Photography 101

I have always LOVED pictures and wished that I was able to take some better pictures.  My best friend, Jules, got a new camera for graduation and took some amazing pictures for us, like these maternity shots, and that got me interested in it even more.  

Before photo skills....not the best

After reading through a friend's blog and seeing her amazing pictures I asked her for some tips and tricks.  She was so helpful and gave me a huge list of resources to check out.  I started with this 12 week tutorial and I have been amazed with what I've learned already.  It's been a lot of fun and getting into it makes me just want to learn more and more.  It's so much fun to take pictures of J and capture those sweet laughs. 

 I started learning about aperture, which is how you get those cool blurry backgrounds and practiced in the backyard on this little bird that is normally in our kitchen.  

 The first picture was shot with f 5.0, the second with f 9.0 and the last f 36.  You can see the higher the f stop value, the more things in the picture that are in focus.

The next lesson was on shutter speed, which is basically how quickly the camera takes the shot. 

The faster the shutter speed the more the camera is able to freeze the motion and catch detail.  Pretty cool huh?

With a little photo skills:

getting better

I'm really excited to keep learning.

Craiglist Chair Redo

 After Sean built our beautiful farmhouse dining table we waited a while (about a year) before we got any dining room chairs to go with it.  When we had our small group over for dinner one night we literally had to bring every other chair in the house into the dining room to have enough seats for people to sit in.  

This is how is sat for a loooong while :)

 Being as cheap frugal as we are, we scoured the internet for a good deal on chairs.  I knew I wanted some white chairs like this post in Country living magazine so, I started looking at Ikea, Target, etc.  The absolute cheapest chairs that I found were $50 a piece.  That would cost us $400 for 8 chairs, way more than we wanted to pay and they didn't have cushions on them which is nice for a long dinner.  Sean and I looked on Craiglist for chairs for months and either the chairs weren't what I was looking for or they were more than I really wanted to pay (especially since I knew I wanted to refinish them).  Then, one amazing day Sean found these chairs for 10 bucks a piece!  That's right, $80 for 8 dining room chairs.  They were in great condition  and they had a really neat design and reminded me a lot of my inspiration chairs. 

 So, we sanded each one down and primed/painted them.  We ended up doing 4 coats of paint/primer on each on, which made us really sick of painting chairs but we love the way they turned out.  I found some fabric at Fabric World for $4 a yard (and I bought 3 yards to recover the chairs) and added a fun punch of lime green to the room.  I think it brightened the room up a lot and Sean loves the pop of color.

Growth Chart

Everyone says that they grow up so fast and they really weren't kidding.  Our little baby is already 5 months old and has gained 6 pounds and grown over 6 inches!  It's flying by and we want to enjoy every minute!  Joshua is growing like a weed and we knew we wanted something that we could track his growth and have for years to come. So.....

 We aren't planning on moving anytime soon, but you never know where the Lord might take us.  So, we wanted to make something that we could take with us if we every moved.  It will last us for years and years and we can use it for all of our kids.

 I was so excited to measure J and see how big he was getting.  I figure we'll do every couple of months for right now and then spread it out as he gets older.  Sean and I every measured ourselves too!

 I just wrote right on the board with a sharpie and labeled the date and how old J was at the time.

  

 We also wanted to make sure that we have scripture around our house so that our children can be used to seeing it and learning it.  We found this verse in 2 Peter 3:18 "Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ."  We thought it was a great verse for a growth chart and epitomized what we really hope for our children.

Garden Box

Last summer I had a small garden where I grew a few tomatoes and some spices.  I would have had more produce if a rabbit hadn't come along the night after we planted and ate all the lettuce.  And then, Herschel (our dog) decided that the tomatoes looked like something to play with or eat so every time one would get nice and big and red he would bite it off the plant.  I would find beautiful, red tomatoes laying all over the yard with bite marks in them....Herschel. 

the culprit.....

So this year Sean suggested we make a garden box to shield it from the animals and we thought we would put some lattice around so Herschel couldn't get in.  

 The finished product!

It's been completely successful in keeping out the critters and Herschel!  We've had tons of tomatoes, basil, parsley, and cilantro!

Baby J's Nursery

We finally finished Baby J's nursery!  We are all set to meet Joshua whenever he decides to get here (an we are sooo ready).  Of course we did a lot of things ourselves and redid things to save money but it turned out exactly how we hoped!

 We found a rocker from goodwill for $30 and recovered it, saving it from the faded denim.

 We also found this dresser at a garage sale for $30 and painted it and bought new hardware.

Our "guest book"

The wonderful shelf that Sean built!

Baby Nestor is on the way!

Our wonderful friend Julianna Ryan took these amazing maternity pictures for us.  We are about 37 weeks now and are counting down the days until we will get to meet our little baby boy for the first time.  

visit her blog at www.silverliningsboutique.blogspot.com

Nightstand Refinish

For a little extra storage in the baby's room, we took a nightstand (that we got for free from a friend) and refinished it.  Refinishing and reusing furniture is quickly becoming one of our very favorite things.  Anyone who has ever shopped for and/or bought furniture knows that quality stuff does not come cheap.  So, every chance we get with a free or low cost piece of furniture that we need, we take it!  We've always been able to redo it and use it.  Check out what the nightstand looked like when we got it:

It is another piece of solid wood furniture with some old school hardware (right up our ally).  Below is the end result after sanding, painting, and getting new pulls for the drawers.

I mean, how sweet is it to furnish our baby's room with a FREE nightstand and a $30 dresser?!?  We're really excited that it came together the way it did.  Stay tuned...more projects (especially for the nursery) to come!