New baby

February 11, 2010
I had a home birth.  It was difficult, but then this little heartbreaker arrived...

Dolls

Nesting

A few days before baby came...

El Chapulín Colorado!!!

This little guy was in February finally willing to wear the full upper half of his Halloween costume that we made him.

The Bed My Dad Built -- From Scratch!

Back in January, part of the nesting process before my second son arrived involved a new, organic mattress, and a frame to hold it courtesy of my awesome dad. Here is the building of our family bed...

Playing on Photoshop

Boy is this blog out of date! Have to spend some time catching up on posts.
If you want to keep more up to date on what I'm doing, check out my Facebook page.
Did I mention I had a baby? Hmm... I wonder why I haven't been keeping up with blogs and art.
Today though I was fiddling around with some images of my boys on Photoshop Elements and this is what I came up with...

ANOTHER blog experiment?

I can't even manage to keep posting on the blogs I have, but I'm testing a new one for those who might be interested.  I'm trying out TUMBLR to see what the fuss is about.  And I'm using the blog to collect bits of inspiration online, to post some short bits of personal stuff, and whatever else tickles my fancy in a more micro-bloggy sort of way.  If you want to see what I'm into right now, check it out.  The name & url are sort of both temporary because I haven't come up with something better yet.  I'll warn you if I decide to change it obviously.

Playing with Nostalgia

So sorry to have been gone so long, but my brain has just been completely fried this pregnancy.  I wasn't able to finish the portraits for the giveaway and I have been struggling the few times I have attempted writing something.

But I did a little something today!  With the impending arrival of our second child, I've found myself needing to return to the images of the arrival of our first child.  I started playing around with some images from that time and thought I'd share what I came up with.

I miss film, and the soft nostalgia that film grain imparts.  Although I'm kind of against 'faking' things like film looks and film grain, I still do go there at times.  And I've been forever dissatisfied with options that Photoshop Elements offers for adding grain.  So I looked online and found a random grainy photo to model my grain after.  And after much playing and tweaking, I turned this photo my husband took of me holding my son at 2 days old...

...into this:

I'm pretty pleased with it.  It's not perfect, and this experiment makes me want to just return to film to get the real beauty back.  Ahhh... film is just so beautiful.  But still, I kind of like what I achieved here.

[EDIT] I'm a little frustrated with the sharpening that I think Flickr did here.  It's softer in the version I made.  Looks better if you click through and view it larger.

O Tannenbaum, how knitted are your leaves?

If I had years to work on it, and the inclination to work that long on such a thing, I would SO make a tree like this:

Yep, that's totally knitted!

I have seen some Christmas trees and other little trees on ravelry, and they are often super cute, but they are miniatures.  How cool would it be to have a life-size knitted tree?  Beats my plastic one any day!

Find these trees on Ravelry.com: 1, 2, and 3

Children's Museum

Had some fun at the Children's Museum in Denver.

Miss Piper

My son learned how to handle our corn snake, Piper, this summer.  He loved it!

Localpalooza

Went and saw my other drumming nephew play with his band at the Localpalooza.

Smilla, Girl!

My boy loves his dog, Smilla.  Sometimes he calls her, "Smilla, girl." Just so cute.

Butterfly Pavillion, Denver

We experienced some beauty at the Butterfly Pavillion.