Children

Ever have one of those mornings when you look at your child and think, "I KNOW that you weren't this big when I put you to bed last night"?  Or a moment when you look at them and think, "Did you just suddenly advance 2 years while my back was turned"?

This is my little 6 year old.  Who suddenly looks 8 years old to me this week.

Sigh...........I see a slight glimmer of a teenager in her face.  And I miss my little girl.  I can't believe I am saying this, but I hope that tomorrow she has a full on 2 year old temper tantrum.  Anything to make her seem more like a toddler to me than a big girl.

Carson

His full name is Carson Danger Goodman.  Yes, Danger IS his middle name.  We are happy to welcome him into the family—Katie’s 12^th cousin, completing the much sought after, “Dozen Cousins” for her.

Isn’t he angelic?

And cozy in his little knitted cocoon?

Later that same cocoon would be found on his brother’s head…………..

The same brother who is learning that sharing, even his beloved Spiderman, is not so difficult after all.

Older brothers will encourage you to like football.

Older brothers will watch over you.

Then ask Taz to keep an eye on you when they run off to play.

Girl cousins will adore you and call you “Cutie-Cute-Cute”.

Welcome to your first week, Carson Danger!

Nasturtiums

Though it is quickly approaching fall, I am still enjoying my crop of nasturtiums.  The weather has been so gorgeous and spring like lately, that I opted to enjoy a meal outside surrounded by all things nasturtium.  Including my own custom nasturtium place cards, made using a vintage postcard image from the turn of the century.

These are my latest find, vintage luncheon plates with matching cups in milk glass with a grape pattern.  They were so reasonable that I bought 10 sets at a local rummage sale.  My daughter and I quickly took them home, washed our little plates, and set the table with them the same day.  We use the matching cups for foods like applesauce, peas, or cottage cheese rather than actual drinks as the cups are quite small.

We enjoy quiet lunches in our front courtyard.  Our house is shaped like a capital letter “H”, with a longish middle section.  This makes for two natural courtyard areas, one facing the front of our property and the other facing the back.  The front courtyard has a 4^th wall that has two small arched openings, and a two wrought iron gates that remind me of the many that I saw in Charleston while on vacation.  It makes for a wonderfully cozy (and private!) area for enjoying a meal al fresco.

Below is my nasturtium place card image for anyone who wants to download it and print their own.  It is sized to work with Avery folded business cards, 2x3.5 inches in size.  Enjoy!

Lydia

In my family, there are LOTS of kids—grandkids, great-grandkids, cousins, siblings, little, big, boys, girls, nieces, nephews.  You name it, we got it.  In spades.

This one is Lydia.  She is number 12 in the rankings and currently the youngest.  But only for a few more days.  Number 13, the baker’s dozen, is on the way and is officially due on Monday, September 20, 2010.   Depending on 13’s arrival date, he/she will likely be my next post.  Once that little one arrives, my daughter Katie will have a dozen cousins.  Being an only child, she LOVES her cousins.  It’s like having siblings, without the hassle of sharing.  When you have cousins, sharing is actually fun.

In honor of Lydia’s birthday, I took this series of photos.  She just turned 1 and is motoring around on wobbly, albeit fast, legs.  Wobbly and fast are a bad combination no matter who is doing the walking.  But as you can tell from her expression, mobility suits her just fine.  And what the heck, her center of gravity is still low to the ground.  This photo was enhanced with my own Photo Fade action.

She wasn’t too keen on sitting still for her Aunt to take photos, but I did manage to distract her a bit and sneak a few in before she even realized.  This photo was enhanced with FloraBella’s BW Truffle action.

Lydia likes to eat.  And it seems that she knows what a picnic basket is for, based on this moment in time.  Sorry, girlie, it’s just a prop.

This is a photo I took of the younger elements of the “Dozen Cousins”, this past Easter.  I aptly titled this one “What Do You Mean the Older Kids Already Found All the Easter Eggs?”, based on Lydia’s expression.  She’s the one sporting the purple bunny ears.

And in closing, I leave you with one of the first photos of Lydia that I took.  She was so tiny then.  That’s not the case anymore, but she is still bald.

Week 37 Photo Challenge at i heart faces

 

This week's topic is Vroom, Vroom featuring any type of transportation in the photo.

Here is my submission--Alex Bracho and Katie Pride, rolling back the years in the Bracho's '55 Chevy Bel Air.

Hats

My friend Christy and I recently got together and made hats. Not your ordinary run of the mill hats, but ones worthy of being the focal piece in a photograph. We are all about gathering up props for photo shoots these days. Or at least I am for sure and I suspect that Christy is as well.


As do most creative impulses, it began innocently enough. I found a silly hat at the store, meant to be part of a Halloween costume. I bought it. And began to mentally de-construct it. And in my head, create ones of my own design. That’s when I called Christy.

We started with a little trip to the craft store. Which led to the “Hey-they-have-feathers-and-silk-flowers-on-sale”, which led to the “Hey-I-think-I-have-a-bag-of-random-trim-in-a-tote-somewhere”, which led to the “Hey-I-have-some-fabric-scraps-in-the-attic”, all of which contributed to the giant mess on my dining room table. I do have an actual studio, but it is far too cluttered, for something on this scale of effort. So the dining room table has been called into service.

It looks just as lovely, covered in trims, as it does completely set with my fav dishes.  Or at least I think so.

We needed someone to model our finished products for us. So my 6 year old daughter, still being of an age where bribery works wonders, agreed to help out. It only cost me a trip to the toy store later that evening. Deal! Don’t be fooled by her girlish looks. Her toy of choice was a Lego’s kit. Of the Star Wars variety.

Christy made this beautiful birds nest hat. This photo is SOOC (straight out of camera).

And this delicately feathered headband is her creation as well. I used one of my custom Photoshop actions to create the look of a hand colored black and white image, taken with a pinhole camera.

As for me, I made this fall hat, complete with a partridge nestled in the autumn foliage.

And this one, resplendent in sparkling blue with an iridescent butterfly companion. We are all about butterflies lately. We were charmed by a caterpillar who decided to spin a chrysalis in the two days that he was being observed in the bug habitat. Fuzzy, turned out to be a beautiful monarch butterfly after just a few short weeks. Amazing.

Here are some of the various trims and fabrics that are awaiting their opportunity to becoming hat art. I was lucky this summer to receive a carton from my Dad full of odds and ends of trims that had belonged to my grandmother. There were spools of ribbon, bits and bobs of laces and trims, sequins, and wonderful vintage rhinestone trims as well. Not enough of any one thing for a large project, but perfect for tiny hats.

My next hat will be something that smacks of Marie Antoinette, sans any small scale model boats.

I’ve also discovered that buying tiny doll hats and perching them on headbands can be fun. I am anxious to try some of them out on my young nieces. My other models………no bribery needed.

My First Fix It Friday!

 

Fix It Friday #70:  Here is the original photo for the challenge.  Adorable little girl, photo slightly out of focus.

For all revisions, I first used the unsharp mask, set to only 1 pixel, just to bring the eyes a little more into focus. I also used the patch tool under the eyes to brighten the face and those beautiful brown eyes.  I am currently using CS3 Extended.

Revision 1--I used my own Photo Fade action to lend a vintage look to the photo.

Revision 2--I created a white vignette around her face to soften the look.

Revision 3--I used FloraBella's BW Truffle and Soft Sunshine actions.

Cameras

I love cameras. There. I said it.


From the moment I dropped off my first roll of 110 film in that tiny-phone-booth-of-a-store called Moto-Photo, I was hooked. I begged my Mom to stop there anytime I had babysitting money. My teenage money was spent in an endless cycle of buying more film, dropping off film, and picking up my reward later—that packet of 24 negatives and the resulting 3x5 images. Heaven!

At some point, my Dad gave me this vintage Kodak 35 mm camera. That started a lifetime of collecting cameras. Of course, I collect a lot of different things, but cameras……….well, they are special.

I quickly progressed from hand me down instamatic cameras to my first big girl camera, my beloved Pentax K1000. That camera was my first purchase the summer I earned a real paycheck, reading microfilm and microfiche for 8 hours a day. As my eyesight reeled from eyestrain that summer, my photographic vision soared. I photographically stalked everything and anything that had compositional merit. And of course a lot, in the end, that really didn’t.

During college I took photography classes just to guarantee access to the darkroom facilities. I was generally found in one of two places during my days at Miami University—the darkroom or Alumni Hall in the Art and Architectural Library. Not including Thursday nights at Lottie Moon’s, but I digress………..

In that library, I had a favorite spot in the back corner where the photography books were located. They were far from the study tables and reading areas, so I would just sit on the floor. Midway through the semester, a small and well worn wooden desk and chair suddenly appeared in the corner closest to those racks of books. And it seemed to me that the burned out florescent light bulbs in that corner had been replaced as well. Apparently, one of the library folks took pity on the tiny girl sitting on the floor reading stacks of photography books day in and day out. It was my personal reading area in the library. I only recall once in my 4 years, did I ever see another soul sitting at “my” desk. I was not happy that day. How to say, “Excuse me, but that is my private desk”???? There really just isn’t an unselfish way to say that.

As my disposable income increased after graduation, so did the volume of film and accoutrements. I bought a copy stand. In the early 90’s I began creating negatives of treasured family photos. Then computers and scanners became readily available. I began to scan my voluminous collection of old photos and ephemera. Heaven again!

Still, I continued to use film for my photography.

Then something truly more magical than being given your own personal desk at the library happened. Affordable digital cameras. I bought a Canon Elph just before a special vacation to Sedona, Arizona. That was the beginning of my new digital darkroom, though I did not know it at the time. My brother convinced me to give Photoshop a try. It was a solid year before I would master even the most basic of Photoshop functions. Of course, I first gravitated to the ones that most closely mimicked darkroom activities—dodge and burn, unsharp mask, and so on.

The rest, as they say, is history.

I still love cameras. And now I love Photoshop, too. It does everything that I used to do in the darkroom. And I don’t miss the chemical smell of the darkroom at Miami one bit. But I do miss the Art and Architectural Library. And my private desk.