Sweet Shot Tuesday

Yes, I know today is Wednesday, not Tuesday, but hey, better late than never, right? So, I haven't gotten my camera out every day this week (I know, 1000 lashes with a wet noodle), but I did get it out a few times to play around. :o)

I'm still working on getting the white balance right. For some reason it's hard to see the difference while looking at the pictures on the teeny-tiny screen on the back of my camera. But I am getting better, lol! I've also been playing around with some of the other settings on my camera, like portrait and black & white.

Another thing I've been trying is manual focus. I fight with my auto-focus CONSTANTLY! For some reason it never wants to focus where I want it to and I can't tell you the number of great shots I've missed because I can't get the camera to focus where I want. Or the number of pictures I delete cause it's focused on some random object and not the subject. {sigh} Then, recently, a friend posted on FB that her next "lesson" would be manual focus. BRILLIANT! Why didn't I think of that?!? If I focus manually, I don't have to fight with the auto-focus! (Yes, I am a little slow sometimes, lol). And now I've decided I need to get my eyes checked! Now that I've downloaded my memory card to the computer, I'm discovering that several of my shots are actually out of focus. {sigh} I guess I just can't win.

Anyhow, here are a couple that did turn out decently :o)

Can you tell she was eating grape lafy-tafy? LOL.

This is my cousin's beautiful new baby. She's three weeks old. They came over for a visit yesterday and the lighting in my living room was HORRIBLE!!! I actually resorted to using the flash {gasp!} to take pictures of my girls holding her! They were coming out either too dark or with the white balance all wrong, even on auto! {sigh} For this one I actually switched the camera to B&W and it turned out pretty decent. I like the B&W feature, I'll have to play with it a little more :o)

Well, that's all for this week. For more "Sweet Shots" visit Darcey @Life With My 3 Boybarians.

Blessings,

Menu Plan for April 26th

Here is my menu plan for the week:

Monday - No kids tonight, hubby and I will probably grab something in town

Tuesday - Leftovers (they are starting to take over the fridge, time to do something about them, lol)

Wednesday - Potato bar

Thursday - Crock-pot Chicken, Rice & Corn

Friday - Spicy Black Bean Soup

Saturday - Oven Fried Chicken, AuGratin Potatoes & Green Beans

Sunday - Not sure yet.

For more menu plans, visit Organizing Junkie. Hope you all have a blessed week!

Blessings,

Sweet Shot Tuesday

OK, these are for Susan :o) After posting my last post she admonished me to simply get out the camera and take some pictures of the baby and post them! So, I did! I need more practice shooting indoors, the lighting in these turned out a little orange! I would have spent longer trying to mess with settings to get it right, but she was starting to get grouchy. And pictures of grouchy babies, just aren't very "sweet", lol.

For more sweet shots, head over to my3boybarians.



Blessings

So Today is Tuesday.....

Yes, today is Tuesday (Tuesday April 20th, 2010, to be exact). Which means I should be posting a picture to link up with "Sweet Shot Tuesday", but once again, I have neglected to get my camera out this week {sigh}.

So, I'm going to challenge myself. I've heard rumor of a "365 challenge" going on (I think it's through Flicker?) that I believe is a challenge to take a picture of something different everyday. And, while it's obviously too late to join that challenge, I'm going to do something similar. I'm going to challenge myself to get my camera out (rain or shine!) and take at least one picture everyday. Even if it means taking my camera with me to the grocery store! I've been stuck in a rut, thinking I have to have perfect lighting (read that to be a sunny day!) and a perfect subject/set up in order to get a perfect picture. But wouldn't it be more of a challenge to get a great picture on a cloudy/rainy day ('cause let face it we have a lot of those around here!) of some random object? Hmmmm....... I think it's time to start thinking outside the box.

So, I probably wont post every picture, after all, I'm sure they wont all turn out :o) But I will post some of the good ones. And, hey, maybe I'll actually learn to use my camera along the way ;)

Blessings,

Our Bedroom Re-decoration

So, like I said in my last decorating post, Hubby and I are working on redecorating our home and we started with our bedroom. Now, I didn't remember to take before pictures. However, I did think to take a picture of "The Wall" before we changed it :o) Here it is:


Now, this wall has been an annoyance ever since we moved in almost 6 years ago (yes, it really has taken us that long to do something about it, lol). First I should mention, our room is basically blue. The carpet is a light blue, the blinds are blue and the bathroom has blue tile. So why the people who lived here before us (Hubby's grandparents rented it out for 7 or 8 months before we moved in) thought Forest Green would be the perfect color for this wall, I will never know (and, no, the picture doesn't truely show the color well). They also did a horrible job of painting it. The wall originally had wallpaper on it that was put directly on the drywall. They simply pulled the wallpaper off and slapped up some paint. They didn't use any kind of primer, they didn't texture the wall and they only did one coat of paint. The result was, you could see every blemish in the wall, there were thin spots where you could see the wall through the paint and there were holes forming everywhere (notice the rather large hole in the paint in the middle of the wall!) Here is the picture again, so you can truely appreciate the change :o)


So, Hubby and I spent the weekend painting and this is what "The Wall" looks like now:

We started with a light blue (and yes, we primed first!) and then I "ragged" on a purple and a darker-basically-looks-brown-purple. We decided not to texture, since the paint technique we picked would give the illusion of texture (and it does :o)). The color combination looks soooo much better with the rest of the room! Here are a few more "after" pictures of the room. And, for those of you who have never seen our room before, the curtains and the shelves with the dolls are new. Oh, and it's clean :o)

So we are basically done with our room now. We still want to change out the light fixtures (I REALLY don't like the ones that are there!), but we haven't found ones that we like and that are in the budget. So that may have to wait a little bit. But in the mean time, we have a much nicer "retreat" for ourselves.

The next project on the list will be the kitchen. This time I WILL take "before" pictures, lol. As a matter of fact, I may just go take the pictures NOW, so that I don't forget when we get ready to work on it :o)

Blessings,

Menu Plan for April 19th

Here is my plan for the week:

Monday - Hammy Mac & Cheese, Salad

Tuesday - Shepherds Pie

Wednesday - Individual Pizza's

Thursday - Pork Chops, Rice & Green beans

Friday - Taco's, Beans & Rice

Saturday - Steak, Potatoes & Salad

For more menu plans, check out Organizing Junkie. Hope you all have a wonderful week!

Blessings,

My Decorating Project

So hubby and I decided it was finally time to make our house "ours". (For those of you who don't know, our house was previously his grandparents house for 45 years.) So we will be slowly changing the "decor" in various rooms. We decided to start in our bedroom so that we had "our" space first. Of course I forgot to take "before" pictures :o) But I will post "after" pictures when we finish.

I had a candle holder on the wall in the "hall" of our room that I moved to our bathroom. I then decided that I needed something else to put on that wall that went with what we were trying to do in the rest of the room. Here is what I came up with. (Sorry for the really bad pictures :o))

I went to the dollar store and picked up three of these frames...............

And went to Micheals and found these three crosses...................

And found this scrapbook paper in my stash...............

And this is the final product!

And here are close-ups of each frame.

So over all it took me about an hour to complete and it cost less than $25! And I think it turned out pretty good ;o)

Blessings,