Bubbles

We let the kids take a bubble bath in our soaking tub tonight. We figured that just because we never use it that it shouldn't completely go to waste :-) They had a lot of fun as you can see by their goofy faces :-) If you look closely at Lovebug's forehead, you'll see the leftover bruise from the spill he took at the furniture store on Monday ... poor little dude :-(

These were 1/125th, f/4 ISO1000.

New family room furniture!

Yay, new furniture all set up!! Keep in mind that these Ikea tables are NOT staying ... they're temporary until we figure out what we want to do.

The play kitchen is definitely still permanent though, doesn't it give the family room that "je ne sais quoi?" :-)

These colors are all pretty funky - the walls give everything a weird glow and then I can never get it right in processing. The sofas are a really pretty chocolate brown.

The gallery wraps of the kids ... this pic doesn't even come close to doing them justice. They're 20x30's.

The basement with our trusty microfiber wraparound.

AND Taylor laying down. LOL. She's awesome, she follows me everywhere.

You can see the pool table that DH re-felted by himself. This pool table came from his parents' house, originally owned by his grandparents. They got it from a pool hall in Dundalk, so it's the real deal! Pretty cool :-)

The humongoid TV we got from Mike :-) It's old but it definitely works ... that's all that really matters. Oh, and there's Taylor again.

"We're not having hot mush for dinner ..."

"We're having cold mush ..." LOL. At least 1 of my friends should be able to say what movie that's from ...

This was dinner for tonight on day #2 of the Curves diet ... "No Pasta Salad." It's a cold salad concoction of basically just vegetables. It was so weird that I felt it deserved a post. Aside from the HOUR I spent chopping up all the stuff that goes into this interesting dish, it's really not that tasty. As DH said, "It's food."

Some of the highlighted ingredients: cauliflower, carrots, mushrooms, snow peas, artichokes, frozen green peas, onions, tuna, cheddar cheese, parmesan cheese, and Italian Dressing. Separately, all of that sounds ok. But together ... eh, it's edible (barely). LOL. Enjoy a laugh on us tonight.

Lens flare!

A few more from yesterday ... love the lens flare! Angel was trying to tickle Lovebug but I'm not sure how much he liked it. LOL.

It's a beautiful day

It was such an amazing day today! Temps in the 50's and 60's meant we were outside playing - in January! Wow! The kids had such a fun time - it was so refreshing to get outside and soak in the sun and fresh air.

Dear Ravens,

GOOD LUCK ... Go, Fight, Win! Love, Lovebug

He put Daddy's Ravens hat on by himself ... and AS USUAL, by the time I got the camera, he had moved onto bigger & better things. That's ok though, we re-shot a few portraits anyway!

These were taken in my bathroom with window light (yes, Lovebug is actually IN the soaking tub). Settings = 1/500th, f/4, ISO800

A-MAY-ZING!

Yes, that's right ... it's definitely January 15th and the windows are OPEN! And as you can see, I'm not the only one enjoying it :-)

You can see the temp at the exact time I shot this image, but check out the max temp - 69.6 degrees! In fairness, this is the warm side of the house at this time of the day, so it only "felt" like 69 degrees. But when I took this pic, it was cloudy, so there was no sun to impact the temp - it really was 55 degrees ... awesome! I opened all of the windows for about 15 minutes before it started to get cool - fresh air is the best!

Settings - 1/60th, f/4, ISO400 - taken with external flash/diffuser for fill light and ambient light.

P's new haircut courtesy of me

Angel really loves her hair being long, but she throws a FIT when we're trying to brush the knots out of her hair. I've been asking to cut her hair for awhile but she always refuses. So one night last week after bath, I just didn't give her a choice anymore. I decided to try it myself because I've done it before. And hey, she's almost 5 and will listen to me, so it should be a piece of cake, right? Yeah not so much. LOL.

This was probably the worst experience I have ever had cutting her hair. She kept moving ... which meant that I had to keep trimming to get everything even. Fortunately I had a lot of length to play with but this was supposed to be just a trim. So after some yelling and crying (YES, I feel awful for screaming at her), this is the adorable new look!

I know that she's the spitting image of me in so many ways .... but good gracious, she's way more beautiful than I ever was!

You'll see she's back on the Halloween costume kick - my amazing mom made this Jasmine costume for Angel and she just adores it. She took a forced break from it so that she wouldn't wear it EVERY day, but it's back in full force again! She is definitely a PRINCESS! BTW, new fun Angel quote of the day ... "No mom, I'm ALLERGIC to boys."

I used the available window light from the french doors in the kitchen. Settings - 1/200th, f/4, ISO200.

Book worm

So I actually grabbed my camera because I walked upstairs to find Lovebug in his room sitting in the rocker, reading a book. HOW precious is THAT?!

He was in a good enough picture-taking mood that I was able to capture a few really great portraits of him too. Bonus! He's two, so it's not that easy these days :-)

Ok, the image below I actually had to re-create because OF COURSE, by the time I got back upstairs with the camera, he had moved onto something else. I set him up with the same book and let him do the rest. By the way, the book is "Pajama Time," have you read it? It's annoyingly catchy and it's sure to get stuck in your head.

Angel got a bit jealous, so she was happy to pose for a portrait too.

This is the new object of Angel's affection - the one zhu zhu we were able to snag for Christmas. HIS real name is "Nugget" but Angel insisted that HER name is "Jenny." For those of you that don't know, we have several babies and animals that are all named "Jenny."

I tried a different action on the two images of her ... still deciding what I think of it. I didn't go crazy with the action, but I added a tiny bit of "glaze" to make the images kind of glow.

I shot these with just the window light in Lovebug's room, 1/60th, f/4, ISO800 ... have I mentioned recently that I just LOVE my camera?! Because if I haven't, now is probably a good time to remind you - I never would have gotten shots like this with the Rebel!