Sorry we’ve been MIA this past week!  Cort and I took some time to relax over our spring break.  I spent a few of my days off visiting Nashville.  I’m a huge country music fan and have always wanted to visit the honkey tonks where most musicians started their careers.  Downtown Nashville was everything I expected – Broadway Street lined with open bars blaring with live music.  Brian and I had a blast with our friends Brad and Kendal!

After our 7.5 hour drive down to Nashville we headed straight to the hotel to shower and get ready for a day downtown.  While we were getting ready the boys came across the show, Moonshiners, on the Discovery Channel.  We were all intrigued while watching these rather… very southern men, making Moonshine (very high proof whiskey).  I thought it was hilarious and rather ridiculous that one of these Moonshine maker’s name was Popcorn, one of the most notorious moonshiners that ever lived.

Popcorn Sutton

A couple days later we were back downtown and came across a bar named Bootleggers Inn.  The first thing I see is a whole wall mural of Popcorn Sutton himself!  This place actually sold Popcorn’s Moonshine from mason jars!  They even sold Popcorn Sutton t-shirts with his bearded face taking up the whole front of the shirt.  I found this hilarious.  But I also found something rather creative and interesting.  The bar had chandeliers made of Popcorn’s mason jars.

They had taken two wooden rounds and connected them with knotted rope.  They had a light bulb in the center of each round and attached mason jars with the lids on around the perimter of each round.  I love this look!  Even though I found it in a Nashville honkey tonk, I think it would actually look really neat in a rustic themed bedroom or basement bar.

If you look closely enough, you can see Popcorn’s signature above the XXX jars.

Brian surprised me with a DSLR camera (Cannon Rebel T2i) as my wedding gift this past July.  Since then, I’ve been researching like crazy trying to learn as much as I can to create great looking photos.  I’ve recently looked into new equipment for my camera.  A new lens (I’m forcing myself to start out cheap until I learn more), flash, and an adorable camera bag ruled my christmas list, along with photoshop CS5 Extended.  Lucky for me, I am a teacher, therefore I purchased CS5 with an 80% discount.  I was ecstatic!  I downloaded it right away and couldn’t wait to get started on making some amazing photos.  Well, it ended up taking me 20 minutes just to figure out how to open an image.  I thought photoshop was going to be something I’d be able to play around with and pick up on “as I go.”  No, Ma’am!  I have lit.er.ally no idea what I’m doing.  But just tonight, I was browsing photography on pinterest and came across this, 45 Amazing and Free Photoshop Actions from Vandelay Design.  I downloaded about 5 of these and they’ve given me a starting point with editing my photos.  Here’s what I came up with…

Two years ago this week, Brian surprised me with an engagement ring and a trip to Napa.  So I felt the need to edit some of my Napa photos.

Before                                                                         After 

My goal was to make this barn look old and antique-y.  I wanted the photo to look like is was taken in the early 1900′s.  My next plan is to learn how to add textures to photos so this would look wrinkled and aged.

For this one, I just wanted a very sharp B&W shot.

These Napa photos were taken with my old 8 megapixel camera.  This proves just how amazing Photoshop is!

Then I went into editing photos from our most recent trip, Kauai and Maui Hawaii.  These photos were taken with my Cannon Rebel.  However, seeing as the camera was a wedding gift and this trip was our honeymoon, I had owned the camera for one day before we left for this trip.  Therefore, most of these photos were taken in automatic mode.

This first photo is one of my favorites from our trip.  We were cruising around Maui and pulled over to look at some views.  Brian took this shot just by holding the camera out in front of us.  I thought the colors in the original were beautiful.  I never thought this picture could improve.  But, photoshop proved me wrong.  I used the high definition photoshop action for this one and the helicopter shot.  I miss being tan…

In Kauai we hiked along the Na’Pali coast.  This picture is from that hike.

So, those of you out there with photoshop, enjoy these free actions.  If you’re a photoshop expert, puuuuuhlease share your secrets!  Leave a comment or email me at justkalirae@gmail.com.