These are a little more creative than the first set. I played more with double exposures & had a couple rolls pushed by The Camera Shop. I’m not all that impressed by the scans, but since they are test rolls I can deal with the imperfections. I’m buying a film scanner for July’s wedding.

Nittany Lion Shrine Holga

State College Holga

Nittany Lion Shrine Old Main Holga Double Exposure

Penn State University Lion Shrine Holga

Penn State Campus Holga Push Processed

Turtle Old Main Holga Push Processed

Can anyone guess what this is?

State College Holga Double Exposure

Nittany Lion Shrine Holga Pushed

Leah Lion Shrine Holga Pushed

Nittany Lion Shrine Film Holga Pushed

These are the ceiling lights in Green Bowl.

Green Bowl Lights Film Holga

This last one was taken at the Pow Wow.

State College Pow Wow Holga Film

Looking forward to July!

I got my first test pictures back today. I didn’t try to do anything spectacular with these, I was just testing the framing, focusing & filters.

A few observations:

1) What you see is pretty much what you get. I read somewhere online that you need to almost chop off heads because the prints will come out so loose. I didn’t find that to be true at all, at least with the GTLRs I bought.

Holga : Wooden Stakes

Holga : Trees

2) You can’t focus closer than three feet without modifying something. I knew this, but I pushed it anyway to see what I would get. Hmph.

Holga : Minmay

3) The filters & colored flash are about as good as you would expect. The double filter-holder totally gets in the way, and the filters with holes in the middle are way too thick in my opinion. I will stick to the solid colors with no piggybacking.

Holga : Filters

Overall, I am impressed with the cameras and look forward to shooting some more!

Holga : Taylor

Holga : Taylor & Sterling

©2010 Disney Photo Imaging LLC, Used with Permission

Our first ever family vacation came to be with a mix of luck, planning and beautiful serendipity.

It all started in the beginning of the year, when Casey (my boyfriend) found out about Disney’s “Give A Day, Get A Disney Day” promotion. The dealio was this: you give a day of volunteer service and get a day pass in return. The stipulations were you had to be at least 6 years old and the volunteer work had to be scheduled on their website.

My youngest was six at the time, so that worked out perfectly. Unfortunately, most of the volunteer gigs were for older kids only and there weren’t very many in our area to begin with. Casey & I stalked the site around the clock, signing up for anything that came up for ages 6+. We finally got approved for one and had to drive about an hour to clean a park. One day of cleaning up garbage covered a day in Magic Kingdom for all five of us. Score!

Now for the lodging… his parents have a timeshare, so they worked it out so that we could stay 4 nights in Vacation Village at Parkway, about 6 miles from the park. It was super-cheap, but we had to listen to their aggressive sales pitch. No biggee, or so we thought at the time.

The kids were super-excited that they were finally going to Disneyworld, and I have to admit, so was I! Even at the ripe age of 35, I had never been to the glorious land of Mickey & friends. They started saving money for souvenirs, and eventually had enough money to pay for another park! They picked Universal Studios and continued to save.

When fall came, we harvested a bunch of pumpkins and gourds and dumped them in the front yard. The kids took turns manning the station, waving down cars and making deals. I gotta tell ya – you dangle Disney in front of a kid and you’ll be shocked at how good they become at selling. Taylor was the funniest – she would talk to the people about our upcoming trip while tapping on the price sign, then walk around casually tossing gourds in the air while making small talk. She was always using her body language to suggest more items, and people loved it. She started coming in with tips on every sale.

As their cash envelopes hit the bursting point again, we added Blizzard Beach to the agenda. Then I started planning our drive there and back. As an expert Googler and lover of all things kitsch, I found some VERY interesting places to stop!

We hit the road Saturday night, armed with a waterproof point & shoot camera, a stocked 12v cooler & some clothes. I drove straight through to North Carolina, stopping only for a short snooze in the car. I really wanted to wow the kids first thing in the morning, and also break up our trip nicely since my boyfriend can’t drive stick. We started our tour at Vollis Simpson’s place. Unfortunately we did not see the wizard himself, but his work was incredible!

Airlie Bottle Chapel

Old Oak Tree at Airlie Gardens

Next, we headed to Airlie Gardens to see the bottle chapel I’ve dreamed about standing in for years. The park is also home to the most beautiful oak trees I have ever laid eyes on. We spent a while there, walking around, making wishes, creeping up on birds and rolling on the grass by the big oak.

Our last stop for the day was at Mary’s Gone Wild, the most awesomely artistic, hoarded-up place you can imagine. The place was loaded with tree houses, bottle structures and mermaid paintings on glass. There was a donation box every few feet and Jesus radio played in the background.

That was my favorite stop by far, because there was just SO MUCH STUFF. I could easily spend a day there, exploring and climbing through the twisted labyrinth of tree houses. When we first pulled in to the place, Sterling screamed, “This place is FANTASTIC! They have EVERYTHING!”

Casey has a thing for Cracker Barrel, so we had to stop at one. While we were sitting at the table with our food, we quizzed the kids about what we saw. Every time they answered correctly, they got one of our pickle slices. When the pickles ran out, our server popped out of nowhere with a fresh dish of pickles. He was the best!

We pushed on south with the plan of driving as far as possible before stopping to sleep. We followed the GPS on the phone while listening to our favorite Pandora stations. Then, without any warning, my phone died.

After tinkering with it for awhile unsuccessfully, I was tempted off the road one last time by one of my favorite things in the whole world: PYROTECHNICS!

The Big Bang - Maximum Powder Allowed by Law!

They had a huge room full of ALL my favorite kinds of boom-booms: loud ones, sparkling ones, big ones, popping ones! I really, REALLY wanted to take home “The Big Bang.” Look at the size of that caution sign! There were also painted hermit crabs, cheesy name souvenirs, and REALLY BIG knives. This was my kinda place.

When the fireworks salesman slinked over to start his sales spiel, Taylor asked him, “This sign says lucky bamboo. Are you SURE this is lucky?” Sterling was obsessed with the hermit crabs. Minmay wandered around the souvenirs, no doubt fantasizing about what she could do with limitless funds.

We stopped and slept for the night, then continued south until 9:00 when I started looking for a Verizon store. That’s when things got a little ugly.

We found a Verizon store that opened at 10:00 and parked out front. After a little while, another guy parked and then a third pulled in. By then it was 10:00 exactly, so I was sure the third car was an employee. Out walked Johnny, a sag-bustin’, sloppy-shirted thug with a key to the store. “Oh, you beat me here!” he said, and then let himself in to change clothes. A third customer came, asked why the store wasn’t open and then left. We waited.

A few minutes later he opened the door and I walked in, explaining my situation. Johnny told me he could mail a replacement phone to my home and print out directions to the hotel. I reiterated that were on vacation and having a smartphone sent to my home wasn’t going to help me since all of my maps, addresses and phone contacts were on the phone. I asked if I could call Verizon on his phone. He told me to go to another Verizon store in another city and ask for help, because he wasn’t going to help me. I asked if I could call another Verizon store rather than drive there and he refused, so I told him I’d be right back and brought my family in.

My kids sat in the chairs, I sat at the counter, and Casey stood next to me while I asked again to use his phone. This time he let me use it and I followed the prompts to get a real person. Meanwhile, Casey talked to him about the situation. He started bad-mouthing me, saying we were trying to MUSCLE him and that having a phone is a PRIVILEGE. Casey asked him where he worked before this job and he proudly admitted he was IN JAIL! I swear I’m not making this up! Casey laughed, he got angry and slammed the phone that I was using, then called security! At this time I had no idea what just happened, just that Johnny got really angry really quickly. Security came in, looked at us, looked at a few phones and turned around and walked out. My little boy thought were were being arrested and couldn’t understand why.

I used Casey’s phone and called the other store while still sitting at the counter. The guy at the other store told me he’d have a replacement phone sent to the hotel, no problem. Ex-cons. Pfft.

After the Johnny incident was behind us, we drove to Kissimmee and checked in. The rest of the day we unpacked, relaxed and swam. Oh! Except for Minmay, she got to spend the day with her uncle.

The next day, something magical happened…

Stitch at Disney World

It was awesome! We got special pins for volunteering and for being first time visitors. We had a lot of pictures taken (which I bought of course). None of the lines were long and we rode everything we wanted.

I love that you can walk down the street and suddenly a show breaks out. I LOVE live performances. That is one of the things I really love about living in this area. State College Theatre rocks!

We saw all the Disney Princesses, Peter Pan, Chip & Dale, Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Stitch, Woody, Jessie… I don’t remember who else.

My favorite ride in the whole park was the very first one we rode – SPACE MOUNTAIN!

©2010 Disney Photo Imaging LLC, Used with Permission

©2010 Disney Photo Imaging LLC, Used with Permission

The next day we went to Universal Studios. I LOVE that park so much! There aren’t as many rides and the lines are longer, but they are crazy! I can think of three rides right now that had fire shooting out at us. They aren’t shy about squirting fire, you can feel it on your eyebrows. Fire! Fire!

My favorite rides were MIB, Krustyland & Rock It! I totally bought the video from Rock It and if I can get permission to share it I will! It’s rad! [Update: Permission DENIED!]

Jaws

Curious George

The Simpsons

Krustyland

Thursday was Blizzard Beach day and the weather was purr-fect! Before leaving for the park, we had to do the 1.5 hour timeshare sales thing. Minmay just started babysitting for short periods of time, so we left the kids in the room and prepared for the hard sell.

We went to our meeting place and checked in. They logged our time and we sat and waited. Finally, our name was called and we met an older man named Fernando. He asked us if we wanted breakfast, we asked if that would affect our 1.5 hour time commitment, he said yes, we declined. He said he needed to take us to another place on the property and brought us to his car.

I remember thinking, “Hmm, so this is how they get you to stay longer. That’s okay, when it’s time to go, we’ll just tell him he HAS to bring us back. He’ll probably try to drag it on but in the end, it’s not like he can say no.” Well, that’s what happened. True story. We ended up somewhere on the property completely stranded and had to find our way back to our building in oppressive humidity. Consider yourself warned.

On to Blizzard Beach! We got our feet wet on Teamboat Springs first and then hit the slides. Just a few of the slides were too intense for the little ones so we took turns watching them at Ski Patrol Training Camp. They had an awesome zipline that Taylor was scared of but Sterling loved. He wouldn’t let go of the handle at the end, so the force would eject him and cause him to flip. It was hilarious! Soon other parents and kids were cheering him on, so we started calling him The Legend. When you get to the second video, watch the kids in the back.

I forgot to mention this earlier, that kid likes to wave at EVERYTHING. In the Small World ride at Magic Kingdom, he was waving at the dolls. At Universal Studios he waved at the ETs. Here he is, waving at us.

We shook up our bellies in Melt-Away Bay just before lunch and then relaxed on Cross Country Creek.

After packing up our things, we reluctantly started the drive back to PA. I still had two more surprises in store.

In Brunswick, Georgia, tucked back into the woods, there is a place called Hostel in the Forest. For only $25 per person per night, you get to sleep in a fabulous tree house, partake in a fresh & delicious vegetarian meal and hang out with hippies and world travelers late into the night. I booked our tree house a week or so in advance and looked for a nearby beach.

Jekyll Island is a beautiful barrier island about 20 minutes from the hostel. On the north end is Driftwood Beach, with very soft sand with dead trees sticking out of it. If you love driftwood, this place should be on your to-do list for sure. This end of the island is eroding away and being redeposited on the other end of the island, revealing the trees. I love places like this so much, because you can really see that the earth is alive and changing.

We spent the afternoon exploring the beach before heading to the hostel.

Driftwood Beach on Jekyll Island

Jelly Fish

We packed a lunch of military rations but had a really hard time eating. The birds there are completely tame and kept swiping our food from right in front of us. Sterling was trying to shoo them and stepped on a cactus.

At the hostel, things were very quiet. It was the perfect ending to our vacation. We walked around checking out the tree houses, gardens & compost toilets. Every place you go on the hostel you find a notebook, including the toilets. It’s fun to read what others have said about their stay (and their poop).

We stayed in the “Peacock.” It’s a tree house with two floors and the inside walls are fairy murals. The kids stayed on the bottom and we stayed on top. Taylor has been taking guitar lessons and a couple of girls jammed with her to E-F-G. In the morning there were chickens all over the place and Sterling stuck his hand in chicken poop. He “thought it was mustard!” We explored a little more and went out in the canoe before reluctantly leaving.

The Peacock - Our Home

Canoe Ride on Lake

"Chicken Shamans Only"

Cob Wall, Bottles, Oven, Living Roof

The rest of drive back was pretty uneventful, except that we stopped at Friendly’s. My mother gave me a gift card forever ago and we finally got to use it. We were expecting an ice cream place with some food, but it’s actually a REALLY nice family restaurant! The service was the best and the food was really good. We don’t eat out often but if there was one here I would definitely take my kids there. When our server seated us at a booth that had mustard behind it, we couldn’t help but tease Sterling. “They knew you were coming, dude!”

It was a great vacation and I can’t wait to take another one.