Trying out this black and white thing

My friend Lisa has started a new weekly photo challenge called Black and White Wednesday (actually it's not really new, I'm just scared of black and white so I procrastinated forever). Anyhow, this week I decided to participate. I was playing around with the daunting Manual setting on the dang camera today, trying to figure out how the heck "real" photographers get that breathtaking exposure and perfect white balance. And these ended up being the photos I used. The girls were separated for a little quiet time and Ree, bored by her sister's absence, agreed to sit (relatively) still and let me try out a whole bunch of settings on the camera. It was a cloudy, dreary day, so we didn't have much light and I had her by the window because I was trying to wring every drop of luminance out of that weak little sun. I think I'm blathering on because I'm afraid to put these photos out there, so I'll shut up now and post my black and white pics. Fine, here they are... (Lightroom editing stuff: converted to grayscale, increased the blacks a tiny bit, adjusted a bunch of the color levels, applied the Cold Tone preset, adjusted the exposure/saturation/vibrance down a little bit, tried to desaturate the blues that snuck into the eyes) (Lightroom editing stuff: applied the B&W High Contrast preset, pulled the saturation levels down, increased the blacks, bumped exposure up a little) (Lightroom editing stuff: converted to grayscale, bumped blacks up a little, applied the Cold Tone preset, decreased saturation a little, tried to desaturate the blues that snuck into the eyes) Well shoot, these ended up being kinda fun. Maybe I won't be so scared next time! I don't ever do black and white, so while I added the editing details on what I did underneath each photo, please know that these are by no means the "right" ways or "expert" ways of doing things. Basically I took the photos in color, then converted to black and white in Lightroom and played around with different things until they looked good to me and had slight underlying color tints (because I don't like stark gray faces). For camera setting stuff: I used Manual mode (gasp) on my Nikon D300, and ended up using the 18-200 lens, 1/80 sec at f5.6, focal length 150mm, and ISO 500. And I used spot metering for the exposure, although to be honest I don't even know if that metering choice works in the Manual mode. Heh. I guess I'll either have to check the manual or bribe TubaDad to read it for me. Oh, and here's what the original colors looked like, in case you're curious. To see all the other fun Black and White Wednesday entries, check out Lisa's post today.

Fashion friday (and a possible record for the most layers?)

TubaDad and I decided to live dangerously and take the girls out for a fancy schmancy dinner tonight. So I told them to run upstairs and put on something pretty and warm (it's a little chilly outside). And here's what they came back with. Heh. Funny little fancy girls. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that they had on the most intricate outfits in that whole place. Ree in head-to-toe blue, Ro in quite-the-interesting combo of pink-based clothes. They were so well-behaved during dinner that we were kind of in shock. And ebullient. Dare I tempt fate by declaring that we have finally reached the point where we can take them out and actually enjoy ourselves?! Hm, we'll see... By the way, they thought the cheese plate was just to die for (tried every single one of the cheeses and dueled over the last bits of sharp cheddar and smoky gouda) and then couldn't agree on a dessert so were thrilled when we splurged and let Ro order the warm apple tart with gelato and Ree order the creme brulee. They also couldn't believe their luck when the waiter brought them custom pineapple/orange juice blends. TubaDad was chuckling as all these layers came off at bedtime. And I just had to take a picture, of course. Little sweeties.

Easter is not going to sneak up on us this year

I don't want to shock anyone, but we are actually ready for Easter. I know! We're the most last-minute people in the world, our friends and family will sadly attest. But for some inexplicable reason, we are 100% prepared for Easter this time around. 1. We've stopped by a local mall to see the bunny himself. Ok, this wasn't due to any stellar planning on our parts, we just happened to be at the mall picking up a white shirt for TubaDad (needed an exact replacement for the one that was ruined in the accident) and literally ran into the bun. (Ro is on the left, and Ree is on the right, and if it wasn't obvious, they chose these stunning outfits) 2. We've decorated the house. Martha Stewart would undoubtedly throw-up if she saw what passes for decoration around these parts, but the giddy four-year-olds love it. 3. All of the top-secret Easter-basket items have been procured and are hiding in a bag in the office. 4. And we've done two successful Easter projects so far: * Project #1 ~ Crayola rainbow cookies * Project #2 ~ Fruity Pebbles artwork Both are great projects to do with your kids. I posted the details/pics in separate posts so this doesn't become the longest post in the history of blogging. Oh, and the cousins are coming over for egg decorating this weekend, and we signed the girls up for our neighborhood Easter party and egg hunt. See? Ready, right?

Easter project #1 ~ Crayola rainbow cookies

Normally I wouldn't buy edible items from Crayola, but we were picking up yet another thumb prescription at the local Walgreen's drugstore and were intrigued by this funky box. So it came home with us, and we excitedly tried it out. I gotta tell you, the stuff rocked! Ro and Ree know the drill by now—yada yada eggs yada yada butter. I guess the girls are pretty familiar with box mixes at this point (yeah I'm not going to win any awards for from-scratch baking any time soon). They thought the hand-scrunching of the dough was pretty fun. And really, how could you beat these little color packets? Neat kneading. Heh. We did a quick hand washing right after this and their hands came out sparkling clean: If you're wondering what the heck the girls are wearing at this point, Ro (in pink) has a skirt around her neck for "decoration" and Ree (purple) was dressing her babydolls and found her old favorite baby sweater (knitted by Ma) and just had to put it on. Whatever... Then there was a whole lotta very serious cutting and decorating. No messy sprinkles or icing to worry about, just some easy multicolored dough to play with. Notice that they didn't even wear aprons: Hm, the kitchen got a little trashed... But no worries, everything (and everyone) cleaned up easily with a quick wipedown: Now who wouldn't want one of these beautiful Easter cookies?! The girls used some of my old cookie cutters to make Easter eggs (the kind of blobby-looking ones), bunnies (completely unrecognizable, don't even bother looking for them), butterflies, hearts, and a big man for TubaDad. We figured out at the very end that it worked really well to mush a bunch of colors together and then do the cookie cutting (see the two multicolored eggs near the bottom right?). Also, if your kiddos weren't quite as exuberant about piling up massive amounts of dough, your cookies would look a lot more like the ones on the box: Ooooo boy, the process of choosing the first cookie to eat took even longer than the decorating: Mmmmm. I'm going to go sneak one right now.

Easter project #2 ~ Fruity Pebbles artwork

This fun project was really simple, and I also got the supplies in the local Walgreen's drugstore (hm, I guess I shop there a lot). I got inspired while walking through the cereal aisle, so I picked up a box of Fruity Pebbles cereal and some Elmer's Glue, and knew we had some colored paper at home. We drew Easter shapes on the paper (I figured out near the end that it worked best to draw the shapes with thick Sharpie pen that would still show if the gluing wasn't precision-ish). Covered the lines with glue, then shook Fruity Pebbles onto the glue and dumped off the excess. We tried whole pebbles and crushed-up ones, and both looked fine, so I think it's just personal preference. Kinda cute, and the girls thought it was a hoot. Please ignore the laundry and various other messy items strewn on the hearth. I'd say it doesn't usually look that way, but that would be a lie.

Pssst, wanna sneak a peek at our family photos?

One of my absolute fave photographers, Erin Cobb, was in California last weekend, and we were luckyluckylucky that all of our schedules lined up and we could steal her away from her family reunion to take some pics of our family. What a treat! She posted a little sneak peek here, if you'd like to read what she wrote. I think I might have squealed with glee when I looked at them. Well, actually I know I did. Anyhooooo, we're going to have some serious trouble narrowing down which ones to print, because we love them all so far and this is only a fraction of what she took. Woohoo! Ro is in the silver dress/jean jacket and Ree is in the tan top/purple shrug. Ro and Ree loved Erin. And they thought she was hilarious. They wish she would come play with them every day, but in the meantime they're happy just to pretend to be her. Today Ree told Ro to sit on the couch, then held up her toy cell phone/camera and started clicking away saying "Hi, I is Erin, and we is going to have a lot of fun and I is going to take a lot of pictures of you. Now what's your name? Oh. Hello Ro! Can you sit right there? Ok. Can you say bananas? Heehee. Ok..."

What they were doing while I was on the computer

The girls were suspiciously quiet at the art table yesterday while I typed furiously in the office. Normally this would have raised a few hackles, but I had a deadline to meet and didn't have time to worry about it. Ro didn't make a peep, and Ree ran back and forth for a little while yelling that she wanted to know how to spell "cupboard" and asking me each letter about five times. It took a loooooooong time. Man that is a big, annoying word to airspell across the house. Anyhow, after a slightly nervewracking twenty minutes, I raced into the kitchen, did a lightning-fast assessment, and was amazed to find that the Hubei Wrecking Crew hadn't destroyed one single thing while I was busy. What's more, Ro had made a little "book" in that time. She stapled a few papers together, wrote a bunch of words that I didn't know she knew, and drew some pictures. Is it just me, or does the pint-sized author look kind of smug?: See cat on mat: Pan: No top (wait, what? oh whatever): Cab: No (hm, perhaps I said that word too many times today?): When the heck did she learn to write words?! She really knew what she was doing too. I know, because I thought she had just written random letters that made accidental words. But when quizzed, she could spell all of those words out loud too. Little sweetie. She was so proud it was adorable. Ro has been dying to learn to read for a few months now, and is just SoClose. By the way, Ree can't spell anything yet and has less-than-zero interest in reading, but that kiddo is funny. I went to the cupboard/pantry for a Cheez-Its run, and saw this smeary little Post-It taped in the middle of the door. Remember that word we were airspelling together? Well you can see it if you look really hard: Hee! You know I'm never taking that off, right? Love them. PS: Maybe I'm crazy, but Ree's thumb seems to look a little worse than it did this weekend. It's kind of bumming me out. It looked great on Saturday and Sunday and I'm wondering if that was because the old medicine that we were using on Wed-Fri (the heavy duty steroid cream Mometasone Furoate) was working? And now that we've switched back to the Mupirocin we're backtracking? Ugh. I'll try to get another picture of it tomorrow. We have a followup pediatric dermatologist appointment scheduled in a couple of weeks and I might need to bump it up.

One of the neatest parks we've been to

We've been to a whole lotta parks (hundreds? more?). The girls are seasoned park connoisseurs by now. And this one that we just visited up in wine country has got to be in the top 5. It was called Howarth Park, and had a huge four-sided climbing wall, pony rides, an amazing 20-foot spider-web climbing apparatus, a wild west play area, swings (a must for our girls), a lake with boat rides, a couple of standard-but-huge playgrounds, a carousel, a running train that you could ride on, a snackbar that served lunch, and more. It rocked! If you're driving to or from Healdsburg, Sonoma, or Santa Rosa, you have to stop here—your kids will thank you and they might even get so tired out that they'll sleep in the car for the rest of the drive. Bonus! Yeah, it was a cool place! While we were in the area, we also checked out the Charles Schultz Museum (or the Snoopy Museum as Ro and Ree called it). The girls were pretty excited about the famous spotted beagle and "Woodstomp." They don't really know all the characters, but had a good time anyhow. Their favorite places were the snoopy-shaped maze out front, the hands-on art area upstairs, the courtyard with statues, and the letter-writing station downstairs. The museum is really geared toward adults, not kids, so if you're short on time, just head to the giftshop across the street and go upstairs. They have a bunch of Peanuts statues, and a Peanuts movie-viewing station with beanbag chairs up on that second floor, and you don't have to pay anything. (Our friend Stacey gave us this tip, and she was so right!) I should probably mention that Ree is in pink/green and Ro is in purple, today. And yes, they are wearing each other's shoes and pullovers, which could be confusing. Yeesh. They had a neat holograph bowl in the museum courtyard, and the girls kept trying to blow the images away: They saw this statue and were thrilled to take their picture with "Woodstomp"—never even spared a glance for that dude standing behind him! Poor ole Charlie Brown really doesn't get any love, does he? Later we camped in the movie-viewing station and watched a fun Easter Snoopy movie while Ree cuddled up with her stuffed snoopy souvenir and Ro played with her nesting Peanuts dolls: Fun stuff. We're home now, so it's back to the grind. Such as it is. Heh. But I would love to know if you have a favorite park/kid spot? Ro and Ree are so much easier to travel with now, so we're taking a lot more trips and it would be fun to have a list of must-see kid places all over the country.