in the picture with the rock formations, and so this is what I got when the computer took away the color.


Then I realized there was an option to chose the filter type I wanted to use to convert it to black and white. Default was blue, but I could also try yellow, green and red too. My photo class from high school was starting to come back to me and as I tried the different filters I got this picture by using the red filter.

I think I need to do some more research on this to see what else I can do to improve my pictures. I'll make sure to get to that right after I finish Christmas decorating and shopping, plan a wedding and get all my school work done. Hmmmm, this could take a while.

Weekend in Decatur

This past weekend we spent Saturday up in Mike's hometown, Decatur, IL to see his nephew Jack. I hadn't seen him since this spring and he's grown so much!! He's crawling and standing up with the help of tables and already saying "ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma". And he likes to Dance and shake his head a bunch. He's so cute! He did cry once, but once out of two days isn't too bad. And he only cried because he wasn't where the action is...that's why they call him Action Jackson. Here are some pictures of him:





I decided to include this little pillow thing I made for Jack in this post. Its my first felt craft. Its like a little pillow with a loop for Jack to hold on to. One side is a puppy face and the other is the letter J. I used embroidery thread to attach the felt objects together. I think I'll start using felt more!

Outtakes...

Just for fun...here are a few outtakes from Rou's photo shoot while I was trying to get the perfect shot for Mike's Father's Day card:

Sure, he's cute, but not always photogenic.

Sometimes he's just too cute for words!!! But this one looks too sad. Must be the tie.

This one is a cute picture...interesting angle, but just not quite right...I think I picked the best one for the card. The final shot is in the previous post.

Pop Art Beth

I just got a new computer and had them install paint shop pro. Its not as good as photoshop, but its about 1/1000000 of the price so it works for now. Tonight I found a tutorial online on how to create pop art. I thought it was neat and decided to find a picture. I feel pretty vain that I did one of myself, but I didn't want to put anyone else's picture up because it might embarrass them. I don't mind embarrassing myself.

Mosaic Pictures

I'm really loving this new Geek Sugar website I found...okay, so its new to me. They have a link to a website that turns your pictures into those mosaic pictures. They get the small pictures from Flickr which is a fun website to surf to just look at people's pictures.

Since its baseball season and I happened to have a St. Louis Cards picture and a picture of the scoreboard at The K...I thought I'd try it on those. Their example on Geek Sugar is a picture of the Olsen twins...I think its weird, but turning your pictures into a mosaic is cool!

Spring has Sprung!

Mike had gone to Kentucky this weekend to go fishing with his grandpa and uncle Johnny, so I got the house to myself and got to do whatever I wanted...so what did I do? Took pictures of all the pretty flowers blooming of course...even the ones in my neighbor's yard. He wasn't home so it was okay. We don't have a pretty cherry blossom tree or whatever the pink flowering tree is. But the yellow flowering shrub (forsythia maybe?? guess I should've paid more attention in flower arranging class in college) is ours. They are so pretty! I hate how they change to all green in the summer, but I guess that's what makes it so pretty and special during spring.










As for my bulbs...they are still coming up. I just don't know why I only have one tulip bloom when other people have all their tulips in bloom! I guess its good because theirs will die and mine should still be alive. So here is a picture of my single tulip bloom. The funny thing is that I think its a fire spray tulip which is supposed to have about three blooms on one stem. Oh well, we'll see what happens.

Summer is almost here!

This is my favorite time of year. I love it when the days start to get longer... I'm wearing lighter jackets...and the fruit stand on Caulks Hill Road is open. It also reminds me that I need to start planning what we want to do for summer. Forget the new year, I make resolutions for the summertime. I feel like summer is such a short time of year, filled with weddings, and visits to family, and yard work. I enjoy two out of three of those, but it feels like your summer is always planned for you and that trip you wanted to take to Chicago gets lost in the shuffle. Then September rolls around (aka football season) and weekends are filled with college gameday and NFL Sunday. So this year, I'm going to make summer time plans and stick with them! I put up a list on the sidebar for stuff I want to do this summer. Last summer we talked about going to Kentucky Lake for a weekend and renting a houseboat, but never did it. I still have not been to the Hermann wineries or even Chicago since I've lived in St. Louis. Easy road trips! So this year, I'm going to get it together and plan stuff and do it!

Another thing I've been wanting to do is to find a place to go hiking. I mean some place other than the Katy Trail. I want to actually climb and not just walk. When I was in Australia we were there over a weekend and had some time to kill. So why not climb a little mountain? It was a place called Devils Peak (highest peak in picture on left) and was in Quorn, South Australia. Pronounced like "Corn" and there was a rock with "Quornies Rule" spray painted on it. Why didn't I take a picture of it, I ask myself that everyday. Sigh. Anyway, it was quite a hike...took us about an hour to get to the top...and it was a beautiful site. It was a bit hazy out, but we could just barely see the ocean on one side and the country with mountain goats and cows on the other. I think I did pretty good. It was tough for a while (taking a break in pic on the right) and I wanted to quit, but I had to see the view from the top.



I used the "I wanna take a picture" excuse for mini breaks on the way up...




Views from the top!

Artsy Wedding?

Yesterday I went to the Foundry Art Center in downtown St. Charles. Its a local art museum/studio that holds wedding receptions on the weekends. I had heard wonderful things about it and wanted to check it out. It is so unique which is what I want. They also book up really fast. I talked to them early last week and they still had 2 weekends in April open, but on Saturday both of those weekends were on hold. Told you it is popular! We will make a decision on that soon I hope. Just need to figure out if its the best fit and make Mike check it out too.


I also enjoyed going to the art center just to look at the art, too. I pretend I'm an amateur artist because I take pictures and draw and stuff. I know my silly PowerPoint drawings won't quite make it in to art museums, but its still fun to and say I'm an artist. I actually thought about submitting a few photos to an art contest at the St. Peters Community Art Center on Mid Rivers. They had a contest for photos with a travel theme. I took a ton of photos in Italy and Australia last year, since it was the first time to either place. I really liked some of the ones I took in Italy and photoshopped them a bit. I thought they looked cool because I upped the contrast a lot and played with the color. They looked neat to me and I was really going to submit them, but chickened out at the last minute. A silly voice in my head kept saying...What if they don't fit the theme, what if people laugh at them because they are too photoshoppy...The voice won and I procrastinated too long to do anything. Oh well, maybe next time. I decided to post them on my blog and maybe that will help me get my confidence up.

Happy Hours!

Last night I crashed a happy hour at Trailhead in Old Town St. Charles. I was technically invited by the honoree, just not by the organizer...so I can say I crashed it and feel like a rebel. It was for my friend Juan who is leaving his current flight test program. A few guys I used to work with were there, Jared, Nate, Don, Cecil, Brain and Eugene. We had a nice time just sitting around, eating bbq chicken pizza and drinking Trailhead beer. Their featured flavor of beer was a hazelnut something or other, but we think that anyone who ordered a dark beer got it... Amber Beer, Brown Ale, Hazelnut Beer, its all the same, right? I think that is what our server thought. I was trying to be home to watch The Office, but was shamed by Eugene and Brian who gave me a hard time about getting home to watch a TV show. There are only two TV shows I like to be home for...Office and Gilmore Girls... so I don't think I'm too obsessed with TV! I was glad I stayed because it was nice talking to everyone again and reminiscing about old times. I didn't have a camera with me, so I have no pictures of last night to post. Because I'm picture crazy I decided to put up a few pictures from my trips I took for the program to Italy and Australia.



Left: The streets of Caligari, Sardinia (Italy). Right: The outback of Woomera, Australia.

It's Still Winter?

I guess I need to move back to California because this winter stuff is killing me! Its cold, traffic is horrible, its cold! Rouge, on the other hand, seems to love the snow. I thought that was weird considering he's a southern dog.

Its been such a crazy winter because we've had two bad ice storms too. I guess the only thing

that I actually like about winter is the neat pictures I can get of frozen trees and stuff. Here are some pictures of the ice storm from December.

Yes, I shoveled the driveway (only Mike's side since he went to work) and it was all ice under the snow. Check out how thick that dang ice is on the driveway! I had muscles of steel afterwards!

Below are some pictures from the storm in January.

It came through on a weekend and the roads weren't that bad, but it did a lot more damage to trees (in our neighborhood, not our trees).

It also knocked out power to most of Saint Charles, but we were very lucky and didn't have to deal with that.