I’ve really enjoyed my first full month of retirement from photography, but it’s quite obvious I need a new hobby. ha!

Right now, my hobby appears to be that of a “couch potato” – I’ve/we’ve managed to watch Dexter Seasons 1 through 4 (um, AWESOME!), every Dance Mom, Scouted, Grey’s Anatomy, CSI (Las Vegas) and of course our regular family shows – Modern Family, Desperate Housewives, etc. While it’s been nice to just sit around and relax on these chilly winter nights, I really need to be on the look out for the next thing! Quilting? Cooking? Zumba/fitness?

We’ll see what happens!

Speaking of fortunes, this was Scott’s:

Appropriate too? We’ll see!

All my problems aside, it was fun to see these videos from almost 18 years ago! Wow, time flies! Gotta say too when I showed the initial “rough draft” to Scott and Claire last night, we were all a total MESS – pretty much bawling our eyes out – haha! Very bittersweet.

Anyway, I plan to do at least 2 more songs, so this is just the first portion. Song credit goes to the band Lonestar – “Let Them Be Little”.

If anyone is interested in the process…I first had to buy a VHS to DVD converter – I bought THIS ONE. Works pretty well, but what they don’t tell you is you need a VCR to use it – all you get are cables, a little converter box and software. So I dug out an old VCR and luckily it still worked!

Then I thought I needed some video editing software, so I bought the top-rated consumer-recommended one – ugh – it SUCKS!!! I probably can’t say the name here, but I’m trying to get my $$ back! ugh! It kept locking up my computer and it was NOT very user-friendly. So I tried making my slideshow on my old fav ProShow Gold, well, that kept locking up too and I couldn’t easily clip the video segments. I tried Roxio Easy Media Creator – which I use all the time to burn CDs/DVDs and that kept locking up too – and it took like 10 minutes to even open the video program. I think our computer’s processor needs to be upgraded or something. So I ended up just doing it all on Windows Movie Maker. Good enough. I seriously wasted so much time trying to do this! But hopefully it will be worth it in the end!

Oh, and if Claire gets her way, I guess Harry (the one with the brown bushy hair) will be my future son-in-law.

The middle photo though was a pic of our Christmas tree – taken with my current very favorite lens – the 35mm f/1.4G – on manual mode to make the lights blurry like that.  :-)Next we have our New Year’s Eve photos! We were getting ready to go across the street to our friend/neighbor’s house for a party, so I barely had any time to take these. uggh! (Scott rushed me out the door…) But I got what I could. Nikon D300, Tamron 17-55mm f/2.8 lens (at like ap of 16, iso 160, shutter 1/160), Alien Bee ring flash. I brought all these photos into Toy Camera Analog Color with the polaroid border and Process type 5.So yay!  I got the first two pages of our 2012 Memory book done!  :-)

While I was at it, I took some ipod touch photos of some of my fav images I took in 2011 of Jacob & Elle. Used “Nashville” and “Early Bird” filters from Instagram here.And tried something completely new on this image – hmm…not sure what I think, but I know Elle is beautiful no matter how I edit the photo!  :-) Have a great week! I start my 10 days in a row again at work tomorrow…boo hoo! Feel sorry for me?

So that set our color scheme of lilac, black & white. We took two of the tables in her room and painted them black (pain in the butt – but they look great!). We also painted her letter “C” silver (which sucked cuz it was an oil-based paint – uggh! Thanks to Scott for cleaning that up!) It took us two days and lots of sweat, but we got it done! She is thrilled and LOVES it!Lamp, bed skirt, zebra body pillow case & drapes from Target, zebra sheets from Kohl’s, coat rack from amazon.com, frame from Home Goods.  Purple Christmas tree I bought last year (along w/ pink & blue) from Wal-Mart.com (sorry Rhiana if you see this – she decided to keep it! )

“BEFORE” – photos taken February 2010. We also decluttered a LOT and we took a lot of her little girlish things and put them in a tote. We’re calling it our time capsule. Didn’t throw them away, but just put them out of sight and out of mind for now.  “AFTER”. Claire said, “It’s FINALLY a COLOR!!” I said Hey! Tan is a color! She disagreed. Hasn’t she changed a TON in two years?!! My baby is growing up – sniff sniff! Once again, Buddy would not leave us alone when we were trying to take pictures! Seriously – we kept taking him off the bed, told the boys to call him, etc. Oh well, he’s so cute! Claire got this picture a while back at TJ Maxx and I love it! Inspiring!!That’s our room make-over! Claire spent $200 of her own on it (Christmas money) and I told her it has to last at least FOUR years – until she’s 17. I just hope she can keep it as clean as it is now!

btw….does anyone want to buy a gallon of lilac paint? I bought two but only ended up using one! Only $15 o.b.o! I’ll also be selling her old bedding on Craig’s List.

Brad & Reonne took the trophy home though for having the ugliest holiday sweaters – she went the extra step and added lights to them! Nicely done Reonne! They get to hang onto Billy Bass until the next party.  :-)

And here’s the video for the White Elephant Gift Exchange. The singing and dancing ostrich was quite the hit of the party!

Just in case you can’t get enough Ugliness for one post, here’s the link to the sweater parade from two years ago = UGLY SWEATERS and the WHITE ELEPHANT exchange.

I love our neighborhood!  :-)

Jacob was super crabby and didn’t want to do it (like usual) and Elle was sweet and cooperative (like usual) so it was pretty awkward at times.

It was snowing SO HARD when we were shooting!  Just kidding - it really wasn’t snowing at all – it was WARM (like almost 40) so almost all the snow was melted and I had to even clone in some snow.  Hardly any snow in MN in December when I would actually LIKE to have some snow for once?? Figures!!

But Florabella came out with a FREE snow overlay download, so that’s what’s on here – #6 at about 80% or so. You should try it! Pretty fun! And hey, it sorta looks real, right?  The outdoor trees I had planned to shoot in at the first lot had been moved indoors, so we went to the next lot. This is where they told me they both felt really dumb because everyone was looking at them, and why would teenagers be shopping for a Christmas tree anyway? (((deeper sigh))). But I got them to do a few shots at the lot before we headed to “the woods”.By then my “hot chocolate” was lukewarm at best. Then Jacob spilled his on the blanket when trying to sit down. Nice.  ;-) Well…………there was my attempt at a Christmas tree lot photo shoot. Totally NOT what I had in mind, but it is what it is. What’s a person to do, right?