IHF Photo Challenge- Best face of January 2011

This week's challenge over at IHF is "Best Face of 2011."  Since I've only done one photoshoot this month in order to focus on backend business stuff I didn't have a lot to choose from. Since I want to broadcast the photoshoot I did do in its own blog post I thought I'd drag my daughter Amalie outside to take some pictures in her new skirt. [more details on skirt below]  We only had a few moments to snap because there's a winter storm moving into the area tonight and you can already feel the chill in the area!  BRRR...
Although I know that through the IHF community this will not be named "Best Face" she's still adorable and I still wanted to participate.

Here is my entry:

These are not part of my entry to the IHF challenge, but I wanted to share them anyway:  

See her skirt? Isn't it the most beautiful, adorable, charming little thing? I had it custom made (no, custom does not always mean expensive) from a wonderful woman named Stacey. She runs a charming etsy shop full of custom made clothing for little girls. Please please please check her out!
Etsy Shop- Hailey Bugs Closet
Facebook Fan Page
She also has a Blog

Finally, if you're a fellow Photog, check out the giveaway that she's part of with Galpin Studios
And another few pictures... to end on a light sense of humor note.  No kid wants to be told it's time to go inside!

Girls Night! (With Kids)

Some girlfriends decided that we needed to start having a "Girls Night [in]" once a month.  We've all (for the most part) gotten married, had kids, and have settled down.  It's weird to think of myself in that spot.  But I've been a mother for 7 years.  Most of us are mid twenties to early thirties.  {Glad to say I have 1 year left in my twenties!}

So although girl's night is a loose term (there were a couple of men and lots of children there) it was nice to get together.  Next month is my month to host, so you can expect more pictures then.  I took my camera because (well, because I always do) I wanted to get pictures of my girl friends but ended up snapping mostly pictures of the kids.

Low light and an ISO of 1600 seemed like a good enough reason to turn the whole batch into black and white.  Although I must say how impressed I am with my camera (Canon EOS 7D) at 1600 ISO.  I probably could have done color edits, but I quickly whipped these out in LR so that I could post on FB.  This is a creamtone preset.  Easy peasy.

Getting in the Valentine Spirit

My lovely friend, Allison Kaye, over at Crafted Love isn't the lovey dovey type that likes Valentine's Day so she's been trying to get herself psyched up by posting pictures of valentine crafts and items on her blog.
So this is for her.  Happy Valentine's Day. ha ha.

The theme for yesterday over on Twitter for @Photoshoot was RED.  So this was my red submission. Red gummy hearts.  Yum.



I opened this is Lightroom and adjusted the white balance and played with the curve a little bit to really bring out the sugar bits on the candies, then exported to Photoshop.  Once opened in PS I ran a LOVELY action by Pure Photoshop Actions called "Brown Sugar Baby."  It's in their set #1.  If you're going to buy actions I recommend them highly.  They're well priced and they're things that you do to pictures anyway, but streamlined into little easy to operate packages.  They made my workflow so much faster.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Fix It Friday (#84)

This week's fix it friday picture was a litle tricker to edit.  I guess many people requested this, so the founders over at IHF granted their wish and uploaded a picture with lighting problems.  I'm kind of short on time today so I didn't do much to fix the lighting except on baby's face.

I intend to do several edits every week.  A contemporary color edit, a vintage edit and a black and white edit. 
Without further ado.. the original, SOOC image:


My contemporary color edit:

I did a lot on this image, included several selective color layers, a popping action, and a high pass filter on baby's eyes.  I kind of lost track to all the things I did to tweak it.

The vintage edit:

Added some softened red and yellow layers, along with a very very tweaked vintage action.
(kinda wishing I had added a vignette here.)

Finally, the black and white edit:

This was simply a gradient fill, along with a slight yellow color layer set to soft light.

Go on over to IHF and check out the other entries.
And leave me some blog love, will you---.... what's YOUR favorite edit?

Collections

I'm not a typical "collector."  I try really hard not to stash things.  I don't like clutter.  But I do have children.  Things seem to grow, multiply, and break at an alarming rate.

This is my kitchen.

[excuse the "after" in the top right corner. I used it for a before/after post for my pitifully ignored 365 project]

I like clean lines, empty counters and opaque cabinets. I decided that this year the white has to go. I've been looking at paint colors and thing I'm leaning to the "sage" family. It will match well with the backsplash tiles that are green in color.

My dishes are also green.  I've had them for about 8 years now and as mentioned above, some have broken. I saw a post today that just got the wheels in my head turning faster than they've turned in awhile.  INSPIRATION!!!

Click to find MaieDae.

Here are some cool dishes I found at first glance:

Here

Here

Here

Anyway, this vintage plate idea is DIVINE.  I almost can't wait to start ebaying, craiglist-ing, yardsaling, etc.
The Mister is likely to disown me. ;-)

By the way, if you like giveaways (who doesn't like giveaways??) you should hop over to http://pienthesky.blogspot.com/2011/01/sponsor-love-giveaway.html and check their giveaway out.  Lots of Etsy stuff there.  And we all know I love me some etsy!

Book 3 of 15 -- Heaven Is For Real

The third book I chose to read this year was "Heaven Is for Real."  After reading the terrible Frog King book I needed something uplifting and positive.  A book about heaven seemed it would fit the bill.  It did. 

Specs:
Title: Heaven Is For Real
Author: Sonja Burpo, Colton Burpo, and Lynn Vincent
Pages: 208 pages
Rating: *****/*****
Started: January 15th
Completed: January 17th

You can buy the book HERE.

This book is only 208 pages so I finished it in a breeze.  The basic storyline is about Colton & Sonja's 4 year old son who has some terrible health problems and ends up with a ruptured appendix and in emergency surgery.  During that time Colton's son visits heaven and sees things and later tells about things that a 4 year old (even with a pastor father) upbringing wouldn't know unless he had actually been there.    It's an uplifting book perfect for those that believe in heaven and want to know more or those that are on the fence about whether or not heaven "exists."

Up next is "90 Minutes In Heaven." Why not stay on the heaven "kick" for a little bit, right?

Book 2 of 15 -- The Frog King

Specs:
Title: The Frog King
Author: Adam Davies
Pages: 316 pages
Rating: **/*****
Started: January 6th
Completed: January 14th
This book was so filled with curse words that I just wanted to hurl it across the wall.  It seemed trashy and screamed to the fact that it was written by someone young that couldn't afford to have any creative writing training.  Or, written by someone that has a large disregard to respect and using curse words as emphasis instead of a dialect of young adults.  But then again, I'm pushing 30, so maybe I'm just getting "old."
It was a story about a mid-twenties guy in a dead end job.  He has a girlfriend that he loves that he can't express his love to.  This is likely because he has such a huge drinking problem that he's out of touch with the real world.
I only awarded it two stars.  I would have given it 1 star, but I did actually finish the book so something about it must've posessed me to read on.   Although upon completion I'm not sure why I did.  I was grateful to be done with the book.  Save yourself some hours of your life and DON'T pick this up.  I didn't even think it was worthy of my taking time to snap and edit a picture, so I stole a stock picture from amazon.

Homemade Laundry Detergent

One of the things I do that I'm most proud of in this house is make our laundry detergent.  I've been doing it for a couple of years now and now that I've saved my family a BOAT-LOAD of money.  I make a five gallon bucket of it every 4-6 weeks.  It only costs about $1.00 to make and let me tell you: it.does.work.
Jason, my husband, throws garbage for a living and even though he likes to tell me that throwing garbage isn't THAT dirty of a job it sure is dirtier than a lot of them. It gets his clothes fresh and clean.


I got the recipe HERE.
4  Cups - hot tap water
1  Bar of Soap.  I've used Ivory, johnson & johnson Buddy bars and fels-naptha.  I usually get whatever I can find a good deal on.  Usually Ivory.
1 Cup - Arm & Hammer Super WASHING Soda (Note that I did not say BAKING soda.  Washing soda is mandatory and is in a yellow box.
½ Cup Borax
- cut up into small pieces (or grate) your bar of soap and add to saucepan with water. Stir continually over medium-low heat until soap dissolves and is melted.  This takes the longest time.  But it is necessary to stand there and keep stirring or it will bubble over.
-Fill a 5 gallon bucket half full of hot tap water. (This is the fun part.  My bucket is too tall to be filled directly from my faucet so I get to stand at the sink with my super slow sprayer and fill with that.)  Add melted soap, washing soda and Borax. Stir well until all powder is dissolved. Fill bucket to top with more hot water. Stir, cover and let sit overnight to thicken.  When you open it the next morning it will look like a bucket of something you made in science class as a kid.  Stir through the gel.  It will continue to separate and gel every time it is left.  This is normal and this is okay.  It will not affect the quality of the product.  Just make sure to stir every time you open the bucket.
- Use a pitcher to poor detergent into empty store bought laundry detergent containers. Shake before each use. (Like mentioned above, it will continue to gel)
-Optional: You can add 10-15 drops of essential oil per 2 gallons. Add once soap has cooled. Ideas: lavender, rosemary, tea tree oil.  I use liquid detergent and/or dryer sheets so I usually allow those to be my scented item to make my laundry smell great!
The duggars claim this will make 10 gallons and that you can add half a laundry detergent jug full of water and half full of your detergent mix, but I don't dilute it any further than it already is.
-I use a top load washing machine and fill two cap fulls of detergent and add it to the beginning of a cycle.
HAPPY LAUNDERING! 

Book 1 of 15 -- The Glass Castle

Have you ever been working on a long email, document, blog post and then {{{POOF!}}} it's gone?  Yeah, that just happened to me.  Can you see the thrilled look on my face???  Well, let's try all this again, shall we?
My second New Year's Resolution was to read 12-15 books this year.  On January 2nd I started The Glass Castle.  You can purchase it HERE.
Title: The Glass Castle
Author: Jeannette Walls
Genre: Memoir
Pages: 288
Rating: *****/*****
Started: 1.2.2011
Completed: 1.5.2011
I completed this book in just 3 short days.  It was a really simple and exciting read.  I hadn't even read the back of this book because so many people had told me that I just HAD to read it.  It wasn't until I was finished with it that I realized it was a memoir.  The details of the story are threaded together in such a wonderful way that I just found myself gliding from sentence to sentence, chapter to chapter, year to year in her life.  It tells the tales of living with her 2 sisters and 1 brother in a "home" full of uncertainty, raised by an alcoholic father and a mentally unstable, extremely irresponsible mother.  The bounce from town to town, house to house, lifestyle to lifestyle.  Lice, dirtiness, lack of electricity and heat, and empty pantries and refrigerators were the norm for Jeanette and her family.  This certainly makes me look around my home and my life and take an extra moment to be thankful and appreciative.  It's a story of great dedication to make something of yourself against all odds.  I'd highly recommend this book.