The Indecisive Artist

California Photo Book

Remember when Jay and I took a trip to California? It was Memorial Day weekend, 2008. Yeah… 16 months ago. Well, I finally finished up the photo book I made to highlight some of the 1100 photos I took. If I haven’t been sharing scrapbook layouts here on my blog it’s because I have been entirely focused on completing this photo book by Sept 15th. I didn’t want to share any of the individual layouts until I had the entire thing complete so that I could show the book in its entirety.

Well, here it is. :)

It ended up being 84 pages total, and I’m really proud of how it all came together and how I was able to see a project like this through to completion. Now I’m just getting ready to order it. I can’t wait to see it in a bound book!

Feel free to take a peek at the book. After all, I’ve been waiting to share it for a long time!

Normally when I scrap, I scrap whatever I’m in the mood for. I could never be a chronological scrapper – I’d never be caught up. Instead, I prefer to scrap whatever inspires me. The benefit to this is that I always have a little bit of something from multiple time periods. Because I use post-bound albums, I can rearrange the pages when I need to. (It’s usually a yearly task as it takes time to rearrange everything.) The drawback with wanting to do a photobook is that I have to commit to having the entire set of layouts complete before the photobook can be put together because there is no inserting more pages later one when I get a whim and decide to add something, you know? For that reason, a photobook is big commitment for me to make. :) However, it was worth the effort. I love the idea of a complete book telling the story of a trip start to finish.

I have to admit, though, that I had no idea how long this process would be for me. I did make an effort to retouch most of the photos before putting them on the page, which always adds time to the process. I intentionally kept the pages simple – it was to be all about the photos and not necessarily look like a scrapbook. Just a base paper, some photo frames filled with photos, and text and/or alphabets to tell the story. I’m so glad I went with a simple approach – it helped me both keep the focus on the photo and the story without distracting elements, and it also helped streamline the process so that I was able to create 84 pages for the book without getting tired of the task. :)

Jacuzzi Winery

I very much meant to post these winery posts sooner, but things have been hectic. Then, when I did have some time to post, wouldn't you know that my computer died. Well, not the computer, but the power cord. It's not very old either. It just wouldn't work, and without a power cord, there was no way to charge the battery on my laptop. So I headed to Best Buy last night to get myself a new power cord. I didn't want to wait for Dell to determine what was wrong and hope they'd send a replacement. I couldn't wait that long!! Ok so patience is not my strong suit. And just to give you an indication of HOW impatient I am... Best Buy ranks second in my book of all places I despise shopping. (Wally World is numero uno.)

But now I have power. I don't even want to say how much that purchase set me back. Yikes.

Anyway, here are some photos from the Jacuzzi Winery in Sonoma. This was the first winery we visited during our stay. It was just a few miles from the hotel and we got there about an hour before they closed.

I have to say this was probably my favorite place we visited. It was hard because I knew it was the first visit, I didn't want to go to ga-ga over what was there knowing full well that the next winery might be even better. LOL. But I think the reason I liked this one the best was because the wines here were Italian, not Californian. And I prefer Italian reds to California reds, generally speaking. There was one wine we tried there (the name escapes me but it was nothing I had ever heard of) that was so delicious. You know how they have different flavors and tastes they use to describe wines? Well, I'm not ashamed to admit that I think it's a bunch of hoo haa. When I drink wine, I taste wine. LOL.  But this wine was different. It had a finishing taste that reminded me of toasted marshmallows. It was sooooo delicious! I have a couple bottles arriving here soon. Can't wait to drink those babies!

 

This is the Jacuzzi Winery and the Olive Press. I don't know if they actually make the wine there as I didn't see any of that stuff... but the grapes are growing right behind the building. We actually saw this place before we got to the hotel, and I knew I wanted to visit it. Just look at all that Italian looking architecture.

View of the courtyard behind the building. It was sooo pretty here. It was such a beautiful day. Jay sat inside tasting wine while I journeyed outside and around the grounds for some camera time.

Before we tasted wine, we tasted olive oil. DELICIOUS!!!! Each of those silver canisters is a different flavor of olive oil, with the lightest on the right and the spiciest on the left. The one on the left end was so peppery it left tears in your eyes and burning in your throat! We were not prepared for that one! We ended up buying a bottle of the mildest flavor.

Just some of the wines on the shelf. They had the most gorgeous gift shop. I could have spent a fortune. Pottery and kitchen stuff.... oh it was heavenly. The Olive Press (where they sold olive oil) had a bunch of homemade soap and bath goods. It was tempting, but I was content just to smell and not buy. I can make my own olive oil soap. ;)

Finally, this is a fountain out off the courtyard. It was beautiful. Behind this were the vineyards. You can sorta see them in the photo, though it's hard to tell from the photo that that is what they are. Those hills in the background? Napa Valley lies on the other side.  We had to drive around them to get to Napa, even though it was probably just a few miles as the crow flies.

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At this rate it's going to take me months to post photos from all the places we visited. :)

San Francisco Photos

Thought I'd share a couple of San Fran photos. I took some of the highlight photos, and cleaned them up in Photoshop. I learned a new thing tonight - how to enhance your sky in your photos to make it a darker blue. So I tried it on these photos. I think it really enhances them and makes the photos much warmer looking.

First up, this is a photo of the Golden Gate bridge. It was cold and windy there when we stopped on our tour. There were these crazy surfers there catching waves. Insane. I guess they like to surf there in the bay because the waves are more frequent than on the coast. At least that's what the tour guide said.

It was interesting how it was so bright and clear and sunny that day. (This was on Thursday morning - the day we headed out of town to Sonoma.) In just a few hours after taking this photo, I'd find myself driving across the bridge. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. However, when we came back in to town Sunday night, the fog was rolling in, and driving over the bridge had this eerie feeling. Unfortunately I was driving, so I couldn't get any photos of it.

This next photo is just a sign marking Fisherman's Wharf. I had attempted to Photoshop out the wire across it, but I don't quite have that technique down. :) So it's going to stay for now.

Fisherman's Wharf was interesting. Lots of people. LOTS. People from everywhere around the globe. Shops on the street selling grey market photo goods. With my big camera around my neck, I was an easy target. Luckily rock bottom prices on grey market lenses are not a temptation for me. LOL. In the same shop they often sold high end artsy stuff. Like $20,000 statues. Jay WAS tempted. In fact, one of the shops was selling out everything really cheap because they were converting the business to be a diamond wholesaler. (Nothing shady there... <sarc>). Jay REALLY wanted to get some marble pedestals. They were only $50. And $120 to ship. But still a good price. I wouldn't let him do it. Ok - so it's the first time in our marriage he has ever actually listened to me when it comes to buying something. LOL. I was just afraid that he'd never see his pedestals. Remember, this is the shop selling grey market camera goods, too.

This was definitely a touristy area... but I'm glad we did it. Lots of fun stuff to see. Pier 39 was interesting with all its fun shops. We certainly enjoyed it. And we got thru it without spending too much money. Except at the fruit stand. OMG the strawberries we bought there were to-frickin-die-for. I only wish strawberries in Minnesota could taste that good this time of year!

So another one of the sights we saw was Alcatraz Island. I knew I didn't want to actually GO there. (Still a little freaked out by that movie The Rock.) LOL. But I didn't realize just how close it was to the city. I had envisioned it being farther away. So I was excited to be able to see it from Fishermans Wharf.  The photo is a little deceptive. I cropped in on it a little bit to focus just on the island. You can see a tour boat going around the island on the right side of the island.

We also asked a guy on the pier to take our photo with Alcatraz as the backdrop, but the results were less then spectacular. He did a good job of getting the island in focus... but we are just a couple of fuzzy blobs. Oh well... we tried.

This last photo I want to share is just this cute little guy waiting for dinner, err.. waiting to be dinner. LOL. There was a row of crab shacks along the street, and I couldn't help but take a bunch of close up photos of the the food available there. MMM. Fresh seafood. And lots of seagulls and pigeons looking for handouts. Crab sandwiches and clam chowder for an afternoon snack.

I have a lot more photos. (Approximately 1096 more...) I will try to share a few more of them over the next couple of days/weeks as I go thru them. I'm working on creating a scrapbook of the trip - one that I will have bound into a book - probably from Shutterfly. I normally don't do bound books except for theme albums... so I thought this was the perfect excuse to create a new theme album!

Anyway, those are the best of the San Fran photos I took. Next I'll share some winery photos.

Quick Post Trip Post

Only have a few minutes for a quick post. We were without internet at home until yesterday, so I wasn't able to post a summary of our California trip until now. And since the hotel in Sonoma wanted $10 a day for internet, I didn't have internet access on the trip, either. So much for keeping the blog updated with photos!

Anyway, the trip was awesome. The weather was beautiful - except for Saturday when it rained. We got to see fog in San Francisco as we drove back in to town over the Golden Gate bridge. Sonoma was rural and peaceful and beautiful. Napa was crazy busy with people. The wineries were not snobby at all.... we didn't feel one bit out of place. (We were actually a little nervous about that.) Some of the buildings/grounds at the wineries were literally castles. Amazing stuff.

Gas was $4.14 a gallon. Our rental car was a Kia Optima. (My husband 'forgot' to rent a car before we left, so when we walked to the car rental place - all three of them - Thursday morning, no one had any cars available, which isn't surprising, since San Fran is sooo hard to park in, it's not like they keep lots of extra cars on hand for crazy tourists to just rent at the spur of the moment. Anyway, since we paid $400 a night for the hotel on Fisherman's Wharf, we decided to get our money's worth, and we put the concierge to work finding us a rental car while we toured the city. :)  And luckily, he found us the Kia at Enterprise. At least it got good mileage. :)  )

We visited 10 wineries in total. Loved them all. They were all different - some had amazing wines, some had amazing views, some had amazing grounds. Some were all of the above.

I will have to double-check the final count, but I do believe I took close to 1100 pictures over the course of the trip. Not all are keepers, of course. :) But I had a goal of 1000 photos (or 200 a day), so I'm quite satisfied. Here's one from dinner Saturday night at the hotel's restaurant. The wine we purchased just minutes before at the coop tasting room on the hotel grounds. The restaurant waived the corkage fee since it was purchased there, and because we were already at the hotel and done driving for the night, I was able to enjoy more than just a sip!

We purchased a couple of cases of wine and had them shipped back here, so they should be making their arrival some time next week. I can't wait!

I'm a little sad that our vacation is over - the time went so quickly! And now it's back to reality. Of course, Jay and I are already talking about "when can we go back?" :)

Going to San Fran/Sonoma/Napa

 

Hubby and I are going on a long weekend away to somewhere we've always wanted to go: Wine Country California!! We are going to celebrate our anniversary. We honeymooned in Italy 8 years ago, and since another trip to Italy is going to be out of our budget for a long while yet, we decided to try the next best thing: Sonoma and Napa in California.

I'm soooo freakin excited. I can't wait! Just thinking about all the wonderful opportunities for taking photos has me giddy!

The last time Jay and I took a trip together was shortly before I got pregnant with Gianna - so four years ago. We took a 7 day cruise to the Southern Caribbean.

Now if the travel books I ordered from Amazon.com would arrive I could start planning some more details!

Have I mentioned how excited I am??