Tag Archives: weekend

People Make the Difference Not Plastic // Photos

June 30, 2008 – 7:43 am

This was a busy busy weekend, but I spent some of Friday and Saturday at the building or construction of the new playground at our church. I think our pastor described this as a Mac Daddy playground on Sunday morning, and he was not kidding. This is one heck of a playground put in, basically over the period of a two day weekend.

You can see the gallery of images from the ground breaking to the finish now except for a few missing odds and ends. The real work, done by all the people who volunteered on Friday and Saturday was incredible. After spending some time out there on Friday I realized that this wasn’t about plastic, bolts, and some dirt, but people.

Sitting in the bob-cat while not in use

Health resting in the grass

Through God, it is people that made this possible, and people that will be able to enjoy what was done on this weekend for years to come. So, when I came back on Saturday I decided to focus a little more of my attention on the actual faces of the people that made this possible.

I picked two of my favorites from Saturday above. One of my bud Heath over at gotroot and the other one of those who will use the playground, sitting with dad while everyone is on a break. Towards the end of the completed gallery you will see a little more focused attention on the people that made this possible.

It was a very hot and steamy weekend where many people took time off from work and their families to lend a helping hand.

By Scott Fillmer | Posted in Journal, Photography | Also tagged , | Comments (0)

Do You Have a Quiet and Peaceful Place to Hide?

June 22, 2008 – 6:13 am

How busy was this weekend for you? For me it was close to frantic pace, but a lot was accomplished. The busy pace of our lives got me to thinking about the question in the title or course, and I often ask this question of myself.

Not really to hide out so the world can’t find you but a place to relax, take your mind off of the craziness of the day recharge the batteries a little. I actually “try” to do this twice a day. I usually eat my breakfast outside, walking around in our garden away from the computer or cell phone… but… now I have a place to sit too.

Building a Tree Swing is One Place

On Saturday we put together a stand for a swing in the garden which was too small for our larger wooden swing we already had, so we put the one together the way it had come packaged and put it in the garden, and put the other one under this large Sweet Gum tree close to our house.

Swing under Sweet Gum Tree

From the photo above you can see there was a perfect lateral branch coming off the side of the Sweet Gum and just strong enough to hold our swing, while being completely under the tree’s canopy. Can’t wait to eat breakfast out here this week.

Friday Ice Cream and Board Games

On Friday I went over to our church to get some photos of the first monthly meeting for Friday Ice Cream and Board Games. Actually it is going to be a different activity each month but this one was pretty neat. Hard to beat 10 gallons of ice cream and 25 board games for a few hours.

Board Games

Cornerstone UMC at Night

When I left Friday night it was dark enough to get an image of the entry way of the church at night. I have been waiting to do this and finally got an image I like. The images here is one of many of course, and you can see the entire Friday gallery on the flickr page for Cornerstone.

Saturday Playground Construction Continued

On Saturday we did a mix of things from here at the house, to the church, to running around Auburn. We tilled up the majority of our fenced in back yard to prepare for a fall vegetable garden. We did this until it was too hot to stand it any more and then went into Auburn.

Land Clearing for Playground

The clearing and tree removal continued in full swing at the church on Saturday and I ran over there to get some additional future playground images. It is not all that easy (to me) to get something photographically pleasing in a construction site with dust and bulldozers flying around, but it does keep me focused on the basics of photography and keeps me from being photographically lazy. See construction gallery here.

After the construction it was back to the house for some more tilling and swing building. It was a busy weekend (so far), but an enjoyable one.

By Scott Fillmer | Posted in Journal, Photography | Also tagged , , | Comments (1)

The Weekend is Here, Time to Get Ready for a Little Polka

May 17, 2008 – 5:35 am

This seems like it was a very long week, but the weekend is here. I was able to get quite a bit of work done this past week and next week will be an extremely busy week with the National Polka Festival in Texas. This past few days, in my spare time, I have been trying to work on developing a blog for the worship leader of our church. Each step seems to be a slow process to me, but progress is being made. I discovered this week that I have never really been able to combine my three favorite passions, faith, music, and photography, into the same place at the same time.

This gave me the chance to do that. Wednesday I was able to do some photography at the church while the band practiced, it was great. I have started to get a few graphics for the site uploaded, and one working banner so far. I love doing this kind of work and if I could work with images, music, and matters of faith all day I probably would. Still work to be done over there but I like the way it is coming around. I have nothing to do with the content at all, so pay Brian a visit and leave a few comments over there.

The Rest of the Weekend

The rest of my weekend is probably going to consist of yard work, but maybe I will be able to get some blogging of my own accomplished. I had to revert back to my old theme after going through, what was to me, some terribly written wordpress code. Still not totally happy with this theme but I have no time to mess with it now.

Hope everyone’s weekend is an enjoyable one.

By Scott Fillmer | Posted in Journal | Also tagged , | Comments (0)

What is a Patio Without a Fire Pit, Not Much To Us

May 4, 2008 – 1:04 pm

Scott Looking at the Patio Fire PitThis weekend was busy but relaxing. Saturday was supposed to be a day for outside tractor work and various yard things we all seem to have to do on the weekend, but, it RAINED. Who’da thunk. We haven’t had rain in the southeast in what seems like years after last summer’s drought (in fact I think it has been a year). It was a nice rain shower and didn’t last long enough to rain out the entire grass cutting day.

The rain did let up enough for us a have a nice fire in our fire pit on the patio. We had this built into the patio when we moved in and we use it all the time. There is something about being able to sit outside around a “camp fire” that makes for a great and relaxing time. We sit around the fire pit on our patio all year round and enjoy it very much. If you don’t have one built into the concrete then you can do what we did before we moved in. Get an old washing machine tub from a junk dealer (they will gladly give them away) or just dig you a nice whole in the ground and surround it with bricks.  When we were building this house, the fire pit in the patio was one of the must have’s of the house, but really it is just a circle in the concrete.  You would think such a thing would be an easy thing for a builder to get his hands around but nothing seemed to go that way with this house (see the category for house if you are interested).

The photo to the left here is actually a self portrait.  Something I don’t do all that often but I had the camera flat on the ground and used the timer to trigger the shutter.  The photo below is one I took of Deborah later on Saturday night. It is completely dark except for the fire in the fire pit. The image doesn’t show the fire because it would be to bright for the exposure, but you can see the spark trails of the fire just to the right side of her face. I did have her sit a little closer to the fire than she normally would so she was ready to move since her knees were a little warm.

She did real well to sit there through a 15 second exposure without moving. Thanks hun.  It is a little spooky (not Deb of course) with the fire glow as the only light source but I love how it turned out.  If you haven’t tried sitting absolutely still for 15-20 seconds at a time shot after shot after shot, you should try it some time.  Deb did great as a subject with fire on her legs.

Cold Night by the Fire

Sunday, May 4, 2008

We had a very nice service that completed the current series on missions. I plan to update my faith based blog, d.amasc.us soon with more information. The rest of our Sunday was spent enjoy one of the most beautiful Spring days here in the lower south. We can now finally eat out on the patio without freezing to death. There is a new moon tonight, and I will try to take a few star trail images and see how they turn out for tomorrow’s post.

By Scott Fillmer | Posted in House, Journal | Also tagged , , | Comments (0)

Saturday is Time to Cut Grass on the John Deere Tractor

April 19, 2008 – 7:55 pm

Today was a day for one thing, cutting grass on the tractor. I think I started about 8am in some light misty rain and stopped about 5pm to go for a short walk. It was short because I was so tired from the days work I couldn’t really put in a full 4-5 miles. I probably cut about 10 acres of grass today, but since we were out of town the last several weekends it really needed to be cut. The grass was higher than the dog and he was not wanting to go outside anymore. Granted, we have a short dog, but still, the grass/weeds, were very high.

Cutting Grass on the John Deere Tractor

Last year we didn’t have any rain for almost 12 months straight, this Winter and Spring we have received a little bit more, not much, but a little, so the Bahia grass has actually grown this year.

Minor Other Items

I was able to do a few other items besides cut grass today. I did copy of a few more CD’s of images onto my compute and updated one of my blogs, My Life in Europe, a blog I edit. On thing that was a nice surprise at the end of the day was hearing from an old friend, Thangles. Deborah and I (and Deborah’s mom and husband David) worked with Patrick and Mary from Thangles at almost all the same quilt shows, for years until we stopped vending at shows. It was really nice to hear from them again after so long. I am looking forward tomorrow to getting back to our church. I was told to expect something different, still not sure what that means but we will see.

Nature in View

We sat out by the fire on the patio tonight after dinner and just about sunset when there was still a little bit of light in the sky, we both witnessed a great shooting star, with a huge contrail turning white to green. It was probably some space junk falling to earth but it was incredible to see. We always get to see some unique parts of nature when we take the time to sit out by the fire. We also seem to have a huge population of Whippoorwills. They call all night to each other. Usually they are competing with the Mocking birds and Barn Owls but not yet. If you haven’t ever heard one, they are LOUD.

By Scott Fillmer | Posted in Journal | Also tagged , , | Comments (0)