Underbusted! Hallowiener Special

Last weekend was kinda busy - The Iowa School of Burlesque put on a two-night show, and there was Farm Crawl. More on Farm Crawl later - here are a few images from the show, Underbusted Hallowiener Special:

Hostess Stinketta Beaverhausen performs onstage.

Guest star Tito Bonito, the Cuban Missile Crisis

Gin Appropriate

Mae the Force

Maddie Moiselle and TJ Godkingwasp Grove

The cast.
Back Row: Stinketta Beaverhausen, Leo LaFlash, Mae the Force, Phoenix L'Amour, Gin Appropriate, TH Godkingwasp Grove, Koko Trousseau.
Front Row: Maddie Moiselle, Tito Bonito.

For more images, please visit my albums on Facebook - Friday's show, Saturday's show.

Redecorating 6

It's been a while since I have posted anything, but work has been proceeding, albeit at a slower pace as things have got busier at the farm. We have now tiled the kitchen and dining room floors, and I painted the switch and outlet plates, air conditioning registers, and baseboard heater to match the kitchen cabinets. We are really happy with the result!

Redecorating 5

The kitchen cabinets are finished at last! It took a full two weeks to do this job...

First, everything was cleared out, the countertops, doors and hardware removed, and the cabinets were sanded and primed, then painted inside and out.

The doors and drawer fronts were sanded down to bare wood before being given one coat of primer and three coats of paint (on each side).

This was my drying area - I needed to support nineteen doors and six drawer fronts.

Doors replaced and fitted with new pulls. I also painted the socket and switch plates to match the doors :)

A "before and after" composite of the sink area. This was before I fitted the new countertops, so it looks even better now :) I cant wait to get the new flooring for the kitchen and dining area!

New Floor

So we had this new flooring in our livingroom, and loads of space, because the furniture hadn't been put back yet, so..... PHOTOSHOOT!!!!

Model: Kitty, hair and makeup by Amy Miller

Redecorating 4

The living room....

Before...

Bye bye carpet! We won't miss you!

We really like the nice open look and feel of the place :)

Redecorating 3

Our bedroom....

...before decorating....

...painted and floored...

...and finished!

Redecorating 2

Here's some more pictures of our "Room of Requirement"

It was really, really great to get the carpet out of there! Then everything had to be washed and/or scrubbed, the ceiling and walls painted, and the floor sealed.

When that was all done, I laid the laminate flooring. I made this video using a free time-lapse app for my iPhone. It took a while to make up its mind whether it was shooting in landscape or portrait format - probably because the camera was aimed at a downward angle. I supported the camera nine feet off the floor on a c-stand in the hall with two booms, so there'd be nothing on the floor that I was working on. The app shot at three frames per minute, and plays back at nine frames per second, so there's about three hours compressed in this vid.

Et, voila! The finished room :)

I wonder what we'll use it for now?

Redecorating 1

It's been ages since I posted anything here, so I'll do a couple of "catch-up" posts, starting with some pictures of inside our house, where we are doing a big redecorating project...

First is the "Room of Requirement" - this has been an office, a feline sick bay, a spare bedroom, a bird nursery, and a general dumping ground for all kinds of stuff....

Our bedroom....

And the living room.

In these images, note particularly the carpets - they won't be around much longer!

Taking a Wider View...

I have been experimenting with panorama photography recently, taking multiple images while turning the camera around, and "stitching" them together in Photoshop to make one big picture. These are my first efforts. They leave a bit to be desired, as I don't have a nodal slide, and a couple of them were shot handheld....

(Blogger has cropped these images, so you need to click on them to see the full width of the pictures)
This is the Western Skies Scenic Byway between Panora and Stuart in Guthrie County.
It's a composite of twelve images.

Next up is the magnificent High Trestle Trail Bridge between Woodward and Madrid, taken from the road bridge on Highway 210. This is a "first draft" for a picture that I'm planning. I shot it handheld, as I just wanted to get a feel for the scene, and didn't bring a tripod. The light was tricky too, as I was shooting into the sun. Fifteen shots went into making this composite.

Next time you're on the Highway 210 bridge, don't forget to look to the north too. This eight-image composite shows the beautiful S-curve of the Des Moines River. Again handheld, I think I'll revisit this shot as well.

Randomness...

A few more snippets from the past couple of months.

We saw the wonderful and talented Daphne Willis perform at a house concert. (I don't actually have a thing for girls with goggles - it's just coincidence that the model in my last post had gogs too)

And Dawn working her anti-Nargle force field...

I found time to do this shot for a magazine article on natural dyeing that Maggie wrote.

Autumn and harvest time is probably my favourite time of the year, certainly from a photographic point of view. Here are some pretty squashes we saw at Wills Family Orchard

This guy (probably girl) was sunbathing on the roof of a car at the Orchard.

Some random autumn shots: This is on the bike trail behind our house.

The old Raccoon River bridge at Adel,

...and Adel's beautiful Court House.

 Maggie's hair is green now :)

We had a lovely Yoga photoshoot at Gray's Lake Park with Paula.

And we went to Hanging Rock Park in Redfield this morning to do some more pictures of the beautiful autumn colours.

Hypobloggia

Only two posts in the last two months! It has been quite a time! To catch up, here are a few of the things that happened, with pictures :)

It all started on the 3rd of August, when my brother Colm, and my daughter Aisling showed up on our doorstep. Apparently, I was the only person on the planet who was unaware of the visit!
Here they are with Maggie:

Maggie, Laura, and Becky did a triathlon

We took our visitors to the Iowa State Fair. They got to line up to see the Butter Cow, eat incredibly unhealthy food, and admire some very expensive agricultural machinery.

We also went to the Adel Sweetcorn Festival. There wasn't much in the was of exciting machinery, but the food was better.

There was the Magic Sample Sunday at Prairieland Herbs.

There were two other visits of family from Ireland (these I did know about), completing what will go down in history as III11(The Irish Invasion of Iowa '11). My wonderful niece, Claire, called in on her way to Australia, and my parents came over too.

Some more random pics: The epitome of Iowa - corn and sky.

And pretty wildflowers.

Oh, and I did a fun photography workshop!