Fix It Friday # 64

It's been a while since I have done one of these and since the past week or so has been about learning photoshop I decided to give it a go. And what a day to try it! This picture is absolutely perfect and didn't need much in the way of editing.

Here is the SOOC version

Here is my clean edit:  All I did was run AMP's "Clean It Up" Action then tweaked to my preferences. I then sharpened and resized for the web, and ran it through Noiseware.

And these ones were just for fun..

To see what other's did with this photo check out IHeartFaces.com

Cup O' Joe Day 4

What would I do without my daily cup of coffee? I probably wouldn't survive. I was in crisis mode this morning when come to find out I was ALL OUT of coffee. What to do? Good thing Jason wasn't due to work until late today, so I was able to run to the grocery store real quick. Doesn't it look so good? I can assure you that it is!

New Lens! Day 2 & 3

So I got my new lens yesterday, and even though I did not post I assure you I took pictures yesterday! I was supposed to take pictures of my friend's son for his 1st birthday, but unfortunately we got lost in translation and never actually met up. So we have planned for a new day! Here is my set up with some special helpers.

And from today while waiting I took an opportunity to take some pictures for my settings, and not to mention Aubrey has been a ham for the camera the past 2 days! I cannot complain!

I just love everything about this picture!

This time for real.

This time for real I am starting my 365 day challenge. Aubrey woke up in a rare picture taking mood today after nap, and of course mommy jumped at the chance to get some cute pictures.

I can't wait until tomorrow because I will have a new lens, and Paige has agreed to be my model!

Picture Time!

I am trying very hard to research as much as I can to make each and every shot I take a great one! Saturday and Sunday besides cleaning, I dedicated my time to playing with settings to get the best SOOC image I could get. These are some pictures from this weekend at the park!

There is obviously room for growth, but I am in love with how they came out! I can definitely see a change from the day I got my camera!

Getting Organized.

Who ever said that January 1st is the only time you can make new goals for yourself? Well it is almost 7 months into the new year and I have finally found my motivation to getting things done around here! I do a HUGE clean every Sunday, which leaves Saturday for the only day in my week to do family things, and if a family event arises on a Sunday, then everything gets backed up since it's kind of hard to do all the cleaning when the kids are here during the week, then when they leave I am so pooped.  (I run a home daycare for those of you who are wondering what I am talking about)

Well yesterday, I came up with this "chore" list for me to complete each day. Each day has a big project and some littler things that I can do, so that there is not just one day I am doing everything. Hopefully if I can stick to this the things I push off from week to week will get done more than once a month! I also decided to delegate some chores to my 7 yr old as she is perfectly capable of helping out with things around the house. I found this great dry erase board at Target last night for $8. Maybe I should make one for my husband too.

And my list..

So far so good. Paige is taking very well to having her own responsibilities in the house. We started it yesterday afternoon, and she keeps on checking it to make sure she got everything, and adding more. Why didn't I think of this sooner?

Carnival Birthday Party.

Well, it's official. Paige is 7. Kids grow so fast, where did the time go? I feel like just yesterday she started preschool, and now she is a big 2nd grader. I am trying so hard to cherish the moments with Aubrey that seem to have flown by with Paige.

We had a great birthday party for Paige. We had a backyard Carnival Birthday Party! It was so much fun and the kids seemed to have a great time. Paige even said that it was the best birthday EVER! I am very proud of all the work I put into it. I can't take credit for all the ideas, I did a lot of searches on google for ideas, but a lot of places didn't have pictures, so it was hard to imagine. So I wanted to post some to help those who want to throw a Carnival Themed Party.

Games
I wanted to do tons of games, but my husband made me feel like I was doing TOO MUCH! Maybe he was right, but she only turns 7 once right LOL Well I did 6 booths: Bottle Blast, Rainbow Rings, No Chop Drop, Paparazzi, Lucky Ducky and PF Ink. For all the booths I hung colorful table cloths from a clothing line with clothes pins, this was a cheap alternative to building booths, and it was very easy to do.I found my table cloths from Wal-mart on clearance for $4 a sheet, if you already have sheets you can work with at home then it's at no cost to you.

All the signs were made from that foam paper. This was a perfect way to get the birthday girl involved too. I gave her the stencils and had her make the signs. She had so much fun decorating them. Words of wisdom though, if you do use the foam stuff like me, after you color with a marker go over with glitter glue. The marker will rub off if you do not.

Bottle Blast

For bottle blast I took clear beer bottles and painted them all different colors then hot glued them onto a 2x4 that I had spray painted. I then placed a ping pong ball on top and gave the kids a water gun to shoot off the ball.

Rainbow Rings

  For Rainbow Rings, aka Ring Toss, I did something similar to bottle blast. I hot glued the bottles  down onto a spray painted piece of plywood. The kids had a lot of fun with this one. I couldn't find "rings" so I just used bracelets that I found at Walmart. They were like kids bangles or something. I liked using the beer bottles again so that it had a "clink" when the ring hit the bottles, guess it's about preference.


No Chop Drop

The object of this game is to move the marble from one bowl to the other with only using chop sticks. It's a lot harder than it looks. The kids got a real kick out of this one.


Lucky Ducky

For us this was kind of a pointless game. I had misplaced the tickets, and had more kids than expected, so the ticket idea wouldn't have worked anyway. Well I still set it out and Little Miss Aubrey used it as her game for the day slashing in the water. What the game was supposed to be about was each duck had a number on the bottom, and which ever number you got was the amount of tickets that you get. There were about 12 ducks with a little bit of water so they floated. There were 2 ducks with 3 on the bottom, 4 ducks with 2 on the bottom, and the rest were 1.


PF Ink

As you can tell this was the place to be LOL. It's the one pictured on the right with the umbrella. Basically "PF" are Paige's initials and we named the Booth PF Ink like "LA Ink". It was a temporary tattoo booth, we were going to have face painting, but we had to switch the day and my friend couldn't do them anymore :( OTC has lots of temp tattoos for cheap!!

Paparazzi

This was perfect as well!! I have tons of pictures of Paige and her friends sticking their head through this photo cut out, and all the parents thought it was hilarious. No Carnival is complete without it!!




Food

Good thing about food you are not limited on the possibilities. For us I just did hot dogs, hamburgs, and chips. And lots of goodies. Yummmm check out these...

I also did bags of popcorn that the kids took home with them.

And instead of a cake I did these....

I had 4 of them with 8 total on each one. They are supposed to look like balloons. They were perfect for outside because once Paige blew out the candles I could just grab each tray and pass them out. The ribbons were hot glued to a piece of cardboard that was covered in blue wrapping paper to give it an effect that they were flying. I then curled the ribbons just to give them an extra cute look. Now the cupcakes themselves, look how yummy they look...

I got this idea from one of my favorite blogs for recipes...http://mealplanningmommies.blogspot.com/2010/05/rainbow-cupcakes.html


I think that just about covered my Carnival Party. For prizes, to make it fair for everyone, I was going to have all the kids collect tickets, but instead of actually getting prizes for the amount of tickets they got, everyone got the same thing, a goody bag full of toys. This was the only way I could find that it would be fair for all the little kids and big kids, and it wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg.

IHeartFaces.com Fix It Friday.

Well I have been MIA for a little while. We took a mini vacation, but the planning before hand and getting back on schedule is such a challenge. Since I wasn't home last week I decided to do both this weeks and lasts weeks pictures. Mainly because last weeks picture was too cute for words!!!

Week # 56
 SOOC

I used the Aged photo preset and put a little extra on the vignette.

Now for this weeks Fix It Friday:

#57
 SOOC

I choose to do the sepia artistic preset, then brought down the exposure just a tad and added a vignette. I also rotated the picture. I really like how it turned out because the focus is really on those cute little toes, but you can see the sleepy baby still. Such a precious shot!

After at least next week I hope to be back in full force with my challenge. Paige's 7th birthday is next week, so LOTS to do!!

365 Challenge Day 1

I have decided to try a 365 Day Challenge! I really want to keep up with this, but I know it's going to be hard especially with my interests changing every day! To start off my challenge I took a few pictures of my little Aubrey. She got a new dress and bows, and just needed to try them on!!

Thanks for looking! And I leave you with Aubrey blowing kisses <3

I heart faces "Faces and Flowers" Photo Challenge

This is my entry for the iheartfaces "Faces and Flowers" Photo Challenge

I took full advantage of the beautiful day today, and my beautiful little girl. I am still learning manual mode and think I am slowly getting it. It took a while for Paige to warm up, but she let loose and I snapped away. I am so proud of how far I've come in my new hobby.I look forward to more challenges each week to help me grow into a better photographer!

It's been a while since my last post.

It's been a while  since I posted last. A lot has changed since then. Aubrey is now a full on walker destroying my house with each new adventure. Paige started baseball again for this season. I really should snap some sports shots for her.

I recently decided to enroll in Online Photography classes so I can take my pictures to another level! And in the process I really need to learn more about editing, so I decided to start out trying Iheartfaces.com Fix-It Friday Challenges. You take a photo they give you and you edit it the way you imagine the photo. It's nice to see how other people edit a certain photo, but also gives me practice in my editing software.



Here are my edits:

SOOC/Original

Edit 1: Using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Preset Fashion Shoot, then playing around with exposure

Edit 2: Using LR preset Sepia Chic

So far it's been a fun experience and hope to be able to keep it up! I would love feedback as I am still VERY new to this whole editing thing.