Church

Day 5

Red Doors

Day 4

The red doors on the front of this place are so eye catching.  I drive by it all the time and think, I've got to get a picture of that! So today I did. The 365 Day Project is really encouraging me to stop and take pictures of things I normally don't, thinking, oh I'll do it some other time.  If I had a white house, I would definitely do some red distressed doors like these.

ISO 320
Shutter 1/25
Aperture F20

My First Pomegranate

Day 3

Pomegranates are in season!  I was so excited to see them when I first walked in the grocery store, I've been wanting to buy one so bad. I've had pomegranate juice and a lot of things that are pomegranate flavored, but I've never actually bought the fruit and ate it that way.  So this is a photo of my very first pomegranate and the first time I've eaten one.  I don't like how they have all those seeds in them, but it didn't taste bad at all.  How do you eat a pomegranate? I would like to just be able to drink the pomegranate juice from the fruit instead of having to keep spitting all those seeds out.  Any tricks to this?

For this shot, I was trying to get the foreground in focus and the background blurry and keep it from being underexposed at the same time (No flash and indoors with low light).  I ended up having to put it on a tripod.  

ISO 400, Shutter=1/5, F5   I'm not sure if this was the best settings for this or not, if anyone can give some advice, please comment or send an email.  

I received the Mastering Digital SLR Photography book, but I really don't like it. It seems to be geared more toward the professional photographer that is switching from 35mm to DSLR (digital).  The photography lingo throughout the book is way over  my head.  I need to do more searching on a more basic beginners photography book.  Any recommendations for Photography books are highly appreciated.

Walking Trail

Day 2

There is a walking trail that runs through the city.  It has some pretty scenery. One thing I always notice is that someone always makes these rock tower things all up along the river.  Does anyone have any idea what this is about?  They all have the rock rings around them, too.  I just thought it was something unique to take a picture of.

This is the walking trail.  I can't remember how many miles long the trail is, but there are little 1/4 markers all along the way to let you know how far you've  gone.  I just happen to run into some friends while I was there.  What a small world, ok, well it IS a small town. lol  I let Little Foot play in the river while we were there, too. He is crazy about the water.  So far, I like the 365 Day Project, I may decide to go ahead and continue doing it.

365 Day Project

Groceries

Day 1

My little trip to the grocery store.  I need to get more creative, I know.  It is tricky taking pictures indoors with no flash and funky lighting.  That's why I wanted to try my hand at this shot. My photography books arrived in the mail finally, so I can start finding out how to set the camera better.  I think the lighting looks a little pinkish and I always hold my camera a little lopsided, something I really need to work on. I'm not sure how to make sure it's level.  Hopefully in the next 365 days, my photos will improve.  This was sort of fun!  :)

Adding a Back Porch?

This is the back of my house.  This picture was taken right before I moved in.  I've been talking about having the little patio screened in, but now I may have a new plan.  I had some company over recently and someone pointed out to me that adding a screened in porch where the patio is built may not work out because of all the electrical wiring and boxes that are there.  They recommended I add the porch onto the back of my laundry room/office.

I would need to knock this window and wall out and add French doors.

Then just add the porch on in this green area I have marked.

I already know of someone I can call to come out and look at my place and give me an estimate of what this would cost.

I was thinking of something really simple like this.

(I pulled this photo from google images. It's from a real estate ad.)

Very simple.

I really like this one, it blends better with my deck.

I'm not sure when I would do this, I'll get the quote for it first, then take it from there and decide what to do.    If anyone  has had a screened in patio added, please let me know of any obstacles I may be facing.  I really want to do my homework on this one.

__________________

Someone emailed me and told me about a lot of bloggers that are doing the 365 days project.  You post one photo a day for a year.  I was thinking since I don't have a lot going on with my house anymore since a lot of my main projects are done, I could do this.  I'm really wanting to get back into photography and this would really help my photography skills.  I just don't know if I'm dedicated enough to get a photo up every single day. I could try it for a little while and see how it works out I suppose.  On the days I have projects going on with my house, I would still post about that, too.  

New Books

Outliers is the next book I will be reading.  R8chel left the recommendation in my comments section for this one.  I read the first pages of it on Amazon and it looked really interesting. This isn't a novel like the others I've been posting about, I like to mix it up a little. You can read some of it here on Amazon.

As you know from my previous post, I really loved the book, Set This House In Order.  I decided to get another book by the same author, called Bad Monkeys.  This also looked interesting from what I read of it on Amazon.

Mastering Digital SLR Photography

I love photography and would like to take more photography classes, but they don't offer them anywhere in this small town.  So I bought a book to teach myself.  I had taken a beginners class in Atlanta when I first bought my camera, but I didn't learn as much as I would have liked to from it.  I have so many questions about lighting and how to get color to come out correctly.  Hopefully this book will shed some light on the subject (no pun intended).  You can read about this book on Amazon, too.

Last but not least, I ordered this book to help me  understand my camera better.  I  bought the Nikon D80 just a couple of years ago when I was in Atlanta and took a class to help me with it.  The book that comes with the Nikon gives  basic instructions, but I need something more in depth since I'm really wanting to get more into photography and I dislike the way the colors come out in my photos that I take of  my home.  I have never been able to get my master bedroom and guest room wall paint colors to come out correctly.  After I read the book I will have to post photos of all the new tricks I've learned!

A little about how I got interested in photography:

When I was in my mid-twenties, I worked at Mystery Fun House in Orlando where I was the photographer that takes old time photos.  I would help the people dress up in old fashioned clothing and pose them, then use an old fashioned camera that you had to make the people sit very still for because the shutter was left open for about 5 seconds, so if someone moved, it would come out blurry.  I also got to develop the photos in a dark room.  This was when I first fell deeply in love with photography.  I loved it!  After that job I started working at photo labs.  One photo lab I worked at, I met a guy named Hal, who took professional photographs for Nascar and Kodak.  He would take me out on the town and we would set up a camera on a tripod and he would teach me how to set the aperture with the shutter speed to get the kind of picture you wanted.  One thing I remember getting all excited about was when he showed me how to set the shutter speed to a longer setting to pick up the lights on cars driving at night on the freeway.   We didn't have digital cameras back then, so after we developed them, the photos turned out amazing!  It looked like we created magic with the camera. I was so excited learning about all the neat things you can do with photography.

After I stopped working at photo labs, I got away from photography for a while, but always had that love for it and longed to get back into it.  I finally decided to get back into it when I was in Atlanta last year and thought I would try my hand at the new digital SLR cameras, since my digital point and shoot I couldn't do all the fancy tricks and get the photos to come out just right.  I am falling back in love with photography again and I think I will try to be more active in taking photos now.  The digital camera is so different  compared to the old 35 mm cameras that Hal taught me with.  It's like trying to learn photography all over again. That's ok, because it's worth it.  I'll try to post a lot of my photography after reading up on these new photography books I just bought.  I'm even thinking of taking some of my prints down to the art showing here in town.  You just never know.  :)

Set This House in Order - Book Review

I loved this book!  I had said before that I like a book that makes me think as I read it, a book that gives me something to try to figure out.  Well this book fit that criteria.  The book is about Andy Gage, who has multiple personalities living in his head.  Matt Ruff did an amazing job to take you into the head of someone with this type of disorder.  After a while, you actually started to feel like it's normal to have multiple personalities inside one person, that is how great a job the author did.  The book even has little drawings and diagrams in it so you can visually see what the author is talking about.  I'm a visual person so I loved this.  Andy has a little house he built inside his head that houses all the personalities so there isn't chaos, the book shows how he came about building this house for his personalities and how each room works and functions.

The story is anything but predictable.  You come to so many twists and turns you have no idea what's going to happen next. I was kept on the edge of my seat up until the very last page.  Oh and another great thing about this book, he doesn't leave you hanging at all at the end.  He neatly goes in and gives you a run down of everything that happens with each character and wraps it up nicely.  I rarely read books that do this, which can leave me with a frustrated feeling.   I would love to read more books like this, so if anyone has read this and knows of other books like this, please let me know.  I don't want to say too much about it because it seems like if I say anything, it will give too much away.

Although I highly recommend this book, I am going to give a warning.  There is one personality in the book named Maledicta.  This personality cusses like a sailor and drops the F bomb in every sentence.  I just thought I would throw that out there in case this might be a deciding factor if you read the book or not.  Although I hate books that have cursing like that, I actually do see why the author used it in this particular case. The only time it's used is with this particular character.

I don't have a  new book set up to read yet, I am still trying to figure out what to read next.  I'll look through some of the ones that people commented on in my last book post and see if any of those jump out at me.  I usually try to go to Amazon.com and read the first few pages of the books first. I can usually tell just by that if I'm going to like a book or not.

I give this book 2 thumbs up!

Garden Happy

My garden is still growing from when I planted it back in spring. There are a lot of weeds in it, but I'm still getting a lot of peppers. I won't need to buy peppers for another 5 years after all these peppers I got!

There are still a lot of herbs growing in the garden too. Some chives, parsley, dill and a ton of Tha basil.

Here's all the Thai basil in my garden. Crazy!

I'm going to freeze a bunch of it and maybe make some pesto and freeze that, too.

I have enough frozen peppers to last for years. LOL

Some of my banana peppers I put in vinegar.

Habanero's I picked.

Canned Habenero peppers.

To can the Habenero peppers so the cans would seal, I boiled vinegar and poured over them in the can.  They didn't seal right away, but that night while I was laying in bed, I heard the cans popping as they sealed.

Now that I had my first garden, I should be ready next year and know what to plant and what not to plant.  I'm going to try to grow my tomatoes in pots next year since they didn't do too well in my garden.  I'll grow more cucumbers next year, too.

Having this garden was one of my favorite things about getting my new house.  I don't think I could ever go back to apartment life now.  :)

My 1 Year House Anniversary

Today it is official, it has been exactly one year since I bought my home. The closing papers were signed October 13th, 2009.

You can click here to read the post from Oct 13 last year on the day I bought my house. 

So much has changed after looking at those pictures.  It doesn't even feel like the same house that I walked into a year ago.  I feel like I really made it a home, I had no idea I was going to go so crazy decorating.  After renting for the past 20 years, it was the first time I was able to really tackle a place... paint walls, change out doors, change flooring, all the things you usually can't do when you rent.  I had so much fun doing it! It was also fun journaling everything down in my *online diary* which is what I like to call my blog.  It's so easy to look back at things, if you ever buy a new home, I really recommend blogging every step of the way.  I also love all the feedback I get from my readers.  When I first got this blog, I named it shopping candy, gave the website address out to 3 or 4 friends that lived far from me just to show them things I had bought while shopping (I love to shop).  Then when I got my home, I started blogging just about my house and after a while, it sort of turned into a decorating blog so I went back and erased all the other posts that weren't really house related, so I had this blog about a house called Shopping Candy.  So I tacked on *for my first home* under it, since I am shopping for all this house candy now!  So that is how I got stuck with the name Shopping Candy for a house blog! LOL  

For my 1 year Anniversary I am posting all my rooms how they look right now after 1 year of being in this house.

 Photo of the guest room isn't exactly how it looks right now, 

I have it torn apart and am redecorating it.

I love my library closet!

How have I liked this past year here at my new home?  Here's a pros and cons list.

PROS:

• My neighbors are really nice and so friendly.
• The neighborhood is beautiful with all of it's rich luscious trees everywhere and the winding hilly roads.
• This house has great bones, it was easy to work with and turned out better than I expected.
• I love being inside the city limits near all the conveniences, but not right in the middle of everything, where I'm tucked back in the trees away from it all.
• Everything was pretty easy to do in spite of all the first time homeowner horror stories I've heard.
• I love my fenced in yard. It keeps the stray dogs out and gives Little Foot a lot of room to run around and I loved getting to have my own garden.

CONS:

• There is a little too much dog barking that goes on in the neighborhood. Almost everyone on the street has outdoor dogs.  
• I wish I had more property than what I do, it would give me more privacy. 
• A Pro was all the beautiful trees, but they are also a bit of a con.  My garden wasn't able to get as much sun as I would have liked.  Acorns sometimes fall out of them and you have to walk outside worried you might get pummeled by an acorn! lol

I have always got the moving bug about a year after I've lived somewhere and even though I love this place, I still have the itch to move again.  I'm not going to do it though.  I'm going to stay planted and make some roots here, something I've never done before.  I know I won't live in this house forever and when I'm older I will definitely retire somewhere farther south, where it's warm all year. (You can take the girl out of Florida, but you can't take sunny Florida out of the girl.)  I long for the long summers and almost non-existent winters.  

I do love being close to my parents though and if they decide to up and move south, I am outta here, too! LOL  I'm making a nice home for myself here, so don't worry, I will be here for a while to come.  :)

I may not post every day like I have in the past, I don't have as many projects going on anymore, although, I do have more plans for some tweaking around the house.  Just a couple of days ago, I broke down and got the Pottery Barn pendant I've been wanting.  So there will still be little fun things to post about.  

Thanks for all your support and helpful comments.  

With love,

Jolie

Autumn Leaves Festival

This is a picture I took at the Autumn Leaves Festival yesterday with my cell phone.  It was packed!!! People come from miles around to go to this once a year.

I mainly went just to get this collard green sandwich! It's a yummy mess!

My collard green sandwich.

It is a food lovers paradise, maybe not healthy food lovers paradise, but well, it's only once a year, so it can't hurt, right? lol

I bought a new front door this weekend, so I'll post more about that later.  It's not up yet, I have to shorten it and put all the hardware on it.  Not sure when I'll get all that done.  I can't believe I've had my house for almost a year now. My one year house anniversary is coming up very soon!

New dining chairs

I found 4 of these ladder back chairs at a thrift store.  They are what I've been looking for and she sold them to me for $10. each.  They need a little cleaning up, I may try to stain them a little darker, too.

I'm also on the hunt for a new dining table.  My little round table only seats 4 and I would like a table that seats 6 since I don't have a separate dining room to seat more people.  I'm hoping to find one that's more of a long rectangle rather than round or oval.  This will leave me to needing a new area rug under the table, too!  Notice how everything always causes a chain reaction and decorating is just never done. :)

I also got me a little fuzzy pillow, 

found it at Target.  ($12.)

Hmm I don't like it on the couch, I'm going to move it to my master bedroom.

I've also still been keeping my eye open when I'm out for an armoire for my guest room.

Here's another one I found at a thrift store, but I think it might be too big and bulky, although it does look similar to the one from my collage I made. I could replace the cut out parts in front with glass.

I'm still going to keep looking around though.

It does feel a little frustrating having to keep going back to the same thrift stores all the time hoping they have just what I'm looking for, so I went up to Virginia to an antique store there and I found this little desk, but it's not big enough for an actual office desk.  It was $29. and would be a good project to refinish.  

My search continues for a desk, too. There is a desk I found at an antique store here in town that I keep thinking about, but it's REAL old and I'm worried that it may smell bad or fall apart on me or something.  I'll get a picture of it next time I'm there.  It's large like what I'm looking for, too.  Why am I so picky?

Oh and just a little thing for fun, a little fact about myself that I don't know if a lot of people know... I LOVE old cars and trucks.  Whenever I see them out on the road or around town, I get a little excited.  Sometimes I'll even take pictures of them discretely with my cell phone, sshhh don't tell anyone.

I should put it on my bucket list to get me one of these old cars one day.

The Wildwater Walking Club- Book Review

I just finished The Wildwater Walking Club recently.  This was a book my book club had suggested we read and I had never read it.  Well I only went to the book club a couple of times.  Anyway, this was not one of those books that was a page turner.   You know those books that you pick up and you can't put it down because you can't wait to see what the next page is going to say... well this wasn't one of those.

I would read it a little, put it down and have to force myself to finish reading it.  There was no action or anything. I think the main thing was that there was nothing to try to figure out as I read it.

Anyway, the book is about 3 women who form a walking club.  The first woman gets laid off from her job (takes a buy out) and doesn't know what to do with herself.  She is hurt by a guy and pouts about it on and off throughout the book.  She meets up with 2 other women while she's out walking and one of them has a lavender garden.  From then on out, the books seems to revolve around the lavender garden and a lavender festival they plan to go to .  The main character, Noreen, seems to be defined by the job she had.  When she thinks of anything or tries to do anything, it's always about her job she had for so long. She even goes to group therapy to learn how to let go of her job.  Through the book the different events she goes through helps her to stop letting her job define who she is and start finding out who she is, Noreen, the real person.  She becomes stronger and finds her own voice.  It took a walking club, vandalizing the town square, a lavender festival, a winery and a death to help her find herself.

I really don't know what else to say about this book.  I didn't take much away from it.  I'm still searching for something that is a real page turner and makes me use my mind as I read it.  Someone suggested for me to read Set this House in Order, so that is the next book I'll start on.  It's about a man with multiple personalities.

Set This House In Order

The next book I'm going to read.

Please feel free to recommend more reading material.   :)

New Dishes!

Fiestaware Dishes

I have been wanting white dishes for a long time. I finally bit the bullet and ordered me some.  I love Fiestaware.  I've posted before about all the different colors of them I own, but I have still been craving all white ones.  I like Fiesta so much, I decided to stick with it and just ordered me a bunch of sets in white.  I am going to start out with 4 sets. I ordered them from Kohl's.

Crate & Barrel Bowls

I also got these little bowls from Crate & Barrel.  When I say little, I didn't realize how little they were going to be, so now I am still on the lookout for some larger white soup bowls. Luckily these were on sale on their Outlet site. This is the bowl set from their outlet page.

I also got some plates from C&B called Cafeware II Salad Plate.

The large white serving bowls, I got off of Ebay.  My mom had some of these Corning bowls at her house and I love to use them when I visit.  I found these serving bowls that are made just like them, but I can't seem to find the matching soup bowls anywhere.  They don't make them anymore, but I know if I keep looking they are likely to turn up somewhere.

So if you can't tell, my new obsession is white dishes!

If you have any brands that you love, please let me know so I can check into them.  I'm a little fanatical about making sure they're lead free.  I had tested some white dishes I had here at my house and the test turned out positive for lead in them.  So that scared me a little.  I'm going to retest them again just to be sure.  Believe it or not, there are still dishes out there on the shelves of stores today that have plenty of lead in them.  They don't advertise it of course, but they will tell you if it's in it or not if you write to them.  (Apparently it's almost impossible to have lead free dishes, it's the glaze that covers the dish that is suppose to be lead free, so never eat off of cracked and chipped dinnerware.)

Fiesta Salt and Pepper shakers

These are just way too cute, I am also wanting to get these!

Tobacco Basket is Up

I love it!  I'm so glad I got this, it may be one of my favorite home decor purchases!   I took my hydrangeas from the fireplace and just put them on the table for now.  I'll try to find something else to put here later.  I had candles burning in my fireplace last night...  I wanted some fireplace ambiance and it isn't quite cold enough for a fire yet.

I put a big screw in the wall and tied some rope around part of the basket at the top and just hung the rope on the screw.  It seems sturdy enough that it should hold.

I called Lowe's today to try to order a new front door for the living room, but the guy didn't know how to find the door I was looking for. Guess I'll have to run down there tonight or some other time and try to talk to someone in person to get things done. The door will be glass so it will  let more light in, I don't like how dark my living room feels when the door is closed, I usually keep it open so I can get light from my storm door.

I don't like my mantle decor anymore, I need to change that out.  I never did switch it to fall decor.  I don't even have any fall decor to decorate it with. I didn't move in until November, so fall was pretty much over by the time I got in.  If you look real close at the picture, you can see where I accidentally left the screw driver and tape measure on the left side of the mantle from where I was putting up the basket.  oops

Tobacco Basket

A while back, I had posted a picture of this basket I wanted to get to put in my living room.

I've been looking everywhere for one and finally found one a few days ago at an antique store!

My new tobacco basket!

I'm going to put it on the wall next to the fireplace, over this table.

I need to figure out how to fasten it securely on the wall, this baby is heavy!

Once I get it put on the wall I'll post a picture.

I also found some other photos online of where people have put these baskets in their homes.  If you have any other pics of these baskets, let me know, I would love more inspiration.

Over the fireplace.

From Southern Living.

Over the couch.

If you're wondering what a tobacco basket is, it's a basket that was used to take to market back in the day. They would use them to display the tobacco on at the market for people to buy.  North Carolina is well known for growing tobacco, so there are tons of these baskets floating around out there. My dad said some of these old warehouses around NC still have hundreds of these baskets stored in them.  I would love to stumble on one of these warehouses  :)

Update On My Dad

Speaking of my dad, he's doing great!  I've been spending most of my time over at my parents home while he's recovering.  This weekend he actually went out on the farm and picked grapes with me.  He was showing me the step by step method how to make wine, so I made a couple of 5 gallon barrels for him this weekend.  I took pics of the process, so I'll post that once the wine is finished, which will be months from now, but I can't wait to see how they turned out since I actually did these myself.   He's not fully recovered, but he sure is glad to be home and not stuck in that hospital anymore.  The doctors said it would take 6 weeks for recovery, 3 months for it to heal, and a year for him to feel 100% like himself again.  He's really doing great though and I'll post updates on him, too.  Thank you all for your encouragement and prayers.