Tag: christmas tree

Macs don’t bounce. 

I made an evening run to the Apple Store tonight for a service appointment with my MacBook.   *sigh*

On the way home I got a quick snap of the Christmas tree in front of Macy’s (tweaked with an iPhone app called Brushstroke).  ‘Tis the season!

And….voila!

This year's tree.
This year’s tree.

I felt like playing around a bit, so I created an animated gif to capture the transformation of this year’s Christmas tree from bare to decorated to twinkling.

To make the animated GIF, I used the web-based tool Picasion.com.  Note: before I created the gif, I reduced the size of the original images down to the size I wanted (i used the width of my wordpress theme as the target image width).  Then I created the gif w/ Picasion.

Twinkle, twinkle.

Painting with a twist - holiday edition.
Painting with a twist – holiday edition.

Julie took her last final of Fall semester today – and is headed home for the holidays tomorrow.  Tonight we went to Painting with a Twist to create a work of art.   This is my version.   Not bad.  A little festive.  Probably worth hanging on the wall for a week or two (?)   🙂

Accidental bokeh.

Twinkly Christmas lights.
Twinkly Christmas lights.

Mom and I set up her tree today.  It looks nice.  I took several photos of it, hoping for one to post here.  On this one, the autofocus was a bit whacky.  And it turned out blurry.  But I like the bokeh effect of the lights.   So… this one is the winner.

For inquiring minds:  here’s a definition of bokeh on wikipedia

Deck the Halls: Check!

2011 tree.

Well, I ended up working all day yesterday, and most of today.   An “emergency” set of meetings came up out of the blue.   At least I didn’t have to travel to New York to attend in person.

One of my goals for this vacation is to get back on a normal sleep schedule.   I would really like it if the sleepy leg syndrome would stay away until at least after 9 or 10pm.   As it is, i’ve been falling asleep on the couch early in the evening and getting up at 1 or 2 to offically turn in.   This morning, I woke up on the couch about 1 AM.  Before I went to bed I checked my email and learned that my uncle in San Antonio, who’s been ill, passed away a few hours earlier.   Makes me very sad.   But I’m very glad that we had a visit with him recently.   On the other end of the happy/sad emotional spectrum, a friend’s first grandchild was born yesterday.   Life.  Happens.  We should enjoy every minute of it while we’re here.  And hug those important to us as often as possible.

I peeled myself off the phone at about 3PM and decided to finish decorating the tree.  This might actually conclude the hall-decking at our house.   If i get the tree decorated, a wreath on the door, a little manger put up, and the stockings hung, I feel like I’ve got most of the bases covered.