punkin' patch

Colby had his first field trip in kindergarten today. Mrs. Cefelli's class along with a few others traveled on the bus to the Gilcrease Orchards. Very exciting for Colby, he couldn't get over no seat belt which is interesting because I can never get him to wear his in the car! Each of the kids got to pick out there very own pumpkin. They also got to have a bottle of fresh apple cider and then we went on a tour of the apple press where they make the the apple cider. I understand it is very delicious, I didn't get to try any because Colby and Bonnie drank it all!

Colby picked the biggest pumpkin he could find, thankfully CJ's mom had a wagon so we didn't have to cart it all around the place! It was a very blustery morning and Bonnie wasn't liking it, she kept grabbing my face and saying "bak-in-a-car MOM"



It was a fun day and I think I we will have to make another trip to pick our pumpkins for carving this Halloween.

Complete!

It has taken quite sometime but it is finally done. Thanks to the man in my life for sacrificing an entire Saturday to finish building it and helping my vision come to light. It all began when I saw in my Pottery Barn catalog, the solution to my disorganization problems. You see, I kinda have a little bit of scatterbrainedness (it's totally a word) when it comes to things like papers to sign, appointments to remember and who needs to be where, when! Well the beautiful Pottery Barn version was a whopping $600 or more so I kissed the idea goodbye, that is until I was blog hopping and saw Sara's version, that she did without and manly help (I want to be her when I grow up, power tools scare me) So I knew what I wanted but not a clue as to how to do it! So I enlisted my manly man of a husband to help with the power tools part and viola here you have my fabulous Message Center. The whole thing is about 4 and a half feet square. Each square is aprox. 12 inches. There is peg board, chalk board, white board, steel board for magnets, fabric padded boards and corkboard. I used my bag-o-vinyl scraps that Shannon gave to me to add my kids names and days of the week so I can remember when scouts is because for the life of me I can never remember!! I also made a re-usable calender on one of the whiteboard squares, just squares of vinyl and days of the week, so i can erase each month and write in a new month! I couldn't be happier with how it turned out and I haven't forgotten scouts or Activity days since!!

Before and After

I have been getting a lot of e-mails and questions about photography lately, which I find HILARIOUS because I only pretend to know what I am doing. I have taken classes and read numerous books on photography so I can kinda play like I know what I am talking about. One of the many questions I get is "What kind of editing do you do to your pictures?" There was a time, and if you go way back in my archives, you will find i did a lot of editing to my pictures, trying to make my pictures look better, I was never happy even after all of the fiddling I did with photoshop. It wasn't until I found out how to capture my images correctly "in camera" that I began to see the results I wanted. In the following image you will see my sooc (straight out of camera) image with a little bit of sharpening for web on the left and the edited image on the right. Now what exactly did I do to this image? I always start off with a defog (just a "pre-sharpen") then I just did a bit of a boost in the contrast and color balance to fix the redness in Sam's skin, and I bit of sharpening on the eyes to give them some sparkle then I just resized and sharpened for web. It took me all of about 1 min to edit and I am really happy with the results. Now this is my process for most of my pictures here on the blog, OR LESS (my mother of all posts a few posts down was all pretty much sooc) Now for my clients I do a bit more like skin smoothing and adding a vignette or maybe some fancy schmancy vintage action!

BTW---I'm thinking of submitting this (and some others) to the Gap Casting call!! Whatcha think? Are my kids cute enough, I think so but then again I may be a bit biased!

We're Great and getting Greater!

I love our school! We have a fabulous principal and staff and a PTA that is awesome. We had our Back to School celebration and balloon launch on Friday morning where the Mrs. Douglas, the principal spoke and read a bit from Dr. Seuss' "Oh the Places You'll Go." Mrs Douglas had such a charismatic way to speak to and inspire these young children. Our school motto is "We're great and getting greater" and every Friday morning before school when the children line up to go into school each class takes turns giving and opening ceremony on different subjects but always end with and round of "We're great and getting greater!" All of the school kids and staff shout this out and is very powerful. I know that because of the commitment of the teachers and staff of this great school my kids will be better people!

The balloon launch is a special tradition reserved for back to school and this year we released over 1200 balloons. Each child and teacher and staff member had a balloon to let go and then there were extras there for the parents and other children that attended. There was also 3 yellow balloons to represent the police, firemen and troops who serve and protect.

It was an inspiring thing to be apart of while all these balloons went up in the air to hear all the children chanting

"We're great and getting greater"



"We're great and getting greater"



"We're great and getting greater"



I searched and searched for Samantha in the crowd of kids but I couldn't find here to get some shots of her but I had fun with Colby as he got to experience this great ceremony!