Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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Passionate about Passion flowers

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Passion Flower

I’m sorry that this Green Thumb Sunday post is late. I’ve had a busy weekend and wasn’t able to make my post on early Sunday morning as I normally do.

This photo of a passion flower was taken earlier this week. I took the photo with my new Digital SLR camera. Doesn’t it take a great photo?

I’ve gone nuts over vines this year. A couple of weeks ago I bought two more clematis vines, three different passion flower vines and a tropical vine that I can’t find the name of yet.

This passion flower has a faint scent. You can’t smell it until you actually put your nose to it though. It smells lemony. It’s a lovely fresh scent.

Do you enjoy passion flower vines too?

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.





Glass Fish

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This weeks Theme is Fake

A glass fish, fake of course:

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A school of fish:

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Chris and I went out on Saturday to see my nephews photo exhibit. We didn’t realize that there was a large outdoor art exhibit going on! My brother had made it sound like it was a small event, but it turned out that the Outdoor art exhibition has been going on for 40 years! There were 500 artists displaying their work.

I’m sure you can imagine how hard it was to find my nephew!

It’s a great thing that we went though. I visited each booth and in one of the booths we found an artist that created these glass fish. They were gorgeous!

When I saw them I thought that they’d be perfect for the “fake” theme for this weeks photo hunters. Yes I’m a little behind getting my post up, but I think I found a creative “fake” item.

A beautiful bloom

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I didn’t get around to getting the photos I took yesterday off my new camera. I still have to upload the software onto the computer and figure out if I have to convert raw mode photos to jpg or if the camera will do it on it’s own when I transfer the photos.

However, I did promise that I’d post a photo from my garden and I thought you might enjoy this beautiful clematis flower. I grow this clematis on a bamboo arch at the entrance to my backyard garden. The clematis is quite large and quickly grew to cover the whole arch by the end of May.

I also grow a rose called Breath of Life on this trellis and it’s blooms are a pale peach. Picture this flower blooming at the same time as pale peach roses … lovely isn’t it?

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Oh, did I tell you that this is large clematis? Each bloom is about five inches wide! They’re huge!

BTW if anyone loves this clematis it’s name is – clematis hybrid Seiboldiana. Also, if you enjoy this one you’ll totally fall in love with the velvet like clematis that I have a photo of on my photoblog!

Make your own photo art at Photo Fiddle

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I have to tell you about this really cool site called photo art. It’s a site where you can take one of your photos and using one of the 50 great styles they have to choose from – oil painting, collage, warhol pop art and so on – and turn it into wall art!

Obviously with my new SLR camera I’m going to be very much into photography for the next while so I can see myself playing around with some of my photos on photofiddle.com.

The site seems to be very easy to use. Just sign in or create a membership and then you can begin uploading a photo to apply a design style to. Remember there are over 50 design styles to work with so you are bound to create something unique and interesting when you work with your photo.

Here’s an example of what you can do with a scenic photo:

Once you are happy with your new design you can create a canvas or art print. According to the FAQ it takes about four days to complete your photo to photo art request, but once it’s done you’ll have some new art of your own creation to hang on your wall.

Until July 10th you can use this coupon to get 20% off your purchase price – promo code: SUMMER07 That sounds like a great deal to me!

PhotoFiddle has been discussed in PC Magazine, Better Homes and Gardens, Yahoo Tech Editor, USA Today and even made the Oprah O List.

Check it out for yourselves if this sounds interesting. I know once I upload my latest photos to my computer I might go and play with them on PhotoFiddle.com and see what I can do with them. Who knows, I might end up getting some new artwork!

My new digital SLR camera

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The other day I mentioned that I got a new toy. Well … I was able to get outside and play with it for a little while this afternoon.

My new toy is a new camera! Of course … what else did you think it might be? Another laptop is the only other new toy on my list right now and considering how much money Chris and I spent on our respective toys on Sunday I don’t think I’ll be getting a new laptop anytime soon.

Ok so I bet some of you want to know what kind of camera I got? It’s a Canon EOS 30D digital SLR camera. It’s my first SLR camera so I didn’t want to go to crazy, but I feel that I managed to pick out a pretty good SLR camera to start out with. The CNET article is pretty good, giving the camera and 8.5 rating.

Since I’ve been working on upgrading my sites and trying to get their use of the servers CPU resources down I haven’t had much chance to blog, answer email or play with my new toy.

I did take a few photos Sunday night after I put the camera together and I could see right away that I’d be happy with it.

Then this afternoon I went outside while it was raining lightly and took photos of my flowers. I’ll upload those onto my computer in a little while and see how they turned out. Perhaps I’ll use some of the photos for Wordless Wednesday if they turned out as well as I think they did.

I still plan on using my Sony Cybershot DSC-H5. I love that camera! However when I really want to take a fantastic photo I think the new SLR will be the one I pick up first.

If any of you know of any pro’s or cons of the Canon EOS 30D I’d love to hear about your experiences.

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