A Walk in the Woods

Hey, How is everyone doing? I hope all of you guys up on the northern coast are safe and sound. I know a lot of you are getting hammered with lots of wind and rain. I hope you’re not without power for too long.

I had planned on sharing with you a vegetable lasagna recipe that I sort of threw together.

I took all sorts of pretty shots of each step. They were good.

Not, The Pioneer Woman good, but good in my own half blurry way.

But again, I had issues with my memory card and I lost them all.

So no lasagna for you! I bet PW doesn't have these issues.

But we had a gloriously clear and crisp weekend. 

(Sorry to all of you who are soaked right now.)

And so we stopped off for a little nature walk at Rocky Bayou State Park. 

It was sort of a spur of the moment thing and I did not have my big camera with me. 

Just my trusty iphone.

There were tons of these funky blobs of moss. It was really cool looking.

I got up and personal with it.

No one was around to see me with my butt up in the air.

I was really hoping to see some fall color. There is not much around here in the way of reds and yellows. 

It is still a little early for us. Which is why I love Instagram. I get to see everyone else’s fall colors. 

Are you on instagram? Let me know if you are. I'd love to see your photos.

And feel free to check out my feed. It’s on the side bar.

Pitiful, I know.

 

Lean on me.... sing it with me....

Then on the way home we stopped along the roadside so I could grab some of these.

Free flowers :)

They filled out my new milk glass pitcher nicely.

I found a few more treasures recently too. I’ll be putting them in my etsy shop tomorrow.

So stop by Skyland Drive and have look.

Stay safe everyone and have a great week!

A Fish Fight

We finally have sun today! It’s so nice to see blue skies again.

But it did get chilly again too. I don’t mind as long as there is sun.

 

It was cloudy the day when I went to the dock with my husband. He did a little fishing and I brought my camera. I was hoping to get some shots of the osprey that hang out down there. I had actually forgotten about these pictures until I saw this shot of an eagle on Michelle’s blog.

photo from Emerald Cove

Isn’t that a great shot? She has a whole lot more photos of these magnificent creatures. Michelle took these shots at Lake Michigan. It looks like a gorgeous area.

After looking at her wonderful shots, I remembered about the day we went to the dock. 

I had to wait a bit but then I saw this.

I had just put on my new lens and I was fumbling trying to get this shot!

I was so excited to get it and then I realized that the osprey had company.

 

Someone wanted that fish!

 

 

It was amazing to watch.

We had heard there were eagle nests nearby but we had not seen any in awhile.

There was the one we saw last year in the neighbors yard eating something. 

That was freaky because he swooped by so close to us!

The osprey drops the fish but I don’t know if the eagle got it!

I just kept snapping away hoping I captured something.

I’m glad he found this fishing spot. I’ll be back for more pictures on a warmer and sunnier day.

The sun did start to come out just before we left.

 

The osprey was off to find some more supper.

Hope you stop by Emerald Cove and see her great shots too.

Have a great week.

Facebook, Etsy and Blogs, oh my!

You know you are behind in blog posts when your husband ask when you will post again.

So, while I chat with you all I thought I’d show you some shots I took when we went walking with some friends at Blackwater Creek State Park.

I have been busy trying to get my etsy shop set up and a facebook page for Skyland Drive.

I have the facebook page set up so now I just need to be active on it. I have to get on there and do some liking. Also, I should do some moving around. Those of you who have FB pages for your blogs which I am following, are done so under my personal profile. So, what I may do is like you all again under my FB Skyland Drive page.

Does that make sense? Because I see no other way of doing this. After I go through all of that I will just hide you under my personal profile so your blog updates don’t show up twice in my feed. 

Or will I have to delete you? That sounds so harsh.

And I keep forgetting to link up my items to facebook when I list a new item on etsy. Even though it asks me after I publish it! I see no way of doing it at any other time.

I am learning as I go here. Bear with me.

 I kept trying to share some of my etsy items already published and it will not let me!

I had to color my hair yesterday because I gained a bazillion more gray hairs from all of this.

Tomorrow it’s getting cut.

I hope you will stop by and see me on facebook. You can find me here.

Some friendly faces would be great.

There isn’t a lot on there right now but it will get better!

Oh and one more of this little guy. It was the cutest mushroom I ever saw.

I guess it’s really a toadstool.

I may lose internet for a bit. We are canceling Cox TV so we have to get our own modem for the internet.

And because nothing is easy around here I'm suspecting there will be problems.

Have a great weekend.

Picture the Holidays

I have not been doing too well keeping up with my daily prompts.

It’s just so hard with so much that still needs to be done around here.

My boys will be home soon. Son #2 should be here in the next day or two.

Son #1 and his fiancé will be here Christmas Eve. It will be her first Christmas away from her 6 yr old son. He will be spending Christmas with his dad. I know it will be hard for her.

I hope we can help fill a little bit of the void.

So here are a few shots from my daily prompts.

Day 9:  It’s a Sign

I like to think I have a few angels watching over me. You?

Day 13: Simply Divine

Hubby brought me outside to show me what sprouted up in the middle of the lawn.

A lonely cosmo. I thought it was divine!

Day 16: The Season of Lights

Played with some bokeh.

Day 18: Recharge

A hot cup of tea and some homemade molasses cookies.

I made a couple of batches today and sent some to my mom. They are a good cookie to mail.

It’s a really easy and quick recipe so I thought I’d pass it along to you all.

I found the recipe on Allrecipes.com. It’s a great site and I use it all the time. I can save my recipes right there and even add notes to them.  It yielded more cookies for me then it stated. 

Here is the link to the recipe.

Crackle Top Molasses Cookies

I hope you’ll give them a try.

Have a great week! 

We’re in the final count down to the big day!

Picture the Holiday and a Winner!

Okay, this week is already zipping by. I need to get my lists in order so I can check things off and I will feel like I’m accomplishing something. Right now, not so much. 

I thought I’d show you a few pictures from a project I started.

I’ve been participating in a photo group called Picture the Holidays. 

It’s was put together by Tracy Clark and Paper Coterier. 

Every day for the month of December we will get a prompt to help guide us for our photos.

Day 5 was The View from Here.

The photo above was my view tonight while outside hanging lights. 

Yes, I’m a little behind.

Day 6 was Every Little Thing. (It’s a JUNIOR mint! And it’s very refreshing!)

It’s definitely been a challenge for me. But I will do as much as I can and hope to improve along the way.

Okay, now for the winner of the FOLK magazine and the mini stockings!

Number 2 is Allison! Allison doesn’t have a blog but she really should.

She is the sweetest person and leaves me the loveliest comments.

So Yay Allison! Email me your address and I will get those out to you soon!

Fear not, I will be having another giveaway soon. 

I have Christmas stockings of another kind to giveaway this time. 

I hope you will come back and try again!

One more picture before I go from Day 4 You Hold the Key.

The key to helping me refocus is the sand, sea and salty air.

Have a great week everyone!

Commenting Problems

Blog commenting.

This is what I want to ask you guys about today.

Not very exciting I know but I could use some help with this.

I will throw in random pictures of our very windy day at the beach because…..well, just because.

Maybe it will help keep you reading :)

(this was like a giant sculpture on the beach)

The other day one of my followers emailed me and let me know she could not leave a comment.

I was perplexed. I googled and googled and I think it might have something to do with browsers.

But then I decided to try to switch from embedded comments to a pop out window type.

And it helped her. I was thrilled because I figured there must have been others out there that were having issues too. I was so happy she took the time to let me know.

But then soon after I made the switch I started getting spam.

They are being caught by blogger and not getting posted. 

Well, except for that one dude that really hates women from the USA. Oh he’s a delight.

But the rest are just advertising type spam. They are going to my email but that's it. 

Good but still annoying.

 (tail of a shark that was getting weighed)

I’d still like to figure out how to get them to stop coming in my inbox.

I can not figure out the connection to having the pop out comment window and the spam. 

The spam usually comes from anonymous. Big surprise there. 

Should I just ban anonymous comments? 

Do you think that doing that will leave some people out? 

I usually just mark them as spam and then delete them.

But since they are anonymous they are sometimes connected to the same email thread of the “noreply” people.When this happens I can’t mark them as spam because the noreply people that are stuck in this thread will be marked as well. At least it's like that in gmail. 

The noreply people get lumped together.

Are you following me on this?

Those of you still in the “noreply” mode should read this post that Donna wrote on the how and why you should consider changing that. She also goes over a few other things  like getting rid of word verification!

I think that if you are having problems commenting on people’s blogs then perhaps you need to update your browser. I use google Chrome and I really love it. 

My son and I finally convinced my husband to switch over from Internet Explorer and he even said it was a lot faster. IE seems to have a lot of glitches when it comes to blogger. 

I may have to switch back to embedded comments and see if it helps get rid of those pesky spammers. I hope you’ll consider updating your browsers as well. It really helps.

I’d love to hear your opinions on this.

Embedded vs pop out comment windows.

Allowing anonymous vs blocking them.

Or anything you know of that might help out.

Thanks so much for all the wonderful birthday wishes for #3.

You guys are all so sweet. 

He read my post and got up and gave me a big hug! :)

Linking up with:
Kat Eye Studio: Exploring with a Camera/Opposing Lines