In the life of The Good Witch

So I haven’t done this in awhile. Life has been busy and hectic with work and everything else. Summer break is upon us and now my little boy is hanging out with my sister for a month and my daughter and I are spending quality time together. So I’ve had other things on my plate. I hope you understand.
Not much has been going on around here. It’s been a really quiet storm season. As in we didn’t receive our first tornado warning in Kansas until I think yesterday or the day before. It had been a year. I mean c’mon!
The other night I did get a chance to watch some pretty awesome stormage come in.

Nothing better than setting up your camera on the sidewalk at midnight to stand out there for an hour because you thought the storm was coming faster than it really was.

This is actually a shot of a sheriffs cruiser going by. Pretty groovy, huh?

Another shot of a car going by. I really love those lol

WOOT!!! Finally it shows up!!!

Day Five: I'm so good at this, and soon I will be left high and dry with no outlet for my talent. 

So so pretty!!!

A really pretty sunset graced us sometime last week.

And we saw some awesome cloudage.

I got a new hedgie!!! Meet Hermes. Isn’t he adorable?! And the ruby slippers and yellow brick road are cellphone charms!

My petunias are looking so gorgeous!

And I have Dorothy staying over.

SO there’s a recap of the last few weeks. It’s been boring, to say the least!

A little catch-up

Well I know I’ve been promising this post for awhile, but between home and family and work it’s been… CRAZY.
But honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ve been spending way too much time being sentient lately and it’s starting to take its toll on me.
Anywho! There has been quite a bit going on, for sure!

Lets see… I water marbled Easter eggs the other day. I’m going to try some more later this week and hopefully get a tutorial up for you before Easter.

I also learned how to make nail polish flowers. If you’d like I’ll make a tutorial on this as well!

Finished a few hand embroidery projects… This one has to be my favorite. It’s made as a “house warming” present for a couple that I have the great pleasure of knowing. They lost their house and everything inside of it, including their four furbabies, to a house fire a few weeks ago. Through this mess, they’ve continued to be upbeat and courageous and I have to say, it’s awe inspiring. Where I would have laid down and cried and wailed and just given up, they’ve gotten stronger and closer together. And I love them for it!

Started another project as well. This one is semi-secret. Y’all will ever only see this part, the rest of it is highly classified.

In other news… They broke our Taco Bell. Well, to be true… They’re building us a new one. But it’ll be 5-6 months before we get to enjoy Happier Hour without going 15 minutes out of town to get it. *sigh* No more Loaded Potato Grillers

Today I dug up 50+ iris rhizomes. I noticed them along our back fence the other day when I was headed home from work. So I decided to go dig them up. I figured there were just a few plants. Surprise, surprise when I kept digging and kept finding them. I cannot wait to get these transplanted in front of the house and get to watch them explode. YAY!!!

Did some awesome conceptual shots as well… I took a picture that was taken in the daylight (the house) and then grouped together some of my lightning shots to create this awesome amalgamation.

My own little version of a Weeping Angel…

This is the same house, just at a wider angle… Used some of my cloud pictures combined with a few photoshop brushes to achieve this.

Went around scouting for new session locations and found this old school house turned church a ways from our state lake. I have always loved how forlorn and neglected it’s looked.

This day it was super windy and the old merry-go-round was spinning on its own. I really wish I could have captured that on film, but I think this does it enough justice.

I also found some milk weed pods when we were clearing out the bush next to our house. I love how soft and free these little babies are. They flew everywhere, but it was so worth it in the end.

Day Seven: I'm stuck in the elevator, get me out!!!

Went out yesterday and got some beautiful shots of the blossoming Bradford pear trees that flank the vacant school across from us. This is my favorite shot over all that I took.

And, but of course, last but not least, some of my spotting shots. I was SO excited and SO sure we were going to witness some pretty hefty weather this last week. Much to my dismay, they either formed east of us or went around us. But! Tornado season has just begun!

Here’s my son and storm spotting “partner” in front of a massive super cell thunderstorm forming Southeast of us.

Dubbed: “The Storm That Formed Over Us”, this massive mesa is just the tail end of a massive line of super cell thunderstorms that stretched at least 50 miles long, if not longer. And of course… It was north of us…

Here’s some beautiful mammatus clouds, or ice cube clouds as my sister and I always called them. These are usually tell-tale signs of a violent weather pattern on the horizon, usually one that includes hail and high winds.

So I was super excited about the cell southeast of us. Hurried home, got my camera and tripod ready, my memory card cleared off and I was ready! I was so looking forward to a major storm. But the more and more I looked at radar, the more and more I realized it was too far west for it to touch us. But I did get a some-what decent lightning show. This is my first with my new camera, so unfortunately I missed a lot of awesome shots with trying to figure out what the best setting was, how I needed my lens to be focused, etc. And it wasn’t a real prolific cloud-to-cloud lightning producing storm. Out of 400+ shots, I only got three that had any amount of lightning in them, and this was by far the best one.
So yeah, it’s been kinda boring around here lately, but I promise to have some more reviews and tutorials up for your viewing pleasure soon.

A Glimpse into the Life of the Witch

Things have been busy leading up to this weekend, so I haven’t been posting much other than a couple of tutorials and what not. We’ve been getting a TON of rain, and I mean a ton. We’ve got around 13-15 inches in the last week and a half. That makes people around here in Southeast Kansas a little skittish after the flood of 2007.

This is a slightly skewed view of the Verdigris River, one of the major rivers that flows here in SEK. It’s wayyyyy out of its banks, as you can tell.

This is a view from the back side of our park that juts up to the Verdigris. There is a road that runs paralell to the river, and it’s completely covered.

This is a view of where the goats live in the zoo. It’s pretty much completely under water and seems to just be getting worse.

This is the Elk River, another major river that flows through Southeast Kansas.

It too is out of its banks. It’s pretty safe to say that any river or any creek around here is going to be out of its banks right now.

But that’s not all that’s going on!

My eggplant is starting to turn purple!!!!!!!!!

Biscuit had to enjoy the rain, of course.

She played a little too rough and fell down in the puddle at the end of the sidewalk lol.

We decided to go ahead and dig up our potato plant, because we figured there wasn’t anything growing. Much to my surprise- we found these little gems! I’ll be boiling these up tomorrow! Just a handful, that’s all. But it’s more than we thought we were getting!

No bigger than blueberries, these little gems are just so freaking cute!!!

I found slugs in the bottom of our potato pot. I HATE SLUGS. Serisly lol They are so freaking nasty and icky. So I showed Cubs and Biscuit what happens if you introduce the to table salt. And this is what happens, as you well know. They found it both disgusting and fascinating. Made me proud lol.

Today wasn’t all slugs and floods… While we were driving around the park, we spotted some gorgeous naked lady lilies standing proudly on the side of the road. I am going to have to blow a couple of these up!

I’m going to be getting all my batteries charged and ready for the weekend. If I have anything new to report, I’ll be posting again; but I wouldn’t expect to see me before Sunday . Have a great weekend, all!

One more day to D-Day

So… July 2nd, eh? One more day until the dreaded 3-2. Yesterday my son came home from my sisters house after being gone for a looooong month. So we proceeded to have some good ole fashioned family fun.

We started out the afternoon with some smoke bombs. Which, I wanted to get some super close shots of but couldn’t get close enough without getting fumigated. I really need a bigger zoom. Or a gas mask.

Kind of reminds me of the Isle of Misfit Toys in Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer. Except it’s the Isle of Burnt Smoke Bombs. And not as cute. Or snowy. So it’s really not like it at all. *sigh*

Then we had to do the obligatory snakes. They burn up in a blink of an eye, but they’re fun. And I’ve been doing those since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.

Oooo wee. Those are spectacular, huh?

Now these are some powerful poppers. They were labeled Thunder Poppers and at $2.99, I told myself they better be worth it or I’d be pissed. A couple years ago, Jakes Fireworks here in Indy were selling what were labeled as “Adult Poppers”. Come to find out, there was as much gunpowder in there to equal a black cat firecracker. We didn’t find them the next year, so imagine my surprise when I found these at Sizzboom Fireworks here in town. I was a little apprehensive. But I picked up a couple boxes and decided to give them a try. They’re a good inch long and pack QUITE a punch. The picture in the bottom right is of one of the poppers intact, the other is one blown up. Quite a difference, huh???

Here’s my boyo, trying to hide from me, sure I was going to throw one of the poppers at him. I’m not even that mean, those suckers would hurt.

And of course, we had to do the typical boy shots with the streamers from the party poppers…. Mohawk, snot, puke, a tail and poo. Yup. We’re special…..

And here’s my wild prairie child Biscuit out in the north 40 of our yard, as far away from the gigantic poppers as she could possibly get.

She also held court with some of the neighbor girls as well. If they start hanging out more, we’ll have to call them Biscuit’s Buddies.

A little well-deserved brotherly/sisterly love. You’d think I was holding a branding iron to their backs with the looks on their faces.

Soooo pretty

A contemplative Cubby.

Oh, and my Fool’d You Pepper is growing!!!!

And it’s growing a butt crack. As evidenced by the red arrow pointing at it.

Lookit the pretty Shamrock flower.

And my pretty New Wonder. This one is doing fabulously.

I part with you on this fine day and leave a friendly little caterpillar (or if you say it like me- callipilar). Have a great Fourth of July, everyone.