Baby Its Cold Outside

Well I am finally back and have quite a few things I need to update this blog with but I will start with the most recent events first.  IT SNOWED AND STUCK!  I know for most of you snow is not a big deal but this is Sacramento, California, we are not supposed to get snow!  We were just about 10 miles away from the schools that were closed down because of snow.  I would guess that we had between 3/4 to 1 inch of snow on the ground that stayed but I have not seen an official total.  We have seen the occasional flurry every few years or so but this stuff actually stuck.  The kids were so excited at first to go out and check out the snow, but it lasted less than a minute before they got too cold and wanted to go back in.  It was a really pretty sight to see all of the palm trees in the neighborhood covered with snow.  Here are a few of the pictures I took, but the time I had the camera out, the kids did not want to go out in the snow so they are just of the scenery. 

 

The kids wanted a picture of one of their snow balls.This is some of the snow on my car.  Yes my car was left outside overnight so it sure had a shock, it usually sleeps in the garage, but Scott was planning on taking the kids to school in the morning so we put his car in the garage so it would be warm for the kids.  As you can see from the picture is has started to rain so some of the snow is melting.   But surprisingly even with the rain the snow stayed until about 11:00. 

I really wish that I had a different camera lens so that I could take better pictures of things that are far away.  There were some really pretty tall traditional palm trees cover in snow but I could not get a decent shot of them. 

Something you definitely don’t expect to see, snow on a palm tree.

It is so cold, and our poor kids don't really have any heavy duty jackets because we just plain don't need it, so they wore lots of layer (2 pairs of socks, 3 shirts and 2 hoodies each).  Here is a shot of our thermometer outside. 

So this was all yesterday but today we set more records for the cold, and the layers of ice were so thick the kids thought that it had snowed again.  This morning at 7 when Spencer wanted to wear shorts and short sleeves to school I took him outside and showed him the thermometer and it only said it was 18 outside.  In fact there are still areas in the yard that the sun has not touched and there are still patches of ice and it is nearly 1:00 in the afternoon.  TOOO COLD!

Oh My Where did the time go….

I just realized how long it has been since I posted on here.  Things are busy busy here and will only be getting busier as the holidays and birthday season for the family begins.  I just wanted to share an amazing blog give away for those girls out there (or dads or friends of girls).  It is for the curlformers hair curlers.  I have been eyeing these for a few months but they tend to be a little expensive as far as curlers go so I have not taken the plunge to buy them.  Well we are a lunch break right now from potty training (I just refuse to eat my meals in the bathroom)  I will try to make the time in the next few days to get some real news and pictures posted. 

Anyways here is the blog to go enter in for the curlers!  http://babesinhairland.blogspot.com/  This is where I get a lot of my ideas for Kaitlyn’s hair.  I will have to take more pictures of her hair and post them on here too.  I know that there are 24 hours in a day but really where do they all go?

First Day of School

Yesterday was the kids’ first day of school.  They are both really enjoying it and are happy with their new classes and friends.  Although Spencer did complain that there were more girls from his kindergarten class than boys in his new class and also that Sarah G. was not one of the girls in his class.  The school lost Spencer for a little bit, but not really.  I got a phone call Monday morning a couple of hours into school asking if I was still planning on having Spencer attend or if they could give his spot up to one of the many kids on the waiting list.  ME- Ummm… no you may not give his spot up, he is there right now.  School Secretary – Oh he is marked absent, let me call into his class and make sure he is really there.  At this point my heart is pounding, what do you mean my 5 year old was marked absent, I walked him into the class room I know he made it there safely, the teacher even took our picture together in the class, where could he be?!  School Secretary – Ok, well the class is not in their room right now, I will go walk the campus and find him.  I will give you a call back.  A few minutes pass while I stare at the phone waiting for it to ring debating on driving down to school.  Phone finally rings, Secretary-  Well I wanted to keep in touch with you, I cannot find the class, I must have passed them in opposite halls.  I am going to check again.  I will call you with in 5 minutes if there is anything wrong.   Me (to my self of course)- Oh great now you lost the whole class, are you kidding me?  I still don't know how Spencer was marked absent but he and his entire class was found and all is well.  Hannah is really struggling not having KK and Pence around to play with.  She was the one sobbing on the first day of school leaving Spencer in his class and not getting to stay with him.  She is constantly trying to get me in the car to go get them from school. She will run up to me and tell me “Oh-no mommy, we are going to be late, we have to go get the kids.  Hurry, hurry. 

Here are some first day of school pictures. 

Kaitlyn on her first day of 2nd grade, she loves her “big girl” flats. Spencer’s is in First Grade, such a little stud.The whole time we were taking pictures Hannah was in the background shouting “me turn, me turn”.  She even snuck in on a few pictures so of course we could not exclude her.I could not get a decent smile out of the kids, so I told them that I spread the peanut butter on their sandwiches with my big toe, and finally some of their cuteness popped out!  The jury is still out on whether I used a knife or a toe, I’ll never tell!

Its been a while

I was just realizing how long it has been since I have actually posted here, sorry. Scott, Emmalyn and I just got back from a fun week in Illinois. I have some fun pictures to share but I want to edit them a bit and will hopefully have them posted in the next few days.

We are gearing up for back to school here. School starts on Monday and this week we have been working on a strict bedtime (during the summer we are a little more lax with the bedtimes and will sometimes let them stay up until about 8). We have also been practicing waking up, eating breakfast and getting ready so that we are all ready to head out the door shortly after 8 am. I have decided that my all time favorite day of the year is the day that school gets out. I will have lots of time to spend with the wonderful kiddos with out the stress of school and homework, I enjoy the fun and quality time we get to spend together. My second favorite day of the year is the day that schools starts! I remember a commercial from when I was in school, I think high school, that I didn't find very amusing at the time but love it now. I have seen it a few times since and decided to go look it up. Here is a link to the Staples commercial hope it brings a smile to your face! (well I guess it might not be so fun for those teachers out there, sorry Nat)

Funny Staples Commercial Here

The rest of the photoshop class

Scott had a fireside tonight so I had some time by myself when all of the kids were in bed to finish. 

Day 10 Project Start to Finish

Today we started by making our own clipping mask, added in two textures, a type overlay and using two fonts on it, and then adding an edge burn to it. 

BeforeAfter

I have never had the gift of words and of course I could not pick two words that I liked to describe the picture but this was the best I have come up with so far.

 

Day 11 Selective/Spot Recoloring

Ok, here is another lesson that I figured out on my own a few days earlier but I did not do it on a black and white photo.  The way she did it was a little different and easier than the way I figured it out on the wedding picture with Nat and Kaitlyn.

BeforeAfter

After I colored in the flower I just could not resist getting her bright yellow big bird clippies in there too.

 

Day 12 Storyboards

When I saw this technique I knew I just had to use the pictures of Emmalyn pulling the petals off of a flower.

Before

 

After

 

Day 13 Collage + Brush

When I saw this I thought it would take forever to do but it went surprising fast.

Day 14 Final Project (collage + selective color + font)

Wow. I made it through all of the lessons and even ended on time, I never thought that would happen!  For this lesson we just made some changes to the previous collage.

 

That is it for now.  I hope you all have enjoyed seeing these pictures, they were a blast to make.

more class pictures

I continued playing with one of the pictures I had open after my last post here and added some words that night.  I think that I am going to have to put this one up on the wall somewhere.

Lesson 5 with words added

I have been playing around with the fonts and so far this is the best one I have found but I still think I can do better before I get it printed.  I will have to check out some more free fonts on the web.

As I went to the next lesson I had found out that I had already done it on the previous picture by adding a frame to it so I did another one too.

“Super Duper Bonus Challenge”  (Project 3 Frame + Texture + Clipping Mask)

When adding the clipping mask to the picture it made the frame more like an added texture.  It is the flowery/filigree-ish details on the top left and bottom right.

before

 

After

  

Day 6 TTV (Through The Viewfinder) and Mega Challenge

The TTV technique is making your picture look like it was taken through the view finder of an old camera.  And for the challenge you were to add any of the previous lessons.  I made it vintage-y with hand tinting to her cheeks and eyes.

Before

After

Day 7 was just a self check (in other words a quiz) on some of the techniques we have already learned

Day 8 Type

Well I had accidentally figured this one out on my own a few lessons ago, actually I figured it out when I was first creating the blog, as it is how I did our banner at the top.  So of course I had to try something else,  I figured out a way to de-saturate the photo and then bring the color back to just the flowers.  (She also had us adding texture to the picture but I tried several of them and I like it much better with out so I removed the texture but I will have to try some of the cool textures on future pics.)

Before

After

Day 9 Edge Burn

This technique is supposed to draw the eye to the middle (or where ever your focal point is).  This was great because you can help hide some of the background junk in the picture so that your eye isn't drawn to it.

BeforeAfter

The difference is very subtle in the picture but it makes the kids pop a little bit. 

Edge burning on this one really helped to hide the cluttered kitchen counters!

Before

After

Well that was it for today.  Tomorrow I will hopefully get to work on lesson 10 and I think that tomorrow is our last day with lesson 14! 

Photo Editing Class

I signed up to do a free online photo editing class.  The class started last week and I am just now getting around to doing it.  I was able to play around with the first 5 lessons.  It was fun and I know that I will be spending too much time playing with my pictures in the future.  Here is some of what we have done.

 

Lesson 1 Frames and Word Art

 

 

Lesson 2 Brushes 

 

 

Lesson 3 Creating a Vintage, Hand-Tinted Look

BeforeAfter

 

Project 2 Frame + Brush + Hand-Tint

 

Lesson 4 Clipping Masks (And I also gave it the vintage look)

Before

After

 

 

Lesson 5 Textures (I also added a frame)

Before

After  

Well that is as far as I have made it so far.  I will post again when I have gone through a few more of the lessons.  By the way if you are interested the class I am taking is called Photo Editing: Frame-ups and Special Effects and is at http://www.jessicasprague.com/.  (I am not sure if you can still register for the class or not but here is the link I went to http://www.jessicasprague.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=976:free-photo-editing-class&catid=1:latest&Itemid=148)

Sliders and Fries Anyone?

 

  We wanted to surprise Scott with something special last week.  The kids wanted to make him cupcakes and I had run across some cute ones on a cooking blog a few weeks ago, so we decided to give it a try.  The buns are a yellow cake cupcake, the beef patties are brownies and the fries are sugar cookies.  They turned out so cute, they were even fairly easy to make, just time consuming.  The kids really had a blast putting the ketchup, mustard, and lettuce frosting on.  Note to any of you who want to try this, do not use ziplock sandwich type baggies as… , great now I cannot even think of the proper name, the cake decorating frosting bag thingies.  The kids burst all 3 of the bags by squeezing too hard.  It was a mess and I ended up having to dig out the decorator bags anyways.  Oh well, we all had a blast.  We even made some of them into Big Macs because the kids didn't like how I was not using the middle of the cupcakes.  We had Scott fooled.  When he first came home and saw them sitting on the table he thought that we had changed dinner plans on him and he thought that they were real burgers.

Bringing the Mullet Back!

Yesterday, Spencer was doing some homework that involved color, cut and paste.  While he was working I went back to change Emmalyn’s diaper, during the minute I was gone Hannah did a masterpiece on her hair.  As we were leaving she gave me some hair and said that the rest was all gone.  Sure enough quite a bit of her precious hair was gone.  Of course I cried, it took her 2 1/2 years to get what little hair she had and now I didn't know what to do.  Here are some shots of her DIY style do.

As you can see here there isnt much left on the sides.

She had two snips on her left side that she got practically all the way to the scalp.

In this shot you can see where she cut the bangs, which we were going to try and avoid and just grow out.

So I put everything else on hold and took her to several hair cutting places who didn’t know what they could do the make it better.  The first place said that the best thing to do was to buzz it all off.  They said it would grow in thicker when it grew back.  I quickly left that place when they wanted to turn my Hannah-girl as we like to call her into a chemo-baby.  The next place didn't even want to try because they were afraid of making it look even worse.   The place after that would try but they had a long wait so we ended up at a salon near Scott’s work so we could show him what she had done.  So the lady at this last place cut that last remaining tuft of hair off of her left side, evened up the bangs, trimmed a little on the right side (which Hannah hadn’t cut as much off of).  The pony tail that she was wearing at the time covers up some of what she did if you part her hair down the middle, but it doesn't like to stay that way as her natural part is over on her left, go figure.  So here is what she looks like now.

  So she will be wearing lots of cute hats for a while.

Here is a cute little video of her.

Easter

Better late than never right?!  I thought that I had actually posted some of these but I must have been dreaming.  We had a nice, fun, un-stressful Easter, the best part of it was that Scott didn't have any meeting so we were able to see him all day! 

Here are the kids in their Easter Outfits.  Of course I could not get a good picture of all of the kids at the same time.  One day I will learn how to properly use Photoshop so that I can fix photos but for now you will just get a few different shots. 

This is the only picture where Emmalyn was not trying to grab the bunnies out of Hannah’s hair, but of course Kaitlyn is hidden behind her.  Hannah would not stand still even for a second.  She was too busy hopping. Here are the kids checking out the baskets that the Eater Bunny left for them.

The kids are opening up the eggs that they have found, checking out their spoils, but Hannah already has her candy open, hoping that no one will notice.