Photoshop Fun

We went to my brother-in-law's wedding tonight and I took 320 pictures...and I almost wish I had taken more!

I am most definitely NOT a professional photographer nor a professional photoshopper, but I did have some fun with photoshop with a couple of their pictures. I really wanted to take pictures in RAW mode and see what I could do differently with them than with regular jpg files, but my camera's RAW pictures are not supported by the version of photoshop that I have. That's the problem with have a version of photoshop that is 7 years old and a camera that is 1-2 yrs old.

Here's the original, straight-out-of-camera picture that I had the most fun with...



The first thing I did was apply a boost action & a warmer action. And then I cropped it a little since the original has just a teensy tiny bit of a kids head in the bottom of the picture.



Then I wanted to see how it would look in black & white, so I went back to the original picture and applied PW's Black & White action. I think it looks pretty good.



Then I decided to try and be all spiffy and leave all of the picture in black and white except for her bouquet and his boutineer. Wedding photographers always seem to have a shot like this.



All actions from Pioneer Woman's Action Sets

Pop Ba-looons

As I mentioned in my Project Life post yesterday. Claire LOVES water balloons. I went to Target...a couple of weeks ago...and bought Anaya some water balloons because we threw hers away last summer because she left them all over the house and we had a 2 yr old and three cats. So I bought some more and explained to her that they do not come in the house. And after playing with them, everyone is required to walk around the yard picking up pieces of balloon. I know, I'm the mean and evil step-mother. It cooled off again and she was at her mom's house, so we never ended up doing anything with them until Memorial Day Weekend. At which point I think I tied at least 75 water balloons and therefore and no longer evil, even if I do make them pick up the pieces of the balloons.



So, on the Friday (May 25) we pulled out the water balloons. And Claire was enthralled. She was popping them as faster than I could fill them. Eventually I found a box to put them in and we kept it out of Claire's reach, so for every one that she got, we put two or three in the box. I also had Anaya start helping me fill balloons, I filled them, she tied them. Unless she was still tying one when I got done filling the next one.

That night we drew a bulls-eye on the driveway and Anaya & Claire "competed" to see who could get the most points. Unfortunately, unless you throw them really really hard, the balloons only pop when they hit grass. They bounce right off of the driveway...and people...but if they so much as brush against a piece of grass, they pop.

Now Claire is obsessed with the balloons. She calls them "Pop Ba-looons". I have a Summer To-Do list with pictures of things we can do on it, and Claire will go and point to the one of water balloons and look at me and say "Pop Ba-looons?". We'll be in the garage and she'll see them on the shelf and say, "Pop Ba-looons?". Which means almost every evening, I end up sitting in the backyard with a hose, filling and tying water balloons as quickly as she can pop them. Mostly she likes to sit in a chair next to me and just throw them from there so that she doesn't get grass on her feet.



In an effort to not tie so many balloons waste fewer balloons, I started making "fountain" balloons for her. Basically, you fill the balloon with water and don't tie it then hold the top of it closed and hand it to her. She holds it while all the water squirts out the top. Then you can reuse the same balloon until it is too stretched out and then it will explode all over the balloon filler while they are filling it. Which Claire will also find humorous. And of course, since I made the rule that Anaya & her friends had to pick up all of the pieces of balloons...guess what else I get to do every night...

Project Life: Week 21

Week 21: May 21 - 27

I feel like I'm way behind even though there is only one full week between the week I post and the current week. My plan for PL this year included picking pictures/ordering them on Sunday night, getting them Monday & putting it all together Monday night or Tuesday night and posting the completed layout on Tuesday. Now I'm giving myself an entire week to pick, print and put together a week before posting it. Not that it matters that much. At least I'm sticking with it.

This was the week with the weekend of Memorial Day. We really didn't do anything special for the holiday, so I just went with my normal Project Life schedule of Monday to Sunday which means next week will start with the Monday that is Memorial Day.



This was also the last week of school for both kiddos. The first two 3x4 are pictures of them on the last day. I ended up adding a strip from my labeler that says "LAST DAY OF SCHOOL" but took pictures before I decided to do that. On the right you see the front of a 6x12 insert. The insert is entirely pictures of playing with water balloons. I originally bought them for Anaya, but Claire LOVES them so much. She asks us almost every night to "Pop Ba-loooons?". I'll probably write a story about that during week 22 of Project Life.



The back side of the insert is on the left of this picture - more water balloon pictures. The top picture is of the game Settlers of Catan. My brother is really into strategy games, so since none of us had to work Saturday, Sunday or Monday, we played games Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday night. I wrote a little bit on the card about what games we played and who won - mostly my brother. Then my mom & sister-in-law and I went to get pedicures on Saturday. It was opening weekend for the pool so we went every single day. And I re-started the tradition of going to McD's for $1 ice cream on our way home - we did it last summer too. And I made a peach pie and it was delicious.



I love the bright red felt letters over the mostly blue/green pictures. They are from Making Memories, I was cleaning my old scraproom in the basement and I found them. I have a light blue set too, but wanted the pop of the red. I put them on the outside of the page protector...we'll see how they hold up. And I won't be able to let Claire look at this page un-supervised or she'll pull the letters off.


Thanks for coming and seeing my Project Life!

Menu Monday

This week, I have a cold. And thinking about what to eat for the week just isn't appetizing. We never did have the pork chops we were supposed to have last week so they got thrown in the freezer. Since my cold was killing me on Sunday night, we ended up eating mac & cheese for dinner because it was even less work than frying a couple of eggs. Hopefully this cold goes away soon.

Monday - Fried Egg Sandwiches
Tuesday - Pork Chops, Veggie Mix
Wednesday - Ravioli w/ Marinara, Veggie Mix
Thursday - Smoked Brats, Veggie Mix
Friday - Chicken Stir-fry, Rice, Egg-rolls
Saturday - Wedding Reception Food
Sunday - Pizza (Homemade or Frozen or Take Out)

That's it, that's what we're eating. Unless this cold continues to make me not want to stand in front of the stove...then we'll be eating Mac & Cheese all week. Or something else equally easy, like sending Justin to pick up fast food.

Recipe: Cookie in a Cast Iron Skillet

Doesn't this just look delicious...



I found this recipe on Tasty Kitchen and had to make it. This thing was seriously rich. It says to serve it with ice cream and it means it - you need something to balance this thing out. I was all out of ice cream, so I went with a glass of milk.



I didn't have any chocolate chunks or any candy bars to make chunks out of, so I ended up using Nestle Mini Chocolate Chips. I will definitely try it again with dark chocolate...preferably high quality dark chocolate. I got a little worried that I did something wrong when I was stirring the dry ingredients in, it seemed like I had too much flour and the dough wasn't coming together at all. But it did eventually come together and look like dough. Then I started folding my chocolate chips in, and they started MELTING because even though it had cooled some since I melted the butter, the skillet was still hot enough to melt the chocolate. So I quickly go them as mixed in as I thought was necessary, and put it in the oven.



It kind of reminded me of a dessert that I used to have with friends out in San Diego. The Pizookie at BJ Restaurant & Brewhouse. This is thicker than theirs, I think it might be good to cut this recipe in half particularly if you don't have a LOT of help eating it. Justin's allergies were bothering him so he had taken some allergy meds and passed out on the couch so it was just me and Claire. Which means we only at about a 1/4 of it. Definitely needed more help eating it. And because it is so gooey, you can't really get all of it out of the cast iron skillet and not have it turn into a mess.

The original recipe: Dark Chocolate Chunk Skillet Cookie
Step-by-step picture directions: Tasty Kitchen Blog

Toddler Summer Nightdress

This is actually my second attempt at making a dress for Claire out of one of my old tee-shirts. This one turned out much better. I learned from the mistakes of my first dress...

Here is my first attempt:



The first thing I did wrong was sew straight up the sides without leaving arm holes - whoops. Which turned it into a tube dress so I cut the original neck line off and added the braided straps to keep it up - I need to shorten them a little bit still. I was also intending to make an A-line dress...but this is not an A-line at all. But I learned! And Claire gets to wear this as a swim cover up.

This time when I cut up my old tee-shirt, I used part of the side seams for the sides of the dress. Then I angled it in a little bit and made kind of half-oval arm holes. Ta-da!



The white line is approximately how I ended up sewing this. As I was doing it I realized that I really wanted the dress to go in slower, so I sewed farther down the dress side than I had actually cut. I did the side seam first, from the bottom of the arm-hole to the original side seam of the shirt. After both sides were finished, I hemmed the arm holes. I just folded about 1/4" of fabric in and stitched as closely to the fold as I could. I could probably do the arm holes a little better, but for a first attempt at making my own arm-holes, it's not bad. It would've been better to have a 1/2" to fold in so that I could've folded the edge under to keep it from fraying...oh well, it's just a nightdress!



After I took pictures of the finished product, I wanted to put it on Claire for a couple of pictures. She REFUSED to have anything to do with it. When I would attempt to put it on her, she would push it back up off of her. When I got it over her head, she had it off of her head before I could get an arm in it. Ended up taking bribery to get her to wear it - ice cream & some little balloons to pop. Now she's wearing it to bed because once it was on her, she figured out that it wasn't so bad after all.



However, there was no getting her to hold still for a picture.

Summer To Do List

Last week, I posted my Summer Vacation 2012 list. Well, I added a few more things to my list and found a fun way to display it - not only the list, but I included pictures for Claire to pick something to do.



Now I just have to remind myself that we have 2.5 months to do it all. Because I keep thinking I need to do it all NOW. The pool opened last Saturday and we went Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Claire and I went to a park on Monday morning. We played with water balloons all weekend - Claire has learned to say "Water Balloon". We've already been out to Deanna Rose Farmstead - twice this year. I have a concert in a "park" figured out that takes place in a couple of weeks. We had actually already been to the farmers' market before I even posted my list. As we do things, I am checking them off using a dry erase marker on the glass of the picture frame. The actual list is written in permanent marker on the paper.



The underlined things are the things that Anaya is particularly interested in doing. Since she is only here every other weekend and we're not going to just sit and do nothing on the weekends she isn't here and then rush to do everything when she is here; we sat down with the list and underlined the things she really wanted to do. We had to prioritize a little bit. For the pictures for Claire to choose an activity, I made sure the pictures did not include any other people. Seems a little unfair to Anaya that there are now thirteen pictures of Claire on our "to do" list, but at least this way she doesn't think that whenever she wants to go jump on the trampoline that Sissy will be there.



And while I'm glad we're actively trying to do things on the list. And it would definitely be better to do it all early rather than it get to be August and have nothing checked off. I just need to remember that we don't need to cram everything into the first couple of weeks.



Printable Summer To-Do Paper from Eighteen25. They have other color options, I just happen to LOVE teal. My printer only prints up to 8.5 inches, so I opened their printables in Photoshop and trimmed them down to 8.5x11. Then I attempted to line up the pattern of the pages. I printed one top sheet and two of the bottom sheet.

Recipe: Green Enchiladas

Tonight I made Green Enchiladas for dinner, and they were delicious! I had to make a few changes from Megan's original recipe due to my inability to shop with a hungry, tired and cranky toddler. So here's the way I did it, but visit The Nerd's Nest for the original recipe, which is probably just as good for people that can follow directions.


You start out with the meat from one rotisserie chicken, one can of green enchilada sauce, a jar of Salsa Verde, a block of cream cheese, 8 oz of shredded cheese and some tortillas. I ended up using 6 of my 8 tortillas before I ran out of space...and filling.


Since I bought my Rotisserie chicken last night, I shredded it and put the meat in the fridge overnight. Since I didn't want to start with really cold ingredients, I combined the chicken, cream cheese, 1/2 of the shredded cheese, and about 10 oz of the Salsa Verde in a pot on the stove and heated it until the cheeses were melted and it was all creamy. You could also add salt & pepper at this point. I'm terrible about under-seasoning our food and usually forget about adding salt & pepper if there aren't exactly amounts in a recipe. Then you spread the filling down the center-ish of the tortilla and roll is up and put it in a greased 9x13 baking dish.


Pour in the can of green enchilada sauce and cover with the remaining cheese and bake for 15 minutes - just to make it all happy and melty. You can also broil it for a little bit to get the cheese all yummy, but we were ready to eat, so I broiled it for maybe a minute or two and decided it was good enough.


Then put it on a plate with Spanish corn or whatever kind of Mexican side dish you like.

It made 6 Enchiladas. I probably could've made a 7th one, but my dish was pretty full and I have plans for the other tortillas tomorrow night. I ended up opening up a few of the tortillas to spread in a little more filling so I wasn't wasting it. We ended up only eating three of them (2 for Justin, 1 for Claire & I). Which means I have lunch for the rest of the week!

Project Life: Week 20

Week 20: May 14 - 20

Lots and lots of playing outside this week. I love taking pictures in the backyard later in the evening - the lighting is PERFECT because our house faces west, so a lot of our backyard is in the shadow of our house. I'm also learning some of the better spots to take pictures inside our house. For example, the north-side window is actually one of the best windows all day long. During the morning & afternoon, light reflects off our neighbor's house into that window and during the evening, we can still get enough ambient light through the window to get pretty good pictures without having to worry about direct sunlight. It's also our diningroom window, which means we spend a lot of time there.



The picture of the roses was taken using that north window light. I set the vase on a short bench in front of the window and just aimed straight down. I didn't even photo-shop it at all - that's just natural light! The picture of the Black-Pepper Chicken, Rice & Eggroll was on our diningroom table - also using the north window light. And the picture of Claire drinking iced tea, facing the north window. Have I mentioned that I love that window...and it's light...and that it is in a great place?



We went to see Justin's parents on Sunday for lunch. They have train tracks fairly close to their house - down a hill, across a street and past some other buildings - so anytime Claire would hear a train she would run to where she could see it and say "Choo-choo". She loves her trains. They also have a swingset out there so she would sit on the swingset and watch the trains go by.



Thanks for visiting to see my week 20! Hope you had a good week too!

Menu Monday

Happy no-work-for-Jenni Monday!

We didn't end up following last week's plan for the weekend very well. The grocery store had Brats on sale, so I picked some up to have this coming week, but Justin decided he wanted them for dinner on Saturday. Then on Sunday we went to the pool late in the afternoon and got McD's ice cream cones at 6pm. We ended up eating left over brats even later in the evening. Nothing wrong with a little dessert before dinner every once in a while. Which means the Chicken might be almost too BBQ flavored. I put it in a marinade before Justin decide to change up the schedule on Saturday evening...which means it will have been marinating for two days! Oh well.

Since I have a short work week AND we have a company event on Friday, my entire menu planning week is thrown off. But here we go with a plan.

Monday - BBQ Chicken, Taters, Veggie
Tuesday - Green Enchiladas*, Spanish Corn mix
Wednesday - Breakfast Burritos, Strawberries
Thursday - Hoagie Sandwiches
Friday - Company Event
Saturday - Pork Chops, Salad
Sunday - Fried Egg Sandwiches

Items with * are new recipes, so we'll see how it goes.

What are you eating this week?