My Lack of Photoshop Skills

I was messing around in Photoshop and was trying to come up with a faded oldish picture look, which I'm horrible at.

See, it just looks all yellowee. (Yes, yellowee is a word.)


But then I did this, which isn't all faded, but totally sepiatonish (another real word), but I like the look.

Could I replicate the look again now?

No.

The Sparking Night Light

So one day the kids are playing nicely in their bedroom.




I could stop there because that was an amazing event in and of itself.

But I'll continue because the story gets even better!

The big kids come running out in a panic yelling about the sparks shooting out from their night light.

(?????) That's what I was thinking. So I jumped up and ran (literally) to their bedroom and discovered the problem.


Sparks were shooting out from their night light!!!


It turns out Abby found a penny, and instead of eating it like you think a toddler might do, she put it on the prongs of the night light and then plugged it into the wall.





It's kind of hard to tell, but there are chunks taken out of the metal prongs where the penny was sitting.


And here is the poor penny.








Yep, the penny has chunks taken out of it as well.

But, thank goodness, the child is still fully intact, and the outlet even still works. So does the night light, actually. And even though I was freaked out to try to use them, Nathan the "electrical" engineer assures me there are several reasons why they are still safe to use.

Thomas

My little brother cracks me up.



He attended a white elephant gift exchange



and gave 20x30 prints of these pictures as his gift.

What else happened in November?

We decorated for Christmas.

And while we were decorating, I was coming down with a sinus/strep/bronchial infection.

Except I didn't know it was a sinus/strep/bronchial infection, I thought it was really bad morning sickness combined with a really bad cold.

It wasn't until three days later when I couldn't even get off the couch to take Jared to school that I thought, "Gee, I think I might need to go to the doctor." Duh. It was yucky bad, but I was happy we had our tree up.

Random Pictures of Me and Mine

A Day in the Vineyard

Get ready for a bunch of pictures.

Or if you're not ready for a pictures overload, go get a snack instead.

I went out with some friends and their kids to take some pictures in a vineyard with high voltage power lines running through it. The sky was very blue with these cool wispy clouds floating around. Perfect for picture taking...if I new how to take landscape pictures. I seriously suck at them!

Take this shot, for example.

Pretty vines, nice sky, fun towers in the background, yet your eye just has no idea where to look. Ick.

So I stuck mostly to my munchkins.








I super-duper LOVE this one. I think I need to frame it.


















Cool clouds, eh?


So I took my lens off and held it on the camera backwards, ya know, just to see what would happen.

And this happened.

Kind of a cool, dreamy, fairytale effect.

Halloween

Halloween.

The one day a year your parents are happy to let you dress up as anything you want then send you out into the neighborhood to beg and threaten endless amounts of candy off of strangers.

The only requirement I have of my kids before letting them run wild is posing for an excessive amount of pictures first.

















This one was not so happy in the beginning.