Do I have the BEST MODEL EVER or what?!
I love how Joanna will (almost always) turn to me with a sweet smile when I pull out my camera.
I downloaded a couple of actions for PSE from Pioneer Woman, and I’ve been playing with them today.
After editing:
This one is pretty noisy, but I liked it anyway.
I didn’t do anything to fix the noise (mainly because I really don’t know how to do that yet), but I added some actions to it for fun.
I could look in this baby’s eyes forever.
We were carless again Friday, but we kept ourselves entertained at home.
After dinner we turned on NBC for the Olympic opening ceremony.
I love when James does this when I’m trying to take his picture. :)
All gazing at the TV.
I cannot remember why Natalie wasn’t wearing a shirt.
We made popcorn and had some M&Ms while we watched – yum!!!
It was fun to watch some of the opening of the Olympics with my little family! Joanna’s the only one who was alive at the last summer Olympics. I can’t remember whether she “watched” any of it. And I don’t appear to have blogged anything including the word “Olympics” ever. My blog is my brain you know.
The NBC signal with our antenna has only be “eh” the last few days. Sunday evening it worked great with only an occasional skip, but most of the rest of the times we’ve tried to watch the station it hasn’t come in very well. The rabbit ears we have have been around quite a while; it’s time to upgrade for sure.
The other day James put on Ray’s sneakers and Joanna tied the pink apron around him. I think it’s a good look. :)
I’m thinking of ditching all the play food in the kitchen in favor of Mardi Gras beads. They’re the best for mixing and pouring.
This is a shot I accidentally took when I was shooting the video of James pretending he was Cookie Monster. If you haven’t seen that video, by the way, click over – it’s worth watching… for your mental health. :)
I just looked at the ticker on my blog and saw that Joanna is 5 years, 5 months, and 5 days old today. :)
She looks seventeen.
Can you get over how this girl can just pose for me?!!
So today I’ve been playing around with Photoshop Elements. I dug through pictures from the last few months to play with. These were some favorites to start with; I just added some effect to them. Matt calls them “Angel pictures.” :)
In each set the first is the edited; the second is the image from the camera because that is how they pasted themselves into Live Writer and I don’t feel like changing them.
From around Easter:
From May:
And from March. Oh how I dream of sweater weather.
James is very into the Sesame Street characters lately. I’m pretty sure Elmo is his favorite, but Cookie Monster is a close second. He calls him something like “Cooo key mow mow.” It’s really cute. We were watching Sesame Street on Netflix today, and I looked over to see James pretending he was eating cookies like Cookie Monster. And better yet – he did it again when I pulled out the camera!
I finally got around to installing Photoshop Elements on the new computer (I had to remember where I put the disk…ahem.), and I’ve been playing with it a little. There is so much you can do in that program!
I haven’t taken many pictures in July (wah!) so I pulled from last month to play.
I could gaze at Natalie’s beauty all day long. :)
Here’s the original:
And here it is after I played with it a little bit:
There is just so much you can do!
I have ever so much I can learn about taking pictures and processing them – so fun!
I have very non-interesting blog titles lately. :)
These are some more pics from before I got the computer (maybe a couple are from after). I need to go ahead and blog before I forget what they’re all about!
Natalie is in to drawing people lately – I love it! This is me walking:
For awhile the girls have been having “rest time” in the afternoons together in their room. I started this a couple of months ago when I needed to stop Natalie from napping – it was messing with her nighttime sleep. So our arrangement has been for James to be in his room at rest time and the girls to be in their room. Ray sleeps in a pack-and-play in my room when he’s here. The girls have been getting louder at rest time and fighting more lately, so I decided to split them up when we don’t have Ray. James sleeps in my room and the girls split between their room and James’. This has worked pretty well the last few weeks. They usually stay quieter without a sister to mess around with, and they enjoy the rests they have together a bit more. Natalie has seemed very tired lately, so I haven’t worried if she falls asleep. It only happens sometimes, and so far has not affected her sleep at night too much.
One afternoon I went to check on her and found this:
There wasn’t a real bed in James’ room, and this is where she got comfortable.
Love it!
This is my usual computer spot, and the kids know it!
I love how Natalie had my mouse “hooked up” to her computer. :)
Random purple cabbage flower outside. Natalie picked it for me.
The very dirt-attracting boy:
Last Wednesday I got to watch Laura for the first time! She loved laying on the changing table and looking out the window. Joanna really loved that too.
Natalie drew this picture of me. I don’t think it’s my most flattering, but I still love it. : )
I braided my hair the other day and decided I’d like a picture of it.
We put the trundle bed together and moved it into James’ room this weekend. James is such a big helper!
He is so stinkin’ cute!!!!
So far he hasn’t slept in the bed, but it’s sitting there ready for whenever he is!
In other news, Matt’s car died yesterday and most likely will need to be replaced. I’m sad. I really really really don’t want to deal with finding a new car. Fortunately it’s the summer so I don’t really need mine during the day and Matt can take it. That gives us a few weeks before we really have to have two cars again. My car needs a little work though before Matt should be driving it so much every day. And I’m not particularly looking forward to how much gas we’ll be buying. I’m just really praying for an old car that needs a good home to fall in our laps like it did last time!
Every time I lay James down for a nap or at bedtime, I sing to him. Usually I sing “You are My Sunshine” or “Bim Bam” (a Musikgarten song with a very beautiful minor melody). Lately he has begun to sing with me every time, and I almost have to stop; it makes me tear up. One of these days I’m going to remember to record it. I love it so much.
We set up the toddler bed in James’ room today. He’s older than the girls were when they moved over to it, but he doesn’t have anyone kicking him out of the crib. :) It feels strange – he is the age Natalie was when he was born. He’s sleeping in the crib tonight, but I want to be ready when the time comes for him to move on up.
Today on my way home from a friend’s baby shower I stopped to help rescue a dog that was crossing Kingwood Drive. As my mom said, I really am her daughter. :) It was really nice to see two other people stop to help. I offered to take him simply because I knew my mom would help and she knows how to get dogs back to their owners. Fortunately this one was easy; he had tags with his name, phone number, and address. I called the number and left a message. I checked the tag again and realized he lived on a street in Kingwood I used to live on. Since it seemed like a sign that it was one of the very few streets I could actually just drive to, I decided to see if anyone was home at the house. They weren’t so I brought him to my mom’s. A few hours later I got a phone call from a very thankful man who’d been out driving for hours looking for Twinkle, his baby. He prayed when he saw his message at home that it would be about his dog. It felt nice to have helped. It felt even nicer I wasn’t the only one who tried. So Twinkle is back at home and all is right with the world. And I feel like I’ve done my good deed for the week. :)
And now for some more catch up photos.
Last week my friend Candice brought over a few tomatoes from her grandmother’s garden. They had an abundance, and she was so nice to share!
Joanna and Matt are the tomato eaters in our house, and I thought about just letting them eat on them over a couple of days. But then I decided I wanted to make some tomato soup. For some crazy reason I just really wanted to try it! This is a link to the recipe I decided to use since I had everything I needed for it. And it sounded good. I halved it because that’s how many tomatoes I had. :)
This is basically what went in it plus some garlic and dried spices. (The jar is homemade broth from the freezer.)
Here is everything all simmering and looking delicious:
I used my immersion blender to puree the soup since I’m in charge and that’s what I wanted. :)
I made grilled cheese sandwiches to dip in the soup – yuuuuum! I’m pretty sure the girls both ate the soup but James didn’t go for it. I even tried putting it in something so he could kind of drink it, but that didn’t fool him. :) I thought the soup was very good (especially for something so full of veggies!). It was perfect to make right now since everything is in season, but it would be sooooo yummy on a fall or winter evening to warm us up. There wasn’t enough left to freeze, but I bet it would freeze beautifully to pull out for a quick lunch.
So. I bought a computer – yay!!! I started hunting online this past weekend and narrowing down my choices in my price range. I found one on Amazon I kind of liked the looks of and another at bestbuy.com. Even though I had kind of a rotten experience last time with Best Buy online, they really did seem to have some competitive pricing. On Sunday I decided to run to the actual store so I could lay my hands on the computers before deciding what to buy. I figured the prices in the store would be higher, but they were the same as online. And I noticed one in the store that I hadn’t looked at (because it was $30 over my target price). It really looked good to me, and I made Matt go online and read the reviews. We agreed the little bit over our intended budget would be worth it for this machine. So I bought it. Then I decided on the way home to call our computer guy and see if I could drop it off with him for some initial clean-up and streamlining. He basically took off all the trial programs and other fluff I didn’t need. He also fixed it so that not everything needs to load up when the computer is turned on so it starts up very fast and runs like a top. And he went ahead and installed common programs I’d need (iTunes, Open Office, etc.). Even though I didn’t get it for real until today, it was totally worth the few days Mel had it – I’m very pleased! For the record (because someday I will want to remember), I have an HP 17.3" Pavilion Laptop - 4GB Memory - 500GB Hard Drive with an AMD A6 quad core processor. And so far, I loooooove it.
Now on to what I’ve been doing to keep busy without a computer (besides watching season after season of Bones).
Strawberries were a good price at Kroger so I ended up buying three 2lb packages to “put up.”
Most of this activity happened in the evening so the light is terrible. Even when it’s not night though, the light is pretty iffy in the kitchen. It makes me want to knock a wall out.
With one of the containers I made a sort of jam. I say “sort of” because I used waaaaaaaayyyyyy less sugar than normal jam. It’s more of a fruit spread. I believe I added 1/2 cup sucanat to what ended up being just over 4 cups mashed strawberries.
I put them in the freezer to store. The spread definitely tastes more like strawberries than sugar, but it’s very nice on pancakes, and I think it will be lovely with peanut butter on sandwiches.
With another box I cooked and pureed (with my immersion blender!) the strawberries to make fruit leather. I didn’t take pics of the whole process (bad light), but I’m going to post all the steps anyway. I de-stemmed and chopped up all the strawberries:
Then I put them in a pot and used a potato masher to get some juices going. I added not quite two tablespoons of local honey to sweeten them a bit. I cooked the mix on medium-medium low until they were very soft and looked, well… cooked. I used my immersion blender to get a smooth puree, which I poured onto a Silpat-lined cookie sheet. (I’m pretty sure parchment paper would also work but I think it might need to be greased. Most recipes online actually used heavy-duty plastic wrap but I didn’t like that idea.) I spread it around as evenly as possible with a spatula.
Then I put it in my oven at the lowest setting (which was 170 degrees F). {Most recipes say to leave it for 6-8 hours like this.} I thought that was actually too warm so I cracked the door of the oven open. And due to the timing of when I started I could just leave it for 6-8 hours without getting up at 1 or 2 in the morning. So I improvised. I turned off the oven when we went to bed and closed the door. When Matt got up, he turned it on again for about an hour and a half before shutting it off and leaving the tray in there.
This is what I woke up to:
It peeled off the Silpat very easily and I trimmed it into rectangles and rolled them up. I think they may have ended up a wee bit over-done, but the kids still think they’re a great treat!
I took pictures of the jar out in the living room where the light is actually kind of nice.
I had some models too. :)
I think I’ll stop here and call this “Part One.” Part Two will have to wait until tomorrow. The post is quite long enough.
I haven’t been taking pictures of everything I eat, mainly because it’s hard to stop and try to take decent pictures of food with three or four hungry beasts nipping at my ankles.
Last week I was nauseous most of the time, so I struggled to find things that even sounded good to eat. This week I feel pretty normal, but I’m definitely craving food I can’t have. And I’ve lost the will to live.
Not really, but I do love food a lot, and I look forward to it. I don’t have a ton of things that are actually on the detox that I look forward to eating. So I’m not really having fun. But I’m sticking it out and hoping next week won’t be quite so hard. And then I’m going to try to ease back in to eating sugar and carbs, but in fewer quantities than before. She says.
So these are things I’ve eaten the past week or so at times I actually pulled out the camera.
I ate my version of this before Matt reminded me to take a picture, so this is his plate. Mine looked the same minus tomatoes. I don’t like tomatoes.
It’s a leaf of Romaine filled with “grilled” (on the griddle) chicken and onions, cheese, and avocado. It probably has bacon in it too. I actually really like this; it’s filling and has lots of flavor.
I’ve been indulging in steaks on the detox which are quite a treat. Matt grills ‘em up for me – yum!
I actually didn’t like this dish, but Matt did so it worked out. Normally I really like summer squash but they just haven’t been speaking to me lately. I think they were sprinkled with parmesan cheese, garlic, and I can’t remember what else.
I bought an artichoke for myself the other night but I don’t think they’re quite in season yet (or anymore?). It was just “eh.” I do love ripping off those leaves and dipping them in butter though. Yummo!
Matt’s been grilling a lot for us; we’ve been eating more meat than usual. I’ve had to up the grocery budget a bit for these (interminably long) three weeks, but it’s okay. And the meat has been tasty!
My favorite “treat” is a sliced up green apple. The program allows for either one green apple or one green tipped banana each day. I’ve been usually having an apple – half at the kids’ rest time and half after they go to bed. I really didn’t like green apples before, but as my only fruit in the day, these taste AMAZING.
One evening I made some taco meat and served it up in a romaine leaf for me and as a salad for the rest of the family.
Here’s my boat – I didn’t end up with a very good shot. It was tasty though!
This is Joanna’s plate:
For the kids I chopped up the lettuce very fine (so it would stick to the other ingredients and be easy to accidentally eat) and spooned some taco meat over it. Then I added cheese, avocado, and tomato. The “dressing” is picante sauce mixed with plain Greek yogurt. Then I broke up some tostadas we had leftover into “chips” so they could use them to scoop up the salad. The girls DEVOURED theirs – yay! I’ve attempted things similar to this, but they never loved it quite so much. We will definitely do this one again! I’m pretty sure James just ate the chips, but you can’t have it all. :)
