Swinging and Sliding

I know that the light is in the wrong spot for these pictures, but sometimes you don't get a choice about those things. These were taken with 50 mm lens, ISO 100, f/stop 4.0 and exposure 1/400 sec.















These last two are my favorites:




Here's how they look after some editing in PSP (Paint Shop Pro):





And in black and white:




Some things I learned from last time I took picture of the kids playing outside:
1. I needed a faster exposure speed to catch the action.
2. I needed to use a smaller f/stop (which actually lets in more light, if I understand that correctly) so that I could get the depth of field more to my liking. Or at least that's what I think happened. LOL! I'm still learning!
3. I needed to get down closer to the action, so eye level with the kids.

I am not sure the exposure is necessarily better in all of these b/c of the position of the sun, but I do think the composition is better. Opinions?

Flowers

My wonderfully sweet hubby brought home flowers yesterday b/c he loves me. :) The feeling is definitely mutual, in case you were wondering. :P Here are some pictures. The first ones are with side lighting and the last two are with the light directly behind me. I am still experimenting and learning how to do all of this photography stuff. I was messing with the ISO, too, so I think the first three are all at different ISO's: 400, 100, and 200, I am pretty sure.

Errand Day!

The kids are in Sonshine School today so I'm getting some errands run. I have been to Wal-Mart, Target and United, so far and I still need to go to CVS, Kohl's and the bank. If you are still needing groceries for this week, just a head's up that pork chops are BOGO free at United and milk is $2.69/gal at CVS.

I went to Target to stock up on Littlest Pet Shop toys b/c some of them were supposed to be 50% off, but I guess they were all sold out of the good ones and the other ones that were on sale where not what I was looking for. I hate when that happens! But I did get some storage bins on sale and that was great b/c I need them for the ribbon that keeps multiplying in my basement. It would probably stop multiplying if I would stop buying, but that's not going to happen anytime soon! LOL!

On a random note, I started on Prozac this week. I have been having wicked PMS the last few months and my GYN thinks this might help. So far so good! I only take it for two weeks at a time, but I'm hoping this helps keep me from losing control of my emotions during PMS.

If you could, please take a moment and pray for my great-uncle. He is having a rough time right now and we could all use your prayers on his behalf. Thank you!!

How do you cope?

I'm having a rough mommy day today. Truth be told, most days are hard mommy days for me right now, but that's a whole other post. My coping mechanism is food, which is why I am 40 lbs overweight. I get upset, I go to the pantry. I get really angry, I go to the pantry. I get my feelings hurt, I go to the pantry. Well, you get the idea. Today my vice were these:


About half way through my 3rd or 4th chip, I realized I didn't want those and was going to feel sick if I kept eating. Normally I would have just kept eating b/c I would rather feel sick from eating too much than deal with what was upsetting me. My very wise and wonderful cousin Kristina told me I need to journal or blog to get me through the rough spots of life. She's right, I do. So all 3 of you that read my blog will be seeing a lot more of me, I think. Tomorrow I might even blog about what's bothering me instead of just sweeping it under the rug. Today, though, I still have my broom for sweeping. I think will go do my walking DVD. Maybe I'll feel better after that. At least I will have accomplished more than just sitting on my hind end feeling sorry for myself!

Working on my photography skills

I'm not a great photographer by any stretch of the imagination, but I do love capturing moments in time. I am learning more about my camera and how to use it and yesterday I think I did a pretty good job. :) I took these pictures at about 10 a.m. under a lot of cloud cover, otherwise it would have been to bright to get good shots, I think. Anyway, I haven't edited these in any way except to change the orientation of some of them. And the bonus is, I got some great pictures of Kami (and a couple of Taylor), enjoying the freedom of swinging.

Jumping on the CVS, Walgreens, and coupon bandwagon

If you check out Amanda's blog you will find some links and tips on saving some major money using coupons and shopping at the drug stores. I was reading her blog and got totally excited about how much money she saved on diapers so I decided to jump in. Yesterday I went to CVS and bought 2 jars of Planters peanuts, a square box of Puffs facial tissues and a tube of Crest Total toothpaste for under $8 and I got $2 Extra Care Bucks to use on my next trip. Then I went to Walgreens and bought 3 boxes of Barilla pasta for $3 (so $1 each!) and 2 boxes of Hefty galleon freezer bags for $3.29 (or something like that. I don't have my receipt in front of me).

So I was on a pretty big high heading into Target where I was all set to buy the 3 packages of Huggies to get my $5 Target gift card. But when I got to the diapers I decided to get out my calculator and figure out if I was really getting a good deal or not. Turns out, I can get diapers cheaper at Wal-Mart because Tim is a part-time employee there. So even with the $5 taken off the price of the 3 pkgs of diapers, they were still like $.27 each. At Wal-Mart we buy the big box and spend about $.25 each. Doesn't sound like much except that Taylor goes through an average of 6 diapers a day so that's $547.50 per year, if my math is correct. If I paid $.27 each, that's $591.30 so I am saving over $40 a year by buying diapers at Wal-Mart! I could probably save even more if I bought store brand diapers, but I am picky about those kinds of things and really love the Huggies Supremes, well that's not the name of them anymore b/c they just changed it, but the kid that has the stretch all the way around the back and legs. It keeps everything in the diaper! ;)

I didn't buy the paper this week so I printed off some coupons (if you go to iheartcvs.com you can print coupons there) for diapers, yougurt and chips. Random, but it will save a few cents and all those cents add up to free money! I have tried couponing in the past, unsucessfully b/c digging through all the coupons in my accordian file was a pain. However, Amanda had pics of all her coupons and gift cards in a baseball card notebook. Genious! That makes it so much easier to see what is in each category and when they are going to expire.

If you have any other money saving tips, send them my way!