Author: panda

Coastal Cleanup

Robby came home this weekend and we celebrated my Dad’s birthday early. On Saturday morning we headed to Goleta Beach to help out with the Coastal Cleanup going on. Altogether, team Nielsen collected 5 pounds of trash (including 76 cigarettes)! Go team! 
And then Robby got us hooked on the show Prison Break, we all went out for buffet lunch, and the guys got in another game of Settlers of Catan 🙂 Another nice weekend!

Think Outside the Box!

So I have this lens lovingly called the “nifty 50.” It is a great little lens for not too much money in terms of lens prices. I tried something new with it that I thought was pretty cool.

Instead of attaching the lens to the camera like normal, I flipped it around so the part that normally attaches to the camera is facing out. Since there is now no way to mount the lens to the camera, you just have to hold it up to the camera opening. What this does is change the focusing distance, so instead of a 50mm lens, I now have a macro lens and can get SUPER close to the subject.

The photos have this dream-like quality to them since they are always slightly blurred. I think the effect is super neat and you can get really abstract pictures with this method. Pretty cool!

Paradise Road Trip

Today my Dad and I didn’t have any DogWatch installations to do, so us girls took a road trip back into the white rock area of Paradise Rd. We headed up Trader Joes first for picnic essentials and then drove over in the late morning. It started to rain on our way over but it was not cold at all.
This beautiful spot was one of our hang out areas. Mandy loved swimming across the entire pool. Penny liked to race around the edges and jump on Mandy when she got out of the water.
We stopped to enjoy our picnic goods and then let the dogs swim and get super dirty again.
It rained about 70% of the time we were there, but it was fun hiking in the rain and watching the ripples in the water.
Mandy was the best stick-fetcher around!
I saved this little guy from certain death on the way out. He was laying in the road right where the tires of a car would have hit him. I jumped out and scooped him up RIGHT before the next car came. That was a close one! 

Crafty & Thrifty!

Kori and I recently went to Art from Scrap for the first time. It is a store that takes donations of all sorts of scrap treasures so they do not end up in the landfills. Anything from tiles, to wood, to paper, egg cartons, plastic containers, beads, shells, and the list goes on. We both got some supplies and we each spent $3. Want to see what we made?

Kori used leather samples and fabric to cover her daily agenda/school planner. How neat is that?!

I painted a scrap piece of wood and added a sea glass and wire handle. I drilled holes for marbles to let the light shine through.