Tag Archives: Photos

Sunday Souvenir – Haircut

I’m late! It’s not Sunday, but that’s how it goes sometimes. On Sunday I hustled to get Jax’s Christmas present painted. His barn is now ready to be clear-coated!

This is a photo post about a childhood memory. When I was around 9 I was spending part of the summer with my grandparents in Iowa. My grandma told me she was taking me to her hairdresser for “just a trim”. I remember the lady’s salon in her basement. I also remember being SO upset when I saw how much my grandma had her cut off. I was not happy at all.

My hair was dark blond at this age. Exactly like Jax’s current hair. It now tends to grow dark blond/light brown at the roots and fade all the way to light blond at the ends from the sun. I always lighten the roots because I dislike the darker roots look. Though I guess its a whole style now – ombré or something?

Did you have any say in your haircuts as a child?

Sunday Souvenir – Christmas Traditions

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Christmas at our house

I grew up in a small family. It was just myself, my dad and my brother. While my mom passed away when I was 5, we continued to get together with her family over the holidays. We had a tradition of holding Christmas either at our house, my grandparents house in Iowa or my aunt’s house in Colorado. I think we sort of rotated through locations, but I’d guess more were at my grandparents house than the others. Later on (when I was in my teens) we switched to renting condos in Florida and having a tropical Christmas. We had extended family in the area and got to share Christmas dinner.

Because we were Christmas nomads so often, we didn’t have a ton of traditions. I liked going to the Christmas Eve church service so I could sing carols and ask far too many questions about the logistics of the whole nativity story. I also had a stretch of years where I insisted on only eating Christmas dinner with my left hand (I’m right-handed), because I’m strange, I guess!

Christmas at my aunt's house. Hello, Barbie Dream House!

Stockings at my grandparents' house

One tradition I loved was stockings! They’d change based on whose house were were at (gift bags were used at the Florida condos) but they were always include an orange that would be added to Christmas breakfast. There were filled with candies and little wrapped gifts without to/from tags, that I suspect everyone contributed. I hang stockings for us every year, but they typically stay empty unless I put something in them. I plan to do some stocking stuffer shopping after all this reminiscing, but chances are mine will be empty come Christmas morning, heh.

Jax is still too young to understand the holiday, but I bet in the coming years we will start creating our own traditions.

I like my brother's sweater. No, really! I do!

Do you have any favorite traditions?

Family Portraits

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Sorry for the silence!

Pre-Thanksgiving I was busy working and prepping for guests. I took the day off on Thanksgiving, then worked Friday and Sunday. Saturday Jax was sick with sneezes and a runny nose so I took care of him while I worked on our family portraits (more on that in a moment.) Of course because I was wiping a snotty toddler nose and getting sneezed on all night while I nursed him, I caught the cold too. So my Sunday of working was pretty bad, and today is 100x worse. I’m sooo sick! But, I’m a contractor and don’t get paid if I don’t work, so work I must! Luckily, thanks to all the nursing, Jax was all better after just 36 hours with a light cold.

the photo we chose for our wall

We’ve been owing our relatives family portraits for some time. We actually had none that included Jax and he is almost 2! $500 photographers just aren’t in our budget, and mall photo studios hold your pictures’ copyrights hostage, which I don’t like. So it was time for some DIY!

I’ve been reading an ebook about my camera for a little while now which is a big help. I spent a couple weeks searching Pinterest and Google for tips on poses, outfits, lighting and taking your own family portraits. I knew that I was going to have to get creative and do a lot of Photoshopping.

I planned to do 2 separate shoots: one of Jax and I and one of my husband and Jax. I included pictures of us adults on our own as well. The plan was to take them all in the same location then Photoshop us together into different combinations. I ended up having to take them on two different mornings, but the light was very close both days.

The results came out much better than I’d expected! The lighting in the playroom was perfect. The poses came together the best they could. Photographers recommend everyone we very close and in contact with each other, but that wasn’t really possible the way I was doing it. We still got some great pictures.

Some behind the scenes:

In order to make Jax smile, I set up our iPad just under the camera. During my photoshoot with him, I played a YouTube video of a laughing baby to get him to smile. During the second shoot, I put on his favorite show, Peppa Pig. When I was in the photos, I used a remote to trigger the shutter. I made sure to take the pictures at the same time each day and left the camera on the tripod in the same spot between shoots.

I set up a Photoshop file with a clean wall photo I’d taken during the shoot, then cut us out of all the best shots and worked on arraigning us together. I spent a lot of time making sure all the edges were clean and added shadows and highlights to make it all come together.

See above for my camera setup, a silly screenshot with two of me and an outtake.

The goal was a nice, large black & white photo for our living room wall, some photos to send off to relatives, and a picture for our holiday cards. Yesterday evening I got everything ordered from Shutterfly. I used a coupon code for 25 free 4×8″ photo cards from saving up baby wipe points to get our cards. I used the promo code SHIP30 for free shipping, so I just paid for the prints.

Merry Bright Greeting Holiday

Create custom Christmas cards this holiday at Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

What do you think of our DIY photos?

Sunday Souvenir – Favorite Childhood TV Show

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Did you have a favorite tv show when you were little? Mine was The Muppet Show. Especially Kermit the Frog! I think I liked him the most because he sounded like my dad. (My dad also did a great Cookie Monster voice from Sesame Street.) It was such a great show with lots of little skits and musical numbers featuring a famous guest star. I ended up with a lot of Miss Piggy gear as a kid because that is what was marketed towards girls. She kind of annoyed me, though. Hah.

Years later in college, my dad used to tape the episodes they were rerunning and he’d give me the VCR tape every Friday night when I’d visit him. I even made a little mix cassette tape of my favorite songs, though I have no idea where that is now.

The first photo is me watching at 11 months old. My dad looks so 70’s cool in the background! And, if that rocks still exists somewhere, I WANT IT! The photo to the left is my brother and I watching tv together. I was 16 months so he was almost 7. The photo below is from my 6th birthday, which was celebrated at a ranch we used to visit with family in Colorado. The decorations definitely look like the work of my Great Aunt Berta. I’m not sure if they were brought out from Iowa by my grandparents and added to a cake, or if the whole cake made the trip. My Aunt Susan might know.

I haven’t introduced Jax to The Muppet Show yet. His current favorite show is Peppa Pig, which we record for him. Apparently it’s a show that is big in England.

What was your favorite childhood show?

Wearing a Miss Piggy shirt at a sulphur spring

Sunday Souvenir – Childood Stuffed Animals

Life Via Instagram

Life via Instagram

Sunday Souvenir: My First Day of Ballet

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This photo always makes me smile. This was my first day of ballet. I took it when I was 4 and loved it. The teacher was a sweet family friend. I used to love this one dance we did where we put on pretty tulle skirts and were little windup dolls with cardboard and tin foil cranks. When my mother passed away from breast cancer shortly before I turned 5, my ballet classes were forgotten.

When I was in middle school, I rediscovered my ballet teacher in the community center by my school. I happily took classes from her until I graduated high school.

Did anyone else have one of these neat ballet boxes? They were more often in pink and had a little compartment at the bottom for your ballet shoes. They actually have one on Amazon!

Check out Ronalyn’s Sunday Souvenir: The Adventures of Esa and Zed

Leave a comment if you’d like to be added!

Glass Instagram Photo Magnets

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As soon as I got my iPhone, I started using Instagram. It’s fun, free and lets you make your less-than-exciting cell phone photos interesting with filters. But what do you do with the tiny square photos it saves? While I always have mine set to save the original hi-res photos, I wanted to do something with the processed images. So I thought of the magnets I’ve made as gifts for years.

little tins are great for gift sets

Supplies:

Clear glass floral marbles (shaped like flattened globes) – avoid the iridescent kind, they are hard to see through.
Strong, round craft magnets. I find these in the craft store in various sizes.
Your Instagram photos (or magazine clippings, pretty paper, etc…) printed to fit your chosen size of marbles.
E-6000 glue
Scissors (and I sometimes use a circle punch the size of my magnets, but it’s currently lost.)
Toothpicks for glue spreading.
Optional: metal tin for giving your magnets as a gift set (found in craft stores.)