Rejoice with your Family

Loved this quote I came across today over at Jenny Springer Photography:

xox

Mel

Free Printable Quote

I came across this quote today on tumblr and really loved it so I whipped up my own version to put on my desk...

 
Here it is in my dining room 

* * * you can print your own by double clicking on the quote and saving it to your desktop.  Then drag the file into Word.  I made the quote to fit inside a 4 x 6 frame but you can resize by clicking on the image in Word and dragging the handles.  Hit Print and you're done!
  

x0x 
Mel

Do What You Can

 

via imgfave

10 lessons for young designers

Came across this via Swiss Miss...

10 lessons for young designers. by John C Jay of Wieden+Kennedy

1: Be authentic. The most powerful asset you have is your individuality, what makes you unique. It’s time to stop listening to others on what you should do.  2: Work harder than anyone else and you will always benefit from the effort.  3: Get off the computer and connect with real people and culture. Life is visceral.  4: Constantly improve your craft. Make things with your hands. Innovation in thinking is not enough.  5: Travel as much as you can. It is a humbling and inspiring experience to learn just how much you don’t know.  6: Being original is still king, especially in this tech-driven, group-grope world.  7: Try not to work for stupid people or you’ll soon become one of them. 8: Instinct and intuition are all-powerful. Learn to trust them.  9: The Golden Rule actually works. Do good.  10: If all else fails, No. 2 is the greatest competitive advantage of any career. (via Edwin Himself)

LOVEly things

Some LOVEly things for the Valentine's Day weekend....

...these beautiful words to remind us that we are in charge of our own happiness.

...a super fun way to reuse heart shaped candy boxes

...this awesome heart scarf

...a cute CD cover if you're in the mood to burn a playlist of your favorite tunes

......and who couldn't resist a Big Love Butterscotch Cookie

image via omnia

Making Photos Look Better

Today was one of those days - the kind that just follows their own course entirely without any regard to what one was hoping to accomplish or the items on one's never ending To Do List.  It started when the Bubs went down for a nap and I had a few free moments to myself.  Instead of sticking to the schedule I had planned the night before, I decided to 'quickly' hop onto Google to find a few ideas for Valentine's Day.  And just as the internet has a habit of doing to a person, before I knew it, one thing led to another, and I didn't get to anything related to Valentine's Day at all.  Rather, I found myself in a hundred different places and ended up reading a very helpful post that contained some great tips on how to make photographs look better. 

It must be noted that one of my guilty pleasures is reading Photography Blogs.  The common theme with the particular blogs I read is that the photographers are all, for the most part, mothers, who have chosen photography as a career path.  I am in awe of the photography they produce and wish that my photographs would come out looking anywhere in the vaguest region of that good.  I realize that photography is a career for them, and that they have mastered the fine art of it, but oh, how I wish I could make my photographs come even just a little bit close to the superbness that they are creating. 

But, alas, I just do not have any particular interest in learning photography.  I just want the seemingly countless photographs that I take of the children to look great.  At least some of them.  I know that is like saying: "I want my meals to look and taste like Julia Child's, but I don't want to follow a recipe."  My husband has tried to show me how to shoot on manuel and adjust the ISO and some other things, the names of which I can never remember, but I admit that I am just a lost cause.  And so whenever I pick up the camera I just flip the switch to Program Mode and hope for the best. 

So I was excited when I came across this post on the "new to me" blog - Beyond Snapshots.  While I understand that you have to start with a technically correct and basically good photograph in order to get to an even better photograph in post production, and that it is pretty impossible to transform a bad photograph into anything other than possibly a minimally less bad photograph - I decided to snap a quick pic of my Bub and go through the steps listed in the post to see if I could at least add the slightest of improvements.

Although it is far from anything I see on my favorite photo blogs, I was happy with the results and I think it is as much as I can hope for unless I step it up a notch and actually listen to my husband's words of wisdom. 

Hopefully this will help out some other moms out there that like to snap a hundred photos of their kids every second and are hoping to be able to tweak some of their fav's before printing and framing. 

As a side note:  it must be noted that my computer is quite old (as is my version of photoshop) - so this might actually look quite terrible on anyone else's computer screen (!) but I hope it provides you with the same inspiration I got from reading the post over at Beyond Snapshots and that you have fun playing around with different settings until you find something you are happy with!

Whenever I whip out the camera, Bubs always goes into super ham mode and pulls the funniest of faces - usually he scrunched up his nose, squeezes his eyes shut and lifts up his chin!  Here I caught him in the middle of doing all three...

So my day turned out to be just perfect, even if I didn't accomplish anything I was hoping to, and learning some new things is always a good thing.  My next step might even be ACTIONS!

Happy New Year!

There are always others who will say it better, so in the words of Martin Luther:

"Glory to God in highest heaven,
Who unto man His Son hath given;
While angels sing with tender mirth,
A glad new year to all the earth."

and Edith Lovejoy Pierce:

"We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called "Opportunity" and its first chapter is New Year's Day."

Family Secret Santas

This year we are really trying to emphasisize the true spirit of Christmas alongside the excitement and constant chatter about the writing of Christmas Lists to Santa and presents etc.  We want the kids to know that the true spirit of the season involves thinking of others and helping others.  And in the words of Christopher Dilts (via About.com):

"The true spirit of Christmas is generosity. Not the generosity of material gifts and presents, but the generosity of your own loving presence. Give more of your own loving presence and less of the token presents this year. Yes, there is pleasure in enjoying material gifts, but what is remembered, what lasts, is the presence of the loving soul giving love generously and unconditionally to another. This presence lasts for all time..."

and

"This is the highest gift of Christmas giving: to see the goodness in another, to recognize, acknowledge and reflect this goodness back to them. This can be done with a loving look, a kind gesture, a warm embrace, a few words of encouragement, or an expression that is as rich and elaborate as you wish. "

Or the words of Deanna Mascle (via Buzzle):

"In order to embrace the true Christmas spirit you must be willing to give. Give of yourself, your time and your love, and give of your worldly possessions. Do not think of the gifts you give to others as an obligation or duty, but think of it as a symbol of your love for them."

So with this in mind, last night we started a new Christmas tradition - Family Secret Santas.  At dinner we drew names out of a hat, and each person has to do something nice for the person whose name they drew - each day until Christmas Eve.  Then, before bedtime on Christmas Eve, before the kids are allowed to open one present, we will each fill out little postcards revealing who we were "Secret Santa" for, and jot down some of the nice things that we did for that person during the month.

Let us remember...

When asked...

Feeling Grateful...

Feeling Grateful...

Gratitude goes beyond...

Not what we say...

“How wonderful it would be if we could help our children and grandchildren to learn thanksgiving at an early age. Thanksgiving opens the doors. It changes a child's personality. A child is resentful, negative—or thankful. Thankful children want to give, they radiate happiness, they draw people.”

Sir John Templeton

Inspired by the quote above, I am in the process of making a number of little Thanksgiving Quote Cards, and I plan to post a new one each day until Thanksgiving. I am going to print them out and each day the kids can take turns choosing one, which we will read together as a family, and then discuss the meaning. They can then hang the card on our Thanksgiving Tree. Even though the kids are still young, I think it will be a great Thanksgiving tradition to start. Gratitude truly is one of the most important aspects of living a good life, and yet it seems to be so easily forgotten in the hustle and bustle of modern living.

So today I shall start with this little gem: