Saturday, August 14, 2010

Costco Photo Contest

Sigrid entered a Costco photo contest today. The 1st Place prize was a million dollars...........or maybe it was just a large print of the winning picture on canvas ready for framing.

The photo was taken in October 2008 at Blue Spring which is near Eminence, Missouri. The spring water forms a shallow stream and the stream bed has lots of very green plants under the surface. The water flows fairly swiftly which caused the blur in the photo along with the natural ripples in the water. Sigrid ended up with an abstract looking photo with Monet-like qualities.

It will be weeks before we hear from Costco. We will not be holding our breath while we wait.


Sunday, August 8, 2010

German Doors & Windows

We just got done wallpapering our breakfast area today and now we are looking for three photos to frame to finish off a bare wall. We will frame them in black with white or off-white matting. Here are the candidates. Anyone have three favorites?




















Saturday, August 7, 2010

Australia/New Zealand Cruise

A few posts back we talked about what the next big adventure would be. We had settled on the Mediterranean but then backed out due to the unrest in Greece and other factors. As we hinted, Australia and New Zealand were on our minds as well. Now it is a done deal.

Later this year we will be taking a 28 day cruise on Holland America. The map below shows all the ports of call on the trip. We are pretty excited about going.

The trip will be especially interesting for several reasons. We will be going through some extremes in climate from the tropical islands of Fiji to the snow capped mountains of New Zealand. Temperatures will range from 85 degrees down to the 40's at some points so we have to have clothes for every situation. A 28 day cruise will be a treat. Our previous longest cruise was 14 days in Northern Europe. The final and most interesting thing will be that this will be the second place we have been in the South Pacific this year where my father served during World War II. The first was Saddle Road in Hawaii in January. He helped build the road as an army engineer. The second will be Vanuatu where he was stationed in preparation for the invasion of the Philippine Islands. Pretty neat to be able to do this.


More later.