Holiday Card Creations

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The kids and I were busy making a few Christmas cards yesterday morning.  This is the front of one of the ones I worked on.  The inside is a secret:-)  I have a pretty large rubber stamp collection considering I never sold Stampin' Up! stuff.  Notice the line of lights on the right is multicolor.  You can use markers to color the stamps different colors instead of just pressing on a single color ink pad.  Blow on the ink with hot breath before pressing on the paper to make sure it's wet enough.  It's a nice effect to add a little extra touch to stamped cards.

Aunt Debbie came to visit and exchange Christmas gifts.  The boys LOVE to see her just like they do Donnie.  Try as she might to talk to me for a few minutes, Johnny in particular just wanted to wrestle.  Here's a shot of Joey giving Aunt Debbie the cards and gifts that he had worked on for her earlier in the day.  Johnny watches.

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This shot shows the only way she could get a break for a minute:

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The following shot is a test shot to see if I could change the shape of the bokeh obtained with my camera by holding a piece of cardstock with a star punched out in the center of it over my lens.  The answer...yes.  Now,   how to apply it to something we'd enjoy seeing...  I probably need the star or other shape to be a tad bigger.

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The North Woods Bean Soup I made last night:

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Johnny ate around the beans and Joey ate around the carrots, but otherwise, it was a successful meal:-)

Santa Train

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Joey, Johnny, Madi, Teen, and I rode the Santa Train last night at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham.  The Santa Train is a big fundraiser for the museum each year, and I heard them announce last night that over 10,000 people had ridden the train this holiday season.  We were on at 7PM, and the last run of the year was at 8PM.  I had picked last night to go because the kids got out of school for winter break yesterday.    We got very lucky with the weather.  It hovered near 58 degrees at ride time, and we only felt one or two drops of rain during the evening.  Although we enjoyed the complimentary  hot chocolate, we weren't desperate to use it to get warm.  The kids made reindeer food and colored and Madi even got a cardinal painted on her cheek.  This year Santa and Mrs. Claus were at a different location on the normal train route.  They had landed on their sled for a brief visit at the museum, and the area they set up for that came across as quite magical.  So glad we went this year (our 2nd time after going for the first time last year).

Last year I was frustrated that I didn't have a tripod, so this year I carried in my lightweight one, and Teen helped carry it around some, and I was very pleased with the shots that I was able to get.  Definitely worth bringing it in!

The POTD train shot was taken on my camera at f4.5 first and then f8.  The f8 produced much nicer light bursts. Again, so glad I had the tripod.  The background for today's shot is a bokeh Christmas light shot from a few nights ago.  I used Color Variations in PSE to adjust the warmer colors into more purple/blue to match the train lights.

The f4.5 shot:

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You can see that the Christmas lights are much flatter.

Here are my favorite family pics of the night:

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The kids squabbled a bit last night.  Sigh...  It's not always as perfect as the pics might convey.  However, without a doubt, we had a great evening and a super fun time!

The beautiful lights around the Magic Wings Butterfly House and train station:

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Madi's cheek with a cardinal painted on it:

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And posting this shot that Joey took in the kids' daily gallery:

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Joey was so excited to try to take a few pics with me last night!  With the tripod and the self timer, he was quite successful I think.

Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

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I came home from the school run yesterday afternoon to find my power off.  First hint...none of the Christmas inflatables in the yard were up.  Oops!  It was the transformer serving my house and 5 others and not a major outage.  Still, Progress Energy was out pretty quick and 3 hours later they had fixed whatever was wrong.  I heard 'damage to our equipment'.  Donnie to the rescue offering us dinner at his place.  The boys and I really enjoyed that.

The boys and I looked at Christmas lights on the way home.  I tried to retake a shot of a red and green spiral tree that I shot the other night trying to get it 'just right'.  I got a few intentionally blurry shots that were about what I wanted and one in focus shot and set about trying to decide just what to do with them that would make for a daily.  I'm not real happy with what I posted.  We can consider it a desperation shot since I don't have anything better to share, OK?

Here's the tree in focus:

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A train nearby:

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Madi and the hat made by Tina Marie.  It's such fun!

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Tonight we get to go on the Santa Train at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham.  It is the boys' last day of school until the 4th week in January, and it's my last day of work for the year.  We ought to all be very excited at school pick-up time today!

Details:
I used a solid green layer and then added a texture from OnOne's PhotoFrame.  It's easy to create a text layer and then use it as Overlay or Screen or Normal with reduced opacity.  The tree layer has a simple line frame from PSE on it which I also added a Drop Shadow too.

Chili with a Smile!

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I didn't take any pics really worthy of sharing with you guys today, but I did take some fun shots and videos.

The daily is Joey (and Johnny) making chili (con carne) for the first time.  I find that the kids eat new dishes better when they help prepare them, and regardless, they have a lot of fun doing it.  The recipe came out of my Hunt's cookbook which I don't readily see online to refer you to.  Sorry.  I use sausage instead of hamburger and less chili powder and a bit of pickled jalapeno peppers chopped instead.

The sunglasses you ask?  Well, to protect the eyes from onions of course!

Besides the chili, we had the nicest fire in our fireplace and a Sonic Christmas kid show from Redbox.

We were at a park earlier in the day, and Johnny looked so cute in the sandbox one minute and running to Joey to play tag the next.

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Notice the stop sign behind Johnny's head lower right.  I thought that was funny with him running and the sign saying otherwise.

This video is pretty cute too:

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Of course if us adults spun ourselves like that we'd be sick!

I have a new bird feeder attached to my kitchen window.  I don't think it's going to yield great pics, but it is fun to watch the birds so close!

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The boys have parties at school today.  Wish I could go...  2 days and counting until our year end holiday starts, though!

Angels Watch Over Us

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The kids and I went to Lights on the Neuse last night.  The best way to describe this experience is that you go on a 30 minute hay ride covering over 40 acres of farmland with thousands of lights.  It's cold, but it's so beautiful that it's worth it.  After the ride, you can walk through a 3D barn that has all sorts of Christmas-themed artwork on the walls.  You wear glasses, and there are special lights on the artwork paint, and the figures seem to come alive.

It is hard to take pics of the lights on the hayride.  The tractor only stops in a few places, so even shooting at a very fast speed to avoid blur doesn't always work.  I did the best I could.  I really needed a tripod in the 3D barn.  I found a few places where I could rest the camera on something to keep it reasonably still.

My daily is one of the shots from inside the 3D barn.  I used Color Efex Pro to alter the colors.  Here are a few more shots from the 3D barn all of which had about the same color theme of blue and pink.

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Here's a favorite shot I took of the boys while we waited in line.  Johnny has on the hat that Tina Marie made.  We love how it's a scarf too!  And green Johnny's favorite color.  It was 32 degrees at ride time, and we were outside for about 3 hours total, so we have on the warmest winter gear that us central NC folks have:-)

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Here's a quick collage of my favorite lights on the hay ride:

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Last year I said that we needed to come to the farm in October because they have harvest themed fun going on then too.  This year I am going to say the same thing:-)  Someone remind me;-)

Also, the boys and I browsed the Hallmark store yesterday:

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Somehow we managed to walk away without the lifesize elf...it wasn't easy.  It was a Gund.

And we also went to see Alvin and the Chipmunks in Chipwrecked:

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A pretty shot from David Anthony's in Fuquay:

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Merry Christmas - Another Card in the Series

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I mentioned yesterday that I'd taken some Christmas light shots that I wanted to try to process for today's daily. I ended up taking Merry Christmas out of another shot and putting it as a screen layer over the tree shot and then adding two frames from OnOne's PhotoFrame to give it a finishing card style touch.  I'm not sure how I feel about so much blue when Christmas is more of a red/green holiday, but I tried a red frame and it was just too much!   I can also see that the image is a little tight in the frame, but I'm out of steam to keep redoing it this morning.

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Here are a few more shots from the night that I liked:

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I wish the snowman was more prominent in this shot.  I tried to merge it with a non blurred shot, but I didn't like the results.

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We found a few houses not far from ours that had very nice lights up, which is where these pics were taken, and Joey is asking to go back and enjoy the show again:-)

Gypsy's Shiny Diner

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I had yet another doctor's appointment yesterday, and I'm so thankful that Donnie went with me.  Days with him are good days no matter what...

After the appointment, we were ready to get some lunch, and Donnie thought we should try Gypsy's Shiny Diner in Cary.  Most folks that live in the Raleigh area will remember that the town of Cary had issues over the shiny outside of the diner and tried to block it's construction for a while.  Irritating.  The town and restaurant came to an agreement, and the diner did open in 1997.

"Gypsy's was constructed in Florida and trucked to NC on 6 over-sized tractor-trailers up I-95 and then onto I-40. Once the trucks reached the NC border, they were met by 2 state highway patrol cars for an escort (required by NC law for super over-sized loads). Once the diner reached Cary, the state patrol assisted the Cary police department in stopping traffic while an over-sized crane set the diner on its foundation. It was a true sight to see!!!

Gypsy's has won many dining awards and has been featured in documentaries, on TV shows, on commercials, CD covers, featured in photo shoots, and print ads. You can always count on Gypsy's being on the local "scavenger hunt" list at least once a month.

Gypsy's has an "original" 1950's and 60's jukebox spinning 45's all the time. You can choose songs from either our original Seeburg jukebox or the small replicas at every table.

Gypsy's Shiny Diner has been the site of: 19 marriage proposals, numerous birthdays and anniversary celebrations, 28,000+ "first date" meetings and thousands of informal lunch meetings. Spend your next significant date at Gypsy's.

Gypsy's is proud to have given to many local, county, state & national charities including the fight against women's breast cancer."

Here's a shot of Donnie enjoying his breakfast for lunch meal:

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The picture is definitely one of my favorite shots of the day!  He's such a smart guy knowing that we'd enjoy the food and that I'd enjoy taking pictures before and after the meal.  I had a sandwich and onion rings...YUM!

From the outside:

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The counter stools:

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The lights decked out for Christmas:

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The counter and table-sized jukeboxes:

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The table top:

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And last but not least the ceiling:

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I grew up eating occasional meals at the Hightstown Luncheonette near Princeton, NJ.  The parents of a very close friend of my mother's owned and ran the place running a taxi service from it too.  We'd stop in to say hello, and of course they'd want to feed us.  So, when we walked into Gypsy's today, I took a fast trip down memory lane.  Sweet!

I can't help but share these cute pictures of the kids from Chick-fil-A last night.

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I took quite a few Christmas light shots on the way home from CFA.  With clouds and rain moving in today, I will probably spend some time pp'ing one or more of them for tomorrow's post.

It's back to work for me today for the first time in over a month.  Do you have any clue how much e-mail is in my work inbox?  Ugh...  My year end vacation starts next Wednesday along with the kid's holiday break, and I am looking forward to that!