kirstencan

Wannabe Photobooth

I posted about this on Pip and Ollie today -  but I wanted to share our fun advent activity for today here, too.

I tacked a piece of Christmas fabric to the wall of Monkey's room over his bed, set the camera up on the tripod and let the kids go nuts with the remote shutter release.

Kinda like this:  (taken with my little camera while they were busy with the other one)

We took about 134 shots - here are some of my favorite ones - not edited or cropped in any way.

 

 

 

Sometimes I'd watch the camera screen and tell them if they weren't in the shot - but that's all I did.  They had so much fun playing with the camera (without actually touching it - hooray!).

And for each of these funny shots that were inadvertently cropped or just plain funny, there are just as many of them looking sweet and smiling.  Love them - I feel like I got a present today!

I got in on the action, too - I took photos with each of the kids and then all together - I'm not in too many of our photos because I'm always behind the camera, so this was good.  And you can see my face in most of them, I promise.

I don't think we'll wait until next Christmas to do this again!

Annual Train Ride

It's that time of year again - time for the annual ride on our historic railroad.  This year was a little chilly, but not as bad as two years ago - all in all it was a perfect afternoon.

 

There are few things cooler than that HUGE steam engine.  At least in our boys' book anyway.

I love how the passenger cars look - but riding in them makes me motion sick pretty quickly.

We stick to the open cars - and love the wind and the views.

Because really?  You definitely wouldn't see this view as well from inside.

 

Dinner at 'The Train Restaurant' afterwards with Kirk and Eva was a fun treat - and then we stopped by their studio to check it out (so cool!  And I forgot to take any pictures!).  BTW, they are offering a letterpress holiday card workshop next month - I am seriously considering it!

Anyway, it made for an excellent Saturday.  Even the long drive there was great because driving through the canyons filled with red and orange leaves was amazingly gorgeous.

Here's our 2008 and 2007 rides as well.

At the Stadium

I met my brothers at the soccer stadium to catch a game this weekend.

 

 

 

Besides the gorgeous sunset - we won!

A Yellow Chair

I spotted this old chair in my neighbor's donation pile in their driveway and asked if I could have it.  It was brown, paint-spattered, and had some electrical tape wrapped around it.

I spray painted it (quickly and badly) a sunny yellow color.  I hate spray painting.  Such gross, gross fumes.

Anyway, I was hoping it would look okay for a senior photo shoot I was doing for a neighbor.

I think it worked.  Especially by the sunflowers.

Hooray for colorful props!

Now I would really like blue, red, and green chairs, too!  Better keep my eyes open, I guess!

Have a great weekend!

Polaroid Love

I mentioned last year that I'd passed up several Polaroid cameras because of lack of film.  Well, last weekend at a yard sale I found a Polaroid camera*... WITH FILM... for $3.  

Ten shots.  Ten tries at something super fun.

With film that expired nearly 5 years ago.

I loved it.

I scanned a couple to show you.

The gnomes are my favorite shot (hence the new blog header) - the clothespins are my second.

And now I'm asking for more film for Christmas.

And yeah, I was the geeky mom who brought THREE cameras to the last day of swimming lessons.  Whatever.  One was for video.

 

*It's a 1200FF

Princess - doll photographer

After her dance portraits last month, my daughter thought it would be fun to take dance photos of her dolls.  I set her up with my point-and-shoot on a tripod and she got to work posing her dolls.

It was pretty cute.  I want to give her more chances to take my camera out and discover photography.  Especially outside this summer.

Later, I taught her how to do simple photo editing in Digikam (rotate, crop, auto color-correction). 

Here are (a few) of her photos.

It was a fun afternoon - and a great summer activity for her!

Since then, we've checked out some 'Photography for Kids' books from the library, and she's wanted to take my camera out nearly every day!  Love it.

When I was her age, I LOVED taking pictures (with my Kodak Instamatic that I bought for $4 at a yard sale).

Oh, wait, I still do!

100 Days

I realized recently that I'd passed the 100 mark on my Project 365!  I started this photography project without knowing how well I'd be able to keep up.  But it's been fun, and challenging, and I've enjoyed it.  I looked through my set and made myself choose my favorite five photos to share today (I usually have a hard time picking favorites of anything):

(click on them to see them in flickr)

I could have picked 5 just of feet.  Apparently I really like to photograph feet.  Who knew?

This has been great to help me know my DSLR better - although some are taken with my point-and-shoot when I'm out and about.   Some days I take a lot more shots than other days, so I have more to choose from, some days I just get nothing good.  Some days I almost forget.

But all of them have memories attached.  It's kinda amazing to me, because it's like a visual journal - even with just one photo.  Looking at the one photo for that day usually reminds me of other things we did that day.  Cool stuff, and I'm glad I joined in.

Now here's hoping I didn't jinx myself and that I manage to finish the other 200+ photos for the year!

Buried

It started with moving the bookcases from the living room upstairs to the bedroom.  And then moving the little bookcases from the bedroom to the basement.  Oh wait, leave one in the upstairs hall, and bring the very little one from there down to the living room.  And the big ol' recliner?  Up to Monkey's room.  For now.  Then I tried to clear out my closet - the one that I don't use for clothes - just for jamming in entirely too many crafting supplies.  And now I'm moving the sewing corner in my bedroom into my closet.  Oh, wait, can we move my sewing table to the basement and bring up our old tiny dining table?  Okay, and now the recliner can be moved to where my sewing table was (I'm glad my husband lifts weights).

The Crafting Closet has much potential, and could be pretty cool when it's done. 

But right now I'm buried.  In a pile of crafting supplies. 

I hope to be unearthed soon. 

In other news, I'm trying to do the 365 in 2009 photo challenge on flickr.  Just coming up with one photo a day.  Well, I take photos everyday anyway, but the challenge will be coming up with a usable one - and then actually uploading it.  We'll see if I can keep up - you can see my set here.

Polaroid Wonder

Erin's post reminded me of this photo I took a few months ago.  Kirk and Eva came to visit, and we enjoyed hanging out with them at the parents' house one weekend.  Eva brought her polaroid camera - she has an ongoing portrait project.  When she took pictures of us I realized that my kids had never seen polaroid film develop!

Here's Eva and Princess watching her film develop.  She thought it was darn cool.  Isn't that weird that for the most part our kids won't know the wonder of polaroid?  Don't you remember waiting and watching them develop?  Too bad the film is being discontinued.  I actually passed up a couple of polaroid cameras at yard sales this summer, not being willing to pay eBay prices for the film.  I guess fujifilm makes some types of film for polaroids, but not the iconic square white border one.

(sigh)

And check out this polaroid photo booth - such a great idea that I wanted to use someday!

Train Ride

We went on the local historic train this weekend.  Last year it was unusually cold, this year it was too hot.  Still fun, but I don't know if we'll do it again next year.

Thomas was, of course, in heaven.  We had a hard time keeping the boys' heads inside the coaches.  And Thomas' glasses fell out the window - but Aaron caught them.  What a guy!

We were in the caboose when they unhooked the engine and brought it around on the siding to the other end of the train.  That was pretty cool to see.

 
It was fun playing with my camera - more photos on flickr.

Last year's ride posted here.