Brianne lost her first tooth.

This has been a very eventful week for Brianne, and I have been horrible about taking pictures to document it. The first big news was that Brianne lost her first tooth. It looked like it was ready in the morning but I was to nervous to pull it out. I was afraid I would do something wrong and make it hurt, I didn't want to traumatize her, and make the rest of her teeth an ordeal to get out. So I told her to wait for daddy to pull it out when he got home from work. Well it didn't last that long. She wiggled it all the way through kindergarten and came home with it in a bag. There is nothing like loosing a tooth at school to make you famous for a few minutes.

Here she is showing off her lost tooth, she is also posing with her soccer metal. It was her last soccer game that night and of course I forgot my camera, and for every other soccer game this season. So I just snapped this shot when we got home. Other events I missed on camera was her kindergarten graduation. I actually got a few shots with my phone, but it is such a pain to get them off that I don't know if I will ever actually do it. If it is any concelation to her, I also forgot to bring my camera to Kaylee's 3rd grade program this week. It was cute they did a wax museum (they were the wax models) of the Aztec empire. Kaylee was a Aztec woman cooking dinner. Luckily my neighbor was thoughful enough to get a picture of her, so hopefully I will remember to get her to e-mail it to me.

Create Your own Blogger Backgrounds

So, if any of you have been looking at my blog in the last couple hours you probably noticed, I have been messing around with my background. Well, it took more than a few tries but I finally managed to create my own background!!!! It wasn't quite as simple as I thought, but if you are not afraid to mess around a little bit, it definitely is do able. The best help I found was on http://thecutestblogontheblock.com/ look under blogging secrets, p.s. I also figured out how to change my font there too. However, the dimensions they give for Photoshop were a bit off, so you might have to mess around with that. I found better dimensions on a you tube video, but still had to play around a bit. So if you are ready to try, two things you absolutely need are: Photoshop Elements, and a free account on Photobucket. It is also helpful if you already have some free digital scrapbooking backgrounds and embellishments. I have given the link to the ones I like the best in the past, but I will give it again in case you are interested http://shabbyprincess.com/, and here are two new ones I found: I am super excited about this one http://summertimedesigns.blogspot.com/ and here is another that looks like you could find some good stuff, but it would take a little more searching http://digiscrapdepot.com/ . Anyway good luck and let me know if you need anymore info, I am always looking for people who are willing to listen to me talk about digital scrapbooking without getting that glazed over look in their eyes.

Recital 2010

Last week we held our little recital in the church. The girls all did really well, I was really proud of them. It is good to have this recital out of the way, they are fun but a lot of work. Now I can just enjoy the rest of the summer. It was a little sad because both Kaylee and Brianne have decided to not take dance anymore, so this was my last year teaching them. On the bright side Sydnie will be old enough to take dance this fall and I have already put together a little class for her. It should be interesting teaching this class, they are all either just turning 3 or not quite 3 when class starts. This is the youngest class I have ever taught so wish me luck!

Kaylee and Brianne before the recital started. They look so cute in their costumes and make-up. I think they like they recital mostly because they get to put on make-up and sparkles.

Brianne ready to tap. She did a tap number to "Putting on the Ritz", and a jazz number to "Girls Just Want to Have Fun."

Kaylee ready to tap. She did a tap number to "Hoedown Throwdown" and a mixed dance routine to a mix of five different songs. The first dance in this mix was to "Fireflies", the lights were off and they had glow sticks on their arms. I think everyone really liked that part, although my favorite was the tap number they did to "Hoedown Throwdown."

Kaylee's class.

Brianne's class minus one, (one of the girls didn't make it in time for group pictures).

My 3-4 year old class. They were so cute. Although I was last in line to take pictures and I think they were done posing, except for Summer the blond in the front she could have posed all day.

Colorful Weekend

We were on our way to Kaylee's Soccer game at 7:00 in the morning, when we saw one of the coolest rainbow's I have ever seen. It was a full rainbow (I could only fit half of it in my camera lens) and you could see both ends touching the ground. Kaylee was so excited, the end only seemed to be about 20 yards away, and she was sure she could run over to the end of it. Even though we were a little late to the game, I happened to have my camera with me, so I just had to stop and take a picture.

Later that night I went to the Miss Saratoga Springs Pageant. Four of the seven girls in the pageant were from our Y.W. it was fun to watch. When I got home, the girls were busy at work making this colorful creation. Kaylee was sure no one had ever made a Lego tower so tall before and insisted I take a picture. When I finally got the camera out they all wanted to know if I would put this on the blog. I guess our life is now defined by blog worthy and non blog worthy events.


When we were cleaning up Sydnie made this little tower and insisted I take a picture of it too. Who could say no to this little cutie.


Today I decided our puppy had gotten fluffy enough. She was actually more fluff than puppy. So I decided to give her a trim myself. After all I am a hairdresser how different can it be? Well three hours later, it turns out a lot different! She actually was fairly patient with the whole process, I don't know if it was my clippers, or her extra fine puppy hair, but it just wouldn't cut. I finally got it to sort of work, but I had to go over every spot about five times. And cutting around her face was a nightmare, she didn't want anything to do with that. In the end I got a half decent trim done, maybe with practice I will get better. She does look pretty cute with her new cut, I can't believe how tiny she was under all that fluff.

Spring Time Odds and Ends

I have a few things I have been meaning to post about. They don't really relate to each other, except that they all happened this spring. So I will start with the most recent. This is what my girls did yesterday:

We are finally getting some nice weather this spring. It has been so warm the last couple days the girls begged me to put up the bounce house. We had a non official swim party with most of the neighborhood girls. Non official meaning: the bounce house is pretty much a magnet, put it up and kids will come. Just a funny note about this picture the first one I took Kaylee was on the swing set playing something else, but when she saw the camera she headed right over. She is the one running on the side of the bounce house, that girl never misses an opportunity to be in front of a camera.

Neighborhood Spring Cleaning Party

No pictures on this one, but I have wanted to post about this for awhile because it ended up being a fun idea. My friend and neighbor Irene came up with the idea to have a spring cleaning party. At first I was reluctant, I didn't know how well it would work, but it ended up being a great idea. This is how it worked: you get together about four or five people, more would be too many and you would probably want to split up, then you take one day and go to each of the houses and spring clean. Of course we didn't spring clean the whole house, but we did the basics like baseboards, walls, doors, and blinds. It only took about 1 hour to do each house, and it was so much fun to be able to chat with friends while you get your spring cleaning done. I haven't had so much fun cleaning blinds.

Basement Bathroom is Finally Done.

This has actually been done for awhile but I've had better things to post about. We ran out of money last fall when we finished part of our basement so the bathroom sat on hold with just a toilet and a tub. When we got our tax return this spring we used part of the money to finish it up. This is how it turned out:

Shaun did a great job with the tile. And now we have got a bathroom to go with our extra bedroom. So now none of you have any kind of excuse for not visiting. We will be expecting you shortly.

Fun with Photo Shop Elements

When I was in Idaho this weekend my friend asked me to take some photo's of her new baby. We also took pictures of her two boys. I'm only a novice picture taker, with a nice camera. I like all the practice I can get. It seems like the more pictures you take, the more you learn about what works and what doesn't. I mostly learn what doesn't. Luckily even though I've got a lot to learn about taking pictures, I am getting pretty good at Photo Shop, so even mediocre pictures turn out pretty good once they are edited. I thought it would be fun to show you a few before and afters of my photo shoot.

The Before:

The After:

So, mostly I just cropped this one closer and removed the background color, then make the background darker.

The Before:

The After:

Can you believe this is the same picture? Same thing as before: I cropped this a ton, then I used the cloning tool to get rid of any brown in the background. And finally I used Gaussian blur to get rid of the texture in the black shirt and smooth everything out.

The Before:

The After:

This one didn't require a lot of editing: But two things that editing really helped with. First, cropping fixed the off center problem, and second I wanted to point out another cool feature of photo shop: skin tone correction. I use it in all my photo editing, see how much better the skin tone looks in the after pictures. Such a small thing makes such a big difference.

The Before's:

The Afters:

I was really excited about the editing technique I learned in these to pictures. We didn't want the chair red because it didn't really match the boys clothes. So I was just going to remove the color from the chair and make it a grey color. But I started playing around and decided to use the blue from their sweaters to color the chair. Some of these tools are just like magic.

Temple Pictures

I drove by the temple on my way to check on my crafts and decided to take some photo's so I could play with the editing. I've wanted a good one of the Idaho Falls temple to hang on my wall.

The before:

The After:

Okay I showed this technique a couple weeks ago but its a good one, you really should try it.So I cropped it then remove a couple cars. Then I applied the Old Photo affect and added the writing on the bottom.

Happy Easter

We had a quiet but fun Easter. The weather did not want to cooperate for an Easter egg hunt, but we did manage to color some eggs and the Easter bunny hid the girls baskets with some yummy candy in them. I'm sure we have had general conference on Easter before, but I can't remember the last one. It was nice to just be able to relax at home and listen to a the apostles talk about Christ. My vote is for general conference on Easter every year.

We colored about 36 Easter eggs. Sydnie had fun throwing her eggs into the dye. She cracked all of her eggs, but it is always nice to have a few to eat while you are coloring them.

The Easter bunny came on Saturday morning this year. He left bunny footprints for Sydnie to follow and left clues for the older girls to follow. They all had fun finding their baskets.


The #1 requested candy this year was bubble gum. So the Easter bunny left them lots. Sydnie couldn't wait to did into her bubble tape.


Even Lu Lu had fun on Easter. She had a lot of fun playing with the empty Easter eggs.