Links and Links

I've stolen a few minutes to visit some of the blogs I enjoy. At least, it feels a little like stolen time these days! There are some fun things out there.

Probably the most cool thing I've run across in quite a while is Postcrossing. They've got a system where you send out postcards to random places. Once people start registering the cards you send, you receive them too. Our first card is waiting to go out tomorrow: to Malaysia. How cool is that?

Cellista shared some fun stuff on how her family does their timelines, with a number of timeline resource links & mini reviews of them. Very cool.

I'm always interested in reading about narration these days, now that we're starting to do it. Nancy's got a very encouraging bit about the benefits of narration she sees in her kids.

And, here's a tutorial for making a camera strap cover. I've got fabric picked out; all I need to do is find time to actually MAKE the thing.

Weekly Wrap-up: Nearly Christmas Edition

It feels like most of forever since I last managed to do a Weekly Wrap-up, but we've been doing pretty well! We're putting the finishing touches on our Christmas gifts, and generally enjoying the season. I love Christmas! Oh, and we're counting down the days to when we get our dog on the 27th. Gotta love that!

Here's some of what we've been up to:

He earned himself a kid camera a while back, and it looks like he's still enjoying it - and learning to view the world through his lens, something I picked up from my Dad.

Oh, and I'm giving away these adorable Nativity Tags, so you should go enter to win.

1000th Post Celebration: Art Giveaway! (Closed)

I've reached 1000 posts! To celebrate, I've partnered with some Etsy shops to give some wonderful gifts to some lucky people! My second giveaway if from my own Etsy shop. Start out by going an having a look at my photography. Then come on back and I'll tell you what I'm sharing with one lucky blog reader!



Up For Grabs:


I am sharing a 5x7 photographic art print, called "All Things Testify!" Printed on glossy photo paper, the winner of the giveaway will receive the print ready to be framed to match your home.

How to Enter:

Step 1: Go to my store and choose a favorite item.
Step 2: Post a link to this giveaway on your blog.
Step 3: Leave a comment on this post telling us what's your favorite & a link to your blog.

If you want, you can use this code to copy for a short post:

<center><a href="http://ritsumeithoughts.blogspot.com/2010/12/1000th-post-celebration-giveaway-2.html"><img border="0" alt="Visit Baby Steps" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-beZNMWcCmmyUXp_jSLDOPnqhWp9jg7-uXhLZKe7ZltKYu0DYu608clpausU2xPs12ZG7LQi64rwwR43DLB6SCcSt82POZaRXkOQvsCGqyuNsk5Hw_mIgTLvY5fWYA0konPOUYw/s144/badge.jpg"/></a><br>Baby Steps Blog is giving away a photographic art print!!<br>Click to Enter.</center>

It will look like this:

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Baby Steps Blog is giving away a photographic art print!!
Click to Enter.

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Up to Two Extra Entries:

1. Add RitsumeiArts to your favorite Etsy shops. Leave a separate comment, including your Etsy login name, on this post.

2. People who follow this blog, whether you jumped on the bandwagon to day or last year, can also leave a comment on this post indicating that you follow Baby Steps.

Entries must be received by 11:59PM CST the 13th of December.

That's it! Good luck!
Don't forget to enter the ebook giveaway, and check back soon for giveaway #3!

I Heart Faces: Orchard

Weekly Wrap-up: The One With No Pictures

After a week where I spent as much time camera in hand as this week, It's pretty ironic to realize that not only have I downloaded zero pictures from my camera all week, but there are so many of them and the weekend is so busy that if I try to download for this post I won't have enough time to make the post. So we have no pictures. But it's quite possible that the best part of the week was Raven's first laugh.

This was one of those weeks were we briefly greeted our usual routine on Monday, then left it behind for the rest of the week. We tried to keep up with the phonics practice because Monkey is doing so well in that area, and we don't want him to loose momentum on that.

Tuesday there were glass blowers demonstrating their craft, which was mighty interesting. We nearly didn't go because I was feeling stressed about getting ready to spend Wednesday & Thursday out of town for a wedding. I'm so glad we went. I can't wait to post a few pictures! Glass blowing is mighty interesting stuff! Tuesday I also agreed to take pictures at the wedding. So I spent some time researching what wedding photographers do, and trying to learn what I could about what the Nauvoo temple and grounds look like, since that's where the wedding was to be.

Wednesday we traveled to Nauvoo. The boys did remarkably well with the travel. We even had a few minutes to see some of the sights: the Browning gun shop & the blacksmith shop. Raven kept us on our toes by pooping to his toes. I did more photo research at the hotel.

Thursday was the wedding, and while everyone else was inside the temple I was watching the boys & we looked for photo locations. I think the pictures are going to be great, as soon as I download them I'll know for sure. I feel like the Lord blessed me to be able to do my very best work on such short notice: everything went smoothly down to Raven sleeping through the whole thing while in my sling. Then we came home.

Friday we did pumpkin carving at my parents' house. It was lovely. More pictures. Hopefully I can blog some of this stuff this week.

Today is the reception: more pictures. And I need to bake a cake for an open house I agreed to bring food to before I knew this was going to be such a zoo. Fortunately, it's pretty simple.

Beautiful Flowers

I Heart Faces: Play

The theme this week for I Heart Faces is "play." Monkey was having a good time playing with the chopsticks and incidentally eating a few noodles, and I was having a blast playing with my camera. Good times, all around.

Here's more pictures of Monkey eating those noodles. Click the camera to visit I Heart Faces!

Fix-it Friday

Spoon

We took Monkey to Applebee's a while back. They had some beautiful light coming in the window that afternoon, so I pulled out my camera. Fortunately, Monkey's pretty used to me.


We got him one of those "shooters" they have. A little ice cream; a whole lot of whipped cream. He was a happy guy. Plus, it came with a spoon. Doesn't that face just say, "What is this thing, and what am I to do with it?"


He got it figured out. I guess it's not really that different from the ones at home.

(I'm trying out the "visions of sugarplums" action from It's Times Like These on these pictures. I like it.)

Partners in Five

The Math Expressions book that I got to do with Monkey is mostly on hold right now, because it requires more writing than he is ready for. But one of the concepts that it works with is "partners" in numbers - that is, the partners of 5 are the pairs of numbers you could add to get 5. We played with this concept this afternoon for a few minutes, using Monkey's cars as manipulatives. I'd give him a few cars, then ask how many he had. Then I'd ask how many he needed to make 4, because that is his favorite number. Then he'd choose the right number of cars & we'd count again to see if he was right. He did really well with 4. Five was more difficult, but he did get some, and I think that he was understanding the concept of partners this time, which he didn't seem to be the last time we played this sort of game. We only did it for a few minutes, which is fine, and I was pleased with how it turned out.

Incidentally, this is my photo of the day for Project 365 too.

I Heart Faces: Collages

I used this tutorial to learn how to do the polaroid effect, and it was surprisingly easy. The picture is from a trip we took last summer to go to my brother's wedding.

Check out more collages at I Heart Faces.

Project 365

365: Because I'm On a Roll

Project 365

This is today's Project 365 picture. I've been having a hard time with getting the pictures done, and a harder time figuring out what to take pictures of, so there are more than a few days that won't have anything for them in my 365 scrapbook. But I'm still working on it, and this evening I found a flicker group that should have some nice around-the-house ideas. And my husband suggested that I do some of his Battlemechs, which I thought was a great idea. So I glanced at CoffeeShop's recent tutorial on the fuzzy backgrounds - an aperture trick - and tried it out. This is the best of the 3 I took. For a first time, it's not too bad! I would have liked to have the focused mech in the middle, and I couldn't make that happen, but it's a new skill, so I'll take what I can get and keep trying.

Fix-it Friday

I don't have specifics for what I did with this one. Pioneer Woman's Boost, and I think her Define and Sharpen as well. Some adjustment layers that I can't remember anymore. The Album Cafe's Dreamy Soft Diffusion. More tweaking. I don't know exactly what I did. But I like it.



I started with #1, and played around with a lot of different ways of taking this black and white. It's desaturated, and the vibrance turned way down. I fooled around with a threashold layer, and different blending options. Then, when I was done fiddling and experimenting (and deleting, and reverting, and plain old reloading), I ran CoffeeShop's Moody Pop. I'm not terribly happy with this one. Definitely still need some practice on the whole black & white thing.

Playing with Photoshop

Coffeeshop has this cool "Diptych" storyboard action. I tried it out on some pictures from a couple years ago, and I'm so pleased with how it turned out! I'm thinking that this pair will be going in my scrapbook, hopefully in the next couple of days. I'm working on May 2007, and it would please me if I got to a time that seemed less like "a long time ago!"

I Heart Faces: Dramatic B&W

Here's a few of my favorite entries:

Big eyes in the garage
A bit of sass
Toddler tantrums - a sure source of drama!
Babe in Bamboo

I Heart Faces: Constructive Criticsm

At first, when I saw that I Heart Faces wasn't doing Fix-it Friday this week, I was disappointed. The constructive criticism idea is cool, but they looked like they'd somehow already filled up all their "slots," even though it's still only Thursday. Then I got looking at some of the links and realized these are old ones, and they must be from the last time they did some constructive criticism, so I decided to play with this picture I took this afternoon, which I'll be using in our 2nd baby's scrapbook.



This is the SOOC. Obviously, I'll need to crop it. This was one of the first ones I did and I was still figuring out where to stand. But I just love the way that Monkey is doing a "belly picture" too!

One thing I'd absolutely love to hear about is books that help people figure out the manual settings on the camera. My programmable-automatic setting does a great job, and is pretty flexible, but I'm sure that if I could just figure out how to use the manual settings I could really have some fun. Plus, this looks just a little underexposed to me, in spite of some fill flash.

Anyway, here's what Bridge tells me is the data for my picture:

Focal length: 6.7mm (this part means nothing to me)
A: f2.8
S(?): 1/50 (This one's not labeled, I'm guessing, since shutter speed is missing.)
ISO: 200
Flash: compulsory mode (I knew it was going to be backlit, even with my curtain "backdrop.")




Here's what I did with it:

1. Cropped it.

2. Curves adjustment layer - first, brightened it up, then removed a little green and took out a touch of red. Flatten.

3. I haven't got a good system for removing noise, and this one had more than a little. Best thing I've got thus far is I use CoffeeShop's Baby PowderRoom action and between the "red skin repair" layer, and the "smooth skin" layer, I can usually get rid of the worst of it. But it only works on skin. I've only recently downloaded this action, so I haven't had chance to run it, step-by-step, and see if I can figure out what she's doing with it. That's on the agenda.

So, noise suggestions? Free noise suggestions? I haven't got a budget for any cool Photoshop toys right now.

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Oh! I didn't realize that people might be willing to spend time playing with my photo! How very generous! Here is a larger file, if you would like:

I Heart Faces: Hilarious Outtakes

Monkey decided to "mow the lawn" for me. In snow up to his ankles. It was tough going, but he kept at it!



I don't look at all the pictures - there's TONS of participants in I Heart Faces - but check out some of these:

Dirt Shower
Facial "exercise" (it's at the bottom)
Her Nose Squishes
Cross-eyed at Lunch
Baby's Bad Day

I Heart Faces: Hands-On