Last night....

Last night, I went over to my friend Kim's house for a Tastefully Simple party (one of us is always having a party of some kind - anything to get together with the girls...) - funny stuff always happens at these things:

For example, Kim will now be known as Kimmie - thanks to Auntie Janie who revealed that tidbit of information.
Dana, my inchie-fied friend was a TS virgin until last night - it's just too good to keep it sacred, D.

Josh held up the chocolate pound cake - I won't pick on him, too much, he's a good sport to be coming to one of these things with his family, but when the chocolate pound cake was getting passed around, he was holding on to it...not to worry, he got the last crumb too.

Barbara, who is also my Tastefully Simple rep will also become your rep if you call her "root beer" - ask her about it when you book a party (and don't tell her I told you).

Bev, owner of my favorite LSS - Scrapbook Cupboard - bought more stuff to add to her pantry full of TS stuff and would be happy to have you make some of it for her (hehehehe)

After the demo, Susan and I hit the kitchen to check out the leftovers and nearly completely 86'ed the beer bread - DEEP SIGH - so good to eat, so bad for your carb count...oh well - my philosophy in life is "eat and be happy then die" rather than "starve and be miserable then die".
Thus the necessity of the "skinny button" on any camera pointed in my direction.

Halloween pictures:
This is my 1 1/2 year old niece, EvaMarie - who was madly in love with this costume - we got back from trick-or-treating and she never took it off - this was taken before we went out - she was so good; we went out for 1 1/2 hours and she didn't cry or complain or want to be carried even once - she just kept telling my sister-in-law, Laura "more candy" when we walked up to a house. My nephew Andrew was a rapper - nice goatee, Andrew...



Dylan was Indiana Jones. Yes, it was just a onepiece top and a hat and no, he did not have a whip - that would have been just one more thing for mom and dad to carry 1 1/2 blocks after starting to TOT...yeah, no thanks.
Angelica was a friendly witch - she did pretty good too - she had had it after 90 minutes of TOT. I had a lighting nightmare at my sister-in-law, Kristin's house and this was the best I could do with Angel - she looks a tinge orange in it - but sometimes, a bad picture is better than no picture. Sorry, baby.

Melody was a bunch of grapes - that costume cost me about $8.00 to make - we got a white hat and painted it brown for the stem, bought 2 dozen 5" purple balloons and some safety pins - pinned the blown up balloons all over her. She got the most comments - even from bigger kids: we ran into some junior highschoolers (both boys) and one of them said, "wow, what is she supposed to be?" And the other one said, " A bunch of grapes, stupid." Again - the picture above was a lighting nightmare - the latex on the balloons was bouncing light everywhere - that was my flash - I had to force myself to use it because my available light was just not available enough. But I love this picture of Melody because she is actually looking at me with a smile - as opposed to the usual grimace with her eyes pointing somewhere else.

Very busy week ahead - school on Monday and Wednesday nights with a test on Wednesday night. Dylan has hockey practice 3 times this week and team pictures on Wednesday night. Can't wait 'til next weekend - going out with Susan and Kristin to take a Christmas card class - yes, I make my own because I love to have no time for anything else and it just makes the holiday season all the more pressing...good times!

Last weekend's hockey birthday pictures.

I took these at Dylan's last hockey game - they played the Eagles (where are they from? dunno.) at the rink in Pembroke - thankfully the game was at 2:40pm - so all I had to do was drive 45 minutes as soon as I got out of work to the rink- as opposed to waking up at 4:45am to get to that same rink for a 5:50am game...


He had to be a goalie - like his dad in high school. Although, I think he'll be alternating with another player on his team and skate out when that player goaltends...Dylan will play the next game as goalie, though. They lost this game - 5-1. And if Dylan was paying as much attention as he should have, they would have lost 2-1. He'll get there - I'm so proud of how much he's learned in the last year. Last October, he couldn't even skate...

After the game, which most of his cousins came to watch, it was back to mom and dad's house to celebrate some birthdays...I didn't get too many shots but I did get these:



My nephew, Dennis and Angelica share a birthday - and so doesn't my little cousin Charli...popular day for having babies, I guess.

My niece, Samantha is 3 days older than Angel.
They shared this ice cream cake - thus the three candles...we had a do-over blow out for Angel because my nephew, Andrew took it upon himself to blow out her candle...sigh....

I think Angel had a good birthday - at least I hope so...she got some money, dolls, bath stuff, 3 webkinz outfits and a webkinz bag for her bunnie. For my birthday, I got 2 cards, a panic button and all the laundry that I did but have yet to fold...not to worry - 32 is the new 21....I'll just keep on telling myself that....school tomorrow....I get to find out what I got on Monday's test...tune it for that exciting number....

I'm so tired....

I have been up since 3:30am this morning - I couldn't go back to sleep after waking up at 3am. We had to get up early because today was Dylan's first hockey game....at 5:50am...in Pembroke (about 15 miles away). The girls slept over mom and dad's while Adam and I took Dylan to the Hobomock Rink...and after I went to work until 2pm.

I got some pictures:
If you ever wanted to know what fresh ice looked like in a closed rink - there it is...

This is what fresh ice looks like when it's done. Both these photos and the one below were taken with my Canon 50mm through the glass, no flash.
It's hard to see in this picture but that clock in the upper right hand corner says 5:31 (am)...yawn!

I'm so disappointed that I didn't get a picture of him full uniform before the game - for a crack of dawn game, it sure was energetic...by the middle of the second period, I had no voice left...I'm sure that my hands and arms were shaky from fatigue, thus the slight blur - took this photo with my Canon 75-300mm at full zoom...no flash. Snazzy uniforms - all of our city's teams are Boxers (it's on the front of Dylan's jersey).

I took pictures of other kids but didn't want to post - haven't asked yet...wanted to see how they came out first.

Anyway, they lost against Pembroke, 7-2. Dylan was not happy about it - but they scored the most (4 goals) in the second half of the first period...when Dylan thought it was a great idea to dive for the puck - he missed a couple of times...thus the pep talk from Adam at the end of the 1st period and they only scored 3 more after that- one of which was a lucky shot that took an odd bounce off his blocker.

I'm seriously contemplating taking Karen Russell's 9-week online photography class called
"The Photographer's Workshop". Registration is on Monday at 9am PST. It's expensive but she's an awesome instructor/photographer. We'll see - between work and school and hockey and PTA and scrapping, I'm not sure I have time to do it...I'll think about it a bunch this weekend.

I should take a nap but I am going to start cooking dinner. I'm starving ....thank goodness hockey doesn't end until April...gives me plenty of time to practice my sports shots...

Everyone's First Day of School....well, almost everyone

Today is the first day of school in our city. Everyone starts today....Dylan begins the 3rd grade. Angel will start 1st grade (they'll both be at the same school - finally). Adam is a School Resource Officer at one of the junior high schools (soon to be middle schools). I start Massasoit tonight.
I take pictures on the first day of school (ok, I take pictures all the time)....those will probably make it up here in the am. I'll be sure to get someone to take my picture (as long as they know where the skinny button is on the cam).

We got off to a great start - the kids were ready, we had some time - so we took some pictures (with my Canon 50mm)

These were taken in the our front yard - all unedited...

It's not Melody's first day of school today - she has orientation and one day of school next week - she was a not happy about it this morning but when we told her it was her job to get the kids to school today, she was good with that (any chance to tell her brother and sister what to do, I guess...). We even picked out an appropriate shirt for her to wear today - It says, "I may small but I'm the boss!"


We shot about 45 pictures in the front yard. I got this one of Dylan while we were at a stop light.
And finally, when we got to school - the utter chaos began - about 60 teachers trying to gather 720 students in the schoolyard to their appropriate lines...with most of the kids and parents still trying to find out their teacher assignments. We knew who Angelica had (I checked in with the principal last week) but it took us 10 minutes to find out who Dylan has. When we got all that information squared away, we dropped him off to his line and found Angelica's line. Our friends' John and Rita's youngest son, Brady is in Angelica's class. This is them:
They weren't in the same kindergarten class last year but they were in one year of pre-school together (where Melody will be going next week).

I did take a picture of Adam this morning on his way out but he's not a morning person on top of being anti-photo (I know, you're thinking, where did I find this guy?)...so I won't be posting his picture here - maybe he'll let me take his picture another time....weenie.
My first day isn't until later tonight - I'll get someone to take my picture too.

Today...

Today, we tried to finish school shopping for the kids. We'll still have to get them backpacks because we went up to the Burlington Mall only to find that there was not a Disney store there. I still have tomorrow - Dylan and Angelica don't start school until Wednesday.

One thing we did find at the Burlington Mall is Chick-Fil-A. I think this may be the only chicken place that can even be compared to KFC. I'm not a big chicken fan - but I'm instantly a huge Chick-Fil-A fan. And today, they did their free chicken strips giveaway if you were donning a football logo of some kind. While Adam wore a Mickey and Donald shirt that dad embroidered with my sewing machine, he does have the Notre Dame Leprechaun tattooed on his forearm. That won us a free sample of chick-n strips. I had the original chick-fil-a sandwich with cheese and mayo - It was fabulous!!! I don't believe there are any Chick-Fil-As on the South Shore, but certainly the ride north is worth it. There are also Chick-Fil-As at the Pheasant Lane Mall in Nashua, NH and at the North Shore Mall in Peabody, MA. That chicken sandwich was enough to make me cluck with eggcitement (ok, I killed it right there).

Dylan had hockey practice again tonight. I took the girls (even though this is the most boring thing in the world for them) so that I could take pictures to post here. These are some of the shots I got:

I shot this photo through the glass with my Canon 75-300mm @f/4.5 1/30sec. with no flash. I set my ISO to 400 - meaning that this picture is not going to be the most buttery smooth picture when it gets printed - it would come out grainy (relative to ISO 100 which is buttery smooth). The graininess is called noise. You can reduce noise with editing software (that I don't have). PSE6.0 will let you reduce noise too. I didn't adjust the noise because I'm not printing a big picture and it's not that noticeable on the web.

Adam has been helping out as a "coach". Today, there were four guys on the ice with the Mite-C team. This photo was shot with the same settings except my shutter speed was 1/25sec.
This is a picture I took of Angel rinkside - yes with a flash - I don't care about the flash at this moment because that is the best smile I've gotten in a picture of Angel that I can remember. She still has this giant dimple in her left cheek - hooray for that dimple!!! I didn't edit this picture at all. She looks a little washed out but who cares when that dimple is all shiny and happy!!!
This is a cropped Mocha picture of Melody who was posing with Angel when Angel moved out of the picture and made her half blurry. She's been a load of trouble lately - sometimes, being 3 years old is challenging. Her favorite thing to say to you after you tell her to do something is, "I don't wanna"....sigh....that's all I have to say about that.

This is a short post because "Prison Break" has it's 2 hour season premiere tonight. Most people who know me know that the lead character in the show, Michael Scofield is my boyfriend. Even my husband, Adam knows it. Michael Scofield is played by actor, Wentworth Miller. You can see pictures of him here.

We can talk about him more later - time to get the kids ready for bed - school starts for all of us on Wednesday - we're dialing back bedtime to 8pm starting tonight....yippy for bedtime!!!

Holy - it's been too long since I blogged!!

I tend to put in a lot of hours at work - this week's adventure included back to back 11-12 hour days. I could barely drag myself out of bed this morning, but unfortunately, I'm a dedicated, hard-working employee of HarborOne Credit Union - and so off to work I went early this morning.

I got home and we went to Providence Place Mall in Providence, RI. I wanted to go to Lush - a store that sells all handmade cosmetics. I spent about $40.00 on stuff for my face, much to my husband's dismay. When my parents came to visit, my mom had brought me some shampoo and conditioner (which I love - thanks mom!!!) and coincidentally, this week, Lush made news this week by staging a protest against the overpackaging of products - they had their employees spend a day wearing just an apron with signs that said, "ask me why I'm naked". The employees in the store up here in Natick, MA ended up having to wear underwear (by order of the Natick police) but I guess the Providence group go to go completely commando under the aprons. Love how green they are and are encouraging the world to be...they have even invented solid shampoo so that it doesn't need to be packaged in plastic bottles.

We came home, did some laundry and then Dylan and Adam went outside to practice a little hockey...I took these:

In this photo - most everything is in focus - except for the end of Dylan's stick and his feet - those things were moving. He was in the middle of spinning around after scoring against Adam when I shot this. I know that I wasn't moving for 2 reasons - I was using a tripod and most of my subject is in focus.
I PSE6'ed this photo - I vignetted it - which I'm thinking is my most favorite thing in the world to do with my pictures. I also blurred Adam and the rest of the background from Dylan who was completely in focus...

I love this guy - I just cropped vignetted him - he actually posed for this picture which is a rarity all in itself - I think he was just trying to be nice to me after I felt guilty for buying facial products today. We don't ever fight about is money but I have a major guilty complex about buying things for myself - except of course if it is for scrapbooking or photography...

I took all of the above pictures with my Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 - it's a good mid-range lens. This was a birthday gift from mom and dad. I'm hoping someone else (check out the guy in the picture above) will get me the new Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5 for Christmas...I'm not sure how much it is but I'm sure it's probably expensive - (I just checked - $399.99 - not as bad as I thought). If I get this someday, I'll have to sell my Canon 75-300mm - just because I won't need it anymore...sigh, someday....

After a couple more hockey shots, the girls wanted to get in on the photo action:

I hate hard candy - this is Angelica sucking on a baby bottle pop...yuck - I know, she needs a haircut.

Melody couldn't keep still enough for a decent shot this time - so I moved onto the mums that my "Mum" got us...when she sees this blog, she's gonna kill me for not yet planting them - Mom, get mad at Adam, I don't plant - he's the gardener around here.


These 2 photos were taken at 7:00pm in macro mode (denoted on most cameras by a flower) - Macro is one of the auto modes - you don't get to pick the aperture, ISO, shutter speed or whether or not to use a flash - all these things get determined by the camera.

These 2 photos were shot moments later in AV mode without the flash. To my own surprise, I like both the flash and nonflash versions. I haven't flashed anything in a while - pictures, I mean.

I'm off to do - what else? - clean my scrap room - it's like the neverending abyss of sorting that needs to happen...my scrap-a-rrifc friends know what I'm talking about - hope to take more pictures tomorrow...Dylan's skating tomorrow - I'll bring my tripod, make some adjustments and hopefully get some good shots. We'll see....

Is summer really almost over?

I love summer - I think I always have and just really didn't appreciate as much as a kid. I'm sure my kids love summer but don't appreciate it as much as they should while they are young. This summer seemed to fly by so quickly that here we are with about 2 weeks until school starts - haven't started school shopping and this year, all three of my kids will be in school.

Yes, 1/2 day nursery school - 4 days a week - counts. Melody will tell you that it is real school.

My job requires me to take 2 consecutive weeks somewhere during the year and what better time than the summer, when all the kids are home to drive me nuts? Since taking up photography I have learned to soak up and revel in the moment - even if it's the one that will drive me to drink. (Don't worry, parents - I barely drink...I swear.)

As a person obsessed with documenting individual moments, I find value in nearly everything that happens, bad or good. And not just the big moments - even the little ones. For instance: One day last September, after a good rain, the kids went out the backyard to play on their playground. All of a sudden, we hear the PAIN cry coming out of Melody's little mouth...and Adam finds her like this:
This was taken in the bathroom, right before I gave her a bath. This picture is hilarious!!! Melody looks like she's growing a goatee. Adam was kinda annoyed that I stopped to take this picture instead of giving the poor kid a hug - "for goodness sakes, she just took a header off the swing, there's no need for a photograph." he said. I'm not a horrible mom, I did ask Melody if she was ok and she said yes...there wasn't any blood or broken bones...just a whole lot of dirt and grass on her face. Look, she was fine, 2 shots later:
...still I'm glad that I took these pictures - they still crack me up!!!

Big moment pictures are a must, right? I don't know who took this picture of Angelica, but I know that it wasn't me as I was the 5 month pregnant (with Melody) Matron of Honor for a friend and Angelica was her flower girl:
...I do know that this picture wasn't taken by a professional (I'm gonna go out on a limb and say maybe my dad took this picture). What a shot - check out the lights in her eyes (proof of a flash for certain because that church is as dark as pre-dawn with their lights on). I'm thinking the same person took this picture too:
...those lights in Angel's eyes, pretty cool. In this picture she's 2 and Dylan is 3. He was the ring bearer. They walked into the church right after I walked in and Adam stood at the front of the church to wave them in his direction and keep them walking. It was all going well until they got about half way when Angelica saw all the guests who kept awwing, and stepping into the aisle to take their picture. So she dropped the basket and high tailed it to the back of the church, crying, prompting Adam to run up the aisle to get her and leaving Dylan to walk the last half of the aisle by himself, waving at people, nearly running at me with the pillow in hand.
Since big moments are not readily available (not a bad thing), I take pictures of everyday things. I love taking pictures of people but I love practicing on things too:

Flowers and slow moving animals are great practice subjects. Either they are still or move slow enough for you to adjust your focusing (or for your auto focus lens to make the necessary adjustments).

Keep practicing - I am - it will take years for me to be the photographer I want to be. Ask any pro photographer; it took them years too...

I love this picture because.....

With a title like that - this may be my longest post yet....


...Melody climbed onto the back of Meghan's chair and called her name. So Meg had to look up to Melody who then just said "hi". (Originally there was some kind of insect on the towel - I took care of that in PSE6 with the clone stamp tool.)
...Angelica can have a thousand different smiles, but she has only one pout...
...because Adam is still my hottie - even after 10 years - even though he'll only let me take his picture when he isn't looking...I love this picture even though there is a giant house going through the back of his head...

...Dylan is the sweetest person I know and it always shows...
...Melody and bubbles are a staple in our household...
...this moment is why we had 3 kids...it only took 13 tries before I got this shot - this was the last one...
...while this is one of the most poorly taken pictures, compositionally, my kids are all laughing at the same time - maybe I had a booger hanging or something, I'm not sure....
...she is so pretty...even when she isn't looking....
...he's growing up so fast, and I'm so glad that I was there to see his first 2 wheel bike ride....

...they'll be friends for life even though they live 200 miles apart...next to Dylan is Andy, my nephew who lives in NYC with the rest of my family...

I could keep going but I am still trying to clean my scrap room. My mom called me today and told me that they might not be making it up here this weekend...even if they don't come, I still can't leave my scrap room looking the way it does - I did get some stuff done last night - only a million pieces of things to sort and store instead of the trillion I had before I started last night...it's progress...sometimes, that's all you can ask for.