Bathroom Artwork

Inspired by our SuperHero themed photoshoot, I DIYed some artwork.  These were made in Photoshop and then printed onto 10x10 Aluminum from one of my professional printing labs.  I love how they turned out!!  Printing on Aluminum was a tad cheaper than canvas and more durable than just mounting prints to the wall without frames.



My Super Heroes

We had a little fun in our house going through comics and cutting strips out and making our own themed background.  I guess this is what you do when its spring and suppose to be warm outside but its not.

The Pier

Took the kids up to the park on the Lake today, its not warm enough to do much but walk around, but its still warmer than it has been.  They enjoyed walking down the pier and playing on the playground.  Can't wait to come back once Summer (or maybe Spring) is here in full thrust.

Gotta love always having a camera with you via your cell phone!

Graze Box

I heard about Graze box on one of my favorite mommy boards, where I pick up a lot of tricks and trips for parenthood and life.  Graze.com is brand new and not even open to the public yet.  Its another one of those box subscription websites, they have them for everything, for clothing, organic food, makeup, even kids fun/adventure boxes, books, you name it, I'm sure its out there.  Graze is for healthy natural snacks.  They send you samples depending on your likes and dislikes and frequency.  I opted for the box sent to the house every 2 weeks.  The best part?  the first box was free, another bonus?  the 5th box is free, so I get 5 boxes for $15!  So why did I sign up for this?  Well my kids love getting mail, but they are horrible at trying new foods.  So I thought maybe if these foods came in a cute package in the mail they might try it.  Oh and there's chocolate involved (as you can see on Cullen's face).  Check out the pics, the boys were so excited to open up the packages and try the goodies.

Saint Patties Day 2013

The older my kids are the more fun they are!  This year I laid out some seamless paper and let them draw a big rainbow for our picture backdrop.  Winter this year is going on and on forever, so I'm trying to do new things with indoor pictures besides just sitting them in front of the white paper, photographing them on the bed is fun but it also gets old, and sometimes my house is just not picture perfect lol.  Painting with the kids is always fun so that's what we did.

Sick Week

The week before Saint Patties day, Caleb got pretty sick.  Fever hitting near 103 for 4/5 consecutive days followed by a couple days of a nasty cough.  After 7 or 8 days the virus passed though and we were in the clear.  but that meant that we were homebound for a bit.  Its hard when both parents work and you have a sick kid, normally Grandma would be able to watch them but this week wasn't good for her so Tony and I had to take sick leave.  A couple days I was able to go into the office at 6 a.m. and get 4 or 5 hours in before going home so Tony could go to work and get 4 or 5 hours in at the office.  It's a struggle and all about compromise.  Plus the kids are couped up all week.  Cullen who wasn't sick wasn't laying around and wanted activites.  Caleb was pretty sick so he was laying around most of the time but without just watching TV all day you gotta find activities.  Here's a couple of things we did.

We built a fort using my seamless stand and a king-sized sheet.

Took some macro pictures of Caleb while he was sleeping :)  I'm a good mom aren't I?

We got the real paints out and taught Cullen about the colors of the rainbow.

Cullen's New Shoes

Honestly everyone should feel sorry for this kid,  he's 2.5 and these are only his 2nd pair of new shoes...  Caleb never cared about shoes, in fact he hated buying new shoes and never wanted to give up his old pair.  Cullen is so different, he loves picking out his shoes in the morning, he's only ever had hand-me-downs from Caleb or some other little boy, except for his Puma's that he got from his Aunt and Uncle for Christmas when he was 1.  Well I finally let him pick out some shoes at target.com, he free shipping and not super expensive!  He was so excited when they came in the mail so we did a little photo of him wearing them.  You can't tell but they are Spiderman and they light up when he walks, just like his friend Cohen's from school (per Cullen).

 

School Portraits

Every February and August our daycare does school portraits.  It just happens to be when Caleb turns another year older and Cullen is another half year older, or when Cullen turns another year older and Caleb is another half year older.  Couldn't have planned it better myself.  I know you're thinking but you take gazillion pictures of your kids, why do you even care.  Well my kids aren't always the most cooperative and sometimes a stranger can get a decent shot of them probably without all the yelling I sometimes do!

This year they took a cute picture together and I thought about how I wish they sold digitals of these pictures, I usually just get a sheet of wallets of each kid and call it a day, but then I end up putting a little tiny wallet somewhere and have no idea where.  So this time I looked again, and lo and behold they do FINALLY sell digitals, at least I think this is the first time they sold them because I don't remember this option before.  Anyway I ended up buying a bunch of digital images.  I'm glad I did :)

 

My new Baby | Welcome Mark the Third

After we lost Mark the 2nd to unfortunate events in Disney, I adopted Mark the Third via Canon's Refurbished list.  Saved about $600 off a new one and it was also only $400 more than what Insurance gave us for Mark the 2nd.

Of course the camera arrives during the week and I don't get to play with it until the evening but what better time than to see how it does with ISO capabilities!

Using my 50mm at f/2.0 and 1/125 shutter speed and a whopping ISO 2500 (not even close to maxing it out).  Here is Cullen my almost always willing model.