Fall Fun

A couple weeks back it was super windy but Callie wanted to go play outside, so out we went. She loved the wind. Whenever a big gust would come she would start running around yelling. It was hilarious. So I grabbed the camera and captured a few of my new favorite shots.

It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

For the last 28 months (note Callie is only 21 months old), Callie has been the proud owner of at least 2 BYU shirts.

So to make things a little more even and to celebrate unity among the MWC, I made Callie a Utah shirt. This is a gift to celebrate the start of college football TONIGHT!!!

Don't worry for the BYU-Utah game, we plan on a compromise and she can support our high school by sporting some purple.

Until then, GO DEEP and GO MWC!!!

Mother Nature's Diet

It turns out that after last weeks fretting over what to eat and how much to exercise, Mother Nature had another plan for my weight loss goals.

All it took was 2.5 days of stomach flu, and I am nearly at my goal weight. I don't recommend the method, but it if you would like to try it come on over and we might be able to find you some germy love to take home and share with your friends and family.

The Cost To Be Thin

The last 5 days or so, Jeff and I have been doing the South Beach Diet. It is a diet that my doctor recommended when I was trying to get pregnant with Callie, so since we would like to have another baby, I decided to make the diet a first defense instead of the last resort.

The basic concept of the diet is that in the first two weeks you eat no bread, no fruit and limited dairy. You have to eat protein with every meal (and snacks too), and at least a 1/2 cup of veggies with breakfast, 2 cups with lunch and 2 with dinner.

I am pleased to report that after 5 days, Jeff and I have each lost about 5 lbs. Yep, it feels good! I would love to keep losing weight this quickly, and when I have just finished a "no sugar added" fudgesicle I think it is possible. Then I look at what I have left to cook for dinner... not too much. Then I think about I will have the pleasure of eating for breakfast tomorrow--eggs (bleh), while I serve Callie my favorite, cereal. Then I see recipes like this, and I want nothing more than to be a glutton.

Since Monday I have spent about twice as much $$ on groceries as normal, and we are running out of approved food. My time spent in the kitchen has about quadrupled, and Jeff's has increased infinitely (as he has COOKED his own breakfast two days in a row).

Can you infer where I'm going with this.

I am wimping out. I have lots of excuses. And they are all good ones. I want to be thin, but I think I gotta find a new way.

Once Upon A Time...

I had a little blog that I posted to every once in a while. Then my computer got a sad, sad virus. And when ever I would try to blog I would get sad because my pictures were all on discs, far away from my hard drive.

But now our computer has been reprogrammed and one day I will have it set up the way I like once again. Until then, I give you a couple pictures from our vacation. Which may or may not be where I left off when the computer fell victim to the horrible packed.200.generic virus...

Karma

A few years back I took the picture below when I was in San Francisco. The poor tourist was just trying to look a little darker for her vacation. I had a good laugh over her fool hardy ways. I even pointed (behind her back) and laughed with my sisters and took a picture that I have often looked back at and giggled about.

This is what happens when you point at laugh at someone's spray tan and then think the same thing won't happen to you.

Now Jeff understands why I was so self conscious over my weird blotchy feet all week. In the end I decided the cute toenails would maybe distract from the overall ickiness of the spray tan.

Note to self: Just because something costs more doesn't guarantee better results.

Mother's Day Highlights

This wasn't the best part of my Mother's Day by any stretch of the imagination... it was just one of the highlights.

While driving to church we noticed it, a toilet in the middle of a dirt/gravel lot. It wasn't just any toilet though. This throne had a brown bowl and a pink tank with a palm tree. Because when I see a palm tree painted on a toilet, well, it just makes me think of tropical vacations and exotic getaways to faraway lands.

**If you are in the Modesto area and looking for a beauty such as this, don't hesitate to swing on over to the corner of Encina and ElVista to pick this bad boy up, pretty sure you can take the five finger discount and no one will miss it (except me next week while driving to church).

Little by Little

In my last post I mentioned my new camera lens and Robin asked about my other lenses. I only have one other lens and it is the kit lens (18-55mm) that came with my now somewhat out of date Canon Digital Rebel. When we bought our SLR I knew nothing about photography except that it was annoying when using a digital camera that had a delay in taking the picture. So I tried to find a camera with the shortest delay possible. In reading on a few websites and Consumer Reports a lot of people said to truly get no delay you had to have an SLR. I also figured we could afford it while I was still working and I would never be able to justify it once I was not gainfully employed (because I still work--like, A LOT!).

So the point of all that is basically that I bought way more camera than I knew what to do with. In time I thought I would figure it out and then maybe I could stop using that little green square that was the auto setting. And in trying to learn there is a lot to tackle and if you try to do it all at once it will make your head spin. So I read somewhere that shooting in RAW file format is what the pros do. So I decided I wanted to be cool like them so I should shoot RAW too. The thing is RAW files are about 5x the size of regular jpegs. But if you are still reading this boring post you probably already know that. The thing is though, it was an easy thing I could do to give me some cred.

The problem is, I didn't know what the point of all those huge files was. I knew I could change stuff about the pictures, but I was confused because I was still saving the images as jpegs too and the jpegs always looked a bit better than the RAW versions, so why would I waste all that extra space for poor pics.

Now I am figuring things out. Not everything, just a few things. This is a pic I shot a couple weeks back. Pretty bad, way over exposed, and I think it looks a little on the cool side. But with a few clicks, it gets better.

Here's the jpeg.

Here's the RAW version (and I realize now this is probably a bad example because the RAW version actually looks better than the jpeg in this case).

First, I warmed it up a bit by changing the white balance to flash.

Then the real magic happened when I hit the auto button to fix the exposure/recovery.

For the final touch, I cropped it a bit (I could have cropped a regular jpeg too).

It isn't perfect by any means, but it is way better, and I am starting to understand, just a little bit why shooting in RAW is cool.

**I haven't had a chance to play with the sharpening yet, but I owe the little bit I know about RAW to Digital Photography for Moms. This looks like a great blog that can give me (and you) lots of great tips.

Me

I was scrolling through the Picasa pics and Callie looked up at the computer and said, "Me!"

So I had to post it!

A Buzz

 

 

 

The lemon tree is in bloom right now and when I go out into the backyard I can hear it buzzing from several feet away with all the bees doing all their pollination.

I have also been playing around with my new 50mm F1.8 lens and I have taken a huge pile of bad pics. With some cropping I thought these were kind of cool.