braddumm

Set found on my FLICKR ACCOUNT

http://www.flickr.com/photos/braddumm/sets/72157623261481081/

If you're having trouble seeing them, add me as a friend over on Flickr. Then you should be able to see them.

Thanks to www.superstock.com for the Announcement Photo for this challenge. Use your imagination to create a photo with the subject matter of HANDS AND/OR FEET. Note that they may be covered with gloves or socks or shoes if you want. Reach into your creativity to make your picture artistic and interesting. This doesn't mean you have to snap the picture yourself (although you most certainly take complete ownership by doing so)...but the photo must be your own. You must conceptualize it, render it, and direct it. It must be worthy of your signature and copyright.

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Thanks to www.superstock.com for the Announcement Photo for this challenge. Use your imagination to create a photo with the subject matter of HANDS AND/OR FEET. Note that they may be covered with gloves or socks or shoes if you want. Reach into your creativity to make your picture artistic and interesting. This doesn't mean you have to snap the picture yourself (although you most certainly take complete ownership by doing so)...but the photo must be your own. You must conceptualize it, render it, and direct it. It must be worthy of your signature and copyright.

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If you want to join in the fun, here's where you post:

http://drawadinosaurday.com

If you want to see what's already submitted, here's the link:

http://toddhpage.com/drawadinosaurday/gallery/

Here's mine:



Thanks for another great day of dinosaur creativity, toddpage! Fourth year running!

We had this for dinner last night...totally easy and really tasty!

This recipe is fast and easy to make.



If you follow this to the letter it will make soup for two people for two meals.

Double, if you have a crock pot big enough, and you get great leftovers for a few days.





Ingredients:



(3) boneless skinless chicken breasts (frozen ok, but needs to cook all day. Thawed can be used if you want to eat sooner)

(2) cans stewed tomatoes (sliced or crushed will work)

(2) cans (small) Ortega diced chilies

(2) cans white beans

(1) packet of (dry) ranch dressing dip mix

(2) packets of (dry) taco seasoning (regular is great but I used chicken taco seasoning for a different flavor)

(1) can of low sodium, fat free chicken broth

(2) cups of shredded SHARP cheddar cheese

(1) small container sour cream



Your favorite hot sauce or chili sauce is optional.







Set crock pot on high.



There are two ways to make this soup.



1) If you are preparing it and want to eat it soon. Use thawed chicken breasts. Slice the breasts lengthwise into strips.



Pour chicken broth into crock pot and add the dry mixes, stir until blended in and add chicken strips.

Add tomatoes, chilies and beans to crock pot and stir until mixture is blended well.



Put the lid on the crock pot AND LEAVE IT ALONE FOR AN HOUR AND A HALF.



Do not lift the lid and stir. I know it is tempting to do so, but every time you lift the lid and stir you lose the built up heat and extend the

time it takes to cook your soup.



After the hour and a half has passed, you take the chicken out and (assuming it is cooked through) let it sit until cooled. Shred or dice the chicken and

put it back into the crock pot.



Let the soup cook for another half an hour.



Sprinkle the sharp cheddar cheese on the top, add a dollop of sour cream and season with your favorite spicy hot sauce, to taste.





2) Traditional crock pot version.



Throw everything in the crock pot, stir to mix it all up. Set on low (assuming you are gone for 8 hours).



Go to work, suffer like the rest of us, come home and remove chicken. Let it cool, shred it and put it back in.



Serve with the shredded cheese, sour cream and drink yourself an ice cold Corona with Lime - or two.

Thanks to everyone who posted great photos for the MY FAVORITE PHOTO OF 2009 challenge this month! You'll see some really amazing photographs in this recap. As usual, review all the work and at the end, please pass on a positive comment about those you really like. If you have negative commentary or constructive criticism, please don't use this post for that. Those comments should be left on the original post from the artist.

Thanks to the moderators of the two communities that host the photo challenges. They do an amazing job and it's a lot of work for them! Kudos!

photographers
behind_the_lens

( 111 Photos behind the cut )

Join us next month for another photo challenge. The topic announcement will post the first Monday of the month. Now before you go, please remember to leave a comment about your favorites and why you like them!

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Last night we went to L.A.Live o see the PeeWee Herman Show at Club Nokia. The show was fantastic - an updated version of the old CBS "PeeWee's Playhouse" television program from the 1980s. All the characters were back - Chairy, Globey, Terry, Magic Screen, Cowboy Curtis, Miss Yvonne (the original actress to boot!), Mike the Mailman, the King of Cartoons...even a new character, a hispanic handiman named Sergio. It was totally a fun show.


This show went on sale last November and sold out immediately. I got tickets because I was lucky enough to hear about it on KROQ FM that morning. When I got to the office I called in to Ticketmaster and got my 3 tickets. A month later, they decided that the show had potential to reach a larger audience than the original venue and so they cancelled the show and changed theaters to the new L.A.Live!'s Club Nokia.

They decided to screw the orginal holders of tickets (due to greed and lack of foresight, in my opinion) by simply returning their money (less the Ticketmaster fees, which they always seem to keep). Anyway, PeeWee agreed to offer tickets to these prior ticketholders first before they went on to the public. In addition, they would offer an opportunity for these patrons to have a "meet and greet' with PeeWee after the show was completed.



The meet and greet wasn't really an invitation to go backstage or get your picture taken with PeeWee, like I had presumed...but we did get to see PeeWee out of character, as Paul Rubens. He got in front of our group, which was about 500-1000 people and answered questions and told story about the past 20 something years when we didn't see PeeWee after the masterbatory arrest in the adult theater and defaming in 1991. He told how he had met Doris Duke years prior and went to her when his arrest happened to ask her for advice. She kindly took him into her New Jersey Compound for 3 weeks where he could figure out what to do next. Some one asked what he did for the next 20 years and he announced it was really his business and not to be revealed publicly. He answered many questions and told more stories about his roots and growing up watching 50's childrens television programming (from this I assume he had to be about late 50's/early 60 years old). He was charming and funny to listen to in a normal (non-PeeWee character) Paul Rubens voice.

After leaving the show, we decided to go have a late dinner in L.A.'s Thai Town, on Hollywood Blvd. and had a delicious dinner. Then we drove home and were in bed by 1am...I think...

Every January the Photo Challenge asks you to post your favorite photo you created last year. This doesn't mean you have to snap the picture yourself (although you most certainly take complete ownership by doing so)...but the photo must be your own. You must conceptualize it, render it, and direct it. It must be worthy of your signature and copyright.

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Every January the Photo Challenge asks you to post your favorite photo you created last year. This doesn't mean you have to snap the picture yourself (although you most certainly take complete ownership by doing so)...but the photo must be your own. You must conceptualize it, render it, and direct it. It must be worthy of your signature and copyright.

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Gizmo


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Here's a picture from today in Palm Springs...me and my dog Gizmo...


( two more pictures from dinner last night )

Brothers Sam & Koli


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This was such a quick weekend. Felt kinda unfair, going by so quickly. Saturday we took the Christmas lights off the house. I really wanted to leave them up for another week, but decided we were already the only house on the block still lighting them up, so down they came. Note that I'm still enjoying the tree, so have decided to leave it up for a while longer...

Saturday night we went to dinner with a group of 12 - SuperMex, which is close to BearBar in Long Beach. It was a fun dinner and I met a couple of new people at the table. Then we all headed down to BearBar for the evening, which was a good time. Afterward, four of us went over to King Taco and had a burrito before heading home. Delicious!

Sunday we slept in and then went over to help my mom with a couple of chores. Then Jose and I headed to Disneyland to enjoy the park with the KUMA group. Ty had a sore throat, so didn't want to go with us. We could only be there a few hours because we had made plans to go to see "The Princess and the Frog" with my mom in the early evening. We spent most of the afternoon in Fantasyland, which was unusual for the group, and Jose hadn't been on some of those rides. In our three short hours at the park we managed to have lunch and go on 5 rides, so I'd say that's a successful trip to DL.

Last night "The Princess and the Frog" was SOOOO good. I was very surprised. I hadnt really heard anything about the movie, so assumed it wasn't a good one. It was fantastic - I'd love to go see it again. After the movie we went back to my house and had grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken noodle soup. We caught up on tivo'd GLEE and to bed by midnight.

I went to bed thinking I want more weekend. I guess that's the usual feeling at the end of the weekend...

Every January the Photo Challenge asks you to post your favorite photo you created last year. This doesn't mean you have to snap the picture yourself (although you most certainly take complete ownership by doing so)...but the photo must be your own. You must conceptualize it, render it, and direct it. It must be worthy of your signature and copyright.

( more under cut )
X Posted

Every January the Photo Challenge asks you to post your favorite photo you created last year. This doesn't mean you have to snap the picture yourself (although you most certainly take complete ownership by doing so)...but the photo must be your own. You must conceptualize it, render it, and direct it. It must be worthy of your signature and copyright.

( more under cut )
X Posted

Okay, lets see if I can do this. I’m really more of a “photo poster” than a verbiage poster…seeing others reviews of 2009 inspired me…I really thought 2009 was a pretty good year. It had good moments and bad moments like all years, but I want to keep things positive, so I will lean to that side of the pendulum swing…

January – I turned 48. I’m totally drawing a blank on what I did for my birthday…wait a minute – we went to have Mongolian HotPot in Monterey Park for dinner and it was delicious. Luckily I take a lot of pictures and mark them by date…DOH!…this year I don’t even have a log of January photos…wow – that like never happens! haha

February – Jose turned 33. We got to go to Disneyland twice for his birthday. We usually go to Disneyland with a bear group or two and Jose let me know there were parts of Disneyland he’d never seen before. So we rode rides less traveled such as the rides in Fantasyland. We also went to a bear/chub event in Palm Springs that was great fun. We actually got a room at the event’s host hotel, so that made it a full weekend.

March – We traveled to Big Bear with a group of friends and had a fun weekend of comraderie, cards, smoking cigars, eating, watching movies on tv and shopping. It was totally fun!

April – Ty’s 43rd birthday. We went to dinner at Roy’s in Palm Desert to celebrate. It was a nice evening, albeit an expensive one. Each year we go to the UCLA Festival of Books, buy books, get signatures of famous authors, see celebrities and buy UCLAwear. It’s pretty much always a fun gig. Its also Easter month. We went to Palm Desert with my family and enjoyed nice weather and the flowers everywhere, etc.

May – I was lucky enough to get a campsite at Carlsbad State Beach for a midweek stay just after Memorial Day. Memorial Day weekend is our 2nd anniversary with Jose so we celebrated with a campsite on the bluffs of the Pacific Ocean and had a great time. I think my best photos of the year came from this trip. We also had a weekend in Lake Arrowhead, went to Long Beach Gay Pride and made a trip to the beach in Huntington Beach for the day.

June – Jose always wants to try new things, so we went to Midevil Times to see their show and we had a great time. We also had a fun time up in Lake Arrowhead. Oingo Boingo’s Tribute Band, “Dead Man’s Party” was putting on a free concert up there, so we enjoyed our friends that joined us, saw the concert and enjoyed the weekend away from Los Angeles.

July – We spent the 4th of July at my sisters house in Rolling Hills. Her place has a fantastic view of Los Angeles from the ocean off San Pedro all the way through downtown. We ate great BBQ while watching all the fireworks shows off her porch. Later in the month we took Jose’s sister’s family to the beach with their kids. Unbeknown to us, we ended up right in the middle of Long Beach’s dog beach. It was comical and chaotic – one of the funniest trips of 2009.

August – We got to spend more time in Lake Arrowhead this summer than we have in many years. That makes me happy as when I was growing up, the family would spend most weekends of the summer there. One weekend we had a great time with our friends playing cards, watching movies, etc. and another we got to spend time with my mom and sister up there. We also traveled to Big Bear with our friends for Big Bear Weekend.

September – Two events the same weekend. My 30th High School Reunion on Saturday night and Sunday was my annual trek to Catalina for the Canon Photo Seminars. Both were fun events, although my HS reunion was much smaller than the 20th reunion…I guess that means I’m getting older…dang it…

October – Disneyland GayDays started the month out – my friends from LiveJournal, durabear and stpbear joined us for the day – it was great fun hanging out with them for the day. For Halloween Jose and I dressed in Scottish Kilts and Ty went as a Henchman for one party and a doctor for the second. I also got my new point-n-shoot Leica camera this month – wahoo! Early Christmas from me to me…

November – Palm Springs Pride in early November…it’s a very small event, but we had a fun weekend out of it with our friends down there. We celebrated my Mom’s 75th birthday mid-month and later in the month went to an Indian Powwow at one of the casinos in Indio, CA. The Indian Powwow was amazing – I’m so glad we did that! On thanksgiving we baked 2 turkeys so we’d have plenty left over for turkey sandwiches later, Ty deep fried one and my sister baked one traditional style in the oven.

December – Lots of Christmas oriented events – Rogers Gardens (a fancy nursery in Newport Beach that always decorates it up nicely for the holidays) was a fun way to start the month and walking through Naples Canals (Long Beach, CA…not Italy…LOL) was a great fun, too. Ty and I have been together 15 years this month, so the three of us went out and celebrated with a nice dinner together. On Christmas Eve we went to Jose's family celebration - a full on Mexican party - the kids all open their presents after midnight...a first for me! My sister turned 50 on the day after Christmas and we had a big party with her friends.

Also, thanks to cinnamon_06 for the subject matter for this challenge.

And thanks to everyone to posted great photos for the SELF PORTRAIT challenge this month! You'll see some really amazing photographs in this recap. As usual, review all the work and at the end, please pass on a positive comment about those you really like. If you have negative commentary or constructive criticism, please don't use this post for that. Those comments should be left on the original post from the artist.

Thanks to the moderators of the two communities that host the photo challenges. They do an amazing job and it's a lot of work for them! Kudos!

photographers
behind_the_lens

( 94 Photos behind the cut )

Join us next month for another photo challenge. The topic announcement will post the first Monday of the month. Now before you go, please remember to leave a comment about your favorites and why you like them!

X Posted

...will go up on Tuesday instead of Monday...