Here Comes Peter Cottontail!

 

Happy Easter everyone! I've been so excited to do this post! I hope everyone enjoyed this beautiful Sunday with their family and friends by their sides in the sunny weather.

Did you all find your Easter baskets? I will never be too old for the hunt! One of my favorite things to eat at Easter time are those wonderful peanut butter eggs. For about a year and a half I worked at the local candy store in my town where Easter is the busiest time of the year.

Gene & Boots Candies is located in Perryopolis, Pennsylvania off of Route 51. The store in Perryopolis is also where the factory is located. From there you can find other local stores or even order online! The location I worked at is right off of Route 22 in Delmont, Pennsylvania.

Now Gene and Boots doesn't just hold a special place in my heart because I have a sweet tooth, but also because of my family. When my mother was in high school, she worked at the store, I worked their in high school, and recently, my grandmother has taken over my position in the shop.

Every year, the factory sends the store TONS of chocolate bunnies and eggs in every shape and size imaginable. Some people just come to see the store all filled up! At the counter (pictured below), there is always a MASSIVE chocolate bunny which weighs in at almost 25 pounds!! That is over $400 worth of chocolate!

As you'll see in the photos, the store is filled to the hilt at this time of year!! And I even took the photos today, which means that everyone had already bought all of their Easter candy.

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter and were able to spend it with the ones you love! I'll be super busy this week as it is finals week!! I cannot believe that my summer is less than a week away. Enjoy the beautiful weather!

 

Here's a link to the Gene & Boots website if you want to check it out! I can tell you from personal experience, they're chocolate is AMAZING (and I'm not just saying that because I worked there)!

 

A Quick Message to the Readers

Happy Monday everyone! I wanted to write this quick post for two reasons. The first reason is that I would like to apologize for not being the best blogger lately. I've been really busy and unfortunately, I will continue to be super busy for the next two weeks. As you all know, I'm a student at the University of Pittsburgh. Two weeks from today marks the beginning of finals week. Because of that, I will be very busy studying and will not have much time to go out and take photos.

My second reason for this post goes hand in hand with my first. Not only do I have preparations for finals and finals themselves in the next two weeks, but I've recently been through a very tough moment in my life. I've talked about him before, my boyfriend of almost five years. I don't want to go into detail, but the relationship has ended and I'm not taking it very well. Needless to say, my blogging will slow down as my healing takes place. I hope you all understand.

This past weekend I headed home to get some comfort from my family. Both Saturday and Sunday were absolutely beautiful so we went to Keystone Park. I've included a few pictures below from our trip (I used my phone so not the best quality!).

I hope you all have a wonderful week. I'll try my best to blog as much as I can.

Photoshop Actions

Happy Friday everyone! I wanted to take the time to share some really good photo effects that I found through one of my favorite blogs, A Beautiful Mess.

I've always admired this blog, run by two sisters, Emma and Elsie. I was just playing around, reading posts and looking for design ideas when I found a post about Photoshop actions. After reading the post, I found that they actually sell these actions and they are easily downloadable. I thought, why not?

I use Photoshop Elements 6 for everything when it comes to editing. They provide a small starter package specifically for Photoshop Elements, The Elements Collection. They also offer starter packs for Photoshop, The Mini Collection, and Lightroom, The Lightroom Collection. Each collection has ten of some of their most popular actions to boost the professional look of your photos, and each collection costs only $10!

Of the group of ten actions which I received, my favorites include Millie, Harper, Nico, Mia and Wendy. One of the best parts about these is that you can overlap them to create unique effects.

Take a look at some of my own before and afters!


Let me know if you guys like posts about photography itself rather than just on places and be sure to check out A Beautiful Mess and their shop A Beautiful Mess Shop. Have a wonderful day and enjoy the weekend!

Caricatures

Good morning! I have to do this quick post because I promised I would. As you all know, I'm a student at the University of Pittsburgh in Oakland. Every year when the weather starts to change, Pitt hosts a small Spring Carnival in what is known as the Schenley Quad. My friend Britnee and I, whom I have mentioned before with The Model Cachet, couldn't pass up the idea of getting a caricature done of the two of us.

Ron Kantrowitz of Mugshotz Art Studio and his buddy Adam Pate were hired to come to our carnival and draw caricatures for the students. While he was drawing my picture, we talked about the blog and I promised him that I would blog about it and tweet him!

You'll see below that Ron did an awesome job. Britnee and I are planning on framing the drawing and we're going to hang it up in our apartment next year as our cute little family photo!