Whao... not another page!!

I'm scrappin' like crazy, it's so much fun! Just wish my supplies were better organized! I have them half categorized.. it will be a work in progress for a while :) All three last weekend at the park. Off to watch Survivor!!

Gillian

My favourite set of photos of Gillian from the summer... I just love everything about each and every photos I took of her on this walk up the road... her puffy flowing hair, her dress and how it contrasted against the greenery, and the action shot! Typical Gillian! (Thank you to the wonderful Kayleigh for your inspiration!! I completely lifted your page because I loved it so much!! Thanks!!)

Holidays in Hand

The big thing in Scrapbooking is documenting each day in December. Why some may wonder? For me, I think December is a special month, so many traditions, new snow (hopefully), winter fun outdoors, snowmen, giving, opening presents, decorating the tree, eating (!). This year, I'm joining Jessica Sprague on her Holidays in Hand class and the goal of the class is to prepare you for documenting December so that when December comes we are ready. I will do mine digitally, and hopefully print them out at the end into an album. As I haven't been scrapbooking much lately I hope I can at least get a few pages done. Things are going to slow down on the photography front, and I'd like to focus on scrapping!

For our first assignment we are to list our values, our hopes, our traditions and what we treasure most for these holidays and here are mine:

1. Now that the girls are a little older and Christmas is starting to mean something I'd like to establish traditions for them that combine what Eric had growing up and what I had growing up: eggnog, oranges in our stockings, selecting a real tree and cutting it down, decorating the tree (without a big fight .. heheheh), decorating the house.

2. Playing in the snow. (hoping that we actually get snow by Christmas). It will be fun to see the Girls get so excited about it and play like kids should play.

3. Spending time with family, eating, laughing and exchanging gifts.

4. Taking lot of photos to capture the moments.

I'm sure I'll have more, but this was the beginning of my list.

Scrapbooking Challenge #14

I'm in the middle of finishing challenge #13 but I thought I would post our next challenge today, in case I don't get to finish it today.

ETA: Finished the page, well almost, I just re-read the challenge and realized I didn't meet the criteria, it was supposed to be 5 images of equal size, oops!! Anyway, I'm just happy I got one done, here is mine for this week:



This week lift the following Creative Inspiration Copy Cat Wednesday, AND post your layout on their site (via Designer Digitals or however way you want!).

Have fun scrapping!

Circles!!

I did the challenge for this week - yippee!!! Here it is:

Happy Canada Day!

Today is Canada's 142nd birthday, and we have a day off to celebrate. Normally if we were teens we'd dawn our Canada T-Shirts, get drunk and party in the Market... but that is so 1996. Now we are responsible parents, who happen to be pregnant so now I'm too big to fit into my Canada T-Shirt, and I'll be drinking juice all day. It's the kids turn to party! We'll be heading to our friend's place this afternoon, and we're just hoping that the weather clears up as it's cloudy and rainy today. Seeing as it's 5:30 am right now (thanks to Gillian) I guess we still have hope that it will clear up by evening, but I doubt it, it's looking like the clouds are here to stay.

Ages ago, Beth and I were discussing how our digital scrapbooking has evolved over the 2 years that we've been doing it. After a number of tutorials and courses, mine has definitely gotten better. I'd say better supplies to more realistic drop shadows were the major improvements. I also suggested we post our very first digital pages and while Beth was a good girl and did it. I never did (or if I did, I don't recall doing it!). So here is the very first page I ever did... Yikes!

I say "yikes" for various reasons. 1. the bad attempt at creating "torn" paper 2. the terrible font used 3. no shadows to be seen, and 4. that frame - what was I thinking... But I still cherish the page, it's a photo of Abby and I walking down by the river in Wakefield in May 2007, I was 8 months pregnant with Gillian, kind of where I am today in this pregnancy.

To see all of my pages, just click on the link to the right... the whole history of my scrapbooking is there!

This week's Challenge #11 (?) is to do a page using circles. You can use circles for the photos or circles for embellishments. Have fun!

Layout Challenge #7

I can't believe I've completed the challenge for this week already! Just had this flash of inspiration!! Here it is:

I probably could have varied the photo a little more, but I decided to stick to this series I took of Gilly swinging on her birthday. Such a thoughtful pensive look...

Friday Photo Challenge and Layout Challenge #7

Are we at layout challenge #7?? (Not sure Beth can correct me because I'm sure she will remember) Anyway I thought since I was my turn I should post the challenge of the week. For the photo challenge, it will go along the lines of my last post: Use Back lighting to light up your subject.

The layout challenge will be to use a photo cluster on a page - that is a cluster of 5 or so photos. See this product here for an example: http://www.designerdigitals.com/digital-scrapbooking/supplies/product_info.php/products_id/7599

Now lets hope for a sunny week to get those back-lit shots... it just clouded over here...

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!

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.

Saturday Chats at DD and Meech Creek

Today was the quarterly event at Designer Digitals, where everything was 30% off and they had chats going all day. I managed to make it to quite a few of them as we was home with the girls doing laundry and other stuff around the house. The weather was beautiful so we did spend a good amount of time outside too, don't worry!!

I did the following two layouts for a couple of the chats:

Click layouts for credits

After we had naps and snacks in the afternoon, we took advantage of the warm weather and not bugs and went for a walk down the Meech Creek Valley. I've posted photos from here before, but this time was with kids!

Heading out with two determined kids
(not as determined on the the return trip,
they probably heard "let's go girls" about 100 x)

Also the first day in shorts!
She learned quickly that when you fall,
you scrap your knee.

I love this one of Gillian!

Our destination-the small bridge over
Meech Creek. A great swimming hole, that only
Bender got to try today!

Tomorrow it's supposed to rain, and be much cooler. We have swimming in the morning and we'll head over to the in-laws for dinner in the afternoon.

Hope you all enjoyed the nice weather today (if it was nice where you were!)

Challenges, Swimming and Lightroom

I seem to be falling into a pattern of only updating my blog twice a week!! By the time I'm done downloading my photos and playing with them in Lightroom, I'm exhausted and can't muster the energy to update my blog!! So I'm falling behind!

I have managed to take a photo a day (pretty much) and try to complete the Photo challenge and layout challenge. This week's photo challenge was to pick a colour and photograph it. I choose Green, thinking with spring here, I'd have many green things to take photos of. I went for a walk down the Meech Creek valley hoping to get some nice shots of green things and this is what I got: BROWN!

Ok, maybe a little green here but that's pushing it!

I should have chosen vibrant brown as my colour! Luckily on Sunday I got this shot:

For the Layout challenge, Beth said it was to use brushes this week. My creative juices were not flowing last week, so it took me a while to get it done, but once I did one, I had to do another one. Here they are:

I picked up a tutorial of how to make custom brushes
from patterned paper, and so it was perfect timing.
The brushwork on this one are the flowers.


For this layout, the brushwork is the "dripped stains" on
the beige paper in behind the photo. I LOVE these brushes!

I will post the next challenges in another post later on.

For the rest of the weekend we had gymnastics and swimming. The girls started their first swimming lessons, Eric went with Gillian and I was to go with Abby, but as it turns out I signed Abby up for the Pre-School A lesson, which means the parents don't go in the pool with them. I wasn't sure how Abby would take it, but typical Abby, she just walked right in there without me and did the whole class with no worries at all! And I just sat there like a beached whale in a hideous maternity suite watching her... fun! I was so proud of her. It was so cute to see Gillian in the pool too, nervous at first, but getting into it by the end. I wish I could have taken photos.

And finally I'm trying to teach myself how to use Adobe Lightroom. It's a very fun program, and typical Adobe, has a million and one tools and techniques to make photos look fantastic! It allows me to do so many fun things at a click of a button! Mind you, I still love using photoshop, I just need to learn how to use the two together most efficiently! And then get to work!! Right now I'm spending so much time fiddling with the photos, I don't have enough mojo left to blog... so much to do so little time eh?

Day off, Layout Challenge and Photo Challenge

We have a long weekend and thankfully the weather is supposed to be nice all weekend!! After this past week and or so, I think we are all looking forward to some sunshine and warmth!!

We had a fun day with a morning play date with my friend Joanne and her kids, we hung out inside for a while, then head outside, and it was surprisingly chilly in the morning. Unfortunately with our lawn not yet seeded and grassed, we had to stick to the driveway to play, which can be pretty boring after a while. Regardless, we had a fun visit anyway and next time we'll head into town to her place where they have grass!! :)

The afternoon was spent napping and playing outside again. Here are some photos to share which also coincide with Jen and My Friday Photo Challenge for the week: The sweet spot! For me it was my 50 mm @ f2.8 (but I used ISO 400 - does that mess up the sweet spot?? I don't know...) Anyway, I think most of these are @2.8. I did a little playing in Lightroom, not sure if I like it.. perhaps a little too overexposed.






Then Beth and My Digital Layout Challenge of the week: Use Stitching:



And a couple more I liked from the week for an added bonus:

Layout and Photo Challenge

A quick post to let you know what the layout and photo challenge are for this week:

Layout - use stitching in a layout. Very basic and vague, but Beth and I decided to keep it that way to not put pressure on ourselves...

Friday Photo Challenge - Jen and I decided on capturing an image in our lens' sweet spot, the place where we'd get out sharpest image. So for my 50 mm that would be at f2.8. It's generally two stops above the lowest f-stop of the lens.

Good luck and can't wait to see the results!

Project 365 - remember that??

Well I haven't totally fallen off the band wagon of project 365. I've found renewed energy with the time change and therefore brighter/longer days! I've managed to take a photo each day in the month of March except for 7 days.... ok so that is a lot now that I think back on it, but things were low, it was dark, snowy, pregnant, working... well you know how it goes. Anyway, I did a couple layouts to keep going on my layouts of my project 365 here they are: (hey look Beth: PINK!)



Hey remember this girl:

Well I'm happy to say her water broke yesterday over night (so very early in the morning of March 30th). But it was one of those things where it broke but she wasn't sure, because no contractions, so that meant into the hospital for an induction and as I write she has probably just delivered! Can't wait to hear if its a boy or girl April Fools baby!

And finally some parting POTD - some more dance moves, courtesy of our resident choreographer - Abby!