A few random photos lying around on my hard drive have made their way to the blog. First off. my name's Matt and I'm a gum-aholic.  There.  I've admitted it, and that's the first step, although I have no intentions of wanting to cure myself of this addiction.  Somewhere between high school and college I got hooked, and ever since I get a little case of the shakes when I'm down to my last couple pieces. I used to pride myself on how long I could make a piece of gum last, often removing a piece from my mouth at lunch and putting back in afterwards and repeating this at dinner.  And sadly I can count on more than one hand the times I've gone to sleep at night while chewing gum (which I removed to brush my teeth) and woke up in the morning and commenced chewing without missing a beat.  Disturbing in hind sight.  Anyway, Kylie recently restocked me, and so all is right in the world.

Here's a pseudo sneak peek of the kitchen refresh with the stash of gum on the counter

Snapped this next image of a Hyacinth in our front flower bed on the last day of winter with temps in the upper 60's...

... then on the first day of spring we had 4" snow and temps in the low 30's.  Go figure.  It reminded me of a time when I was about 8 years old and I was so honked off because - in my obvious limited understanding of how the weather worked - I was under the assumption that as soon as spring started the weather automatically turned sunny and warm so I could go outside and play, but instead it was snowing on that day.

Was taking the trash out tonight around 11:45pm.  Looked up and saw some clouds rolling in, so I rolled out the camera bag, busted out a tripod and took these 2 photos .  Just proves there's sometimes beauty in the mundane.  And to think, all I thought I'd see on the way to the trash can was me tryin' to toss the bag into the can from 15 ft away in one try. This first one is pretty much SOOC (straight out of camera) except some added sharpening in Photochop.  The light at the falling on the top of the fences is actualy the security light from our backyard.  Details: Nikon D3 - ISO 640 - 24-70 f/2.8 lens at 24mm - f/5.6 @ 5 second shutter speed.

I added a littel bit of cross-processing action and sharpening in Photchop on this second one.  Details: Same as first image.  Nikon D3 - ISO 640 - 24-70 f/2.8 lens at 24mm - f/5.6 @ 5 second shutter speed.

Take that, 12 Lords-a-Leapin'..  This year Kylie one-upped you by taking your 12 days and besting it by 2.  Yep, this year I was introduced to - and pleasantly surprised by - the 14 days of Valentine.  For those that didn't know, Kylie is more than a little crafty with her hands and her surprises, and on February 1st the mini-mailbox she had decorated (see below) showed up on my desk in my office.  Something different followed each day through the 14th... well, almost each day. On about day 8 Kylie had acciedentally forgotten to put that day's gift in the mail box, so when I sat down at my desk to do some work that night and looked inside and didn't see any new "mail", I joked to Kylie sitting in the next room that it musta been a holiday that day because the mailman didn't  come.  One other day we got just over 6" of snow outside and I told her the mailman musta took the day off due to weather because the mailbox on my desk was empty that day.  In all seriousness, though, it was great to walk in to my office each morning and see what had been delivered.  Most days it was a little card with a hand-written message to start the morning, and occasionally instead of a card there was a thoughtful little gift inside.  Ridiculously sweet, right?

The next two images are of the cards Kylie made me along the way.  I told you she was crafty.  In fact, she's recenty started her own venture into small business by becoming a Stampin' Up demonstrator... which reminds me I'm supposed to get lost Saturday afternoon while she hosts her first party at the house.

And finally here's my ghetto tabletop set-up I've been using whenever Kylie asks me to take a few photos of her creations.  Pretty elaborate, eh?  Don't attempt this at home unless you're trained in handling aluminum foil.  I used this set-up to take the images above using my Nikon D700 with an 85mm 1.4 lens set at ISO 1250 and a shutter speed at 1/80th of a second and an f/stop of 2.0 (f/4 on the top down shot of the cards above).  The 30" Lite Balance reflector I used is one I've had for a long time, and if you're interested you can find it here.

Today has turned out ot be the most snow I've seen in my 13 years in Dallas... and I'm enjoying every inch of it. First up: snowball launched? Check.

The rest of the images in this post were taken just after 10pm tonight.  It rocks how it's so light out because of all the light being reflected from the snow.

Poor Mia was conflicted.  She wanted to be outside in the backyard with me, but she's a bit snooty about snow.  We were shocked - and shamelessly amused - later when she tried to actually navigate her way through the drifts without us having to forcibly pick her up and drop her in a snow bank.  Very out of character for her.  Maybe she's thinking about trying out for the Iditarod.

We've got this much snow as of 10:15pm, and it's still coming down.

Small downside to shooting while it's snowing.  Good thing these things are weather proof.  Hmmm... not sure if that applies to an uncovered hot shoe flash mount.  Think I'll wait a bit before slapping a flash on this guy.

The good news?  The gas cooktop was installed today.  The bad news?  I scorched one of our Calphalon One pots on my first attempt at using said cooktop.  It's too soon to call this my fault, but my case doesn't look good.  I wanted to test out the awesomeness of cooking with gas, so I told Kylie I was just going to run a little test case by boiling some water.  That was around 9:05pm this evening. [cut to 10:16pm] Kylie:  (walking into kitchen) "Why is this still boiling?" Me:  (sitting in my photography room at the computer) "What'd you say, honey?" Voice in my head: Uh-ohhhh... tell me I didn't forget about the water I started to boil an hour ago.  TELL ME I didn't forget about the water I started to boil an hour ago?!.... I forgot.  Quick, come up with an awesome excuse to deflect the blame. Me: (walking the walk of shame into the kitchen)  "Oops.  I think I forgot." Voice in my head: Really?  "I think I forgot?"  Is that the best you could come up with?  You're hopeless. --------- So now I'm in search and rescue mode.  I'm looking for and taking recommendations for trying to save our [awesome wedding gift] pot.  I've got some Bar Keepers Friend stuff I'm gonna give a try, but I'm open to other ideas if you've got 'em.