Lallow Mommy

Gillian is going to be 2 next week, which shocks me! 2 whole years! Lately her speech has been really changing from just "saying" (only we understand her!) only a handful of words, to being able to communicate so much better (caveat: just with us and Phyl, others probably have no idea what she is saying!!). Some funny things she says is: playing with dolls and you ask if she wants a dress for the doll, she will pronounce "Yeah, dress" really well. When she wants to colour, she'll ask "Lallow, Mommy" which I she picked up from the colour "Yellow" used in colouring. Then she'll say "chi choo, Mommy" which means "Thank You Mommy". Then the cutest of all she will say "Bah Bee" which is the way she says Abby. She has a tendancy to stick the sound "b" in front of many words, "buppy, buppy" means "uppy uppy". It's just so much fun seeing her develop into this beautiful little girl, who loves to talk, sing, run and scream at 2:00 am!! :)

Happy weekend everyone!

Friday Photo Challenge

Ok, this is catching up from last week. I only took a few self portraits... need to try it again, when I have time, but at least I'm posting them! I didn't use much creativity with these, I'll have to come up with something a little better next time, and incorporate the belly! :)





off to bed...

I'm not missing... really I'm not...

Jen and Beth have been wondering where I went this week. I explained to Beth today that I, unfortunately, am completely running out of steam these days. After working all day, making dinner, and putting the kids to bed, I have just enough energy to download any photos I took that day and then, basically, I'm burnt. I don't have the energy, and as a result the brain power to muster any kind of creativity or thought to think through something. So scrapping and Photo-shopping have been put on the back-burner. At least until I'm done work, on July 10th and have a couple of minutes a day to rest. It's not to say I'm doing nothing, I have been working on some images this week, it's just taken me a week to figure out what I'm doing!!

Here are some favourites:

There is just something so cute
about kids reading books, and I
love to take pictures of them when reading.

The concentration, wonderment and amazement
that each page brings. It's so cool!
(I also love kids feet!)

I love her in this funky 60's dress! Perfect on her!

more reading...not even noticing mommy
making funny noises and acting like a goof
to get her to look at the camera!

Off for a short after supper jog. This one
is a runner!

Abby laying in the grass... love this one!

I really like these two, however I'm not sure
who this child is or where she learned to pose
like that - it's kind of freaky really.

Singing "Head & Shoulders"...

Bender looking regal.

And that is it for now... off to bed!

Layout and Friday Photo Challenge

I'm falling a little behind on my challenges. I didn't post anything for last week's layout challenge of a photo one year apart, or this weeks challenge of using a photo as a background. So it's a good thing I had a 2 hour nap today, because it gave me some energy to scrap tonight!!

Here they are:

One year apart
(I'll post credits later!!)

Photo as a background.

Then for the photo challenge, Jen made it to shoot at your widest angle. I have a couple for this one:

@ 24mm (or whatever it translates to
when you don't have a full frame sensor)

@24mm

just to compare = @70mm

@24mm

For this week, both challenges will be connected. The photo challenge is to take a self portrait, and the scrapping layout challenge is to create a layout about you - could be that self portrait you took. A photo of your favourite outfit at the time or your favourite thing... but the subject must be all about you!

Bye for now!

Photo Montage

I've not been spending too much time on my computer lately, still burnt from last weekend! I now have tonsillitis which I probably caught because I was so run down. This pregnancy is really taking it's tole on me, and I still have 3 months to go. I'm at 27 weeks now, and am wondering where I'll find the energy to make it to the end.

But of the 15 min I did spend on the computer this week, I put together a photo composite montage. A technique my friend Cheryl shared with me after a workshop she did. It's so very simple, almost ridiculously simple to do. Here is the image:


Notice how it has some texture in the photograph. It's basically done by putting a texturized image (in this case I used a photo of an old brick from the market) over an image and changing that layer's blending mode to "multiply" (overlay and softlight could work too) then adjusting the opacity. Gives it a painted renaissance feel to it. Then I stuck on the "May" word art for fun.

Wedding Workshop and Tulips

I've been MIA for a while now, since Thursday. Things have been crazy and I had no time (or energy) to update my blog... Saturday and Sunday were spent at the Algonquin College Wedding Photography Workshop and then Monday was spent photographing the beautiful tulips.

The workshop was interesting. Each day we had the morning in the classroom, and the afternoon was spent shooting a bride and groom. They were just stand-ins to the real thing, but it was still fun to have a woman dressed up in a bride dress, and a man in a suit. There were 15 of us in the class, all taking it for various reasons, whether it was to open a business or because they were shooting a family member's wedding that summer. Unfortunately the weather really wasn't that great, so we were really limited in where we could shoot. We were at the Stitsville United church on Saturday and the Algonquin College green house on the Sunday. Overall the weekend was challenging and somewhat humbling, because it really showed us that to take photos under pressure in crappy conditions (ugly church on a rainy day!!) is really tough. I'm not totally turned off of shooting a wedding, I'd just rather mentor someone for a summer before plunging right into it on my own!

Sunday was Mother's day and unfortunately I wasn't home to be pampered and feted, but I did get the weekend "off" which was more than enough to ask for in my mind, so I had a fun mother's day in the end. Abby put together an art project at daycare which was cute and fun to see. She is really starting to grow up and to see her create things (with Phyllis' help) is fun!

Monday morning I had arranged to meet a woman from my photography class, to get up really early and meet down to Dow's Lake to photograph the tulips. They were so beautiful and in perfect bloom, it's so hard not to take a million photos! I did fill up a whole 8 Gb memory card with flower pictures, some good and some bad. Here are some samples (SOOC - too tired to edit! and I don't think they need it):





And then today after work I picked up the kids and took then down to Major's Hill Park to see what was happening at the Tulip Festival. Not much really and I must say pretty pathetic this year. But for a 3 year old, just to get to ride on a Merry-go-Round is exciting enough, so it was worth it!




Notice that I cut Gillian's hair... her bangs to be specific... she looks so different! Like a big girl!


Anyway, off to play... I'm so behind, I'm already a week off in our Scrapbooking Layout challenge!

Ode to the 24-70....

Beth and I have been sharing our camera wish lists with each other for some time now, and while they do have their differences, they are quite similar. We have been both coveting the 24-70 2.8L mm lens for a while and as of today, I am a proud owner of one. Beth may be jealous, but Beth should remind herself that she is way more smart, disciplined and responsible than me, and now she could just borrow it from me... :) And me on the other hand is not so smart, impatient and impulsive... but enough about that... I've only had it on my camera for a few hours and I already love it. It's focusing speed is SO fast. I really notice the speed of it, it's amazing. I've taken a few shots and here are a few samples...







It's a heavy lens, but nice and solid. I think it will be the one that I put on my camera and never take off!

Catching up on Project 365

I started the doing layouts for my project 365 back in Jan, and I've just only completed Feb! Oh well, I still plan on doing it here and there, and changing the look for each month. Here are the remaining pages for Feb. Due to the kids being sick and me being tired and sick, there are many black spots where I didn't take photos. Lost my drive in Feb. Good thing I got it back... well sort of, skipped today...




Night!

Layout Challenge for this week

I thought I would post our challenge for this week. In honour of my( and I think soon to be Beth's) one year anniversary blogging, use two photos exactly one year apart. Similar to my pics of Gillian from Saturday.

Layout and Friday Photo Challenge

Last week's Digital Layout challenge was to use a mask. Since I use masks in basically every layout I do, I decided to take a mask, colour it and used as it's own element. Here is my page, can you see the mask??

It's the faint yellow flourished square
tucked in behind the photos and paper!

The Friday Photo Challenge (which is slipping far from happening on Fridays!! ha!) was Food. Here are my two photos from that:

Flour

Milk

I decided to go with B&W for these shots, because really, flour and milk don't really have much colour contrast!

We had a good Sunday, although not terribly exciting - with swimming in the morning and shopping in the afternoon. The black flies have started, but they aren't totally unbearable. I imagine by next weekend, they will be getting there. So to take advantage of the nice, bug free weather we went outside after supper to throw rocks in our stream. Fun!




Back to work tomorrow. Not fun.

Take care!

One Year

I forgot to post on April 30th to celebrate my first full year of blogging!! Wow, I can't believe that it's been a whole year going strong (well some weeks stronger than others!). I know of a few of you out there that read this, but are there any others?? Probably not, since I don't do a very good job of tagging each entry or passing the word around! But that is ok, I only started this for myself and for fun and I'm still having fun! So rock on fellow bloggers!

I thought I would add in a couple photos taken exactly one year apart to celebrate:

Gillian, at 11 months

at 23 months

A walk in the woods

I love that it is spring, and that the bugs haven't come out yet! We can go for walks in the woods and not get eaten alive!!