Spaghetti Night

Boy's Play

It seems my son has a bit of a shoe fetish.

If I were to say he is obsessed with shoes, I would not be exaggerating. He loves his own shoes; he loves his mama's shoes. He even loves complete strangers' shoes. In fact, he's recently started greeting people by going up to their shoes, pointing, and saying, "Shoes! Shoes! See?"

He's also really into organizing shoes. I don't let him play in my closet anymore because boyfriend did a number to my rows of shoes in there. So now he's limited to the shoes he finds around the house. And that doesn't seem to bother him.

He packs all his shoes up in his walker and carts them around the living room like a shopping cart. He stops at the stairs and lines the shoes up. He takes each shoe, one by one, and attempts to put them on his feet. he gets a real thrill when he gets on of my shoes on his foot.

He will carry on in this way until he finds the only thing more exciting than shoes: cars. And when he gets his hands on a car? We're talking full-on car noises and crashes.

So.

Shoes and cars. That's what makes this boy happy.

                

linking up with Paper Mama

Our February in pictures

We got into trouble.

We had fun with daddy.

We summoned our inner model.

We played with good friends.

We enjoyed great weather and explored new places.

We got messy.

We had a great February!

Linking up with Paper Mama for Wordless Wednesday.

Ribbit Ribbit (Wordless-ish Wednesday)

A sweet friend from church made Cohen a hat. She's actually been making one for every baby in the church, and it is so much fun looking at all the babies in their cute hats.

Cohen and I are not hat people. I'm not typically a fan of dressing your kid up in silly things, and Cohen, well, he just doesn't want anything on his head (because, then, how could he show off his beautiful white-blonde hair?).

But this hat. This is a hat we both can make an exception for. It's just too adorable. And the joy my baby gets when he sees himself in the mirror is off-the-charts precious.

He will not let me take it off his head. And I'm just fine with that.

Also linking up with Paper Mama 

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And now it's edit time!

Selena provided the picture this week. Check out her website, it's pretty cool.

Here's the original image. Don't you just love a beach wedding? I was telling a friend just the other day that if I could do my wedding all over again, I'd forget about all the fancy and just have a simple beach wedding. Or a barefoot outdoor wedding. With bbq and lemonade. There's something about the simplicity that is so romantic to me.

Here's my edit:

I cropped the image and cloned out a lot of the distracting sea grass. I brightened the image and added contrast. I also did a lot of work with the background: softening it up and brightening it up even more. Finally, I played with the curves a bit to add a little bit of a pink tint to the entire image.

Here's a side-by-side:

Thanks for the fun picture, Selena! It makes me want to get married all over again :)

Want to see how others edited this pictures? Click on the box below for lots of creativity!

A Wordless-ish Photo Dump

I've got all these photos to share and no logical way to share them.

So I'm dumping them on you. Enjoy.

My boy loves him some bubbles.

Gotta get that last drop.

Goofing off with dada.

How much can a little guy carry? We don't play with toys these days. We carry them around. And sometimes drop them in the toilet.

Baby gate fun.

Independent play. I love watching him become creative.

Sloppy Joe night. The boy was in Heaven.

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And now it's time for an edit.

This week's photo is brought to us by Linda from Coach House Crafting, and can I just say, Linda, next time you go to this place, take me with you. Please? I will love you forever. That place is beautiful.

Here's the image SOOC:

And here's my edit:

I brightened up the image and sharpened it up. I added some contrast and increased the saturation. Then I cloned out the little boats on the right and the funky looking clouds in the top right-hand corner. And voila.

Here's a comparison:

Whatcha think?

The Laundry Room (and an edit)

Let me introduce you to my new love. Her name is Lady, and she is so pretty.

I really wish I had a before picture to highlight the dramatic difference. But since I don't, just imagine a total builder's grade laundry room: beige walls, white wire shelf, ugly and cheap ceiling fixture. She wasn't so much of a lady back then.

The whole transformation started when our old, old, old dryer broke just days before Christmas. I wasn't sad.

So we did some quick homework and bought these pretty little things.

And then we thought, Well, since we've got new appliances, why don't we just fix up the laundry room?

And fix up, we did.



The framed art? I made it.

Looks good, right?

You want them?

Who's your favorite blogger?

 The prints are suitable for 8x10 pictures. The laundry guide is suitable for 4x6 print.


And now for some specifics:

• glass containers from Hobby Lobby (except the glass bottle -- that's from Ikea)
• lighting from Ikea
• all frames from Hobby Lobby
• red rugs from Ikea
• Iron holder and ironing board hooks from Ikea
• shelving from Ikea
• baskets from Ikea
• Laundry Room plaque from Hobby Lobby
• stainless steel drying rack from Ikea
• plastic drawer tower from Target

Linking up with parenting BY dummies and 5 minutes for Mom for Wordless Wednesday.

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And now for my 2nd ever Edit Me Challenge. I tell you, they're not kidding when they call it a challenge.

This week's picture was a booger. I would compare it to one of those 1 million piece puzzles that's impossible to complete.  I guess I'm just not used to editing landscape photos. I much prefer people.

But the picture itself is gorgeous. I mean, hello, paradise.

Here's the original SOOC:

And here's my edit:



Here's what I did:

I cropped the photo. I felt like the original had a lot going on, and I wanted to just focus on one thing.

With the cropping, I needed to also clone out some of the balcony and a part of the tree on the right hand side of the picture.

Then, I added some contrast to the picture and increased the saturation a bit.

I gave the picture a little bit of a cross processing effect and then softened the entire picture to give it a hazy feel.

Here's a side-by-side comparison: