Olivia's First Birthday Party

So my baby girl turned ONE the first week of January.  A birthday party was in order.  The theme was obvious.

OLIVIA THE PIG

My lovely sister hosted the party and let me take over the house with the decorations

I had some fun drawing a 'life sized' Olivia to put up:

and also sculpted an Olivia to go on the cake:

The girls got a lovely Olivia themed boa and tiara, and since I couldn't think of anything 'Oliviaish' to get the boys, they got a red slinky.

Madam started out in her pretty birthday dress

but was stripped down to the diaper to enjoy her cake

















I think she enjoyed it.  Later that week I did a 'cake smash' shoot with her, which she also thoroughly enjoyed:

Makes me somewhat sad that my baby girl is growing up so fast, but we're enjoying every minute!

Kids on the walls

No, my children are not climbing the walls, but I'm sure that will happen soon enough.  Remember those pics I took back in July? The ones I showed you here ? Well, they're finally up on the wall.

I printed the photos at McBain's on canvas.  The gallery wraps are pretty expensive, so I just got the canvas, then put them in some frames without glass.  The effect is pretty nice:

I also did the kids' silhouettes.  I took a photo of their profiles, then edited in photoshop and printed to transfer to a canvas board. They were then mounted on a plaque spray painted gloss black.  REALLY like these, but they'll have to be updated every once and awhile just like photos.  I think I took the photo of Olivia when she was about 4 months old, and I can really see the difference!

(and no, Olivia's head is not defomed, she got that extra bump from my dad...we like to call it her extra brains!)

Mr. F and Miss E

Had some fun taking a few pics of a friends kids the other day, and showing her some photoshop ropes.  I'm thinking I need to record a high key action, but not sure how it'll work since every photo needs specific tweaking...any suggestions?

6m photoshoot for Mr. B

So Mr. B is 6 months.  I did his first photoshoot (you can check out the pics here) and now he's all grown up!  Check it out:

Art for Grandma's house

So my mom and dad recently moved to a new house and are taking their time in decorating the place.  One thing Grandma REALLY wanted was grandkid artwork, so my sister and I got together and the kids painted some canvases.  Since the ages range from 2 months to 5 years we kept the pieces similar by using the same size of canvas and paint colours for each one.

The 3 older kids used a paintbrush and went at it.  I'm really excited about Ashton's (bottom right) since he has not really drawn or painted anything in his 4 odd years.  He's a typical type A, so everything has to be perfect or he'll get upset, but it looks like his hands have finally caught up to his imagination!  For the babies we just did some foot prints.  Olivia did hers in the jolly jumper, but I think she had more fun jumping in the bucket of water afterwards...

I had done some high key edits of my kiddos to put on my walls, which made my mom think that she wanted b&w photos of all the grandkids on her walls.  So while my sister was over we also did a little photoshoot for her 3.  A little photoshop later, and we have some great high key photos for grandma's walls!



Pretty pleased with the final product, although it would have been nice to get a good shot of all five kids together.  Unfortunately we tried at the end of the day, and got one, count it ONE shot where all the kids were looking at the camera.  And only one of them looked normal on that shot.  Guess we'll be giving that one a go another time...

6 month photoshoot

So baby girl was 6 months in July so of course a photo shoot was in order. It took a few tries (grumpy, too hyper, gloomy, bad-lighting day, forget to change white balance on camera...) but finally got a nice collection. Olivia is most definitely full of spunk, as these pictures show (tutu - Old Navy, headband - sewn with synthetic scraps cut in circles and melted on the edges, sewn with pearl beads in centre)  Yes, her eye is turning in.  Ashton was in glasses at 17 months, and unfortunately I think Olivia will most likely get them even earlier since we don't have to wait for a referral to a pediatric opthomologist.  So enjoy this uncluttered baby face while it lasts!

And Ashton could not be left out of the loop, so he got to get a few pics snapped too.  What a handsome young man my roly poly baby is turning out to be!

Reasons for crafting.

My two beautiful kiddos - the reasons I craft!  I love sewing and knitting my kids stuff, taking their pictures and generally spoiling them with stuff I make!  Ashton is a newly turned 4 year old (!) and Olivia was about 10 weeks here.

I took pictures of Olivia over the course of a week to get a full 'set'.  Inevitably this is how our shoots ended:

Laptops are a multitasker's best friend.

Took some pics of 'little' Mr. B last week.  At six weeks he's bigger than Olivia (who's 3 months)

Haven't played around in Photoshop for quite some time, so I found an awesome blog with free actions and tutorials here: http://www.thecoffeeshopblog.com/  I'm still working with Photoshop 7, which seems to fulfill all my meager needs, so I see no need to upgrade!  Had lots of fun editing these while nursing my cranky little girl!