Is that a plastic Santa or the real thing?

T-Boz was not fooled one bit! Merry Christmas!

He sees you when you're sleeping

Merry Christmas from my candy cane mouthed family to yours!

She's a sweet sixteen

Our little cousin turns sixteen tomorrow. On a snowy New England day, the family threw her a surprise party. There was lots of lovely, yummy food, music and dancing, visiting with family and even a visit from Santa (about which T-Boz was not amused - he is just at that age where they get really suspicious of men dressed up in red suits!)

I promised to do a photoshoot with her after the holidays and I am really looking forward to it - she is a beautiful subject.

Happy Birthday R!!! You are gorgeous and your parents are going to have a run for their money! ;)

climbing

O Tannenbaum

Here's our family room tree. We have switched over to the LED lights which makes the white look really blue. I prefer the warmness of the old lights, but you can't beat the savings in energy and lifespan of these.

Yes - we do put up more than one tree in our house. I LOVE Christmas! When we moved to this house, I had the builders put in an electrical outlet in the foyer where I envisioned a tree going. We put a real tree in the family room and an artificial 10 footer in the foyer. The foyer tree is up and lit, but not yet decorated. You can probably see a little of my control issues in this tree....it is the red and gold tree. The foyer tree is blue/silver/clear glass. Yes....moving on....

This is T-Boz's Santa picture from last year. I had one of him, one of L-Dog and one with both of them framed in these ornament frames last year. He was a really great looking Santa!!

This is an ornament we received in 2005 - L-Dog's first Christmas. It is Winne the Pooh by Lennox.


Here is another L-Dog themed ornament - a guitar of course!

I broke out the tripod to take these pictures. The ISO is set to 400, the apeture to f22 and I used the remote timer to fire the pictures. The shutter was open for a full 30 seconds. It was fun to play around.

What does your tree look like?

car seat donations

I've been busy shipping car seats and working on the foundation blog today. Check it out over the course of the next few days to see some families featured to whom the foundation has donated seats.

As always, we have a huge list of children waiting to receive their seat from the foundation. Each day, they are at risk riding in either seats they are too young for, too big for, or no car seat at all. Can you spare the price of your daily coffee today to donate to the foundation and make a difference in the safety of these children's lives? I, and their families, would be forever grateful!

silhouette

T-Boz is getting so big!

a winner

I won my first ever blog giveaway on Thursday! Another set of Patti Brown's Kaleidescope overlays! I opted for the Light Set and had a little play!

Here is L-Dog in Scotland at the New Lanark Mills museum. There was a room dedicated to music and light. Both boys enjoyed it very much!

Here is my original photo of L-Dog:

And here is the addition of Bokeh Touch:

Interesting to see the combination of a black and white photo with a color overlay.

And just so he is not left out, here is T-Boz in that same location:

I heart faces - Fix It Friday

Jenna entered this photo originally for the Constructive Feedback spot at I heart faces. She wrote that she thought the photo was a little bright and needed to be toned down a bit and she wished that the colors were more vibrant. She also felt like the photo might have been overexposed.

Here is her original photo:

Here is my first fix - a color:



Here's what I did:

- I ran it through the community edition of Noiseware to reduce some of the grainyness/noise that came with the original photo as it was shot with a high ISO setting of 800.
- I opened it in Adobe Camera Raw and adjusted some of the exposure, recovery and blacks. I also bumped the clarity a little.
- In PSE4, I did a curves bump by pulling the center straight up. I then did a layer mask and only applied it to the man on the ground.
- I then did a levels and squeezed the sliders in on both ends and then moved the center slider over to the left till I got the contrast and look I wanted.
- I then did a Hue/Saturation layer and bumped up th blues and the yellows individually.
- I did a futher Hue/Saturdation layer and reduced the red and only applied it to his face using a layer mask.
- I then did a edge sharpening using an action that I got on Clickin Moms.
- Finally I added a vignette using an MCP action (a freebie!)

Here are a couple more plays with this picture. The first is running PW's Old West:


and lastly PW's seventies (which I adore!):


Check out what others did with this photo at I Heart Faces.

congratulations my friend

May you have a very long and happy marriage - love you!

Do the bump

The following is what happens when two old friends get up on the dance floor.....

did you hear?

It's almost Christmas!!!

we all have our fascinations

Focus

I Heart Faces - Fix It Friday

This photo was submitted by Lindsey from Getting Wild In The West. She wrote: "The baby in the picture is my son, Bennett. He is about 71/2 months in the picture. The thing bothering me most about the SOOC shot is the coloring. My camera seems to take really cool pictures!"

Lindsey - you need to play with your white balance setting!

Here is Lindsey's original picture:

And here are my fixes:

Happy Friday

We will be decorating our tree and house this weekend and really getting into the holiday spirit. Christmas cards are making their way out - you may have already received one from us. If you have, hope you liked it!

Kaleidoscope Textures by Patti Smith

I've been playing about this afternoon with Kaleidoscope collection from Patti Smith. Here is my before picture which has some pretty nice bokeh in the background to begin with (I love me some bokeh!)
On this image, I have applied Smoke, Watercolor Vingnette and Impressionism 2.
There are endless variations to try out and I can easily see me being sucked into trying loads of combinations. There is a 30% off sale going on right now, so if you fancy using these textures, which can be used in softlight or overlay blending mode in Photoshop, check them out! I also got the Light Flare set which gives me even MORE ways to play around with images. Oh my! I can see endless hours disappearing right now!

Maya Papaya Hair Clips

A shout out for my friend Kami who owns the Etsy shop Maya Papaya. I adore her clips that are made with real wool and no glue - everything is hand stiched and wonderful quality. If you are looking for hairclips that don't fall out, look no further.

Check out this lovely seasonal clip!

It's a good thing I don't have a girl otherwise I would have a hair clip problem!!!

Eighteen months old today

It's crazy to realize that today T-Boz is 18 months old. The past year and a half have gone at warp speed for us! Today he is a fully fledged toddler, running around, chatting away and having interactive conversations (mostly baby talk, but surprisingly less and less), throwing the odd tantrum in there for good measure, and giving lovely hugs and kisses.

He is still on breastmilk; nursing when we are together and in a sippy when not.

He is approximately 24 lbs at the moment - that Swine Flu knocked some weight off him and he has slimmed considerably.

He knows a number of signs and will do them if you ask, but only does milk, more, please and all done without prompting. He also knows red, cow, thank you, orange, yellow and green.

His eating habits are great and he tries most things. He has been on table foods since about 9 months - we followed 'Baby Led Weaning' and skipped purees completely. He has his picky moments about food, but for the most part is an excellent eater.

He says 'no' with an English accent - it is the cutest thing. The answer to all questions is, of course, 'no.'

He runs around and has a cute little penguin run where he has his arms straight and his hands stuck out just back from his sides. I must catch it on video before he stops doing that.

He is still rear-facing in his car seat - naturally! ;)

He is teething like crazy all the time. Right now he has his top and bottom four front teeth and one molar in. The other three molars are on their way as are his eye teeth.

Sleeping through the night has not happened in a very long time (see above and the Swine Flu).

He likes to wake up and then come into our bed for his morning nursing session. If it is early enough, he may fall back asleep for a little bit.

He is a hitter. We are working on this with him and he is slowly getting better, but it is what it is at the moment.

He is such a darling baby boy though and I adore him so much!