We're in two newspapers!

Yesterday, a Mother came by with her kids and asked,

"is the Christmas house from the paper?"

We pulled the paper from the recycle bin and sure enough, we had a small photo and a caption in the Stuart News.

Here's the Palm Beach Post listing too.


We were thrilled because this meant that we'd have a lot of happy visitors to meet tonight. We had a great night and met people from all over the country. I bet, there were 200 cars with 2-5 people per car.

We had some folks from Hyde Park, NY which is near my birth city of Rhinebeck. Everyone seems to have a story about why they came. Some people come on dates, most come with kids, some picked this as a meeting place to swap kids. Some people can't speak English, some were from overseas. Some kids were frightened, but others tried to climb right into the garage display.

One girl saw a couple display mice that she recognized from her childhood. She said they always freaked her out a bit, but she had never told anyone. She laughed about it. One person said this is better than Rockefeller Plaza and another said it is better than Disney. While I disagree, I was thrilled to accept the compliment.

How to Photograph Christmas Lights

I've been obsessed with learning how to take GOOD photographs of Christmas lights. I've learned a tripod and a disabled flash are the two most important steps to get great shots of lights. However, what about ISO, exposure, aperture...etc?

Here are 6 links that will mark the beginning of your crisp and vivid Christmas light photos.

http://photojojo.com/content/websites/photographing-holiday-lights/

By the way, I loooooove photojojo. It is one of two RSS feeds I religiously read. Lifehacker is the other. This is NOT a paid post (I don't do that).

Lionel Train Under Christmas Tree

Here's today's shot of our indoor live Christmas tree. It has a circus train, hence the farm animals. I love this new camera! I took this shot by plugging the camera into the laptop and using the Canon Utility to take the photos....this led to less camera shake because my finger wasn't pressing the shutter button.

A Cathedral in Milan during Christmas

natale a milano
Originally uploaded by grana [2007]

John and I visited this Cathedral in Milan, Italy a few months ago.

Did you know the rest of the world calls doesn't call it Italy?...or Milan? They are called Italia and Milano.

This one cathedral took 500 years to build and has been nearly destroyed dozens of times. Infact, there's a very catchy cliche phrase in Europe..."it's like building a cathedral." This is where the phrase comes from.

It's one of the largest cathedrals in the world and is considered the epitomy of the gothic style of architecture.

Napoleon was coronated here. There is supposedly a nail from Jesus' cross in the tip top of the dome inside. They take it down a few days each year and we missed it by 5 days.

It's one of the top 5 most memorable places I've been in my 28 years.

P. S. I found this on Flickr.com in the 2007 Christmas Group.

Our Neighbor's Nativity Scene

I went walking around the neighborhood last night to take some photos of other houses. Here's one cute manger scene. I love how they put down hay and even used a shepherd's hook for the star.

100,000 website hits!

Atcually we're at 111,000 since June when the stats were activated. I'm pretty impressed and will use the next few paragraphs to brag a bit.

I did all the tedious SEO stuff that webmasters do to ensure to get a good page rank in search engines like google. I am proud to say that we are number one on google....the famous band Copeland is even behind us. Most any keyword that you would think of to find us...works!

SO, to celebrate our 100,000th hit, I decided to revamp the website. I've added videos, photos, a new banner, and a new back end to the blog. Hope you all like it.



I'd really appreciate to know if you experience any problems and what browser you use. Feel free to leave a comment to let me know.

Garage Gingerbread Photo

Another Gingerbread scene from the garage

Garage Display (Gingerbread)

Today's shot. I'm still learning this new camera.

My Brother Matthew

This santa sways from left to right. So does Matthew.

Nov 30th Lighting Ceremony Photos

Matthew and I had a great time. I think we were trying to make funny faces for the camera in this shot. I love my new camera.