Happy Friday!

I felt like posting today so wanted to wish everyone a HAPPY FRIDAY and a very happy weekend! The weather has been cooler here in the morning. It was 56 degrees on my way to work at 7.30 AM. BRRRRR, I miss summer already. Though it is nice to have a cooler mornings on the weekend to sleep in. I also started getting more inspired and excited to do more baking when it's cooler, as I'm sure everyone are.

Aside from some baking and cooking this weekend, we are also going to see Defending the Caveman. I'm really excited! The synopsis sounds hilarious.

Happy Friday and a funny article

I feel like posting today and not having any topic I thought I would just post to wish everyone a happy Friday and happy weekend!

It is going to be cold here this weekend - forecast temperature would be 18 degrees for the high on Sunday. YIKES but I will be spending a lot of time in the kitchen so it will be warm anyway :).

And.... I found funny this article at eatthelove blog a few days ago and thought it is so funny. Irvin wrote a list of "You know you're a food blogger if..." Check it out.

I am definitely guilty of several items on the list. No. 6, 9, 14, 19, and 34. I have come close to doing No. 24 recently - so this one made me laugh!

How about you? If you dare to fess up on which one you've "committed"? Which items make you laugh?

Padua

A short post this time.

From Venice,we stopped by Padua.

Padua claims to be the oldest city in Italy. It is also home to Prato della Valle, the largest square in Europe and according to wikitravel, is probably one of the most beautiful square in the World.

It is hard to argue that you might find a square more beautiful when you see statues like this one.

Each statue has different pose and details.

Venice

From Zugspitze, we continued our vacation to Venice.

I feel that Venice need no introduction but for those of you who are interested, Venice is a city in northeast Italy. It is a group of 118 small islands linked by foot bridges.

Such as this one bridge.

Venice is famous for its architecture and its setting.

There is just something romantic about being surrounded by water.

Zugspitze: Top of Germany

Zugspitze! Zugspitze!!!

I can't pronounce this word but it sure was fun to try on our way there.

Zugspitze, at 2,962 meters (9,718 feet) is the highest mountain in Germany. It is located by the border of Austria and Germany so we had to stop by. It took us about 2 hours to get there from Salzburg.

On the way there, we stopped by for lunch at a cute small town called Grainau in the  Garmisch-Partenkirchen district.

Salzburg

We spent a couple of weeks in Europe this year for vacation. First stop, Salzburg.

Never been to Austria before, we were plenty excited.

The trip started well with a beautiful sunset over the horizon as our plane ascended into the sky.

The Golden Hour

When I started reading up on photography, especially landscape and portrait photography, and I quickly run into a term called the Golden hour.

The Golden hour is the first hour after sunrise and the last hour before sunset. The sun during this time is lower in the sky, and thefore it produces a softer and more diffused light. This type of light is more flattering.

A lot of professional photographer swears by this and some even go as far as saying that they only shoot during the Golden hour.

I am not a morning person and there is no way I am getting up at dawn before the sunrise, not even with the promise of a good picture or a cup of good coffee. So shooting around sunrise is out of the option.

A few days ago, I came home earlier from work to a nice golden light around the neighborhood. The sky is blue and clear and the weather was perfect.

I quickly changed, grabbed my camera, and went for a walk.

My Golden hour moment only lasted about 1/2 hour before the sun sets, but it was good for practice and experiment.

Devil's Head Lookout

I am catching up on my post, :).

We took some road trips this summer.

One Saturday we went to Devil's Head Lookout.  It is a US Forest Service fire lookout southwest of Denver. To get to the lookout tower, we hiked this beautiful 1.4 miles, 951 feet elevation trail.

Wild Animal Sanctuary

We went to the Wild Animal Sanctuary a few months ago.

 

The Sanctuary is about 40 miles North East Denver. We use the GPS

 

It is a non-profit organization, who rescue wildlife from across the US, Canada, Mexico, and South America. The animals rescued come from a variety of situations such as illegal pets, zoo surplus, exotic animal auctions, and from facilities closed due to animal abuse.

 

What's cool about the Sanctuary is, unlike the zoo, the animals are there to stay for the rest of their lives

 

We walked on the tall elevated catwalks to view the animals.

 

 

We saw a lot of tigers, wolves, and bears.

 

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A little pond for the tigers to swim and play.

 

 

 

 

The tube behind the sitting bear is actually a tunnel, leading to their underground climate-controlled rooms.

 

 

 

The best part of the trip was to see a cute brown bear, who kept coming over to bother the volunteer workers.

 

 

 

Snap Thursday: Roxborough Park

I went to Roxborough State Park earlier this month to test out the my new Sigma WA lens. It was cold and snow-packed. Took me forever to walk around one of their shortest trail, but I did it and came back home with a hundred pictures.

So I will be showing pictures from my short walk in the next several weeks. I hope you guys will like them.

Click here for a larger image

To join Snap Thursday: Post your photograph on your blog on Thursdays and leave your link in the comment section of my Snap Thursday post. Please also link back to my site. Click here to get your widget.

Snap Thursday: Lights

I have been slacking on my photography. The weather has been cold so I've been spending most of my free time knitting by the fireplace. This is one of my stashed photos. I took it last Fall, when the weather just started to get cooler at night. I wanted to play with low shutter speed and moving cars. It was really fun to do and I like the result.

To join Snap Thursday: Post your photograph on your blog on Thursdays and leave your link in the comment section of my Snap Thursday post. Please also link back to my site. Click here to get your widget.

Denver Zoo, part 2

This is part 2 of my Denver Zoo post. I thought this creature is interesting. It is called Slate-Pencil Urchin. If you are interested in learning more about it, you can check out the wikipedia link here. It has a lot of biology jargon (is it latin?) that went over my head. For me, I photograph it because it looked awesome, :).

I never would have thought there would be a baking reference at the zoo. This pretty starfish is called Chocolate Chip Starfish.

Denver Zoo, part 1

Christmas break we went to the Zoo and had a lot of fun! Lots of animals to see and photography.

We were lucky it was a nice day. There was still snow on the ground but it was sunny and the temperature is in the 50's.

Snap Thursday: Tall buildings

Santa (aka. hubby) a new lens for Christmas: Sigma 10-20mm.  I have not had a chance to play around much with it. But I did take a couple of shots when we were in downtown over the weekend.

To join Snap Thursday: Post your photograph on your blog on Thursdays and leave your link in the comment section of my Snap Thursday post. Please also link back to my site. Click here to get your widget.

Snap Thursday: Merry Christmas

Just a quick Snap Thursday to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! If you do not celebrate Christmas, I wish you Happy Holidays! :)

I made these truffles last weekend. Will post about them next week!

To join Snap Thursday: Post your photograph on your blog on Thursdays and leave your link in the comment section of my Snap Thursday post. Please also link back to my site. Click here to get your widget.

Snap Thursday: Bunny

It was pretty cold last week. We had a couple of days of snow and over the weekend the temperature was only in the teens.




On Sunday morning I looked out my front window to see the snow and to my surprise there is a little bunny taking cover there.

It opened its eyes for a second to look at me and then closed it again.

To join Snap Thursday: Post your photograph on your blog on Thursdays and leave your link in the comment section of my Snap Thursday post. Please also link back to my site. Click here to get your widget.

Snap Thursday: Seeing through

I had a lovely time last Thanksgiving weekend. Ate a lot and knit a lot. While taking pictures of my knitted projects, I noticed an interesting view through the viewfinder of my camera. That is, the coffee table, the wooden board on the coffee table, and the couch in the background.


So I did what any wannabe photographer would do. I took a picture of it.

While I like the photo above, I felt something was missing. So I took off my glasses, set it on the wooden board, and took a photo of the glasses.

I like this shot much better, :). It is funny to see the bit of the couch through my glasses.

To join Snap Thursday: Post your photograph on your blog on Thursdays and leave your link in the comment section of my Snap Thursday post. Please also link back to my site. Click here to get your widget.

Snap Thursday: Cowl

Happy "almost" Friday everyone!

I have been so lazy with the blog post lately and that is because I've been busy with my other hobby: knitting. Here is a photo of my latest finished project.

I love this cowl! I have been wearing it every day. It is very soft and it keeps me warm.

The pattern is Purl Ridge Scarf from Ravelry . The yarn is madelinetosh tosh vintage. I used about 1.3 skeins of it.

To join Snap Thursday: Post your photograph on your blog on Thursdays and leave your link in the comment section of my Snap Thursday post. Please also link back to my site. Click here to get your widget.

Snap Thursday: Sunset or Sunrise?

Sunset or sunrise? Can you guess?

I will post the answer in the comment section in a few days :).

To join Snap Thursday: Post your photograph on your blog on Thursdays and leave your link in the comment section of my Snap Thursday post. Please also link back to my site. Click here to get your widget.

Snap Thursday: Snowy cabin

Less than a week after I took the fall color photos, it snowed!

It's the wet kind of snow that is so beautiful because it stayed on the trees. This is a picture of someone's house in the city. I love it because it totally looked like it's a cabin in the mountains.

To join Snap Thursday: Post your photograph on your blog on Thursdays and leave your link in the comment section of my Snap Thursday post. Please also link back to my site. Click here to get your widget.