It's New Years Eve baby!

Wow, 2010 was a crazy year.

~We continued our year with our niece Rose living with us.
~ Rose challenged us daily.
~We finally got her to enjoy reading.
~She finished and graduated the 8th grade.
~Her final grades were all A's and B's.
~My mom and I took a 2 week road trip to take Rose back home to her parents.
~Along the way we saw the Winchester House of Mystery, rode the Roaring Camp Railroad train, saw the Golden Gate Bridge, drove through the Redwoods, went to Crater Lake and drove down the Columbia River before crossing into WA and on to my sisters house.
~On the route back we passed Mt Shasta, the Castle Crags, toured the Jelly Belly Factory and also Hearst Castle. We drove the last leg on the famous Highway 1 along the CA coast(actually, we drove up that way too cause it's a gorgeous drive).
~Chuck and I got back into a routine as a childless couple.
~At the end of July I started a diet.
~I started diving into my photography.
~I took my first photography class with Faith at Simplicity.
~We started having problems with our landlord.
~We gave our 30 day notice.
~I signed up with my second photography class with Faith.
~We spent all of November packing and cleaning the rental house.
~We moved back in with my mom(eeek).
~In early December we were flown into Nashville, TN for a transplant check-up for hubs(everything is good. He's still on the list and moving up).
~While in TN we made a dash up to Knoxville to see our friends. It was awesome! We even got to attend our old church.
~It snowed while we were there.
~We had to drive in that terrible snow.
~I talked hubs into spending a few hours walking around the gardens at the Opryland Hotel. I got amazing pictures.
~We made it home safe.
~Hubs got a really bad cold.
~He then passed it on to my mom.
~My mom missed Christmas dinner at my Aunts house due to her cold.
~We went and had a great time.
~Tonight, the last day of the year, we are spending it with friends. We hope you all have a safe and fun night. Don't drink and drive!
~I am finishing this year off 61 pounds lighter!

Santa's coming!

Guess what I'm getting for Christmas? I get my epiphanie camera bag! I'm so excited. I need to order it...

picture source

...but first, I have to go through all this and undo it all. Yup, my mom thought it would be funny to hide this all over the house for me to find. We just found the last $1 today.

The bag will be from my mom and from Chuck's mom. Thanks moms! I love my gift! I hope everyone got what they wanted this Christmas too!

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

Merry Christmas!!!

Welcome to my blog. This past week I decided to merge my personal blog with my photography blog. 2 blogs was just too much work. You will know me from Pamela Bowers Photography. This is now where I will be posting my photo's. Feel free to follow me over here.

Family

Motion Blur

Pretty Package

Glow

Sparkle

My Christmas Tree 2010

It would be perfect if I had remembered to get my topper angel out of storage. No tree topper this year.

A little creative lighting. To do this just use a long exposure and shake your camera a little. A dark room helps too.

An update...finally!

I have been thinking long and hard and have come to the conclusion that having 2 blogs is way too much work. I was separating my photography from my personal blog. Well, I'll be separating them no longer! I am merging my blogs back together. I will keep my other blog for the future should I break into the photography business and need a place to promote my work. For now, I am just having fun and learning and I can do that over here at Kassie's Beach. I just found that I was not posting as often over here and I feel like I have been neglecting my first love and my first blogging friends.

I have been overwhelmed this month with Christmas prep, shopping, wrapping gifts, getting settled from our move, photography assignments from the online course I'm taking...you name it! Then we have been hit with a huge storm that is lasting forever. I like the rain but, seriously, come on already. It's supposed to stick around till Thursday even. It's messing with my photography. Our house has the WORST lighting so I prefer to shoot outside. Can't do it in the rain though. Grrrr!!!

Hubs got insanely sick this past week. He missed 3 days of work and had to go see his docs. He better not pass it to me! Last weekend we were flown into Nashville for a kidney transplant checkup(we have to go every 18 months to stay on a donor list). We asked them to fly us in a day early so we could rush up to Knoxville to see our friends. The VA was happy to oblige us. We got in Saturday afternoon, grabbed a rental car and made it to Knoxville around midnight. Sunday we got to attend our old church and say hi to tons of old friends. Then we had lunch with friends at Calhouns(we don't have them here in CA) then went to their house for the afternoon. It was great.

It started snowing while we were there so we hit the road for Nashville. What a crazy drive. It should have taken us 3 hours...instead it took 5 hours. We had upgraded our rental to a 4x4 suv and we drove the whole way using the 4x4. Scary!!!

Monday morning the visit with the transplant team went quickly so we had almost 4 hours to kill before heading to the airport. I asked if we could go to the Opryland Hotel to walk around the gardens(my husband sure loves me). It was gorgeous. The orchids were AMAZING! The waterfalls...!!! I posted a few pics down below but am also saving a few good ones for an upcoming scavenger hunt. Be on the lookout!

My diet is going well. I am on a time out this week for Christmas. What that means is I'm trying to keep my calories low but I'm not worrying about staying exactly on point. I don't expect to loose this week but I'm hoping to at least stay put. I may gain a few pounds in water as my salt intake went up a smidge. I am still right around 55 lbs. I plan to get back on the day after Christmas(New Years isn't about the food for me). I cannot wait to get down to my first goal and get my sticky fingers on my new netbook.

Okay, enough talk...here are my pictures for this post...

The snow was coming down VERY hard...for the whole 5 hour drive!

In many places you could not even see the roadway.

Bokeh from a Xmas tree at Opryland.

This was of a chandelier. I love it.

I used this last week in the scavenger hunt. It's the same tree from 3 pictures up framed by a huge wreath. We had to climb many stairs to get high enough for this picture.

Flying back into San Diego. That is the Coronado Bridge.

Ahhh...home sweet home!

These next 2 pictures I took for my photography class. I just wanted to share them. This one was for Ordinary Beauty.

This one was for Imitate a Photo. I had to choose a photo and recreate it. Mine is better then the original if I do say so myself. lol

Eeeeks...that was a long post!!!

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

Winter

Black and White w/selective coloring

Wind

Okay, there was no wind present but this is my interpretation of wind through falling water.

Framed

Remember When...

...we lived in TN and this was our church? It was so awesome to get to visit everyone last weekend!

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

 Holiday Colors

My kitty and puppers stockings!

Winter Holiday Icon

Well, Jesus is year round in our house but I wanted to use Him since I'm using secular Christmas stuff for most of these hunts.

A Tree

 My mom found this little tree at Michaels. It just had to be my tree shot!

 

Quiet

And, speaking of my mom...here is her kitty. Pepper just wants to be left alone. She never comes out of my moms bedroom.

My Favorite Color

I love bright colors. Every bright color! I chose to use this bright pink eye shadow to convey that. Pink is pretty darned awesome anyway.

 All the pics that had a texture on them were the same texture by Kim Klassen called Silent Night. I thought it would be fun to pick one texture and use it on most of my entries this week. In fact, the only one I didn't use it on is the first one.

I have so much fun going through and seeing everyone's entries each week. This weekend I will be in Tennessee. I promise to come around and see your awesome entries on Tuesday.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

It's rather exciting to get back into the swing of things. The month of November was very stressful for me. Moving sucks. It wiped me out!

In My Home

I had so many ideas for this one but then nothing was inspiring me. I chose to photograph this instead. It was drawn, cut out and colored by my nieces. It was my prize at the end of a scavenger hunt they created for me. I love the creativity of children and I adore this. It has a place of honor on our fridge.

It's Beginning to Look a lot Like...

Well, honestly, it's not really looking Christmasy here. Our decorations are set amongst the greenery. I would love to have snow for Christmas. It'll never happen here.

Sweet Treat

This picture came out of my archives. I'm on a diet here peeps!

Time

My grandfather made this clock. It is my moms. I grew up with this clock. I have one too now. It's hanging up in the house as well(yes, I live with my mom again). Mine is in a darker area and would not photograph well.

Everyday

Yup, I think this one speaks for itself!