Myriad & Sundry – Page 58

Digital Scrapbooking: The Hows, Whys and Wherefores

May 19, 2011 1 Comment

I’ve mentioned a few times that I am planning a digital scrapbook of Jameson’s first year. I used to “regular” scrapbook (regular? hardcopy? real?) but anyway, I just… lost interest. I burned myself out when I made a birth to 18 years scrapbook for my brother’s graduation, even with some help from my cousin. I have two scrapbooks that are started and will probably remain unfinished.

So why digital scrapbooking when I could just slap some photos into a photobook and call it done?

I always loved the look of scrapbooks, they’re so charming
I feel like it lends more meaning to the photos when you spend more time on it after you take them
Descriptions are beautiful rather than informational (a date can be done in digital chipboard to really pop and stand out, rather than just being a caption below the photo)
A chance to be creative! of course.

Digital scrapbooking seems pretty simple. You only need some basic Photoshop or other graphic program skills. Oh, and some photos.

Get a program. You can go free, like GIMP. Or you can go expensive like full Photoshop CS. Or land somewhere in the middle with Corel Paintshop Pro or Photoshop Elements. Key here is the ability to work in layers so you can easily move around your photos “on top” of digital paper or other fun digital pieces.
Get some digital paper, or make your own. Because I’m not about to make my own digital scrapbook paper, stickers or alphabets, I browsed around and found some free stuff. Searching “free digital scrapbook paper” will pop up all kinds of stuff. When we say digital paper, we really just mean images that look like paper.
Get some fun fonts. Again, searching “free fonts” should give you call kinds of inspiration.
Take a little tutorial on your graphics program of choice, once you understand layers and what dimensions your program is in (inches or pixels–it’s probably easier to work in inches while you do your scrapbook) you should be good to go!
Once you’ve got a handle on the program, make a decision about what size you want your digital scrapbook to be. Most digital papers come square, so 12x12in or 10x10in are good sizes. You can get these printed individually as sheets (see some options here and here) or in a photobook (see my photobook post).
Make your first page. Create a new image in your size, ie., 12x12in. Select your paper and place it on layer 1. Then you want to bring in your photos in other layers. You can resize your photos to fit your pages. Add some text in a fun font.
Is this too boring? You can find other elements for your pages too. If you were searching digital papers, you probably saw all kinds of other things to add to your pages. Faux flowers, “stickers”, chipboard shapes, edges… Again you can get a lot of great stuff for free.

Here are a few of my favorite sites. One in particular is running a sale right now, I love their stuff. They are not free, but to me they have great quality, and remember the nice thing about digital scrapbooking is that everything can be used over and over and over.

Sassy Designs digital papers and other elements. Most everything is on sale right now through the end of May for $1.
Computerscrapbook.com some cute free things, like these alphabet blocks. I downloaded some of their kits myself.
Freedigitalscrapbooking.com has some nice “paper shapers“. If you understand basics of layers and selection/cut tool, you can use your scrapbook paper and then shape them into circles, squares, etc.
Ali Edwards has a lovely font to download for free, plus tutorials and projects, and inspiration.
Not free, but I like the set up of this site digital scrapbook elements.
Shabby Princess – This is my favorite, though new free sets are far between.

So here I am, after all that research and accumulation of digital scrapbooking paper and elements, 5 months in and nothing to show for it. Time is flying! Time to get started…

general life

Money

May 18, 2011 1 Comment

Money is a touchy subject! Which is why I’m not really going to talk about money, but rather the planning around money.

Brian and I didn’t really have the luxury of choice when it came to the decision for me to return to work. Luckily, I feel it is turning out for the best right now. I have my adult time, and my Jameson time. Right now this works. And I’m starting a new job, which is exciting for me! Luckily, with me going back to work, we now also have the luxury of some disposable (read: invest-able) income. The question then becomes, what actually should we do with it.

There are so many options, and after meeting with our new financial adviser yesterday, I’ve come to realize it’s pretty dang complicated too. There is life insurance, Roth IRAs, 401Ks (which, we have to confess, we haven’t paid much attention to), there’s college savings, and the myriad of other possible investment options…

We had to come prepared with a ton of documents too. And I have even simplified this list.

Stock stuff (including Brian’s random stock he bought some time ago to fiddle with… hmmm not sure I remembered that haha)
Current 401K info. Did you know the financial adviser will recommend your investments through work? I guess I didn’t really think about that. We should’ve gone to one a long time ago!
Bank checking & savings account statements, savings bonds
Life insurance summary of coverage/annual statements (this is also great. Again, I didn’t know that the financial adviser would be able to help with life insurance in combination with what we have through work)
Home mortgage loan
Most recently completed federal and state tax returns
Most recent work W-2 and 1099 forms
Completed Monthly Budget Worksheet and a questionnaire to help us determine how much risk in our investments we were willing to make, and we got to fill that out separately (the financial adviser gave us pre-homework to do!)

So at this point, the adviser is going to his own homework and we’re meeting again next week to do some of the actual dirty work of making progress on decisions. A couple hard questions he asked us:

He asked how much we wanted to leave in our savings. Brian said 6-9 months of what we need per month (see that Monthly Budget Worksheet we had to do came in handy). We found how how much money that was, and it was about 3 times the amount that I personally thought it was. Apparently that is a critical decision we need to make prior to taking money away in investments you can’t touch. I guess that makes sense.
He told us, assuming that we invest at a rate that matches college tuition increases, we will need to put $600 a month away for like 22 years to pay for one kid to go to college. (this is the part were we started talking about how awesome my parents were. Seriously, mom and dad if you’re reading this, he totally said that you guys must be great and that you raised me well :))

I guess most people don’t think of talking to your financial adviser before making a decision like moving, or having a parent stay at home… but I’m pretty sure he’s now an integral part of our decision-making process.

It did take us about 2 years to schedule this appointment (to be fair… we got married, moved, had a baby…). Next step: getting a living will. And not 2 years down the road. What is it about having a baby that makes you think of all the scary stuff?

life with baby

Mom’s First Night Away

May 17, 2011 2 Comments

There are a lot of moms who talk about how they can’t sleep because they are worried or anxious about their baby. I don’t seem to be one of them. That’s not to say that I wasn’t, because when baby is brand new, sure, there was definitely some paranoid-check-baby-check-baby-again nights. But after Jameson started sleeping in his crib, after I got used to the monitor instead of having him right next to me… it became very easy for me to fall asleep, stay asleep, only get up when baby is crying, and go right back to sleep (though I should add a disclaimer that for the most part, Jameson is an excellent sleeper even though he doesn’t sleep through the night yet he only gets up to eat once usually).

That said, I have kind of surprised myself, because overall my friends can attest that I’ve always been somewhat of a worrywart. I attribute most of this to Brian, who has helped me overcome a lot of that time wasted (though he will tell you I still worry too much). Anyway, right now I think we mesh very well in our parenting styles for Jameson.

When I went on my first outing without Jameson almost a month to the day after he was born, I thought for sure that I’d worry about him. But turns out, either the trust I have in Brian or my new worry-less attitude (probably a little of both), I didn’t care at all, except when my milk said hello. That’s not to say I didn’t think about him (after all, I was at my friend’s baby shower, and you can’t help but think about babies at a baby shower), but I was unconcerned, enjoying myself without being anxious to return home.

Now, after my first overnight trip away from Jameson, I can say the same thing. And I surprised myself again, because it was easy. (Hopefully, that doesn’t make me a bad mom, haha) On Friday I visited some college friends of mine and stayed overnight. We hung out, ate Chinese food, had an ice cream pie for my belated birthday, and had ~~some~~ a lot of wine. I brought my pump, and even though I am not pumping surplus for Jameson and probably shouldn’t have wasted that milk, I let myself have some fun and dumped it in the morning. I even stayed until 11 o’clock the next day. And you know what? Brian and Jameson were both fine. Jameson had his bottle overnight, went back to sleep like a champ. Brian enjoyed spending the time with him and even sent me some pictures of their time together:

life with baby

Changing Routines, Choosing Daycares

May 16, 2011 No Comments

Brian and I made the choice well before our baby was born to send him to daycare. We sort of tried to get Brian’s mother to take the responsibility at least a couple days a week, but his parents (as in love with their grandson as they are!) are in the prime of their fun traveling years and couldn’t commit.

Fair enough. So who else can be as good a mom as me to my son?

I briefly debated about a nanny or a home-run childcare. But I believe in safety in numbers (so-to-speak) and child/teacher ratios and even germs (that was all theoretical until Jameson brought home his first cold, haha) and so daycare it was. And Brian and I got so lucky. More lucky than I think we realized, until I had to go select a new one. Because I’m changing jobs.

life with baby

An Hour a Day: Pumping at Work

May 15, 2011 3 Comments

So I know you’ve all been wondering exactly how, with a full time job 8-5 (actually 7:30-4:30) have I been able to post so frequently. The truth is that I am writing on my phone while I pump. Because after a month of shopping, surfing Facebook, and reading blog posts on my little phone, plus reading all the magazines in the lactation room here at work… I get bored pumping. What else would you do pumping 20-30 minutes (like 15-20 actively pumping) three times a day!? An ipad would be nice, don’t you think? haha

This is where I spend my time. Lots of magazines, I’ve looked at them all.

From here out, I’ll be discussing practicalities of pumping, so if that doesn’t interest you, feel free to stop here. You won’t be missing any cute baby pictures 🙂

life with baby

New Discoveries

May 14, 2011 1 Comment

Over the past two weeks, Jameson has discovered some new abilities. For about a week straight, he enjoyed making spitting noises (without the spit). I tried to get it on video camera, but it seems as quickly as it was a fun novelty for him, it became boring and old. Within a week, he stopped!

He’s also begun trying to stand on his feet more. He likes us to hold him up to help support him, but just like when he discovered sitting up, he seems to like to be in positions he can’t quite do by himself yet!

And last he has finally discovered his feet! I took some photos of him with my brand new camera a couple days ago, and they turned out great! I had some difficulties getting it hooked up to the computer first though, and Lightroom doesn’t read the RAW format very well yet (since the camera is brand new.. I feel like maybe they rushed a bit on the new profile?). It’s very contrasty, and I did three edits of these photos before I was satisfied. I may install the provided Nikon software since that should read their RAW format the best.

Without further ado, here’s a few from this mini photo shoot with the new Nikon D5100.

Click through on this last one, when you view the large size of this photo, Jameson’s eyes are crystal clear! A great shot from the new camera.

In just a couple short days, Jameson will be 5 months old. The time has definitely flown by, and he is currently sitting in my lap while I am on the laptop, getting a little antsy with sitting still and hanging on to his pacifier which he is slowly getting better at getting back into his own mouth.

life with baby

Wherein Brian Gets a Surprise During Bathtime

May 10, 2011 No Comments

On Saturday, since I was spending the day with my friend Emma, Brian had Jameson all to himself most of the day. They did fun man-things… like go to the park and pick up flowers for mom.

So it was the first time dad did the bedtime routine by himself, as in alone. He’s done parts but I have always been home around somewhere. Not that he ever needs me to – you know – hand him Jameson’s towel during bathtime because it lay forgotten in the closet still or anything like that. (To be fair and honest, I do the same thing, and I have only done the bedtime routine by myself a few times also) …but this story is not about me, it’s about Brian 😉

Brian is an excellent dad. He has limitless patience for rocking to sleep and has a hard time letting Jameson cry in his crib. Sidebar: I have been known to sleep through Jameson crying with the monitor on loud next to my head. Brian loves bathtime, and I’m sure that as soon as Jameson starts playing with all those bath toys we have, it will be even more fun. Right now though Jameson still thinks of himself as a fun toy and splashes his feet around like a frog. Super cute.

Anyway, we have experienced many of those special events that all parents go through: we have been pee’d on, we have been spit up on ALL THE TIME. But we had never had the opportunity to experience the event known as Poo In The Tub. That’s right, Jameson is almost 5 months and we had been that lucky. Until Brian received the surprise by himself on Saturday night.

Not only that, but Jameson has started on solid foods (oatmeal, and last night, brown rice). So of course… it wasn’t the kind we have been used to seeing. I would’ve given anything to see Brian’s face. Alas, I can only make do with the description that Brian has relayed which I will refrain from repeating here. But apparently, before he realized he’d have to do all the clean up, dad was proud of his son. That’s another man-thing.

general life

Practice Your Photo-Taking Skills on the Computer

May 10, 2011 No Comments

I found this great SLR camera simulator to help practice with manual modes on the camera.

I confess that when I take photos I let the camera do all the work — I set my camera to automatic-no flash. With my new camera on the way, I’d love to learn the value of using aperture/shutter priority and manual modes!

When I was in high school, I used a traditional SLR camera. It’s so easy to be lazy with newer DSLRs. I learned my dad’s SLR camera and took a lot of great photos on it and promptly forgot them all by the time I had my DSLR. It’s time to re-learn.

general life

On Photos, Cameras and Editing

May 9, 2011 No Comments

This weekend, I said goodbye to a dear friend, Emma, as she left from a lovely visit to meet Mr. Jameson for the first time. I also said goodbye to my first DSLR camera, the Nikon D40, which I purchased in 2007. I sold it to her, plus the extra battery, and I am currently camera-less.

Of course, we’re not literally camera-less; I am not sure that’s possible anymore, because we still have Brian’s sophisticated point and shoot, plus our camera phones, and our camcorder which can take stills too. So by no means am I really camera-less, but I still feel the loss of the ability to shoot in RAW format. Like forgetting to put on my wedding rings: even though I have my lovely rose ring which goes on my index finger, my ring finger still feels naked and awkward.

Friends tell me I take great photos. I myself think I have a long way to go to be professional, but I can see the growth in my skills since Jameson was born. Like I told Emma, I think that you lose some things (like freedom haha) when you have kids, but you gain in others. Particularly, my Lightroom skills.

I never read the manual, so here I am learning on the fly. I started with the Library screen, the basic adjustments to my photos (Auto-whitebalancing, sorting and rating) and moved to where I am now primarily working in Design mode, I am syncing adjustments across all similar photos to save time (though Brian would say I still spend obscene amounts of time editing photos), and even starting to play around with free presets which can tweak photos in fun ways I may not have thought of.

So last week, I re-processed some of my favorite photos and posted to Flickr last night. Here are a few:

Remember when I talked about how much better the color looked in my recent monthly photos?

Here’s an example of a preset I used which made the photo look aged. I tweaked it to bring out the blues again because the hat is such an important part of the photo.

And there are examples of my improvement with eyes and softening skin to remove Jameson’s dry baby skin. Because baby skin is not always silky soft.

I’m excited continue to enhance my skills with a next level camera. My new friend will arrive on Tuesday from Amazon (of course). It will come with 16 megapixels versus the D40’s 6 for more cropping and blow up fun. It has 11 focus points and faster continuous shooting plus a vibration reduction kit lens for quicker more accurate focusing (especially for the sneaky fast baby Jameson is becoming). It comes with a view screen that flips and rotates for great positional shots in awkward places and self portraits! We’re going to have fun, my new friend the D5100 and I.

Are you curious as to how I chose this particularly camera? Then read on.

general life, life with baby

Celebrating Mother’s Day (Weekend)

May 9, 2011 3 Comments

This weekend, I enjoyed the company of one of my oldest friends, Emma. Emma flew in for the weekend to meet Jameson. She adored him. This is her favorite photo from the weekend. I haven’t posted the rest yet. She likes the funny look on his face (this was near the end of their photo shoot and he was starting to get cranky!)

Poor little guy is coming down with a cold, so he wasn’t quite himself yesterday. Though somehow he managed to find the energy to plant me a little marigold at daycare; buy me a new Pandora charm; buy me roses and a card. haha

Most of my weekend was actually spent away from Jameson. Emma and I went to Melt Bar and Grilled (her request since she had never been). I enjoyed my Parmageddon and she had their newest permanent menu add, The Dude Abides which has mozzarella sticks and meatballs. We also tried their spinach and artichoke dip which was good and just a little spicy, and a local hard cidar.

I couldn’t believe the days this weekend turned out so nice! We had to walk around Legacy Village and stopped in the new Gymboree brand Crazy 8 store. I got Jameson an adorable shirt with a moving eyeball on it and finally found a nice sunhat for him, with a nice mesh inside for sweat.

We went on many walks this weekend and Brian even took Jameson to the park. I was sad to see the weekend end. Before dropping Emma back off to the airport, we hit up B.A. Sweetie‘s and picked up some candy. What a great place! I had never been there before, but they had all kinds of old-school candy in warehouse style: boxes and boxes of tempting candy and chocolate!

We spent Sunday evening at Brian’s parents for burgers. It was so nice to have someone there to hold Jameson so Brian and I both got to eat in peace, haha. It was a lovely reminder of how grateful we are to have some family nearby for babysitting, watching, or playing duty. And for my mother, I sent her flowers (tulips this year) like I do yearly, plus a new ebook that just came out with short stories by mom-bloggers called “Stories I Only Told My Mom“. I’m rather excited to read it myself too.

This year I’m particularly appreciative of how difficult a mom’s job is! And how nice it is for us to have family nearby, how difficult it must have been for my parents living so far away from family when I was born. Oh, and there was no Internet you know. I love how connected we all are now.

Mom, me, and grandma on Mom’s side for her first Mother’s Day

Me and Jameson, our first Mother’s Day

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