Chihuly Exhibition

I love glass.  Any kind of glass...textured, coloured, thick, thin.  It all fascinates me.

Today I went to the museum downtown and explored the Chihuly Exhibit.  From my first step into the room, my breath was taken away.  I didn't know where to look first as it was all so beautiful. 

When I entered into the first area, there were two boats filled with glass sculpture.  These boats were placed on dark mirrored glass where you could see the reflection just as if it was in water. It looked like the boat was filled with all sorts of flowers.  It was incredible. Chihuly has actually floated boats down a river filled with glass balls and flowers.

This was the other boat. It looked like it was filled with fruit but these were simply large glass balls. The boat itself is probably about 15 feet long.

The next room contained this huge underwater garden which was too large to photograph. There were so many different parts to it.  I circled this a couple of times just trying to see everything that was contained in the display.  It was really fascinating to see and experience.

                                                       Sea shells hanging on the plant life.

Snails crawling up the stem.

An octopus floating in the plant life.

These are red reeds imbedded into Birch logs making up a really pretty display.

These next two pictures are part of the ceiling in one of the rooms.  There were several more panels.  You are encouraged to lay on bean bag matts to take in the splendour of the glass.  Words don't describe how beautiful it was.

This will give you an idea of the room.  Along the front of the wall are the mats for you to lay on.

This star was hanging from the ceiling. There were others as well in different colours.

This is called an icicle tower.

This is a reflection of the icicle in the mirrored glass below.

Another really beautiful display showing flower hanging onto the side of a wooden structure.

A day at the falls

Today Ralph was able to take a day off so he humored me and agreed to go out and shoot some pictures.  We decided to head towards Niagara.  We took our passports with us and ended  up going to the American side of to see if we could get some different shots of Niagara falls.  This is the first time that I have been here.  It was really windy and cold. We couldn't remove our gloves for a very long period of time because it was so cold.  This made it challenging when setting up our camera for each of the shots that we took.  Sadly Ralph had forgotten to put his battery in his camera so he wasn't able to take any pictures at this point in time as he didn't want to walk back to the truck to get it out of his camera bag.  We didn't stay here long as we found the wind quite challenging.

Since the day was so overcast I decided to process some of the pictures in black and white as there really wasn't much colour.

In the background  you can see the Canadian Falls.

All bundled up!! I have two vests on and a downfilled jacket.  Lots of pockets to store filters and other camera gear.  I was having so much fun. 

We didn't have any issues crossing the border as we weren't on the US side for very long.  As you can see from the pictures it was really overcast making for some interesting shots.  The wind wasn't blowing as hard on this side of the river so it didn't feel quite as cold.

Since the sun was starting to peak through the clouds  We were lucky because there wasn't that many people visiting today so we were able to find lots of places to set up our tripods for the pictures.

I was using a 14mm wide angle lens which limited some of the pictures that I could take but was quite pleased with some of the shots.

I really like this picture that Ralph took.  He used a Neutral Density Filter allowing him to smooth out the rough water. 

Christmas Eve Day

The alarm went off early this morning (5:30) as we wanted to go downtown and get to the market well before it got busy.  The roads were slick but we took our time.  We were downtown by around 6:30.  This was the perfect time to get there as the crowds weren't yet wandering around.  We spent a nice leisurely hour at the market and then enjoyed a coffee at Starbucks.

 

Afterwards we walked up towards the Eaton Center and admired the decorated windows at The Bay.  I used to look at these every year when I was working downtown.  They have done a really good job with the displays.  Most of the displays were animated which would have made it really nice for our grandchildren to see.  Maybe we can bring them downtown next year.

We walked through the Eaton Center as well and admired the huge tree that they had on display.  It was an artificial one about

3 stories high making it almost impossible to photograph.  We enjoyed practicing taking shots with Bokeh in the background.

After that we enjoyed a nice leisurely breakfast before walking back to our truck.  It was a fun morning.

Feeling blessed

Today we celebrated Christmas together as a family.  We met all together at church and listened to a really good sermon.   I am so thankful that we are able to do this together as a family.

Afterwards we went home and prepared coffee and snacks.  It was really nice to relax and spend time together enjoying each others company.  Everyone was in good spirits.  We don't often have the chance to do this and we love the times that we have together.

The time flew by, but we enjoyed every minute of the time spent together.   I look forward to reading my new book and am sporting some beautiful jewellery created by the kids.  The look of pride on their faces when they gave them to me is something that I will treasure for a long time.

Kristen Speelman - the wife of our nephew Robert, created this wall picture for us to give to Laura.  She was thrilled to receive it.  Kristen did an amazing job.  We love the text that was written and it will look beautiful hanging on the wall.

We love our grandchildren with all our heart and thoroughly enjoyed the time spent all together.  They were so good today.

Unwrapping gifts was fun.  You should have seen Hailey jumping up and down when she saw her new sweater from Under Armour. 

After a fun afternoon together, Brody was exhausted and also developed an sore ear.  We really hope that Laura caught it in time with the ear medication.

Our beautiful girls humoured their Oma by posing for pictures by the tree.  Thank you girls.  It was fun.