November 21, 2005

I know it has been quite some time since I really posted an update (not counting any pictures I may post). Time is going by so quickly, I can hardly believe Braidon is over 2 months old already. He gets bigger every day! I took him for his check up this past Friday and everything was fine. Nothing exciting to report about that. I did update his stats so make sure to check that out on the link (right hand side).
The kids got there school pictures back last week. And I will be picking up Braidon's pictures from Penny's this Wednesday. I'll be sure to scan them and then post 'em for you so you can see, but I'm not at all happy with the school ones. Neither of them turned out very good. Caraline isn't smiling in hers and Gavin looks liked he was fighting off the effects of novacaine!! O'well I always hated my school pictures too so I guess they aren't suppose to look good, LOL.
Nothing new to report about the static of the adoptions yet. We are going forward with Gavin's adoption first but nothing has happened yet. Hopefully we will have a court date soon. It would be really nice to have it done before years end but that may not happen. Ben is suppose to talk with the lawyer again today so I hope he has some news for us. It's been two weeks since we last talked and I feel like it's just going to slow!! I realize it's a complex process and it will take time but I can't help but to be inpatient.
We went and did some Christmas shopping last night. The kids are now nearly done. We have a couple more little things left to pick up but the bulk of it is finished, THANK GOODNESS! If we can start picking things up a little every week we might just be done and ready by Christmas day, LOL!
Well the baby is yelling for some breakfast so better go! have a good Monday and remember to check out Braidon's new stats.
Theresa

Digital Photo creations

Lately I've been very interested in toying with the photo editing program I got (well Ben got me , really). It started out with just touching them up and making some black and whites but has since turned into a passionate hobby of mine. I guess when you spend all day, every day, looking at the same walls you need to find something to entertain you. Anyways, here are some of the photos I've played with over the weekend.







Here you can see I turned Caraline into a real "flower girl", LOL. I also made the image look like it was painted on canvas. It didn't really turn out like I wanted. I think it would have worked better if she had been looking straight on but I think its still cute.













I was trying to capture the size of Braidons tiny hand in this photo. All that I did here was convert to black and white, and then, remove the original background. I used a mask to highlight just the center of the photo and then put on a frame.

It didn't take much to make this picture as precious as it is! I just turned it into a black and white, added the text, and framed it.

I came across a webpage for cute baby contests and the winner each week won a portrait of the baby done in this style (pop art). So I set out to see if I could do it myself and I think it turned out just like the professional ones looked like. This picture is now the wallpaper on our computer screen!







In the before picture Gavin is actually holding up a clump of Sheba's fur that he found on the floor! Ben told him to hold it up like a beard so he did and then I took over with the editing program. We've renamed Gavin "Old Man Jenkins" since this picture was created, LOL. I spend a lot of hours working on this one but I think it was well worth it. The picture turned out to look very realistic. I cloned parts of the original piece of fur and then created his beard and mustache from it. It was a very long process to say the least but I'm so happy I figured out how to do it!








This is a photo of my brothers friend. As you can see he didn't really want his picture taken. I had to learn many new techniques and practice over and over again to get this to work but I figured it out and managed to take it from "pg-13" to "G" rated. I'm very proud of myself with this one. Even if you look really close, you can't tell I changed anything.







I think it's safe to say that no picture will ever be safe again, LOL! I'm sure there will be MANY more to come as I learn new things and get better at the stuff I already know. Hope you enjoy them.
Theresa