Day 3: Sky

For day 3 of my challenge I was supposed to photograph clouds. Well, I haven't seen a cloud in a week. Clear skies and intense sun are the norm for late June down here on the border, so once again I took artistic license and took a photo of the sky. But of course it couldn't be only sky, because that would be boring, so here are a couple sky plus something else shots I took this morning.

f 1.8, 1/2000, ISO 100

f 3.5, 1/2000, ISO 100

Day 2: what my camera wore today

This is day 2 of my self-initiated photography challenge, using this 30 Day Challenge chart posted on the Life, Love, and Photographs blog last spring. Today was supposed to be "what you wore today", but honestly I didn't find that very motivating at all. Today was a loosey-goosey, old holey skirt, comfy but horribly stained T-shirt, and pony tail day. Sorry, folks, there was no way under heaven y'all are getting a photo of that.

However, I did spend time sewing today, and made myself a comfortably padded and pretty cover for my camera neck strap. I used this tutorial as a base, but went off on my own with it (which is pretty much par for the course for me when it comes to sewing).

So, you all can at least see what my camera wore today, and pretty much everyday I will be carrying it. I also made a plain black neck strap cover for hubby to use, because for some reason he says he won't wear a strap with flowers and ruche (the technical term for that that gathered bit of blue fabric). Go figure.

As with yesterday's photo, the first is straight out of the camera and the second is with just a tiny bit of post-production. In fact, today it was a very tiny bit of "fixing"; just a small curves adjustment as I found it to be a bit cool straight from the camera. Hmmmm, is it the camera? It could be my monitor too. I think I need to investigate this further.

f 2.2, 1/100, ISO 1600

I'm still loving that shallow depth of field. I wonder how long it'll take for that to get old, if ever.

Old Sign Tutorial

I have been following the CSI project blog for well over a year now. Hmmm, maybe even over two years. I've loved many of the things bloggers have shared, and have even made a few of the things. I have frequently wanted to enter something myself, but never seem to get around to posting a tutorial of the right theme in the right time. Well, when I saw this week's theme, I got all motivated. I've done a wood project. I love how it turned out. I even have photos ready to share. Here goes my first CSI project tutorial.

I have long wanted a "Mama's Restaurant" sign in my kitchen, just because of all the times my kids have said, "Let's eat at a restaurant." Then I could say, "We are eating at a restaurant. Mama's Restaurant!"

Then one day my husband found an old board out in the desert. It was dirty, covered in spider webs, and oh, so beautifully aged. I particularly loved the old rusty, barely hanging on hinge. Here's how I turned it into a focal point in my kitchen.

Important! Step 1: Have hubby brush the board off very well, and make absolutely sure no spiders are hiding in those cracks. Spiders in the kitchen are not a nice focal point. I'm just saying.

Step 2: Lightly roll on your chosen background color of paint. You're aiming for the result to look like the board was painted when it was new and didn't have all those cracks and splits. Keep the paint light on roller, so that no paint gets into the nooks and crannies. Paint the board lightly, and not too evenly, and allow to dry.

Step 3: Paint your lettering. I practiced on a strip of butcher paper cut to roughly the same size as the board, in order to work out the spacing. I went with "café" because "restaurant" wouldn't fit. Allow to dry.

Step 4: Sand over the paint to make it look even more roughed up.

Step 5: Hang and enjoy (Yes, those are cast iron pans hanging below the sign. It was my husband's idea, but it looks great. We just pull one down when we need to use it.)

I hope you enjoyed this short and sweet tutorial. Maybe I'll do another for the CSI project some day.

I got a new camera!

 

My new baby, a Canon Rebel T3i, plus my lenses, 50mm f/1.8 II and 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS II.

I consider myself an amateur photographer, always striving to take the best photos I can with the equipment I have. For years that has been a simple Kodak point-in-shoot, but even with it I have been able go beyond just pointing and shooting and have learned to compose my shots, look for great lighting, and much more.

To the left is a shot I particularly love from that Kodak, straight-from-the-camera without post-production adjustments. Her skin is so nice and creamy because of the light from an open door the right of the camera, and I love the perspective.

However, for some time now I have been feeling as if I had outgrown my Kodak, and I have even felt my desire to take photographs waning because it. Just this week I have been blessed to finally upgrade to a DSLR camera, and after months of research and waiting, I opted for a Canon Rebel T3i . If my experience with my Kodak is any indication, it will be many, many years before I outgrow this camera.

Instead of purchasing the camera with lens kit, I opted to order the camera body and the lens I actually wanted separately. It meant I couldn't take my camera home the day I bought it (I had to wait a week for it to come in), but the price was actually $10 or so cheaper. Why bother? Well, do you love those portrait shots with the subject in perfect focus but the background blurred and dreamy? I do, and it's the lens that makes that happen. Well, specifically it's the f-stop of the lens. The Rebel kit lens' lowest f-stop is 3.5 and you need at least a 2.8 or so to get that nice blurry background. The 50mm lens I purchased has an f-stop down to 1.8!

Anyway, to help me quickly master this camera, I have decided to follow the 30 Day Photography Challenge that Life, Love, and Photographs hosted last June. I am taking some artistic license, however, as mastering the camera is my goal. So, for example, today I will post a portrait, not a self-portrait (and you can see how my lens blurred my background so nicely).

This was shot in manual mode, with an ISO of 800, f-stop of 2.8, and shutter speed of 1/160. There is a large window directly behind the camera, but it is tinted so it is a subdued light. This photo is straight out of the camera.

This is the same shot cropped and with a bit of post-production adjustment in Photoshop Elements (less than 3 minutes of work). That dreamy, blurred background makes me so happy! (Especially since those bookshelves are particularly messy and dusty right now ;).

Organization for the Naturally Unorganized (part 1)

Introduction

 

I believe there are only two kinds of people in the world when it comes to organization. There are the naturally organized people, and everyone else. The naturally organized (the NOs) have cute little mottos like, "A place for everything and everything in its place," while the rest of us, those that I think of as the naturally unorganized (the NUs), can't even find the place for our things, let alone find our things to put them there.

So, how do you know which group you belong in? Well, most of us know in our hearts, but if you are unsure take this little quiz:

1. Have you ever spent more time setting up an organization system than you spent using said system?  
2. If I were to ask you to tell me the specific location of at least one pen, your keys, a pair of scissors, and last month's water bill, would you be unsure or doubtful of where all these items are?
3. Do you want to knit/sew/scrapbook/whatever but the time it would take to set it up would be more than the crafting time you have available?
4. Have you ever missed an activity that you wanted to go to, because you totally forgot about it or remembered the date and time wrong?
5. Have you had to dig through clean, but not folded and put away, laundry in order to get dressed more than twice in a week?

If you answered "yes" to most of these questions, you're in good company. I can answer "yes" to all of them; I am the queen of the NUs. 

But, is there hope for us? Yes, but it's not in the way the NOs would lead you to think. We cannot just do things their way and hope to suddenly become like them. Think about it, you know exactly what I mean. Most of us NUs, if we've been adults for more than a couple of years, have spent time and money on some wonderful, beautiful organization system that will fix all of our problems, only to find that it just becomes something else that doesn't have a place and doesn't get dusted.

The problem with all of the organization systems out there is that they were developed by.... not you. "Huh?," you say. In order for a system to work, I mean really work, it needs to take your individual home, activities, and preferences in mind. For example, I hate to write by hand, so any system that has me setting up a paper calendar that I have to write appointments on is not going to be kept up to date by me. I'll put it off until the calendar is so out of date that it's useless. So, my calendar system is totally digital, and I find keeping it up to date almost effortless.

Anyway, this post is the first of what I plan to be a series on how to organize your home, homeschool, crafts, appointments, and more with your own needs and preferences as your guide. I will be giving lots of examples of how I do things, but only as ways to spark your own creativity to think outside the color-coded, labeled, and shelved box.

Review of All About Reading Pre-level 1

All About Reading is the newest line of products from All About Learning Press, the makers of All About Spelling. All About Reading level pre-1 and level 1 are currently available, with level 2 due out some time this year. At the time of this writing I have completed level pre-1 with one child, and am in the first few lessons of it with another one. I have also recently started level 1.

If I had to say what made All About Reading (AAR) so great in a single, short sentence, it would be, "All About Reading is research based." The author, Marie Rippel, is extremely well read in the research and studies behind what makes successful readers, and AAR focuses on the things that have the most impact on future reading success. Marie terms these "The Big Five Skills" and describes what they are better than I can.

Of these Big Five Skills, phonological awareness is the one most overlooked or underestimated by other learn-to-read programs out there. Phonological awareness is, "

I don't know if it is that they are ignorant of the importance of this skill, or if they assume children develop this skill naturally and don't need to be taught. Some children do develop phonemic awareness naturally; my oldest two children did.

AAR level pre-1 takes your child through the alphabet three times. The first time through focuses on capital letters, the second time on lower case letters, and the final time on the most common sound of each of the letters. This level is "pre-1", because it doesn't teach reading. Rather, it teaches the skills necessary for reading success, skills that most other learn-to-read programs overlook (more on this in a bit). Depending on your child's development and upon your feelings on the better late than early debate, AAR level pre-1 would be appropriate for 3 year olds on up to even 7 or 8 year olds. For me and mine, I find it best for 5 year olds, although I still put it to good use with a 6 year old last year because it wasn't published until just after his 6th birthday.

Like all All About Learning Press products, All About Reading is set up to be taught at the child's pace. Level pre-1 has 78 lessons, but an older child could do 2 lessons a day and a very young child could work at the pace of 1 lesson per week. I used it last year in the second half of Kindergarten doing 1 lesson a day, and I am starting it this year in the second half of preschool aiming for 2 days on each lesson.


In addition to introducing a letter and doing phonological awareness activities, each lesson of level pre-1 also has you sing the alphabet song while pointing out each letter on the chart, read a selection from one of two books (Zigzag Zebra or Lizard Lou), do an ABC Craft Sheet (a sampling of pages my son completed is to the right), do some additional letter activities (the teacher’s manual gives a list of suggestions), and finally 20 minutes of Read Aloud Time is scheduled. You are left to choose the books for reading aloud, but it is scheduled so that you remember the importance of doing it. I use Sonlight for our Read Aloud Time.

I don't use the zebra puppet. As popular as Ziggy seems to be, it's just not in me to talk to a child through a puppet. Too many bad Lamb Chop memories, I guess. My kids have done well with me just reading, "Ziggy says..." and then doing the activity without the puppet. Anyway, if you have similar puppet feelings, just rest assured the program works just fine without it.

Lastly, I thought I'd share an iPod app that I've been using with my youngest as another option for the additional letter activities. The iWriteWords app is a cute and fun way for your little one to practice writing capital and lower case letters, and then words. I like this app better than numerous other free and less expensive ones, because this app teaches letter form the same way that my chosen handwriting curriculum, Handwriting Without Tears, does. Too many of the other apps I found allowed the child to trace the letter any way they wanted too. I know from past experience how important it is to develop the habit of starting letters at the top from the very beginning, or they will never break the habit of starting at the bottom. Anyway, there is an iWriteWords lite. It only includes the letters A, B, and C, capitals and lower case, but it does give you a chance to see if you'll like it before you buy.

Flashcards with 4 Kids at One Time

Last week I did math flashcards with four kids, with four very different abilities, all at once. It was a great review for each of the kids on their own level, and was great fun to boot. I used multiplication flashcards, but it would work with addition flashcards as well. 

Here's how it worked:
I showed the card to my 7 yo and he had to tell me what the two numbers added together equaled. Then I showed the card to my 9 yo and he had to tell me what the numbers multiplied equaled. Then my 12 year old, whose back had been to the flashcard the entire time, had to tell me what the two numbers were after having only heard their sum and their product. Finally my preschooler read off the two numbers.

Did you get that? Let me try again. Using the top card pictured at the right here, my 7 yo old would say, "5", my 9 yo would say "6", and my 12 yo would have to think what two numbers add up to 5 and multiple up to 6. She would answer "2 and 3" and then my preschooler would look at the cards, read off the numbers "3 and 2" and tell the 12 yo that she was right.

All four kids enjoyed the activity so much that they begged to do it more and were disappointed when I told them we would save it to do again next week. 

Anyway, I got this idea for the book If I'm Diapering a Watermelon, Then Where'd I Leave the Baby?: Help for the Highly Distractible Mom by Carol Barnier, although I did modify it to include the preschooler as well. If you have never heard Carol Barnier speak, I highly recommend going out of your way to hear her. A few of her talks can be heard on her website, although it was the one with the same title as the above book and the one titled "Don't Miss the Gift in This Child" that touched me so deeply.

Brown Eyes Blue

This post is mostly about the problems I've been having with running photo retouching actions on my dark eyed but fair skinned daughter. My favorite Photoshop Elements action is 2 Minute Miracle from The CoffeShop Blog, but while it is ideal for my blued eyed boys, it does seem to have issues with my brown eyed girls (and one brown eyed boy).

Here, see what I mean. This is a photo of my baby (who is almost 5, ACK).

This isn't the best of photos, as silly mama didn't think she would want pictures of another child's birthday party. I didn't have my camera with me, so I took this with my iPod. Anyway, the only work done on this photo was cropping and I used the clone stamp tool to clean up some pizza sauce off her check (clone stamp tool on the laptop is almost better than wipies in the purse).

This is the same photo with the 2 Minute Miracle action applied to following the tutorial for the Eye Bright portion of it. I left the opacity of "Bright Eyes" layer at 100%, and as you can see it didn't result in space alien eyes at all. Actually, they look great. Except... it turned her brown eyes blue. A pretty blue, to be sure, but blue nonetheless. I've ran into this problem with other photos as well, although depending on the lighting sometimes it turns her eyes green.

Here's the same photo again, with the same 2 Minute Miracle action, but this time I set the "Bright Eyes" layer to 0%. She looks more like herself, but here her eyes seem a little dull and not quite right to me. Part of the joy that is the 2 Minute Miracle is the way it makes eyes POP, and these just don't.

Same photo, same action, now with the "Bright Eyes" layer set at 30%. It's better than 0%, but there is still a blue-ish cast. When I go lower to 20-15%, you can hardly tell a difference from the 0%. I can live with this, and it has been what I've been using for her photos, but I'm not completely happy.

This time after running the 2 Minute Miracle action I hid the "Bright Eyes" layer and then ran the PowderRoom After Dark action. This action was made for retouching dark complexions, so I hid all of the layers of it except the "Eye Pop" layer and left it at 100% (the skin smoothing and defining layers are just way too much contrast for fair skin). I can't discern much if any difference between this and the photo above, so it's not the solution I'm looking for.

Not Just Pinning

I succumbed to the blog-'o-sphere pressure and finally got myself a Pinterest account a couple weeks ago. However, I don't want to be someone that is always pinning and never doing, so here is some doing proof.

I've been pinning hair styles for ideas to use with my daughters hair, AND I've actually used a few of the ideas over the last week or so.

I took this idea on the left and used it for my preschooler's hair Sunday (on the right, sorry it's not the best of pics).

 

For my pre-teen, I took a tutorial on how to use a headband to create curls without using heat, and made it into a hair style. My daughter (right) obviously doesn't need help in the curls department, but we love the look of her hair wrapped around a headband. It looks like a soft crown of hair. We left the hair hanging down in the back on this day, and added a big pink flower to complete the look.

Workboxes Update

Last August I wrote about the workbox system I was implementing, and I promised to write a follow-up post in January or so. Well, June is more than a little late, but here is the follow-up on our workbox system.

The reason for this follow-up post is simple; many people blog about their wonderful workbox system they are just starting to use, but you don't hear much about what people have been doing for the long term. I, myself, have spent hours putting together a system that didn't last two weeks before, so I think it's important to let people know what has worked for us in the long term.

I am happy to say that we are still using workboxes. 

 

We have changed things from how we started, however. The biggest change is my two oldest kids. My 8th grader didn't start this school year with workboxes of any sort, but rather I was just giving him an assignment checklist. My 6th grader was using a workfolder system (see the August post I linked to in the first paragraph above). Neither of these held up to the test of time, mostly because they required regular updating from me. The workfolder system especially was an epic fail, as it took 10+ minutes daily of my time in order for it to work. 10 minutes isn't much, I suppose, but they were 10 unnecessary minutes and as such they all too often were spent elsewhere.

Even the way the little kids use their workboxes has changed slightly. The whole "take off the numbered square and put it on this grid" thing is gone. First, neither the kids nor I needed that movement of numbers to feel like the work was done. Completing a bin and putting it back is more than enough visually to get the idea across. Second, I have always allowed my kids at least some choice in the order they do their subjects, but me setting up the numbering took all choice away from them. 

Anyway, here is the description of how workboxes work in our homeschool now. We've been doing it this way for months (more months than we did it the other way) and I don't see it changing except I'm thinking of putting their colors on the ends so I can see more easily at a glance whose bin is whose.

Each kid has one bin per subject, more or less. My 8th grader has one bin per hour, as I require an hour from him a day for most subjects, but Spanish and Grammar only take up an hour together total. At the beginning of the school day everyone moves their bins away from their spot under the bookshelves and as they go through their school work they put the bins back one at a time. When they have gone through all their bins they are done for the day. They get to choose what order they want to do their work (I do override their choice as needed, but it isn't often) and that diminishing stack of bins is a great motivator. Many of the subjects don't require set up at all, as they are just "do the next thing" subjects like handwriting, math, and spelling. For history and science for the older kids I either give them a print out check list with lessons that will last them months at a time, or I refer them to the Sonlight Instructor's Guide to look up the assignment on their own. For the younger kids I put some IG pages in the bin with the books for me to use. The only bin, out of all five kids, that requires daily set up is the bin that holds my K'er's page from All About Reading Level Pre-1's Letters and Sounds Activity Book as it needs different craft supplies daily (I promise to do a review of AAR soon, it's WONDERFUL). Well, I've trained my guy that setting up for the next day is part of finishing up for today, so this bin is ready for the next day by the time he puts it away. Plus, that makes him excited for the next day too.

Anyway, that's our system in a nutshell. If you have any questions, ask and I'll give more detail.