Photoshop!

Ok, so I will soon be helping a local photography studio with some of their editing.  This is the same studio that I help with the Diva birthday parties, and just recently have helped with lighting some location photo shoots.  So I have been studying up on Photoshop, got a mini-lesson from one of the photographers on how to use it, and have been reading tutorials online and playing around some more.  I thought I would share some of my pics I have edited with you!  Now these are edited a bit more than you would someone's portrait, but I am having fun playing. :) Just a reminder that if you click on the actual picture, it will blow it up larger for you to see.

A Letter to Lowes

Dear Lowes,

I am very disappointed with Lowes.  I needed to replace my cooktop, and since I live 40 miles away from a Lowes store I started browsing Lowes and other websites. I found Lowes had the best price, and found the model I wanted, but according to the website my store didn't carry it and I would have to order it.  So I did.  I waited 3 weeks and then called to check the status of the order.  Previously I had checked and was told I would be called by an associate as soon as it arrived.  Yes, the phone number they had on file was correct.  Well, I never got a call, so when I called today they said that it had been ready for pickup for a while.  This was mildly irritating because being without a cooktop for 3 weeks is tricky. So tonight my husband and I arrived at Lowes to pick up the cooktop and when they brought it we noticed the styrofoam packing block was busted. (We have driven the 40 miles back home just to open boxes of broken stuff before, so we try to always check before we leave now.) So we lifted that up and the cooktop we waited 3 weeks for was dented.  So the customer service guy thinks about what to do for a minute and then informs us that they actually carry that model in the store!  So I waited 3 weeks for a dented cooktop that I ordered only because the Lowes website said it wasn't carried in the store, and that no one was apparently going to call and let me know it had arrived anyway.  I guess next time I need something I will pay more and go to Home Depot.

Sincerely,

Heather

(I did actually send this to Lowes already...jerks!  And we did get a non-dented cooktop that the store had in stock. Grrr)

Random Ireland Observations

• The people are super-duper nice.  Seriously.
• There are not many fat Irish people.  I think part of this is because they don't drink soda like we do.  When I did order a Coke, it always came in a small size (with no ice) and there were no free refills.  I think the other part is because a lot of them walk or ride bicycles everywhere.
• The Irish don't use ice!  Our hotel room was lacking an ice bucket.  When we got water with our meals, there were no cups full of ice.  However, the beer was chilled!
• Using an ATM was an extremely easy and effective way to manage money while we were there.  Credit cards worked fine too.  Also, Post Offices would exchange currency.
• The paid parking system confused the tar out of us.  Parking garages had you pay the fee at a kiosk before you got back in your car to leave.  Pay-and-display parking was scratch-off ticket looking things for sale at the Post Office and maybe elsewhere in Limerick.  In Ennis there was a machine on the sidewalk that printed out a ticket for you to put in your car.  It was all just very strange because we didn't know how it all worked the first few days. 
• Bono sings about "where the streets have no name", and many of the streets in fact had no name.  Thankful for the GPS, even though I cursed at it 80% of the time.
• The roads are crazy narrow and curvy, with stone walls overgrown with shrubs that will scrape the side of your car constantly if you stay on your "side".
• The people are really nice!
• The countryside was so breathtakingly beautiful...yet stinky.  Sheep don't smell great.

Ireland Trip Part 8...Dublin

Sorry for the time lapse between posts, but my laptop power cord burned out and then I went on a trip to visit the familia in Kansas.  This series of Ireland posts should be about finished though!  It's hard to believe that exactly one month ago we were flying to Ireland.  Anyway, our last day in Ireland we drove the 2 whole hours across the country to Dublin for one purpose...to visit the Guinness Storehouse.

Dublin did have a bit of traffic, but it also had something we had been missing.  Traffic lights!  No roundabouts here!  The part we drove through looked kind of trashy, so we didn't think Dublin was much nicer than Limerick at all.  We made it to the Storehouse without incident.  I had pre-booked tickets to save a couple euros, and was I glad I had.  There was a huge foreign tour group getting tickets at the counter, and we were able to go to the self-serve kiosk and right through the gates.

The tour was self-guided, but we learned a lot, and there was so much to look at.  The bar at the top had a panoramic view of Dublin where we enjoyed a tasty pint.  We visited the Guinness Store and bought several t-shirts, pint glasses, and other little trinkets.  We even bought some Guinness chocolate bars, and they were definitely interesting.  Then we used another coupon I had to eat lunch on site, and there was another unexpected surprise...an ice bucket!  Were we in heaven?

The hubs surprisingly didn't want to traipse around Dublin, so we hopped back in the car and on the way back stopped in Roscrea.  There was another castle tour we did there and we walked around a bit.  After that we went back to Limerick and chilled.  It was a fun, but exhausting vacation!  I wanted to start packing things up, taking inventory of souvenirs for the customs form, and just little stuff like that, so we ordered room service.  Bad idea.  We did get them to send up a bucket of ice, but the food we received was rather nasty.  At this point I was really missing "normal" food and was ready to get home just to have something I knew I would like.

As always, a few pics from the day:

View of Dublin from top of Guinness Storehouse

Roscrea

Roscrea

Looks are VERY deceiving