My nephew has a photographic display at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition this weekend. I really should go to that to see his work and to check out the other artists. I just love pottery and sculptures and if the artwork is anything like last years I’ll be buying some items this time around.

The only problem is that tomorrow is going to be HOT. Really hot. So … do we go to the art show tomorrow or Sunday when it’s going to be a bit cooler?

We have gardening that still needs to be done as well. We started mulching the backyard garden last week, but about 1/3 of the back garden beds aren’t finished yet because we ran out of mulch! We bought more but haven’t had time to add it yet. Certainly if it’s going to feel like 40 Celsius (104 F) tomorrow I don’t think I want to be working in the hot sunny garden. Of course I could just stay inside where it will be nice and cool, work on the computer or be lazy and curl up and read A New Earth, Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. Yeah it’s a self help type book. It was a gift from Chris’ aunt. I should read it at some point.

The other thing that Chris and I would both like to do, but don’t have to do, is to perhaps go back to Cherry Beach this weekend with our dog Midnight. We took her there last Sunday and she had a ball playing in the water. We’d taken her to the lake before, but she’d never done more than splashed in the water. This time Chris was throwing toys into the deeper water for her to fetch and we got to see her swim for the first time. She took to it well and other dog owners said she was a great swimmer. They couldn’t believe it was her first time.

We all had fun at the beach so I think that’s a must do.

Of course this is summer in Toronto and there’s always all kinds of festivals, events and things to do on the weekends. I guess I should check what’s going on so that we don’t miss out on something good.

At this point I’m thinking we should go to the beach tomorrow - the hot day. It’s cooler by the water and if we get hot we can always get in the water. Certainly with all the wet dogs running by we will get a bit wet. Then on Sunday we could go to the Art Exhibit and then finish our gardening when we come back. If there’s any other good things going on in Toronto we’ll I guess we can try to go to one of them on Saturday evening.

Looks like we’re going to have another busy weekend. What are your plans for the weekend?

I don’t really like taking pictures of people. Perhaps those of you who frequent my blogs have noticed that there aren’t very many people photos in my posts. However, there are lots of photos of gardens, flowers, plants, nature/ landscape, and city scenes. Oh and I guess photos of my puppy are starting to build up as well.

Whenever I’m out with my camera at a photo worthy event -say Woofstock in early June, or our walking tour and hike at The Brickworks last Saturday or perhaps even our trip to Cherry Beach last Sunday with our dog (who swam for the first time ever!) I just start clicking away and the next thing I know I’ve got two or three hundred photos stored on my cameras memory card!

The amount of pictures I take isn’t a problem as far as my camera’s memory card capacity, it’s dealing with those photos once I’ve taken them that’s the problem.

Storage of the photos is becoming a problem. My laptop was slowing down quite a bit a month ago and I realized that for the last year I’d uploaded almost all of my photos (3 to 5 mb each = 30 to 40 gig of photos!) to the laptop and that the hard drive was quickly filling up. I literally spent a few days transferring the photos to my desktop computer and deleting them from the laptop and that seemed to have helped my laptop performance somewhat. However I think I’m going to have to find a better storage solution.

If you take a lot of photos I’d love to hear what you do for storage. If you use an online storage system or a portable drive or if you transfer the photos to CD’s or if you have some other solution.

My other problem is lack of time. I have several blogs and I also have health issues so I work on my blogs when I’m feeling well enough to write. Working on the blogs takes a lot of my time. Barely leaves me enough time to network with other bloggers let alone transfer photos from the camera to the computer, edit them and perhaps upload them to Flickr. Going over 200 photos takes about two hours or more as I crop them, adjust their size and occasionally adjust the color balance or other levels.

Now if I only took a few photos at a time this wouldn’t be a problem, but since I take like 200 at a time I feel compelled to deal with each and every new photo that I’ve taken before I upload the good ones to Flickr (my main online storage system at this time).

This means that sometimes my photos are a week or more old before they make it into one of my posts.

So are you a Photoholic too? How do you deal with it?

Isn’t it amazing all the things that you can do with Lego these days?

I haven’t looked at a set of Lego’s in ages, but I take it that they make them in a lot more shapes and sizes than they did when I was a kid. Some of them must be flexible too.

Have you ever made any interesting creations with Lego?

Have you ever taken a photo that you loved so much you thought that it might make a beautiful painting?

I’m sure most everyone has a photo at home that they’ve thought about enlarging in order to turn it into a beautiful wall hanging. Perhaps a photo of your children when they were young? The happy couple on their wedding day? A beloved parent or grandparent?

Well, if you happen to live in Australia you might want to visit Brilliant Prints. This family-owned canvas printing company can turn your photos or digital images into beautiful canvas prints in as little as three to four days.

As some of you might remember I turned one of my own photos into a lovely canvas during the summer. Mine wasn’t done by Brilliant Prints, but I am very happy with how my canvas turned out and I’d recommend that anyone who’s ever wanted to turn a photo, a slide, or some form of digital artwork into a canvas print do so. My canvas hangs in my dining room and I see it every day. I love it.

Your canvas prints might look like this in one of your rooms.

You can turn your images into square, rectangular or panoramic canvas prints in sizes ranging from 11″ x 14″ to 101″ x 203″. That’s quite a range of sizes isn’t it?

Brilliant Prints uses quality materials. They use a fine American-made 100% cotton canvas for all of their canvas prints. They also use ink that has been tested for it’s longevity and that is said to provide 75 years protection against fading. The frames that your canvas will be stretched on are quality profiled meranti stretcher bars.

One of the final processes in the creation of your canvas is lamination. Did you know that some Canvas Print companies do not laminate their canvas? The lamination process is very important as it will help to protect your canvas print from damaging moisture, mould, dust and abrasion. Brilliant Prints uses a high quality laminate from America on all of their canvas prints.

I think the prices are quite reasonable. A 12″ x 12″ square canvas print only costs $58. A full list of their canvas printing prices is available on the pricing page.

Included in the price of each canvas is any resizing of your image that might be necessary, conversion of color photos to sepia or black and white if desired, emailed proofs that will show you how your finished canvas will look, plus any editing of the photo that’s necessary including color correction, enhancement, and dust removal or repair of your image. There are no extra charges for digital images, but if you send in a photo, slide or transparency there will be a low cost scanning charge.

The process is very simple. Well, the customers side of the process that is.

Simply send your photo, slide or digital image to Brilliant Prints. If your images are already in digital form you can simply email the company your photos. Don’t forget to include information about what size canvas and other options you might like to order. They also have an FTP option if your digital images are too large to send by email. Photos, negatives, transparencies and slides can be mailed to Brilliant Prints.

Once Brilliant Prints receives your images they will take a look at them and see if they can successfully create the canvas that you ordered. It all depends upon the quality and resolution of the images as to whether they’ll be able to enlarge the photo well enough to create the desired canvas size. They will then contact you and let you know what they can do for you.

The folks at Brilliant prints will keep in touch with you through the whole process of creating your new canvas print. As I said above they’ll email you proofs of what your canvas will look like before they begin the process of creating the canvas.

I love this companies guarantee. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a guarantee quite like it, nor one that would ensure customer satisfaction so completely. This is their guarantee:

“You don’t pay a single cent until you receive your prints and are completely happy. We will gladly send you prints from your own images without upfront payment! If you are not truly, absolutely, 100% delighted with your prints then contact us and we will arrange for them to be returned. We will even pay the return freight.

It doesn’t matter whether the problem was your fault, our fault, an Act of God, or the fault of the bloke at the post office. It doesn’t matter if you change your mind, decide you don’t like the picture, or have just divorced the husband / wife in the photo. Unless you are happy, we are not happy. No conditions, no small print. “

Isn’t that a great guarantee? You don’t pay a cent until you are completely satisfied. There is absolutely no risk to their clients.

If you enjoy photography and want to create a great photo that you can eventually make into a canvas print you might be interested in visiting the learning center at Brilliant Prints where you can learn about how to compose photos better, how to edit your digital images and if you are an enthusiastic amateur or professional photographer you can learn more about how you can become successful commercially.

Now I know that I have quite a few readers from Australia. Visit Brilliant Prints and see how they can help you turn your fabulous photos into lovely canvas prints for your home or perhaps as a gift for someone you love.

This weeks theme is Original

I wonder if someone were to kiss this crowned frog if it would turn into Prince Charming?

This is another piece of metal artwork that my husband and I saw when we went to the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition in downtown Toronto during the summer.

The show was fantastic, but I enjoyed the metal art work the most.

I’d love to have this metal sculpture either in my garden or on our front porch to greet visitors.

I guess the site has spiders that regularly monitor the internet for images and it creates collages with all the images that it finds. Visit the page to see what the collage looks like right now. Wait a few minutes and it will refresh on it’s own and you’ll see yet another interesting collage.

Cool site.

Note- I’ve been told that some of the photos in the collages might be distasteful or even offensive so be aware! I didn’t see any of that when I visited in the night, but it pulls images from all over and obviously doesn’t screen them first. I was linking to the site, but if it links to sites in “bad neighborhoods” I don’t want my site associated.

So … who knows of a great place to get camera lenses and accessories online for a good price? A place that ships throughout North America of course. Maybe Ebay? Any other ideas for me?

I was all set to plunk down about $700! It’s there loss. I’ll find the lenses I want at a good price somewhere else.

Summers almost over and if you live in a climate that cools down in the autumn you’ll soon be spending more time indoors. I don’t know about you, but during Fall and Winter I tend to look around my house and ideas start brewing as to how I can redecorate to make it look even nicer. I know I’m not the only one who does this - I know people who rearrange their furniture and put out new wall decor and accessories two or three times a year!

We’re renovating our living room and dining room and I’m getting antsy to finish the rooms with accessories that I’ve had stored in boxes in the basement. I’m hoping that sometime in the next two months I’ll finally be able to make these rooms my own. We have a lot of items to accessorize the living room and dining room but I’ve never really decorated the walls in this house or my former apartment. The main reason why we never put up wall art was that our apartment had concrete walls and it was just too hard to hang anything and well, in this house we’re in the midst of renovations so we just haven’t been able to decorate yet.

Now I’m busy looking for wall art. I happened to visit an online store called Wall Decor and Home Accents. This store has a lovely selection of divine metal wall art in a variety of shapes and sizes that would make any wall look spectacular.

I really like the piece that’s called Viborg Metal Wall Art. It’s the photo that I’ve included above - isn’t that interesting? Some might think that it has an abstract modern look and I’d agree, but the piece also reminds me of nature with it’s shades of brown. It reminds me of a tree - perhaps tree bark? What comes to mind when you look at that piece? Certainly it could be a conversation piece if placed on a wall in a room where people gather.

If you like wall art you really should visit the Wall Decor and Home Accents website and have a look at their selection. The metal wall art really is divine. I don’t think there’s a piece there that I don’t like.

I must be in a nature mood tonight as the second piece of metal wall art that I’ve added to this post is called Vantania and it’s most definitely tree like. It appears to be composed of panels, but I could be mistaken.

The online store also carries architectural pieces, wall clocks, wall mirrors, candle wall scones and wrought iron decor. Many of the pieces are on sale right now, so if you are interested in finding some pieces to brighten up a plain wall of your home take a look. If you buy now you’ll save some money! Oh and Christmas isn’t too far off, some of these items would make fantastic Christmas or even house warming gifts.

For some very strange reason I really don’t like taking photos of people. Perhaps it’s because people tend to pose for photos and I simply don’t like posed photos?

I do like this photo that I took of Chris while on the boat cruise this past Saturday.

I’d been taking photos of the city skyline and the sunset as he stood beside me on the upper deck of the boat. I turned and saw him standing at the rail with a view of the lake and the glow of the setting sun upon him and decided to take a photo.

After going to see my nephews exhibit at the Edward Day Gallery on Tuesday, and taking into consideration my growing interest and involvement in photography I’ve been thinking of taking some photography courses. Perhaps even attending the Brooks Institute of Photography or another reputable photography institute.

I’ll have to do some research and look into how long a course that I might be interesting in would take to complete, but I am interested in improving my photography skills and perhaps pursuing it as a career.

On Friday we went to see the Blue Jays play a game of baseball against the Seattle Mariners. Of course the Blue Jays won the game. 10 of us attended the game that day.

That day I’d wanted to get downtown a little earlier because some of the cast of Heroes was in town and they were doing some presentation at Dundas Square. I didn’t make it to that, but much to my surprise the four cast members that were in town went to the baseball game! I took some photos and I’ll be making a post on my Celebrity blog shortly with a few of the photos included. So I did get to see some Heroes after all. Pretty cool.

The next day we, 15 of us, went on a dinner boat cruise on Lake Ontario. We had a great meal and I’ve got some fantastic photos of the cities skyline at sunset that I took from the boat. Just beautiful. If you ever come to Toronto I highly recommend going on a dinner boat cruise. It was a lot of fun.

On Sunday we went to my brothers in Aurora, Ontario for a BBQ. I think there were 24 or 26 of us that day. I’d lost count by that point! We had a great day together. My niece brought a game called Washer Toss with her to the BBQ. It had been my parents washer toss boards that we’d always played with when visiting them in Ottawa. Most of us hadn’t played for at least four years so it was an interesting tournament! My sister in law and my nieces husband ended up being the big champs of the day, but my nephew and I came in second. Yes I can throw washers! LOL

Lets see, I’m so tired I’m trying to remember just what we did yesterday … Oh yes … My brother from Vancouver, his son, and his daughter and her boyfriend went to the Hockey Hall of Fame while my sister in law came over to our house. Chris and I took my sister in law to Toronto’s beach area and we had a great time walking on the boardwalk, watching volleyball games and eating ice cream.

Later that evening we all met up again at a downtown restaurant for dinner. Man that restaurant had huge servings! Every single thing I ordered I only ate part of and brought the rest home in a doggy bag. We had my left overs for dinner tonight.

Today was the final day that any of us could get together. My brother from Vancouver, his wife, son, daughter and her boyfriend were going back to Vancouver at 7 pm this evening, but they had the day to get together with whoever was available. Luckily Chris had today off work so we met up with them and went to an art gallery where one of my nephews had some of his photos on display. Since that was around lunch time my sister who lives and works in the downtown area was able to get together with us to see my nephews work and then we went and have some coffee and tea together before dropping her off a her office again.

We then went to the beach area again so those who didn’t go yesterday could see how lovely the area was. Around mid afternoon we had a nice lunch on an outdoor patio on the Beaches - complete with more left over food to bring home. Why do restaurants have such huge servings?

After that we lead my brother towards the highway so he could head back to the airport area to return their vehicle and check in to await their flight.

Can you see why I’m tired? I’m totally wiped out! I have to recover though ’cause my birthday’s on Thursday and I’m sure we’ll be doing something that day too.

I’ll be processing all the photos that I took over the weekend (probably 500!) on the computer and posting some soon. Stay tuned as there are some spectacular shots!

What did you do over the holiday weekend?