Scrapbooking

I really have not spent much time scrapbooking in the last year. It just hasn't been a priority in my life. Between part-time work, full-time school and all the kids activities it's hard time to find time to scrapbook. The only saving grace is that I went to my girls scrapbooking weekend in April and a group of us get together every month or two to scrapbook at the library. Beyond those there's been very little scrapbooking at home. Regardless, I thought I would share some of the work I've done in the last few months.

Oh What a Knight!

If you've followed my blog at all you've probably seen these play posts year after year after year. Yet again, the kids went to River City Childrens Theater camp this summer. This was Chase's 6th year, Tristan's 5th year and Carissa's 3rd year. The play this year was "What a Knight!", a medieval tale. The play was both hilarious and entertaining.

Chase got a pretty great role this year as the evil villian of the play, The Dark Knight. He did a great job of learning his numerous lines and the big chunks of monologue (which always began with "Life is like a game of chess..."). I was pretty impressed with the job he did.

Tristan played Earl Axminster, the leader of the squires. He was the leader all right and had the booming voice to prove it. He had a lot of lines too and even earned the "Diaphram Award" for using his diaphram to speak loudly during his part. Here he is doing his solo.

Carissa was one of the the royal guards, Sniff. (The other royal guard was Scratch. Scratch and Sniff... get it? LOL) She was adorable and was very good at announcing the arrival of the king and queen. Her most common line was that announcement: "King Arthur and Queen Guinevere!"

All in all another great performance from the kids and a great play from RCCT. The kids are already looking forward to next years play, "Rapunzel".

Congrats!!!

Just a huge nod of congratulations to my kids, who endured another long belt testing day on Friday, August 13th. They all came out victorious and sporting new belts - yellow for both Chase and Carissa and green w/stripe for Tristan. They all rocked at testing and really earned their new belts. Congrats kiddos!!!

Still Life

I've been really enjoying my photography class this term and I can't believe it's almost over! My final assignment was due today and the theme was still life. I really didn't have any idea what to do for still life and moped around for 10 days or so before settling down to take photos. And since I didn't have many ideas I just perused the house for things to take pictures of, like this shell:
and my beloved Mickey Mouse musical figurine.

Then I hit the kitchen - the refrigerator, the pantry, my china cabinet - and started to get a little more creative.

I added a little 7up to liven things up a bit

And then there's this one - my 2nd fave of my entire portfolio. Again, photoshop helps me turn the raspberries blue. I LOVE photoshop! Just wish I could have it on my own computer instead of using the ones at school!

These adorable little cups from the china cabinet, some juice from the fridge and a bloom from my geranium all put together. I digitally manipulated this one, as the paper and juice were originally shades of yellow. I decided to go all pink.

The teacup got me thinking about the teacup ride at Disneyland, which is based on the Mad Hatter's teaparty in Alice in Wonderland. Inspired by Alice, I made my own little ode to the movie using these adorable little brownie bites in my fridge (which I got free with coupons - score!). Before long the kids were bringing me things to photograph, some of which I used for my final assignment. These are Tristan's knitting/crocheting supplies. His 3rd/4th grade teacher taught him how and gave him the yarn to keep working with.

Here's some of Carissa's toy horses and blooms from my friend Melinda's yard. A little photoshop magic on this one turns the tiny horse into a beautiful unicorn.

This one wasn't brought to me, but I've been meaning to take a photo of Chase's bear for some time, as it's been with him since the beginning and is still well-loved.

The school supplies were hanging about and so were the wrapping supplies (I'd just wrapped Tristan's birthday gifts) so I put them together for this one.

And last but not least, one of my fave photographs - the bottom of a handblown glass bowl that I received when my cub scout den toured a glass blowing foundry years ago.

So there you go. The end of my journey in Art 140-Digital Photography. Thanks for putting up with all my photos. I learned a lot and think I'll use what I learned in my photographs for years to come.

Family Reunion (or as close as we get)

We have a very small family. In my entire lifetime I can't recall ever going to a family reunion, mainly because we have so little family that I'm aware of. So this week was as close as we come to a family reunion. And it all centered around on key event - my sisters visit to Oregon.


Last week was my sisters high school reunion so she flew back to Oregon to attend. I haven't seen her since I took her to the airport 8 years ago. She now lives in Texas and neither of us gets the chance to see once another.


My brother and sister-in-law came to Oregon to visit too, planning their tirp to coiincide with Wendy's visit.


Today was my turn to host the family and the final time we got to see one another before my sister left for Texas. We had dinner and german chocolate cake for my dads birthday then walked to the park for some family pictures. These were my faves...

Here's where we started - mom, dad and us three kids:

Here's just us kids:

And all of our kids - the grandkids:

And here we are all together, one big family shot. Who knows, it could be 8 years before we're here again. But it was good to have this family time.

Read It Forward

I just wanted to share this site with all the other book lovers out there. It's called "Read It Forward", a site supported by Crown Publishing. Each month they list at least 3 books that will be released soon. Then you can put your vitrtual "name in a hat" to win any that strike your fancy. I've put my name in for three months. I won that first month and received a decent but forgettable book that I passed along to some of my book club girls. Then today another package arrived on my doorstep - another free book. Score! I think tomorrow the drawing opens for the new books so stop by and put your name in the hat... you never know what might magically appear on your doorstep. :)

http://read-it-forward.crownpublishing.com/

More deals...

This one ends today, but if you've got a computer and a Safeway then you're in luck! Such a great deal on both cereal and cheese this week there. Here's what I got:

10 boxes of Kellogg's cereals, 6 packages of sliced cheese, 2 cartons of Welche's juice and flour (which was on sale but no coupons). And the grand total for this?$14.40! PLUS I have a $5.00 coupon good off my next order. Can't beat that!

This deal is almost up (today is the last day) but here's a post about next week's awesome cereal, granola bar and fruit snack deal. Good luck to you on saving money. :)
http://thekrazycouponlady.com/2010/08/safeway-general-mills-buy-4-save-4-promo.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FODHU+%28The+Krazy+Coupon+Lady+%29&utm_content=FaceBook

Photography Class - Assignment 2

Our second assignment was due today - portraits. As I previously lamented, we were told no kids and no pets. Well, I wasn't about to take a pile of pictures of our pets, though I certainly could especially since we have 9 pets to choose from. But no kids? Seriously? Kids are so much of my life - both at home and at school - and I was a bit lost with the thought of taking photos of other grownups. Thus my pictures are either of family,


good friends

or absolute strangers that had no idea I was photographing them. LOL

Overall I'm okay with how I did on this assignment, though it's I wouldn't say I was too impressed with myself. I probably should have been more outgoing and asked more people to do photo shoots with me, but I wasn't so I'll just have to deal with the grade I'm given.

Mommy & Me Weekend at the beach

Carissa and I were invited to spend some girl time at the beach with one of my good friends, Erica, and her daughters Linsday and Allison. Her family owns a little cabin on the Nestucca River just outside of Pacific City. I was only able to carve out 2 1/2 days (this summer is CRAZY!) while the boys were gone to Boy Scout camp and so we called it our Mommy & Me weekend.

The cabin we stayed at was quaint but adorable. It just barely fit us all, but that was fine with us. We ate simple food (including pizza dip the first night... my new fave food!) and just relaxed and enjoyed ourselves.

The first night we went to Pacific City and climbed the giant sand dune to walk along the edge of the cape. It was beautiful and blue skied. It was huge fun, though I haven't yet edited those photos so don't have pics to share. I will admit to taking lots and lots of photographs of strangers, hoping to catch something good for my portrait assignment in photography class.

We came back to the cabin where the girls played Polly Pockets and then watched a movie while I gave them all pedicures.

The next morning we were at the beach again, this time for 6 hours. First off was the tidepools. We saw lots of starfish and anemone's and even saw a few fish and crabs.

We tried to fly kites but it was oddly calm that day and there was no way we were getting them up higher than about 6 or 7 feet. Carissa ran so she could get her seahorse to fly, as we've forgotten to take it for several beach trips and she was DYING to finally get it in the air. Lindsay and Allison got theirs off the ground for a few minutes too.
Then the girls relaxed in the sand, building a sandcastle and attempting to form a bridge across this little stream.

By the time this day was over they were totally wiped out. But we had a great time at the beach with our friends and enjoyed our Mom and daughter time.