November 16 - Thankful for...

Today I'm thankful that I got to talk to my grandson and find out that he had a really good day. It was his first day at his new school since moving to Alaska a week ago. He sounded happy and excited about his teacher, his class and the friends he has already made.

I'm so thankful that Aiden loves school and is such a good student. He really enjoys learning new things and doing school work. He is such a good boy.

I love you Aiden and hope you have a wonderful school year! Keep calling grandma and let me know how your day is going.

PS: I know he looks sad in this picture, but he's really not. He just hates me always taking pictures of him. This is a very rare recent photo where he is actually NOT covering up his face or hiding from my camera. Got to love him!

New Class - Holidays in Hand

Today I started a new class on Jessicasprague.com called Holidays in Hand. Tara and I are both taking this class and I'm really excited about it. We will be making a holiday album for this year as well as getting and staying organized throughout the holiday season. I think it's going to be fun!

Our first assignment is to make a list of our holiday goals for this year, so here goes...

2009 Holiday Goals

1. Get into the holiday spirit earlier and more intensely.

It seems like every year it is harder and harder for me to get into the holiday spirit. With just me and Dom here at the house it is hard to maintain that "festive" spirit. Putting up holiday decorations just seems to be a bother instead of a joy with nobody really here to enjoy them.

I need to do this even if it is just for the two of us.

2. Get Christmas cards made and mailed early.

Last year I had the cards made and ready to mail before Thanksgiving. I have barely started them so far this year. In fact, I think I only have 5 made so far and about 30 more to go. I also need to get my mailing list done. I lost my list from years past when my computer crashed, so I'm starting over from scratch.

My goal is to have all this done no later than December 1.

3. Have all gifts bought and wrapped by one week before Christmas.

This will be a hard one because Dom is always wanting to put this off until the last moment. I must keep pushing to get everything bought and wrapped early so the week before Christmas is completely free from these tasks.

Gifts going to Alaska need to be bought and mailed by December 1.

4. Make a Holiday Album documenting our activities this year.

I have already been thinking about doing this and in fact bought an album to use for this purpose last July when Ali Edwards mentioned it on her website. This class will be just what I need to make sure I reach this goal.

Those are my goals for this year...now I must stay focused and accomplish them all!

More Pictures from my Jessica Sprague Class

I'm finally getting around to sharing the rest of my photos from the class I took at JessicaSprague.com...bet you thought I'd forgotten about this...but in reality I just got a little busy with my granddaughter being born and then doing Dom's party. So better late than never, I'm going to finish getting these photos blogged!

Day 11 - Selective/Spot Recoloring. I did not take this photo, but I have always liked it, even though it was kind of blurry and I hoped that someday I would be able to do something like this with it. Finally I learned how to do this. First I changed the whole photo to black & white then erased the black & white from the glasses, letting the color show through. Now the reflection of the campsite really stands out in the photo...really love how it turned out! Added a black frame and a little text using the Ali Edwards font and now what was just a blurry photo looks really neat. I love how it turned out and the fuzziness of the photo just adds to the effect. I think this was one of my favorite lessons from this class, I've always wanted to know how to do this.

Day 10 we did an entire project from start to finish using the techniques that we had learned in the previous classes. I love this picture I took of Aiden while we were camping at Cove Palisades earlier this summer. On this copy I added a couple textures to the picture then erased the textures from around Aiden making him glow and stand out from the rest of the picture. The Jessica showed us how to make a rounded corner frame for it and add the word art/journaling spot, customizing the text.

Day 9 was all about adding an edge burn to a photo making your main subject stand out from the background. This will be very useful, I love how it turns out.

This first picture is one that was taken by one of the nurses in the operating room when Skyla was born. this is the original picture. (I did this photo after I finished the class, but I think it really shows how this techniqe works.

Now the same picture after applying the edge burn technique.

How great is that? Now Chad and Skyla really stand out from the busy background of the operating room.

This next picture is the actual photo that I did for Day 9 of the class using the same technique that I used on the picture of Chad and Skyla. This is a picture of Aiden at the rehearsal for Chad and Melissa's wedding June 6, 2008.

There are just a couple more photos that we did in class. I will share them with you soon. They involved making storyboards and collages using combinations of different techniques covered in the class.

I've also got to get Skyla's birth blogged...so much to get caught up on here!

Dom's Birthday Party Saturday July 25, 2009

Pictures from Dom's birthday party:

The little kids playing in the pool Carla and Pep brought and set up in the backyard. Pictured: Gracie, Joey and Aiden.

Dom opening his gifts with McKenzie in the background.

Mark and Donnie...and that's little Skyla that Uncle Mark is holding, she doesn't look too sure about him.Looking down the table towards Dom. That is Aiden in the sunglasses on his left and Bob Lavoie barely made it in the picture on the bottom right corner.Andrew and Jeremiah eating dinner, you can also get a partial view of Aiden on the right side of the picture.
Another shot of the dinner table, I was so busy I didn't get very many pictures but did make sure I took some after everyone had gotten their food and were sitting down. I wasn't in my "photographer" mode, so I must apologize for the lack of good pics...sometimes you just got to go with whatever you get. In the picture above you have a close up of Tara and Andrew, above them are Jeremiah, Elaine, Bob Lavoie's daughter, then Dom at the head of the table. On the right side of the photo are Chad and Bonnie.
Now looking down the table in the other direction from upper left and moving clockwise: Dom Jr., Carla, Kylee, Mike, Ken Gemma, Laura, McKenzie, Tara and Andrew (in the blue shirt).
Another shot of the table with Jake, Bonnie's great-nephew in the foreground. Everyone else is shown and named in the other pics.

What we ate:

I fixed turkey sandwiches and bbq beef sandwiches along with 8 salads. It was a hot day and salads just sounded good to me. (Of course, not everyone else agreed with my menu choices, most people in Dom's family think salads are not things to be eaten, especially our grandkids from that side. I can say, my side of the family loved the food I prepared this year.)

The salads I prepared were:

1. Crunchy Napa Cabbage Slaw (this was a really good slaw, one of the best of had, but you need to really watch how much cilantro you put in, it can get a little spicey!)
2. Spinach-Blackberry Salad (this was a little unusual, but surprisingly good I used marionberries from our yard and shaved parm cheese)
3. Romaine and Mandarin Orange Salad (I really liked this, the poppy seed dressing was great! I'm glad I have lots left over and I was even able to send some home with Chad and Melissa since Chad really liked the dressing too!)
4. Greek Tortellini Salad (I added black olives, and chopped hard salami, didn't add the spinach leaves, added chopped basil leaves instead - this seemed to be a crowd favorite - the lemony vinegrette was really good)
5. Cucumber/tomato/green onion salad with balsalmic vinegar dressing (my own recipe that I have been making for years, a real favorite with several people in our family. So glad our own onions were ready to be picked for this, they add such a great flavor to the salad.
6. Bruschetta in a bowl: tomatoes, basil, mozzarella and croutons tossed and dressed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. (got the idea from #42 here).
7. My own homemade potato salad that I have been making for years.
8. Fruit salad with watermelon, honeydew melon, red seedless grapes and green seedless grapes.

For dessert we had our usual marionberry cobbler with vanilla ice cream and brownies.

Guest List:

Dom (the birthday boy, celebrating 75 years!)

Me (the party planner, caterer, all around slave)

Mike, Laura, McKenzie & Kylee

Dom Jr., Carla, Grace & Joey (backyard pool provider)

Miah (general last minute helper, thanks so much!)

Lissa, Chad (my sous chef, such a big help!), Aiden & Skyla (star of the party at just 5 days old)

Bonnie (my other sous chef, ice provider, table provider, general helper & baby holder) & Jake (all around helper) Matt...(MIA, but he will be available on August 25!)

Bob & Joyce Lavoie (Dom's golfing buddy & his wife)

Skyler & Elaine (Bob's daughter and her husband, another golfing buddy of Dom's)

Ken Gemma (so glad he could make it this year)

Mark & Donnie Anderson (thanks to Donnie for helping with the cleanup!)

Andrew & Tara Hagman (thanks so much guys! Andrew washed ALL the dishes and Tara did most of the after party cleanup! not to mention Andrew mowed the entire pasture on Thursday so it would look nice for the party...you guys are wonderful!)

Jeremy and Penny Anderson (so wonderful to see you...thanks for making the long drive for the day)

It was a good day, but I'm glad it is over for another year!

More Class Assignments

While looking around my gallery from the class I'm taking (see blog entry below) I discovered a photo I photoshop'd from Lesson 3 that I haven't shared here yet. This was a bonus project from Day 3 where we desaturated a photo, hand tinted it, added a frame and then added some stars to the background with the brush tool.

I used another picture from the photo shoot with Melissa (BTW, we are still waiting for Skyla's birth, Lissa is more anxious than the rest of us for this all to be over with and have Skyla in our arms at last!)

Okay, on with my pics from the class.

Day 5 Textures

Things are really getting pretty amazing now. I'd never worked with textures before. They give

a sort of 3D look to your photos which can make your pics look old and crumpled to contemporary and even make them look like they are printed on bubble wrap, depending what texture you use. Again, Jessica directed us to lots of free texture files you can download off the web.

The first photo I worked with was one Mino took in old town Conversano while we were in Italy in 2006.

I changed the photo to Sepia, did some other adjustments to it and then added a texture, which really gives it an old look. (See what looks like a crease in the center of the photo and the crumpled look around the edges? That is the texture layered over the photo.)

The next pic is also from our trip to Italy. It is a photo of all the umbrellas and people on the beach in Calabria. Doesn't it look like a really old photo now?

Then I did one more photo from our trip. This time I also used some color-tinting and added a frame to the photo. I also added a brush stamp and then text tool to add in the date.

My final picture from day 5 is a picture that I took of the hibiscus on our front porch, again using just about everything we had learned up to this point in the class.

Very fun class and I'm so excited to finally be learning more about using my photoshop elements program.

Day 6 - TTV

I had never heard of this before, but really good photographers are doing what are called TTV photos. TTV stands for through the viewfinder. In a nutshell, they are hooking their digital cameras up to really old cameras through the viewfinder on the old camera and taking pictures with their digital cameras. (Sounds complicated, and if you want more info there is lots of it out on the web.) Anyway...people are making texture templates to be used in photoshop that will give your photos this look without all the hassle of hooking your digi camera up to an old camera when you are taking a picture. On Day 6 of the class we learned how to add these textures to our photos. Very, very interesting look.

I used a photo that I took at the wedding shop of Melissa when she found her "dream" dress for her wedding. The texture I added to the photo makes it look like the photo was taken through the view finder of a really old camera. Then I added a brush stamp to the lower left corner of the photo and a little text to the lower right.

Day 7 of the class was just a Q&A of all the things we had learned the first week, which was an awful lot of stuff to remember. I'm so glad I will always have access to these course materials so I can go back and refresh my memory on all this stuff!

Day 8 Text

Up to this point we had just been working with simple text on our photos. In this lesson we learned how to add adjustment layers and textures to our text.

I used a photo I took on our trip to the Superstition Mountains in Arizona adding texture to the photo and to the word "time". Then I layered the words "standing still" over the first word, added a sanded overlay to the edges of the photo and layered a "negative" frame on the top.

So now my blog is up-to-date on all that I have been learning from this class and I'm anxiously waiting to discover what Day 9 will bring!