Sedona Vintage

There's really no need for me to go on and on about how beautiful and special this family is and how much I love their images!!!  The fact is that I do love them and I always love photos of them!  For anyone who may not know, these are my "KIDS" and this is my beautiful granddaughter, Lucy.  She is one of my favorite subjects and has been for her entire life!

These photos were taken by Oak Creek in Sedona.  It was a beautiful weekend for a family photo outing but it was midday and a bit sunny for some of the shots.  What the heck though...I just went with it. 

I've been trying out lots of different photo finishing techniques and vintage-inspired photos are quite popular right now.  Whenever I finish my photos that way, I seem to end up preferring the full color version.  But with these, I found a vintage color finish I just love and I also finished some in a special black and white finish that I love too. 

I thought I'd share them here and ask for feedback.  For your own photos, do you like full color, the vintage look and/or black and white.  Go for it here...you won't hurt my feelings and I would love to know how people feel about them.

Isn't love grand??!!  I see a lot of love in these images!

Blessings and Love to You and Yours,

Kinsale, County Cork, Southern Ireland

This was IT for me!  This was my vision of Ireland; this was what I wanted to see most of all…a little Irish town – quaint, colorful, full of pubs, greenery, shops, friendly people and history!!!  Kinsale was my favorite place to visit on our entire trip and I want to go back! I want to go there with my sisters and then I want to travel all over County Cork and Southern Ireland.  It’s a dream but you have to have those…

The drive to Kinsale from Dublin was beautiful, but so were all the drives.  At the beginning of the trip we worried about all the time we would be spending in the car but I never had a problem just staring out the window and taking in everything I could – fields, sheep and cows, hills, amazing green landscape and adorable (to me), quaint little hamlets.  If you blinked you would miss them but they were very special.  Maria and I actually got quite a few good pictures just by sticking our camera out the window and clicking as we drove past!!  Not enough time to stop for every “cute” sight we saw…

 
Compared to some of the little villages we went through, Kinsale was the big town! Almost as soon as we got into town, we came upon the Perryville House which was to be our home for the next three nights…ahhh!  Barry came out to help us park and help us carry our embarrassingly large amount of luggage and shopping bags up the stairs to the rooms.  Perryville House was like being in someone’s home and our entire stay there was very special, so special that I went on Trip Advisor and gave them 5 stars!!!  I never do that! We spent the afternoon checking out the town and its little shops, restaurants and people!  In the bakery, we ran into a cute little family who had a 9-month old baby named Charlie.  He was so dang cute that I took a bunch of pictures of him and emailed them to his mom, Sinead, later that day!
 
I can’t help myself…I just want more of Ireland!!!!  See if you want some too…

The beautifully furnished and very comfortable Perryville House...it made me think of my grandmother's home! 

You see this beautiful courtyard from everywhere inside.

Barry giving directions...it's hard to get lost though!

Would you believe they were selling "hot" sauce???

B is usually a few steps ahead of me...impatient!

Charlie...he wasn't too sure about me!

This marina was directly across from our hotel, the view from our window!!!  Lovely... 

At this point, I can't leave out the doors... 

Cheers... 

An Old Irish Blessing

May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind always be at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, and rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Dublin

Other than passing through Edinburgh, Scotland, to exchange our rental car and landing in Belfast by ferry and heading straight toward the country, so far our trip had been all about the quaint, small towns and the countryside.  We had loved every minute of it and it was all new to us. 

So, when we arrived in Dublin and spent almost two hours driving in circles looking for our hotel, getting lost in a maze of one-way  and dead-end streets with traffic that would rival New York City, we were less than thrilled.  Wanda, our trusty GPS lady, had a bit of trouble navigating there, as did our printed Google Maps.   The culmination was when we finally found our hotel and were told they had no onsite parking and we would have to park about 3-4 blocks away and walk there, through the city…with luggage, lots of golf purchases and two golf bags!!!  We ended up opting for the risk of leaving golf bags and gifts in the car and took off  for our journey to the hotel.  We can laugh about it now, but we sure weren’t laughing about it then!!!

Then when we got to our rooms, neither of our keys worked to let us in!  By this time, we were more than tired and ready to get in that room.  While Bryan went down for new keys Paul, Maria and I decided we needed to leave Dublin first thing in the morning after a good night’s sleep.  Luckily Bryan, always the voice of reason, convinced us we were there and we needed to stay as planned and check out the sights.  Plus, he reminded us that we were planning to go to the Guinness Factory and Jameson Irish Whiskey Museum so those were good incentives!  The problem with the room keys turned into a major joke by the end of the trip because almost without fail, every time we got back to our rooms the keys didn’t work!

It was a completely different experience, but we ended up enjoying our two days in Dublin and spent much of the time wide-eyed at all the various craziness going on around us.   I loved all the sights…including lots of new colorful doors for my growing photo collection, wonderful churches and great architecture.  Temple Bar was a fun place I would compare to Soho or Greenwich Village in New York…wild and crazy on the weekend.

P.S.  I should mention that some of these pictures were taken by Maria.  When that is the case, I have not put my copyright on them; however, please don’t copy without her permission.

Temple Bar...shops, street vendors, street artists, lots of people...and so much more!

This one's for our friend, Derek!

 

Doors, doors, doors!  A friend named Ted would call it
"Argument for Urban Color"!!!

Cheers to you and yours...

"But one of the most fantastic things about Ireland and Dublin is that the pubs are like Paris and the cafe culture. And Dublin, in many ways, is a pub culture."
-Hugh Dancy