I hate

Diablo 2.

Dear Diablo...
Please return my boyfriend to me.

365 Woes

The 365 project is going... interestingly. 20some days into it and I'm a bit frustrated. Some days I take a bunch of great pictures and have a lot of trouble narrowing it down to one. Other days I don't get out of the house and have no desire to mess with the camera at all.... or if I do I just take another snapshot of a cat or the baby. I've now taken 481 pictures with the new camera, but still need to learn a lot of the manual functions and other features. One month almost down, 11 to go....

Airplane Giggles

Now that I'm not completely wiped out I can actually update.

The baby actually did pretty good on the airplane. But the most memorable part was when we got up to get off the last leg of the flight home. She had been grouchy the whole flight because it was after her bed time, but when I put her up over my shoulder she started giggling like I had never heard her giggle before. She giggled for a good few minutes, amusing a lot of the people who had been sitting behind us. Theatrical little baby.

She also got to see both grandmoms, and her grandpa before he went into surgery (my dad just had part of his liver removed today because of cancer. He's currently recovering fine) She got completely spoiled by my mom, and we managed to go out two nights in a row because my mom was more than happy to watch her.

Now, she's spoiled because of how much attention she got. She does NOT want to be left alone for even a minute which is very frustrating.

Home

I'm home after having gone to my 10 year high school reunion and spending the weekend at my parent's house. Wiped out is the best way to describe how I feel.

To remember in the future.... flying around the baby's bed time isn't a good idea.

Good night

3 month portraits

I just got Lorelei's three month portraits back and they are beautiful! There is no way I could pick one favorite. Here are two of my favorites. If you like them you should check out the photographers website. Tiffany does great work and is wonderful with kids.
This second one is kinda goofy.... and that's why I like it! She's not always smiling and doll like, so why would I want pictures that only show that facet of her personality?

Monster Wreath, completed!

It ended up being easy to make.. but the fur was hard to find. I found a small amount of purple fun fur, but much less than needed to do it as a group project. Only "natural" colors were easy to find. But I did end up with a purple wreath, with enough fur left over for two people to do a one side purple/one side black wreath.

Here is how mine turned out. Not a shot of it in place on a door but... you get what you get ;)

Migranes explained!

I have for years tried to explain the "aura" part of my migraines. This morning I woke up with one and in the ensuing "how do I make this thing go away" internet search I found this. It's a neat flash animation of how a visual migraine looks. It's not quite perfect, but it shows the general idea pretty well. (it's at the bottom of the blog post, though the words are interesting too)

My Kitten has a first name...

.... it's M-A-R-I-E

Meet Marie Curie. The Kitten, not the baby.

Italia

I was just going through pictures on my computer and found some sketches I did when I went to Italy last summer for 15 days. When I was there I had been making plans to try to be able to go there for an entire summer or something. Now... I've got a baby. I guess that won't be happening for a while.

Here's one of my sketches...

Kitten vs. baby

When working on taking my daily picture today, the kitten kept trying for her own photo op. But then she wouldn't cooperate beyond that when i tried to include her.

Mahi Mahi

I got some Mahi Mahi last week on sale and had to figure out how to cook it. I found a tasty recipe with basil on top but .... I used a bit too much basil. Matt liked it more than I did. Looked pretty good though and I paired it with some stir fried veggies and brown rice. Tasty, healthy, and somewhat fast. I just wish I could find the recipe again because I don't remember all that was in the sauce.

Inspiration

I was reading the wonderful blog of a photographer I ran across and found this quote...

"You are not there to capture their hobbies and the same smile with changing outfits. You are there to capture the spirit of who they are and the many faces that their spirit has."



She was talking about senior portraits.... but that's also true for kids portraits. Especially kids portraits in my opinion. They change so fast.. and there are already expressions I will never forget that Lorelei has stopped doing. Her "beak face" when she was going for food and some of her "playing with her tongue" faces have stopped as she's been moving on developmentally and she's only 3.5 months old. These moments are so much more precious than the "outfit that Aunt B gave her."

New camera, new blog

My camera arrived on the 6th.. just much later in the day than I thought it would. I got so excited I forgot about posting anything here. I decided to start a 365 project in celebration of the awesomeness that is a Digital SLR. A Canon Rebel isn't the end all be all of digiSLR's but to me, it's just fine! (there are a lot of different people who claim to have done the first 365 project, but it's typically all the same concept)

Hopefully I will manage to stick with it. Some days just fly by and at the end I realize I've done nothing of importance but here's my chance to work on that!

My 365 project will be here: http://cindy365.blogspot.com/

I have three days so far. day 4 I will post today... and I might post today's but I may decide to never post the picture of the day until the day is completely over. Never know when a better opportunity may come up for pictures!

Getting antsy...

Camera still isn't here. Tracking says it went out for delivery at 5 am.

I need to run out and get some stuff from the store but I wanted to wait to make sure I don't miss the delivery. At least it gets the baby some more around the house time. She's gone out with us for three nights in a row and been up past her bedtime so she probably needs the relaxation.

Right now she's hanging out having naked time on a quilt on the floor by me. She seems to be enjoying the wiggle time.

Halloween wreath

I think for Halloween I'm going to make one of these monster wreaths. So fun :)



If I remember I'll post a picture of the one I make.

Ridin'

Today I got to go on my first motorcycle ride since New Years. And no, riding to the bar to play pool when my mom was in town doesn't count as a ride. That was merely transportation.

Me, Matt and his dad rode from Austin to Llano. We took a route that took about 2 hours to get there and a shorter highway route back. I really preferred the way out because it was curvy enough that I didn't spend the whole ride fighting the wind. Matt's dad rented a nice Harley that he had for a day. Apparently you can't rent motorcycles in Virginia. Something about the liability laws makes it not feasible.... but now we're in Texas!

The ride was beautiful and we stopped at a few overlooks, but sadly I didn't bring my camera so I have no pictures of it.

In Llano we ate at Cooper's .. one of the best BBQ places I've eaten at in Texas. You stand in this line outdoors and point at the particular piece of meat you want off the grill and they hand you that piece. It's definitely not a place for vegetarians.
I got beef ribs and prime rib. It's fairly expensive for what seems like a picnic style meal- actually it seems the most similar to a North Carolina fish house- with long picnic tables where everyone sits together.



I'll have to say that for an occasional treat, it's worth it. Other people seem to agree- there were about 20 people ahead of us in line and the dining room was completely full.

We ate and then headed back to Austin... and home to the baby.
All in all a pleasant afternoon.

RANT: the Captcha

A CAPTCHA (IPA: /ˈkæptʃə/) is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer


Argh.. and they are horrible. The ones many web sites use are hard for me to read. And apparently they are hard for others to read so you get tons of do overs on them. With the do overs.... well couldn't a computer guess that way too?

They seem like a waste of time, and they hurt my eyes. Down with them!

Waiting...

My new camera is sitting somewhere in Dallas.

Around 3 we have to go pick up Lorelei's grandpa from the airport.... I was hoping the camera would come before that.

I still have tons to do. Mainly putting sheets on the spare bed, scooping cat litter, cleaning out the car (poor little car will be swamped with 3 adults and a baby in it) and getting the baby ready to leave. Maybe it's better that the camera isn't here yet so I'm not rtrying to play with it instead of doing other stuff... but... new toy... *whine*

A new project

Tonight hopefully I am going to start a new project--- baby shoes!

I don't have a printer that works so I can't print out the pattern I found, but it can't be that hard can it? There are only three pattern pieces and they look pretty basic.

Once I figure out a pair of regular shoes, I am going to start on Lorelei's Halloween costume. She's going to be a black cat, so I am going to try to make a pair of minky baby booties that look like paws.

It will be an adventure at the very least!

Coffee time

My new thing... coffee with a half spoonful of brown sugar and a pinch of cardamom powder. Yum!

New Toy!

After trying to take pictures of my baby... and some of my creations... myself, I've gotten fed up with my old camera and finally broke down and ordered this:

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=139&modelid=16303

It's supposed to get here Friday or Saturday... and with any luck there will be far more pictures once I have the better quality camera.

Huzzah!