Is this a 3 year old or....

a beaten wife?

Edited - to correct to 3 year old & 3rd birthday...

This picture is just wrong on so many levels....

But it still makes me laugh.  This was me on my 3rd birthday.  I don't remember the full story, but the way I remember the story as told to me was that a few days before my birthday my mom and dad were washing down the driveway and washing my Dad's truck.  I think they told me not to do it, but I climbed up in the bed of the truck, and very obviously fell and gave myself a black eye.

It required a trip to the emergency room.  My mom said they were questioned about it to make sure they didn't do this to me (they didn't). If I remember right I may have had a concussion. Now I know what's wrong with me. LOL!

I do remember later that evening, being on the couch with a big ice bag on my face.  Then a few days later I got to celebrate turning 3 looking like this.

The iron, just add's to the image. Even more so, since I can't remember the last time I ironed anything.

Over the past 8 months, I have been working through the 23,000+ pictures stored on my computer and cataloged in Adobe Lightroom.  Last year I scanned all of my pre-digital pictures, as well as those I had from my mom.  I have spent tons of hours organizing these pictures by date, tagging them with who, what and a bit of where. Rating the best to cull them down, deleting bad pictures that just are not worth keeping.

Why did I do this? Well for a few reasons...

• This process is making it easier to find the stories from my childhood and family history that I want to tell. 
• I want to enjoy these pictures.  I can have them scrolling through a slide show on our digital frames and computer screen savers.
• I have shared many of them with my parents and siblings.
• I also think at the rate we take photos today. my boys will end up with hundreds of thousands of images from their family history. I don't want them to be so overwhelmed by the thought of it that they do nothing with them or worse delete them. Because they may not appreciate what they have until after I am gone.  At that point they would be left wondering who the people in the photos are.  The task to organize them at that point would be daunting, and likely never done.  

I am establishing a process that I can maintain.  And while I was already well on my way, I am loving the  class that Kayla Lamoreaux  is offering on her site for Lightroom organization.  She started with digital scrapbooking supplies, but has just moved into the photo organization module. And amazingly she is giving this class for FREE. If you have any desire to improve your photo organization, I strongly suggest you check it out. Even if you use a different organization program she has a lot of really great methods for organizing your photos.

Picture Fall & ScrapTiffany Monday

Where did this past week go? I never did fit in blogging towards the end of the week. I got involved in creating my first photo book and finished that up Friday night. I am not really a digital scrapper, but I didn't like the templates on the photo book site, so I visited Designer Digitals and picked out a kit, frame, and some digital stamps and made my own. I am pretty happy with how it looks on the screen.  I can't wait to see the final project. I can't wait to see how it comes out.


I think I am going to do another photo book for my current photo project.  I signed up for Picture Fall over at Big Picture Classes. It is a nice complement to the photography class I am taking with Maggie Holmes. The chance is giving more ideas to play with the camera, without always having to chase around one of the kiddos.


The class started October 1st, but registration is open until October 6th if you want to join me. The daily photo prompt, great gallery and message board are great inspiration.


Here are my first 4 days. I am keeping a journal off my thoughts on each day's picture. Then I will be ready to put it and the photo together for my photo book.

October 1^st, 2010

 Fall. Not really in Arizona. It is still well over 100 degrees and fall foliage is not anywhere near us yet. But inside our home you can find fall all around us.

October 2^nd, 2010

 A peaceful spot to relax, read and chat with Mike when the house is quiet and all little boys are asleep.

October 3^rd, 2010

 No real fall leaves in Arizona, maybe in December or January it will look like Fall? Our only brown leaves are from leftover tree clippings caught in a vibrant hibiscus.

October 4^th, 2010

Ready to Brew…these three words make me happy.

Mark your calendars. We are having a blog hop over at ScrapTiffany November 8th & 9th. Lots of holiday inspiration and giveaways are planned.

This weeks assignment was to use this sketch by one of ScrapTiffany's own designers, Keely

Here was my take on it...

Head on over to ScrapTiffany and check out the other ladies work and give the sketch a try this week.

Happy Monday!

Photography Class Assignments

I have had my DSLR camera for almost 5 years. I never learned how to use it, and with a kit lens. auto mode, and a lack of knowledge, a DSLR will not take better pictures than a good point and shoot. I have plenty of proof of that. 

So when I heard about Maggie Holmes photography class for beginners I decided it was finally time to learn how to use this thing.

The 1st assignment taught us about ISO.  I realized I had never adjusted the ISO since opening the box. No wonder the poor light pictures were so awful.

The second assignment taught us about shutter speed and aperture. I am still trying to work through the correlations of F Stops and Shutter Speeds, but it is really starting to make sense. 

Shutter Speed Assignments

Aperture assignments

My kids weren't cooperative models, so I had to resort to things I could control better. Maybe they will be my guinea pigs on the next assignment. Time to get into Manual.  I am excited

Making Me Happy

Pretty happy with my shopping trip to Kohl's last night. I needed some things for our upcoming vacation and had a 20% off coupon. All but 2 things I bought were on clearance and the other 2 were on sale. So I got 7 pairs of shorts/capris, 6 shirts, a pair of shoes, a purse, sunglasses, a scarf and a watch for just over $150. I call that a score. Since I hate clothes shopping, that makes me happy. And it was done in just about an hour.

Love it!

I was home on Monday sick with an yucky bug and Mike had taken the boys out so it was quiet. I was sitting in the chair feeling awful, but then I looked out the window and saw this dragonfly just resting on a leaf. Well what is a girl that is taking a photography class to do? Grab the camera of course....

He was pretty cooperative, even with me trying to change my settings and figure out how to do that best with the zoom lens. He even scratched his nose at one point, too bad I didn't get that.  I also played with some flower photography here...

I'm pretty happy with these straight from the camera shots. I am excited to go to full manual this week in my class. I'll share some photos to date tomorrow from the class, it is amazing what you can do with a camera when you begin to learn how to use it.

Don't you love days where it all just clicks creatively? I have had a couple recently. I really wanted to update a the banner that was hanging on our patio door for awhile. We decorated for fall over the weekend and I was inspired to finally get to it, but at first I was stumped with exactly what to do, then it started flowing.

Then again tonight, I planned to just watch Glee (which was recorded on the DVR in my scrap room). I didn't plan to do anything crafty. Then I picked up the Jenni Bowlin Limited Edition Vitange Halloween Kit that I am pretty sure I ordered the last one of....

and before I knew it I was singing along with Glee to Empire State of Mind (New York) and creating something I love.

I can only share peeks right now, because these are may be future DT projects. But I love when creativity hits and you can just jump on it. Don't you?

Something else that is making me happy this coming weekend, Bazzill.  If you live in the Phoenix area this Friday and Saturday is the Bazzill warehouse sale. I haven't gone in a few years, but I plan to head over and see what I can pick up. I'm sure I'll at least get a pizza box of cardstock (not like I need it). Click on the link for the info.

Happy hump day!

ScrapTiffany Monday and a Quick Weekend Update

We had a relaxing weekend, other than that every one of the male species in this house was sick with a stinky summer cold. I am hoping it stays in the male genes and I don't get it. We just laid low, no projects, no work.

Saturday I made a lot of progress on my scanning project. I have been scanning and re-touching my mom's collection of photos going back to young days of my grandparents and lots of my childhood. I'm done scanning now and working my way through 160 or so scans that have to be split to individual pictures and re-touched. I have about 55 scans to go.

I am taking Maggie Holmes Beginning/Intermediate Photography Class starting in a week. I just bought a new 50mm lens for my DSLR. I only had the kit lens that came with the camera (18-55mm). I never could figure out what the big deal was with a DSLR, since my point and shoot Sony took just as good, if not better, pictures.

So call me amazed when I downloaded my camera card this weekend and saw some of the shots I got with the new lens. I still don't know what I am doing with the DSLR, but I just kept turning the dial and shooting
away and got shots I could never get straight out of the camera with the point and shoot.

These are all straight from the camera, no post processing.

This is a shot with the kit lens...

Same location, new lens (in auto)....much crisper I think...

Now all new lens....

Taken in auto (the flash went off)...

Taken in aperture priority (what that means exactly, I don't know yet), no flash... 

I'm not sure on these,I was either in manual with no adjustments or auto, but the darned flash wants to go off in auto all the time, so I think it was just on manual...

I am now looking for the next lens for my wish list. I think I want something that will zoom. I will wait to see what I learn in Maggie's class before I decide. But whatever it is will be on my Christmas wish list.  I downloaded  The Digital Photography Book, Volume 1 to my Kindle now to learn a bit more. I like what I am reading so far, no words that I don't understand yet.

This week's ScrapTiffany assignment was to use the color orange. Tiffany is not a fan of orange, me? I use it a lot. It works good with the boys, it goes well with other colors, I like it bright, I like it Fall-ish, whatever, I like orange. So this one was easy and made even easier with a few products from my August Studio Calico kit...

I stamped the border with paint using a round foam brush and stitched the tickets on and the bottom border and added some of my favorite punches. 

Check out what the other girls did this week over at ScrapTiffany and if you do an orange layout send it to Tiffany to share with us.

Picture Spring

I am taking the Picture Spring class over at Big Picture Scrapbooking. The instructor is Tracey Clark, the founder of Shutter Sisters.

I never made it through 365 days of photos last year, taking a picture everyday got difficult when I couldn't find something new to photograph each day  I signed up for this class to help expand my horizons, so to speak, and re-train myself to look beyond the obvious.  Each morning our we have a prompt for the day in our in-box. It is up to us to interpret what that means to us.

So here are my first 10 days of pictures....

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Day 9

Day 10