International Pinhole day!

Jamie Tucker, self portrait, image from handmade camera 12 pack soda box, using photo paper, 30 sec. exposure

NNU's art club sponsored an activity on International pinhole day! We made our pinhole cameras, then took pictures with them. Many others from around the world made images as well, check out www.pinholeday.org to see them. Look under group>NNU Art club to see more of ours. Thanks for looking!

Texas, SPE & Spring!!

Christy at the Botanical Gardens

Not a lot happened in February, but March and April have picked up speed like they do every year. I'll fill you in and post some pictures. We had spring break a few weeks ago and I was able to go to the Society for Photographic Education Conference in Dallas, TX. Normally, I'm not a huge fan of TX, but a great friend of mine who was a Jman with me in Guatemala lives there, and we got to spend a few days together! What fun!!! I am reminded of how blessed I am to have such great friends, even if they live far away.

Christy & I at the Botanical Gardens

The Photo Conference was wonderful, I learned so much and had 3 portfolio reviews of my China work. I also met some new folks and traded business cards. I met 2 ISU alumni who knew Fran and Donna Dene, how cool! Christy and I ate some real TexMex, laughed about past adventures and caught up on todays. Spring was already in full force in Dallas, so we enjoyed the Botanical Gardens in Ft. Worth before heading to the airport to return to Boise.

Spring tulips

Spring has arrived in early form at home now! I am so excited to have a garden growing in the front window, and dreaming about planting everything outside. I'm sure I will kill a few things, but what joy it is to see little tomato and lettuce seeds sprout into seedlings! There is a creek/canal near our house, and with that brings lots of ducks. So, we have had ducks in our yard for awhile. I'm sure there will be little ducklings sooner rather than later :-)

Lettuce seedlings

I have a small garden plot out back and some flower beds in the front that I will use to plant tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, chives, squash, cucumber, oregano, parsley and basil. Hopefully something grows from all these options! We are all enjoying the yard, patio and garage. We grilled and ate outside at out picnic table for the first time last week!

Backyard garden

My students and I are looking toward summer as we all do this time of year! We have about 3 weeks of classes left, May 7th being the last day of finals. So far, I don't have any huge plans for summer break, except to rest and do some camping! To help with spring fever, my photo 1 class took a field trip to the Old Idaho State Penitentiary this past week. It turned out to be a great 70 degree day.

Inside the Idaho Pen

Megan, Jared, Allison & Cassia hamming it up at the Pen

On some other news, Brian and I are going to be planning a trip, though not until Oct 28th. We got concert tickets to see U2 in Vancouver British Columbia at their last concert date for this tour!!!! We can hardly believe it! We have never seen them before, and are really excited to see them in the Northwest.

Sammie is doing well, she is looking forward to her graduation May 27th. She's been helping me with cleaning and cooking. She is now a master chef or 'Little Chef' as we like to say. We have both realized the wisdom of some of my mom's recipes, Salmon Patties & Porkchops & rice, they are easy, fast and taste great! Thanks Mamita!
Love you all, thanks for reading, the sun has come out and has turned this rainy day into one that is calling my outside! Until next time, hope this finds you all well. Let me know you've been here and how you are. xoxo

Prayer Tablets

I had some exciting news a week or so ago. There is a juried photography exhibition called "Krappy Kamera" that I entered back in December. This is an annual show in it's 11th year. The photographs have to have been taken with a camera that has a plastic lens, or is a pinhole camera with no lens. I shot all of my black and white China images with the Diana + camera which classifies as a 'krappy kamera'. I submitted 6 images, and this one, Prayer Tablets, was selected. So on Friday I worked in the darkroom all day and printed, matted and framed it to send to the Soho Photo Gallery in New York. It felt great to be working in the lab making art!

Tree Rats

So, I was thinking it would be great to have a bird feeder since we have a nice big window in the living room. We've had the feeder out now for about 2 weeks, and I have only seen one living creature eat from it...a squirrel. Yep, no birds, not even a sparrow, but this very agile squirrel that can hang from his back legs, tilt the feeder and eat away! He usually eats breakfast, second breakfast, and perhaps lunch as well :-) Our neighbor at our old place, Ze, can't stand squirrels, and calls them "Tree Rats", so here's our cute tree rat.

Inside the green house

We have unpacked most of our boxes, but, sadly, as you can see, no art hanging on the walls yet! Thanks to our friend Karen, the wooden floor in the living room has a nice big rug. We are still getting used to all the quirks of an old house, drafty and strange noises.


The stove is ancient and takes some getting used to, but at least it works! Friday we had our first dinner guests for Quick Curried Chicken and it was a fun evening! We are enjoying the luxury of having a washer and dryer as well. Samantha has come to live with us and finish out her last semester at Nampa High. She really likes the large basement space!

Moving in a blizzard

Our casita

Needless to say, this past week has been a white and cold one in Nampa Idaho. Of course this is when we decided to move! Thanks to our great friends, Brent, Nic and Alejandra and our new friend, Carol, we were able to make the switch without too many problems.
We have now been in our new place for a whole week. It is a cute craftsman house with more space and quirky character. It even has a yard and a picnic table out back. We will make good use of that in the summer. We are still renting, and are glad that it's not totally ours. We aren't ready for that level of adulthood :-)
Today, Jan 5, it snowed for most of the day and this is what our place looks like in the snow!

Brent helping us move from the apartment

Mamita and I, Christmas 08

We have had so much going on lately, it's been a whirlwind. Mom was here for a short 'n sweet visit right after finals, before Christmas. This was her first trip to Idaho, it was nice of her to brave the cold instead of heading to Florida! It was a cozy stay for her as we were still in our apartment. I did get to show her our new place before she left. We took her around town, went to the Bistro, shopping, Winco, church, and the Rec center for step aerobics! We played many hands of Nerts and made Snickerdoodles. It was great to see you mamita! Come back when it's warmer! Love you.