"Studio" Set up

I'm off to bed so I'll save the weekend recap for later... but I just wanted to share these from the weekend. The short of it is, that I set up my make shift "studio" in my living room.. basically a black bed sheet and dark brown curtains (which the girls though was a tent/stage and proceeded to play in it instead of sitting down quietly like any toddler model would... I mean really who raised these kids????) Anyway, it was about 2:30 Sunday by the time I got everything set up to my liking and of course had to get Eric to model for me first: (yes that is a smirk...)

Eric gives me his best "Blue Steel" look

I love how this turned out!! The catch lights were perfect!
Now if I could just get her to smile...

This was the best of the 3 I got of Abby
before she proceeded to chase, Gillian
around the backdrop! I love it!

Can't wait to set it up next weekend and try to bribe them into sitting for me... should be fun! Maybe I need to take photos of other people's kids... Anyone game to sit for me??

Organizing and Backing Up

I have been falling behind on organizing my digi supplies and backing up my photos, so I'm going to spend this evening doing that... fun! Knowing me, I'll probably get distracted by the photos and end up posting some or scrapping some, but hey it's all part of the process isn't it! I'm not even sure where I am on my DVD backups. I have a feeling I haven't done any since the beginning of the year! Yikes. Luckily I back up to my EHD and to Carbonite, so I hope that is good enough for now. But it's on my to do list to back up to DVD and give copies to my parents for safe keeping! Yes, I'm rather paranoid....

Off to burn!

Some photos to share.

I'm too tired to write about the weekend, so I'll just share a few nice photos I took with my new camera (which I love soooo much!!)

Uncle Art was up for a visit
I just love the expressions on everyone's face in this one.

We tried to get the two of them together, unfortunately
the cheering crowd was not standing beside me! So they
are looking the wrong way!

Gillian

Almost looks like a mug shot??...but I thought it was a neat one.

Employing the "Close your eyes, then OPEN" technique.
you would have thought it was the "close your mouth, then OPEN" technique!
Cute none the less!

I have more, but I'm going to bed...

Cool, I got props from the Guru.

This week I felt pretty proud of this: http://aliedwards.typepad.com/_a_/2008/11/gratitude.html

I received a private message from Ali Edwards asking if she could post my layout on her blog. She was doing a post on translation in the creative language and how people translated her templates into their own creation. And my Gratitute page of Gillian was chosen among 6 others to illustrate her point. (for those of you who don't know who Ali Edwards is, she is a guru in the scrapbooking world - so to get props from her is pretty cool!).

Now its the weekend, I hope to pull out the camera and take lots of pics of the girls. I'd like to set up a little studio in our living room, since it's the best place to take indoor photos. We have 2 stories of windows (great for light, bad for heating bills!) which is perfect, I just have to figure out how to rig a backdrop. I tried nailing a black sheet to the ceiling once before:

Here is the black sheet.. worked ok, but not perfect.
But you can see how great the light is, especially for catch lights.

I found the sheet too small, it picked up the dust like crazy (it was basically black felt) and it fell down easily. I think I've come up with a plan to be able to put up whatever backdrop I want, and it be relatively secure (as secure as it's going to get with two little girls running around!). I'll work on it tomorrow, if I get a chance to do some shopping, but it essentially is going to be a small curtain rod fastened to the end of the ceiling with fabric hanging from it. I wonder what Eric will think of my plan!! :)

**update**
It's funny, just before I went to post this I took a peek at Jen's blog and she also wrote about her home studio today!! Too funny!! Great minds think alike! (Jen I'm off to get me a G&T!!)

Just a page to post today...

Just a regular work day today, so nothing exciting to write. Instead I'll post this page I started last night and just finished... isn't she beautiful! :)

Abigail - Future Olympic Skating Champion

I was watching TV this weekend giving Gillian her bottle of milk when Abigail came walking downstairs after her nap. She sat up on the couch where she usually sits, beside Bender and started watching with us. I happen to find a skating show, you know, one of those tacky pro-skating shows where the skaters skate to cheesy music and sometimes to live bands. It's all just so contrived, I don't like them! Anyway, enough about my thoughts, Abby just took one look at the girl skating and she was mesmerized!! She immediately said "I want to do that!" followed by "I want to learn how to spin, like that", she was in awe. It really helped that the woman skating had on a pink/white sparkly outfit - which of course Abby had to comment on also. Then the next set of skaters came on, a pair, and she said "Look Mommy, the man is helping the girl." I asked her if she wanted to learn how to skate like that and she said YES, and she needed a pink dress like the girl...of course!

Tried a few photos with the flash I got, and I loved it! I still have to read up on how it works, but got a couple cute ones after throwing it on and clicking away!

Update on the Septic job...

I realized I hadn't posted about the progress of the septic work. Well I'm happy to report that they are all done! I've never experienced such a smooth job as this one was. All the guys working on the place were nice, and competent, and got it all done with no hiccups! Amazing eh... I guess when you pay as much as we are for this, then they would serve us breakfast before getting started each morning and still get it done in time!!

Here is what our back lawn looks like now:

It's higher by about 3 feet, and much bigger because we cut down a bunch of trees. So all in all it's good. So when we though that maybe the main problem in the first place was that the septic field was shot, it turns out that there was no real field in the first place!! Whoever had installed the thing 34 years ago, put in the wrong pipes. So this was actually a good thing, because they had lots of room to lay the new field, a proper field in the limited amount of space we had.

Photo of the day:

Can someone recommend a child friendly restraint for this one??