Sandoval Family Blog

Old chair made new, and an Olivia moment

I bought this chair last summer at the small junk/antique store in Pungo (there's only one!). It was $40. I picked out some very funky fabric, got it recovered (finally) and it's my new favorite chair. Of course, the cats were trying it out within 10 minutes of its arrival. 

And now for...An Olivia Moment

A couple of nights ago, Olivia and I were watching High School Musical 2. It's the end of the movie and the main characters kiss one another and then these big golf-course lawn sprinklers comes on and drench them and they all sing and dance off into the sunset, so to speak. So Olivia says during this scene, "I want to do that one day, mom."

"Oh gosh", I think.

So I say calmly, "Oh, you want to kiss a boy one day?"

"No, I want to play in the sprinkler like them," she says all cool.

That was a close one. 

Yummy Remote

Yummy Remote
Originally uploaded by amiefletch.

I think I will lick this remote. Yes, I will. Yum.

Staring at a wall

She did this last night for about 5 minutes straight. To me, it's staring at the wall. To her, who knows. Maybe she sees her shadow.

She requires no bribes for photos

The light in the master bedroom is just right in the late afternoon to experiment with back lighting and such. With Olivia at Nana's, I had to borrow a cat for a model. Savannah may eat flowers, but she's a willing model. (As long as you pet her.)

 

Suspicious

I bought some blooming tulips the other day for a pick-me-up. Came home last night to find the head missing from one of them, and suspicious chew marks on the leaves. Did some investigating and discovered:

This is what all of the blooms should look like.

 
One of them now looks like this.

Busted. Savannah is caught in the act. Charlie is in the background yawning. Tulips bore her.

 
Is that not an innocent face? Charlie sniffed but did not eat any of the blooms. (Which may explain all of the sneezing she's been doing.)

Relaxing Charlie

A quiet moment on the hall steps:

 

The cat chair

Charlie has taken over Olivia's Tinkerbell chair. No matter where the chair sits in the den, around 9 or 10 each evening, we hear the distinctive sound of Charlie slowly carefully getting in the chair and going to sleep. Last night I suggested we experiment with the chair and put it somewhere else in the house to see if Charlie would find it and curl up in it. A moment ago, I heard the distinctive sound of Charlie easing into the chair - behind me in the home office. Then I saw Steve laughing to himself on the home office couch - he had moved it without me even knowing it - to see what she'd do. Sure enough - she's sleeping happily behind me. Who knows where we'll move it tomorrow night!

Since I'm desparately trying to improve my focusing issues with the fancy camera, I took a bunch of shots of Charlie sleeping in the chair at many different shutter speeds/apertures and at two different ISOs (800 and 1600). Lesson of the night, it really does pay to shot at a very high (1600) ISO in even slightly low light - it produces sharper photos. I suppose that's because the shutter speed doesn't have to be as slow to catch the limited light. I'm also learning not to turn the aperture down quite so low  - yes, you're supposed to keep it "wide open" in low light - but that tends to lead to major blurring for me. (As with the photo of Olivia in the entry below this one.)