About

Hi! I'm Louise. A number cruncher by day, a Mommy 24/7, and Partner-In-Crime with my Better Half.

We live on the West Coast of Canada. We've been renovating our townhome since January 2010 with the goal of selling it and buying a detached home with a large yard for our son, Walter, a large garage that my better half, Manuel, can turn into a workshop (he's a finishing carpenter with more tools than our son has Lego blocks!), and finally, a space for me to cook, create, and find that balance between 21st century expectations and a semi-minimalist/frugal/eco-friendly lifestyle. We finally finished renovations and put the townhome on the market in September 2012. Yes, it would have been better to put it on the market in March/April ... but with fulltime jobs, a young son who wants us to be present in his days, older parents with health issues ... it just didn't happen. Oh well - fingers crossed that all goes well!

Technical Stuff

I use Blogger for publishing.  I have two Canon digital cameras for taking photos - a Powershot A1000 and a Powershot S3 II.  The A1000 is a simple point and shoot - great for having in my purse for those quick shots you don't want to miss.  The S3 is bigger and more cumbersome, but takes much better quality photos.  It handles ambient and indoor lighting situations so much better.  Still, I'd like to upgrade to a Canon 5D Mark II so I can use multiple lenses ... and until then, at least get a new tripod to use in those night-time indoor still shots that I always seem to be doing.  My old tripod met a toddler - three year old Walter - who was fascinated with how tripods were put together - said tripod no longer stands!  For editing my photos, I'm using Adobe Photoshop Elements 10.  It's great for the basics.  I am thinking about acquiring Adobe Illustrator so that I can make graphic images.  I have an HP Dv6 17" laptop with an Intel i5 second generation processor.  The last thing in my arsenal is Microsoft OneNote - a great tool for organizing notes, keeping track of projects ... plus I love that I can put some, but not all, of my notebooks in the Cloud.  Makes it so easy to access and maintain.