Stuff I like. And stuff I don't like, too.

When an unexpected beautiful snow covers the muddy ground and sticks to the trees, you just gotta get some pictures. I'm glad I got up early enough to catch it while it was still so pretty, it's already melting now. We all know what melting snow looks like when you have two dogs 😃. Nothing you'd want to take pictures of! Having a quiet day at home today, hubby bought wine so looks like I'll be cooking and quite likely enjoying myself pretty soon, whenever it's wine-thirty. 🍷📖❄🥂 Hope you are having an awesome day!  Wanna follow me on my Finsta? #bookaddictiam  HERE Check my Viewbug page out  HERE Or see my Photocrowd pics  HERE Or, if youre feeling generous, or pitiful, either works, go download from  my  Adobe portfolio  HERE   Or my Shutterstock portfolio  HERE   Or my Getty/Istock portfolio  HERE     Thank You!

Gotta love beautiful books from the dollar store, right? Adding it to my ginormous TBR list, but I couldn't resist, so pretty!  I've been reading more than photographing lately, just got discouraged with my camera, it doesn't take good shots of snow. Another reason to move south? I think so. However, it is now Spring, at least officially,  so I am going to go nuts with the camera pretty soon! Soooo excited! Also, my son is getting married in a few months, so I will be sharing lots of those kinda shots too. Am I too old to squee??? Puffy. I am doing it anyway.  Have an awesome day!! Wanna follow me on my Finsta? #bookaddictiam HERE Check my Viewbug page out  HERE Or see my Photocrowd pics  HERE Or go download from  my  Adobe portfolio  HERE   Or my Shutterstock portfolio  HERE   Or my Getty/Istock portfolio  HERE     Thank You!

Gotta love winter in Maine! Like, you really gotta, or you'll go crazy. Weather report says maybe another big snow storm coming our way next week. Yay? Let's just say I'm very grateful for having four sons when it comes time to shovel out :) I haven't completely abandoned this blog. More like I've just been embracing Instagram. I can't help it, this blog seems dead and IG is alive! Check me out there @bookaddictiam Check my Viewbug page out HERE Or see my Photocrowd pics HERE Or go download from  my  Adobe portfolio  HERE   Or my Shutterstock portfolio  HERE   Or my Getty/Istock portfolio  HERE     Thank You!

So, my kids have informed me that I have a "Finsta", I had no idea. A fake Instagram,  apparently. I didn't intend to use it for any nefarious purposes, I just read a lot and didn't want to bore any of my real life friends with pictures of books or unwanted book reviews. Not one of my over 400 Facebook friends is a big reader. I share my  FB page with my hubby, his idea, not mine, and his friends are into sports and music. Not reading. So, in addition to this blog, which I actually quite enjoy but it's kind of like yelling into the wind, no one reads or comments EVER, I made an Instagram account to befriend other bookaholics. Not a crime, right? Within ten minutes I can have 20 likes on a pretty picture of a book (or 10) that I am currently reading. That makes me happy. I want no Facebook drama with real life friends so I only friended other book readers/writers/collectors. If that makes me book-ist so be it! Blogger appears to be a ghost town, anyway. Sa...

When it's icy, raining, and just plain freaking cold out, it's a good time for a glass (bottle) of red wine and a good sci fi book. ❤ Hope the weather is better where you are!  Have a n awesome day! Quick, before you change your mind, go download from  my  Adobe portfolio   HERE   Or my Shutterstock portfolio  HERE   Or my Getty/Istock portfolio  HERE  

We are literally getting a foot of snow this afternoon, so like everyone else, I acted as though the world was coming to an end and bought out there grocery store this morning. Gotta feed my four kids and hubby, even if I could gladly live off of Munchos and green tea. However, now that I am home, three of my kids are here safe, hubby's skidder broke down so he said the heck with it and he also is home safe. Gotta get son #3 home from work and then I will really relax. In the meantime, I am spending a few glorious hours with King Henry VIII and the Tudor Court. Bliss.  Have an awesome day! Quick, before you change your mind, go download from  my  Adobe portfolio HERE   Or my Shutterstock portfolio HERE   Or my Getty/Istock portfolio HERE  

Cold as heck here, the Pats lost the Superbowl so my hubby and my son's are all pouty. ( I'm a Jets fan, therefore I'm used to losing) So....this is how I'm spending today. Reading a good book and drinking a ton of coffee.  Writing blogs nobody reads and taking photos nobody else looks at is getting me down. But I'll get over it! Have an awesome day! If you're bored, check out my Adobe portfolio HERE   Or my Shutterstock portfolio HERE   Or my Istock and Getty portfolio HERE  

Insert internal screaming HERE! Ugh How am I ever going to make any kind of money selling my stock photos when I can't even find them, and I know what I'm looking for! I logged into Adobe to search through some photos, even though I tagged each one myself, I couldn't find any of my pit bull, or my lighthouse pics either. Found one tagged "maine" and "lake", but couldn't see my pit bull jumping out of water at all. So frustrating! What kind of warped algorithm do they have going on?? So, we had a beautiful snow storm, nice fluffy white snow. Did not get any good shots though, cheap cameras aren't great at photographing white with white. Came out blurry as heck. One day I will invest in a fancy camera, in the meantime I bide my time til spring when I can get out every day. I CANNOT WAIT. I'm supposed to be getting shots of Easter scenes, so I will share those HERE when I'm done! In the meantime.... Check out my Adobe portfolio ...

I hope you had a fun and safe New Year!  As I mentioned before, my wedding anniversary was on New Year's Eve, so my hubby took me to our favorite place for a Scorpion Bowl, or two 😉.  Took a couple of my kids with us to drive, one of the perks of having a houseful of teens, I guess!   My awesome hubby bought me flowers, of course, which I promptly disassembled and took pictures of, and played around in Photoshop,  on my NEW LAPTOP that Santa (or my son's and hubby) bought me for Christmas.  I was so excited! Still am, thus all the explanation points. (!!!) Pretty, right? They are pretty all together in their vase too, I assure you.  Ok, I took a quick pic with my cell phone, just to show he did indeed buy me a "bunch" of flowers, not just the two I edited above. :) And a card too! Since I was in such a good mood, and my profile pic on HERE is now from last year, I took a selfie, cause...

Hello? Hello? Hello? Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me Is there anyone at home? Sometimes I wonder...

As planned, I braved the below 0 temps yesterday and attempted to get some shots of my dogs. I did not dress the part, though, and my bare knee in my torn jeans actually stuck to the ice I so stupidly knelt on. I know, I know, I should be better prepared,  but my dogs just do not cooperate with me when it comes to sitting still and posing prettily, so when my teenager walked in the room and offered to help me out I thought I'd better grab the opportunity and fast. So this is about as good as it got yesterday: Then it turned into this: She loves loves loves to chase snow balls as much as she loves catching tennis balls or chasing rocks. She thinks it's her job, no joke. She is all business and extremely focused. My yard is too small to get any good shots of her in action, I'll be taking them to the mountains once it's above 20 degrees again. Hopefully I'll shoot some keepers then. But hey, my dog had a blast, so that's what matters.  My ot...

I hate that the cold weather is making the news, it is Maine, it is winter. As far as I'm concerned, anything under 40 is too cold. I mean, cold is cold, right? My poor cat refuses to use his litter box, holds it as long as he can, then jumps on the window screen and hangs there til I let him back inside. I should probably get a picture of that hahaha.  I pity my poor hubby out there trying to get some work done, most likely the skidder won't start anyway. Although it has warmed up to minus 3.  On the plus side, cold temps make for some pretty pictures. Crazy people out on the ice today, I can think of a million things I'd rather be doing than ice fishing, but to each his own!  The difference a month makes, eh? So I plan on getting some pics of my dogs in their cute sweaters later today, maybe when it warms up to 0. :) As always, check out and download my photos from istock/ Getty HERE And my shutterstock portfolio HERE And my Adobe portfolio...

Just a quick post. Hope everyone had a good Christmas! Santa was good to me, I have a new laptop, and Photoshop is installed and ready to go. Woohoo! I took these pics the day before Christmas Eve, very very very cold here in Maine, my fingers were freezing and I couldn't snap too many. Little did I know that it was going to get even colder. Minus 3 degrees here when I woke up, not counting the wind chill. Good day to stay indoors, too bad I am dying to get out there and get some pictures now that I can upload them again. Too bad Santa didn't bring me gloves. Guess I'm headed to Wal-Mart to get myself some warm clothing.  Hopefully I will be updating more often now.  Sold another photo on istock! Go me! :) Check out my Adobe portfolio HERE Or my Shutterstock portfolio HERE Or my istock/Getty portfolio HERE

I'm thinking of changing the title of this blog to "Please Buy My Photos" hahaha. So, 7 have been downloaded,  which is 5 more than had been downloaded last time I checked, a month or so ago. I have to make $50 before I can even get the money out, sigh. I lost my enthusiasm,  mostly because my computer is unfixable, apparently.  Four kids, and four step kids, lots of Christmas gifts to buy, soooo. No computer for me for a while. Very time consuming trying to upload my photos to the various sites I use on a regular basis. But oh well! Life is good, things will start to fall into place eventually. I missed the first snow fall of the season here in Maine, but I'm pretty sure we will get more! Gotta get some great photos soon, and when I do, I will share them here, of course! Thanks for reading, hope you're having a fantastic day! You can check out and maybe even download my photos at any of these three places: Adobe Istock/Getty Shutterstock 

It's still only Fall, but man it is cold out there! Here in Maine we expect these cold temps, but we had quite a nice ride, temperatures in the sixties up until just a couple weeks ago. It's strange how 50 degrees feels so cold in November but down right balmy in April. My computer is still dead, I'm still borrowing my kids Apple laptop, which I hate because it confuses me, to be honest. It's the old chick in me. Thankfully I manage to figure out how to upload my pictures with it, which is all I need it for. Went to my favorite place to shoot yesterday, a local park with a lake, just a couple miles from my home. The trees look so barren, it will be a beautiful view as soon as we get some snow. Which may be tonight!  I uploaded 30 for Adobe, they accepted three, which is actually better than I expected. Adobe has my smallest portfolio, 21 pics, but they are the only one I have sold any at, so I keep trying. Like I said, I don't have a great ca...

UGH, in addition to having been so sick, my computer is also still dead. Dead dead. Which uninspired me. I've made two sales so far, which is sad and exciting at the same time. The beautiful,  vibrant fall colors never really happened here which also uninspired me. Took some amazing photos of my dog: Unfortunately, she is wearing an NFL Jets collar (J-E-T-S Jets Jets Jets) so until I can get on a computer with Photoshop I can't sell them. Hubby is a Patriots fan and says he knew no good could come from a Jets collar. Pfft. I need to sell 1000 photos to fix my computer! Hahaha So, I have not been shooting a photo a day. In fact, I went an entire week without picking up my camera at all, which is sad. But I didn't see the point without being able to edit them at all before uploading to adobe, shutterstock or istock. To be honest, the landscape around me hasn't been very inspiring either. Dead leaves on the ground, trees bare. Hunters all through our woods ...

So, I've been slack. But I have a good reason! Went to my gym's annual Halloween costume party and had a bit too much fun. At least that's what I thought at first. But since myou hubby and kids got sick too, I assume I caught a stomach bug. It wasn't the Hippie Juice, after all. But wow, was I sick! Not one photo all weekend. Thankfully I began feeling better and went to Mt. Blue State Park in Weld, Maine to snap a few photos. It was cold on the mountain! I wore flip flops and regretted it. But oh well! Shot these two from the side of the road, one town over from where I live: Pretty, right?  And guess what? I finally made my very first sale, on Adobe! Now for 1,000 more ;) Hoping to take some today, but it's looking like a busy one so we'll see. As always, thanks for reading, hope you're having a  fabulous day! Check out my Adobe portfolio HERE Or my  portfolio at Shutterstock HERE Or check out my slightly ...

Another failed attempt at getting a holiday shot.  Ugh. I think I'm going to make a wreath and decorate that, maybe get some fake snow. Or champagne in flutes, candles, happy new year banners... This was the only one with any promise, and it looks nearly identical to the ones I took a couple of weeks ago.  Shutterstock and Adobe said they had too much "noise" and didn't take them. So I "de-noised" this one through Lightroom,  but I'm not holding my breath. I did get some cute ones of my dogs: My Pappy-Jack who started out a tad suspicious when I told him I wanted to "shoot" some photos of him in the woods, haha. Mercury is always good for a laugh. Nervous little dog. No grateful ones of Angel, had a smudge on my lens that I didn't see til we got home! Oh well, there's hardly a deficit of Pup pictures these days. :) Sorry, not sorry. Thankfully I did get some pretty scenic shots.  Still ho...

So my coffee kicked in, but not in time to get any decent holiday shots. By the time I had dinner and dishes finished it was getting dark, UGH. I love the changing of every season here in Maine, but we've already lost 4 hours of daylight! I have too many things to do every day before it gets dark. Anyway. I set up Christmas balls, ornaments, lights and gift boxes, but it just wasn't happening. They were too dark, even though it was before sunset, in front of my window where I shoot most of my indoor photos. I hate using the flash, but did it anyway. So, not good. I was frustrated and my hands were tied, hubby took my car and I couldn't find anything else in my house.  So I went outside, and used my favorite subjects.  One of my two dogs, Angel My kitty's silhouette at sunset Moses with the flash. He HATED that haha. Poor kitty. So that's it for today! I'm thinking tomorrow I will try again for some holiday inspired ...