salt dough ornaments!

I decided Ally was old enough to partake in some fun arts and crafts this year, so I found a recipe online for salt dough and made some ornaments using holiday cookie cutters, which we then painted, covered in an acrylic varnish so they'll stay nice and pretty, and finally added some little jewels to make 'em sparkle - cuz all girls love a little sparkle :) Anyway, it was a blast and they turned out so cute! I'm already excited to make this a new holiday tradition each year. The recipe for the salt dough is after the photos below if you're interested! It's SUPER easy. Happy Holidays!

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Salt Dough Recipe:

1 cup flour
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup salt

Mix all ingredients together until it forms a dough, then turn it out onto a floured surface and knead it for a few minutes until you feel like it becomes uniform and fairly elastic. Then roll it until it's about 1/4 inch thick and cut out shapes with cookie cutters (or free-hand it if you're feeling crafty). Place cut-outs on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and use a straw to poke out holes in the top for the ribbon to go through once they're done. I baked mine in a 170 degree oven for about 6 hours because at higher temps they were puffing up, which is not pretty. You can try at a higher temp if you kneaded your dough better than I did, but keep an eye on them because you DON'T want them to puff up. Once you feel they are completely dried out from baking, take them out and let cool. Then paint with acrylic paints, and use an acrylic varnish to coat them again once the paint is dry - this will make them last so they don't absorb moisture in storage and turn into dough balls again by next Christmas. Then decorate with more adornments if you'd like - for older kids glitter would be fun! Then just loop through some ribbon and tie for cute ornaments, or you could even skip the hole and turn them into magnets or pins - really cute homemade project and REALLY easy.

bed-head

Let's just appreciate the bed-head for a moment. I'm looking forward to seeing how this story develops as she gets older and the hair gets longer. I'm anticipating quite a display of bed-headedness in years to come. Behold:

holiday photo shoot

I was determined to get a cute photo for Christmas cards this year, so I set up a quickie photo shoot, which consisted of one white sheet draped over our dining room chairs in the dining room because it gets the best light, and one small fake christmas tree. Add cute outfit and toddler and voila - let the games begin. Unfortunately, getting a 2 year old to sit and smile on cue is near impossible. I think I took about 50 pictures, and the three below are the only ones worth presenting. The rest are all half closed eyes and her trying to run away. Anyway, I'd say getting a couple memories at least was worth it!

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i know, i know...

Enough with the close ups on the eyes - in my defense, I've been doing it so I can practice eye sharpening techniques in photoshop. Plus I just can't help myself.

silly mommy...

You thought you could sneak up on me? I can hear you a mile away.

nature museum

Today Ally and I ventured a whole 5 minutes across the freeway to a little nature museum that features local wildlife (think coyotes, badgers, raccoons and otters) and also has a few fun little hands-on children's exhibits. I thought the animals would totally thrill her, but she was more interested in jumping up and down the stairs (except for the otters of course since they're always entertaining and adorable).


The exhibits inside though, were her favorite.  Probably the best was a tube meant to illustrate and updraft that helps birds fly, among other things.  The kids could put colored foam thingies into the tube and then watch (or squeal with delight) as the air blew them up and out the top.



The other hit was a wall filled with holes and colored water bottles that was meant to show how a certain type of worm (I can't remember which one) burrows and lives.  Ally just liked the pink ones and spent a good 20 minutes hoarding them together in one section.



Girls - as long as they're pink, even worms are attractive.

beach day!

We headed over to Stinson Beach over Labor Day weekend with some friends, and actually saw the sun! I dragged my camera along and got a couple good shots of Ally and Rowan (our friend's little boy). Fun day overall and the kids had a great day in the sand :)



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day trip to Sonoma

I took a bunch of pictures when we went to Sonoma on Saturday, but of course like the ones of Ally the best (I know I'm biased). Hope you like 'em:



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another monday night

Mommy runs around taking weird pictures while Ally does her puzzle and ignores her :)

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Ally and I went to the park this morning and I figured I'd play with the camera while she played on the jungle gym. It was pretty gloomy out, so the color shots were a bit depressing, but changing them to black and white did the trick - here are my faves:

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my baby elephant

Inspired by Ally's beloved little stuffed elephant she sleeps with and takes with her everywhere, I decided to hunt down an elephant costume for her first Halloween - I had to take advantage of what little time I had before she would be insisting on princess and tinker bell costumes. There is something just so purely hilarious about a child who has no idea how ridiculous they look. And besides, how adorable are elephants?? Their big, clumsy feet, big ears, enormous brown eyes and slow, mellow nature just scream "cuddle me". Or maybe that's just me... anyway, here you have it:

Please don't call the authorities.

fate

Today, I had two different events in my life collide in a beautiful (and delicious) way:

1. Bryan's dad was coming to visit us this weekend (arriving today) and we were going to have dinner at our house tonight

2. I had a strange desire to buy a gigantic box of blueberries last time we were at Costco, which resulted in about a pound of them sitting with nothing to do in the fridge (you can only put so many on cereal and Ally has decided she's over blueberries for the time being)

If this isn't fate, I don't know what is. I realized the universe was trying to tell me something, and it sounded a little like "blueberry crumb cake for dessert". Who am I to argue??

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And, like any good hostess, I had to make sure it tasted okay before I serve it later...

mmm... yum.

kids and spaghetti

What is it about kids eating spaghetti that just begs you to take pictures? Oh, right - the fact that they get red sauce smeared all over their faces without the slightest hint of embarrassment... just pure delight. Exhibit A:

I think this one's my favorite (above)

Now in for the close-up.

Yup, that's close.

Deeee-lish.

photography lesson #1

I'm trying to learn the basics of photography so I can take better pictures to share with you all, and today was day 1. I headed out into our backyard to test out my understanding of (1) aperture, (2) shutter speed, and (3) exposure settings.

I headed over to the apple tree first to test aperture, which is basically how much of the photo will be in focus - the lower the number, the less will be in focus (although the wider the opening, meaning it's letting in more light - kinda confusing) and the higher the number, the more will be in focus (and the narrower the opening).

Here, the aperture is at 5.6, which is the lowest our camera will go - you can see pretty much only the apples and leaves are in focus and the background is blurry:

Here, the aperture is at 36, which is the highest our camera will go, and you can see that the bushes in the background are now much more in focus:

Okay, so on to shutter speed. The faster the shutter speed (or smaller the fraction), the more detail you will get from a moving object - great for sports shots or any kind of movement. I thought it would be cool to shoot running water - here's my first attempt at our indoor kitchen sink:
Disaster. Because the shutter speed is so fast, not enough light is let into the camera, and even after lowering the aperture and increasing the ISO setting as much as possible, still too dark - so I went outside. Here's the hose with a shutter speed of 1/30:
Not much to look at, so here it is with shutter speed of 1/4000:
Cool! And while the hose was on I sprayed the apples cuz I thought it would look pretty :)

So finally, onto exposure. The camera's auto settings are usually pretty good at determining what the exposure should be, but sometimes with an item that is dark in color, it overcompensates and it comes out too bright - case in point:
The dark purple of the flower was making the camera try to lighten it up too much, so I used the AV +/- button to adjust the exposure down manually and here it is again:
Much better.

Finally, I wanted to take a picture of the lemon bowl in our kitchen - here's the first one:
I realized the shutter speed was still set too high for indoors, so I decreased it to 1/250 and increased the exposure:
Eeek! Too much exposure. Took that down a bit:
Better! Though I really need to clean that bowl...