2007 African American Festival // Making dolls, originally uploaded by Claudia Snell.

Last weekend we went out to the African American Heritage, Family and Youth Festival. It was held in Institute Park right near where we live.

It was a beautiful day. The crowds were great - everyone was really enjoying themselves. The food was good. Music was good… You get the picture.

This was the first time they’ve held the festival outside. It was a great idea to move it out there.

Sarah had a great time at the kids activiites. She made a doll and a mask at the crafts tables, bounced in the inflatable thing and enjoyed the enterrtainment. She also did a little shopping.

Swans, originally uploaded by Claudia Snell.

We’ve had swans in Institute Park for a couple of years now. Maybe even three. This year they started acting funny. One of them got pretty aggressive toward the Canadian Geese. The other one seemed to be sitting on a nest on the far side of the pond. I was hoping it meant babies.

Today we saw the new family. Looks like my guess was right. The strange behavior was because of the impending arrival of babies. There are 5 beautiful little ones.

The daddy was looking pretty protective so I didn’t get much closer than I was when I took this shot. When I stepped forward a few feet he hissed at me. I’ve seen him on the attack so I thought it best to back away and leave them.

The babies are absolutely adorable!

2006 New England Summer Nationals, originally uploaded by Claudia Snell.

I commute about 50 miles each way, every day (no, not in the car in the pic. Mine’s a MUCH newer GTI). Anyway, this was something interesting to me.

What gets me is the part about using the A.C. instead of driving with the windows down - DOH!! I’ve been doing it wrong. I guess I should not be surprised. I do lots of stuff wrong

Check this out:
Tips You May Not Have Heard, To Save Gas
No doubt you have some summer plans that will put on you the road, but it’s going to be painful filling up before you leave. There are simple things you can do to get more gas for your money.

read more | digg story

CHOCOLATE!, originally uploaded by Claudia Snell.

Brought from Italy by my super awesome co-worker! (Have I mentioned that I work with the BEST people! So awesome, anyway…)

This stuff is so very good. There were 4 of them, we’re down to two and will certainly finish those off next week. Right after I took this pictures we ate the one with the crunchies. OH YUM!!!

Chocolate is the best.

Damon, originally uploaded by Claudia Snell.

A couple of weeks back we got to hang out with Damon and his new girlfriend. Nice kids.

Anyhow, I took a bunch of pictures (of course) and then made them into a slideshow. Check it out here

This one is another “collaboration” with Damon. He made the music and as already stated, I took (lots) of pictures.

If you like the slideshow and want to make your own, check this out. It’s called Soundslides and is one of the easiest audio slideshow creators I’ve ever seen. It really is easy - open it, select the folder your pix are in, select your audio file (simple browse via HUGE buttons). The program resizes and organizes everything for you. It has easy to use options for customizing the timings and look of it. The slideshows are easy to update and maintain too. This thing even creates all the HTML and whatnot so you can just post what it produces. I wouldn’t say it was easy if it wasn’t - really! One of my biggest peaves is software that says it’s easy and is in fact so hard you have to spend a year in intense training to grasp the basics. This one says easy and delivers on that. It’s about $40 and is well worth it.

Whew! I’ll stop gushing about Soundslides now. I’m not getting paid for this ya know