if i were a bug my name would be: BEE hind

has it really been almost two weeks since i've updated the blog?! really? i don't even have a great excuse... i could definitely use the i was battling off sickness last week and pumping vitamin c and airborne like there was no tomorrow... but mostly the yuckies just made me tired. which, i might add, is far better than feeling really seriously crummy. i'm back to *mostly* normal now. all excuses aside, the real deal is that i just got behind, and it felt a little daunting to try to catch up. but it's 9:18pm and i'm feeling quite awake as i listen to the frogs croaking a springtime song outside.

i'll do my best to sum up my life in pictures from the past few weeks. on saturday the girls and i went for a bike ride with my mom, my niece and nephew. it was a nice short ride, and a fun one for our first ride of the season. we've gotta get our bums back in shape for some longer rides! after the ride, the girls and i headed for the daffodil fields. it was getting close to the end of their bloom, and we hadn't gotten up to see them yet this year. (you've gotta time it right because they mow them all down toward the end to harvest the bulbs.)

it doesn't matter how many times i've wandered through the acres and acres of flowers, it always amazes and overwhelms me. what an amazing display of creation for us to enjoy. there are a few more pictures here. we also drove through the fields filled with the white blanket of thousands of snow geese. they were taking off and it looked almost like someone was shaking out a great white blanket. it's truly an amazing sight to see.

ella publishing is running several weeks of tv scrapbook challenges... if you're in need of some inspiration, check out the ella blog for details and join in the fun (and have a chance to win a fabulous ella ebook)!

sunday after church a friend of ours came and mowed my lawn while his wife and i visited & the kids played. we have a pretty crazy big hilly yard that is no easy beast to mow. and i credit stan being an amazing man and having wonderful friends that do so much to help us when he's away. so THANK YOU gabe for supporting the troops!

thursday emma started dance lessons for the first time ever. i picked a package of ballet/tap lessons up at the school auction recently since our love of classic musicals has spurred her into wanting to tap dance like fred astaire and gene kelly. though she has not quite reached astaire level in one lesson (hee hee) she has quite enjoyed tapping her way through the house everyday since.

last year on st patrick's day i was feeling extra motivated and made quite a crazy green dinner for us. although (shockingly) i still have some green food coloring left from last year, i was not feeling 100% and couldn't muster the energy to massacre our dinner. all i managed to get done was a couple of three leaf clover hairdos for the girls in the morning. while i wasn't earning any super-fun mom awards this year... at least i kept them safe from pinching for the day. :)

no really, thank you chinese food! you fed my little sweeties when i was feeling too crummy to make dinner.

while clicking through flickr last week i stumbled across a picture that inspired me to take some shots of me & my wedding ring in honor of the amazing man who gave it to me so many years ago. i am the luckiest girl in the world to have landed such an incredible man. i know i don't tell him enough just how proud i am of him, and just what an honor it is to have him by my side... even when that means he's a million miles away. he's the man of my dreams, and quite possibly most wonderful man in the world.

emma and i stopped by a little blue schoolhouse on our way to a benefit dinner the other night. it's right on our way to church, and i've always wanted to stop to utilize the pretty blue walls. well, with a little extra time on our hands, we stopped by and took a bunch of pictures just for fun. :)

just like her mom & dad, torrey got an eye exam the other day and was told she'd need a new set of stronger glasses. so off to costco to pick out some new frames and replace the lenses in another pair. after picking up the new set of glasses we took a bunch of pictures (here and here) for daddy to see the new specs. i think they're pretty dang cute!

another fun surprise this week was my march ck. i've been dying to show this layout to my dear friend donna struggling her way through breast cancer, who inspired it. she has the most beautiful heart and contagiously inspiring spirit of anyone i've ever met. (see her adorable self here & read about her here and here) since we took these pictures, she's finished chemo and grown back about 1/2" of hair! she's kickin' cancer in the you-know-what! {love you donna!}

this week my mailbox was also graced with a beautiful new handmade necklace i ordered from the darling janna wilson. i {heart} her... besides being a super talented scrapping genius, {lucky for me} she's also a crazy crafty jewelry maker! i'm pretty sure i'm gonna need one of these babies in every color! i'm so in love with this little beauty. check out her way cute necklaces here!

and last, but not least, is this little pair. and by little i mean ginormous golden eagles. i was sitting in my living room enjoying a nice hot cup of coffee when these two bad boys landed in the tree across our yard. they are seriously amazing creatures, and the picture doesn't nearly do them justice. we see a lot of bald eagles in our area, but rarely get a good long look at golden eagles. after this little eagle chat, the meeting ended in something that would have been more suited for the likes of animal planet... if you know what i mean. yes, spring is in the air!

i hope you have a wonderful week filled and overflowing with blessings.

xo
noel

20 years from now

now well into the second month of my second year of project 365 i've seen a definite pattern develop. not that it took me two years and two months to figure that out, but i digress... my daily pictures tend to be face shots of {shock} my girls. while i have loads of reasons for that, not the least of which being that they're easy & accessible targets... er, i mean subjects. but after reading an email from noell hyman of paperclipping.com, i got to thinking about what kinds of photos will i want to see 20 years from now? what will my girls want to see 20 years from now? what childhood photos do i cherish most? it's those real life moments that are so fun to look back on, and the memories they bring with them.

but another thing that i (personally) really enjoy is watching my kids grow in photographs. it's one of the reasons i take so many face shots. when the girls were babies, i took them to sears to have their pictures taken ever single month of their first year. why? beside the fact that i'm slightly obsessed with pictures?? they grow and change so quickly, it seems like if you blink it's gone. you think you'll remember the each little piece of them forever, but sadly you don't. or at least  you can't conjure it up at any given moment. i sometimes joke that if you put all the pictures i've taken of the girls in a big stack and flipped through them, you'd see their lives in slow-mo (like a cartoon flip book). and so it goes with the face shots. taking pictures every day shows those subtle changes that i might have otherwise missed. magic moments of tiny change... at least they're easier to take than big changes, i think!

we had a couple days of fabulous sunshine here in the northwest. (my apologies to the east coasters who are socked in with snow right now!) don't worry, we're back to rain now, but on the sunny days i got a chance to try "panning" again. it's a very cool way of keeping your subject in motion in focus while the background is blurred. 

i'm definitely not an expert, and i took hundreds of shots, and only had a handful turn out clear. but i'll give you the basics, if you want to give it a try. have your subject or find one that is moving in a consistent motion. they don't have to be going a million miles an hour, just moving predictable way. set your camera to shutter priority. you'll want your shutter speed to be on the slower side around 1/20 to 1/25. (the top pictures was a 1/25 of a sec at f9, and the bottom image was at 1/20 of a sec at f25.) now, i was holding my camera, but you may have better luck with a monopod. but for the pod-less, i'll tell you how i did it. focus on your subject, then follow them with your camera (keeping them in the frame) as they move. click your shutter at some point while you're following them in camera... making sure to continue to follow them after you press the shutter. it'll take some practice, but the end result is something like these.  i'm sure there are zillions of applications for panning, but i've tried it with bike (and now scooter) riding. it's a good place to start since it's a generally consistent motion to follow.

 

as for the rest of these... just snippets and samplings of daily life. nothing too exciting, but again part of the memories that hopefully will turn out to be the treasured ones 20 years from now.

we're heading back to colorado to visit my brother over the girls' midwinter break this weekend. that leaves us trying to tie up all of our loose ends before we leave on friday. so yesterday the girls made their valentine cards for their classmates thanks to a super-cute and FREE digital goodie from paislee press. they're now ready to spread the valentine's love!

my how the years fly by + a giveaway!

i'm sitting here with that sunrise, sunset song from fiddler on the roof rolling through my mind. "wasn't it yesterday when they were small?... sunrise, sunset. quickly fly the years. one season following another, laden with happiness and tears." i know people say it all the time... but MAN! it really does fly by. when i was editing yesterday's pictures i had a little epiphany (i know i'm a little slow, but here it is anyway), i can look back at exactly what happened one year ago today. how cool is that?! heading into my second year of 365, i'm sure this will be a fun little something to do from time to time. it's like googling the date in your own life. :)

now for the fun giveaway part! ella publishing has {surprise!} another fabulous book out in collaboration with the amazing folks at write.click.scrap. with 30 idea-packed pages, a year in review gives you method to scrap an entire year's worth of memories in 24 layouts. who couldn't use a few ideas on catching up on some of our backlogged pictures?! so here goes...  
want to win a copy of a year in review?
comment on this post what types of scrappy eBook titles you're dying to see available. i'll draw a winner on monday! good luck!

teetering on the edge

Supplies: patterned paper: Paislee Press Photogenic kit (lined & brown- as overlay) & In Good Comany kit (green), Taylor Made Indefinitely Kit (pink) oscraps.com; overlay: Paislee Press; negative frame: Rhonna Farrer House of 3; word art: Taylor Made Composure kit (oscraps.com); flower: Paislee Press In Good Comapny Kit (oscraps.com); heart: Taylor Made Indefinitely Kit (oscraps.com); font: Arial

oh wow! how did i get so far behind again? i love, love, love social networking and networks. but sometimes i'm not always the best about getting all of them updated at the same time! so here i am, getting this baby up to date... at least until the morning when it falls behind again. lol. but that's the nature of the beast i guess. keeps me out of trouble anyway!

last wednesday i took some family pictures for some friends from church. i love, love, love this family! they're funny, they're generous, they're sweet, they're thoughtful, they're the best. i am so thankful to count them as friends. anyhow, this little fella is the cutest ever. the more fun he's having, the more serious he gets. it's so darn cute. couldn't you just get lost in those big brown eyes?

we spent thanksgiving with my family, at my sister's house. very low key, and perfect. we ate, of course, and simply had a nice time together. i only fell apart once missing stan. it seems like it's the little things that set me off missing him... trying to carry a heavy table up the stairs by yourself. then your wonderful children, who mean well, try to help. my wall still stands, relatively unscathed from the incident. but the experience (silly as it seems) left my heart a little heavy. just a jabbing little reminder. so when i arrived at my sister's and my dad asked how i was... well, you know how it goes when someone asks you how you are and really means it... {sigh} i got it out, and had a really nice day with my family. i have so much to be grateful for.

my sweet niece came home with us from thanksgiving to spend the night. i told her she could come as long as she helped us clean (our project for that friday) and man did she ever! she is a cleaning machine! she helped the girls with their rooms and with our laundry. i think i may have her come over every weekend! lol. after the cleaning was done they got some play time in, jumping around. there are a few more pictures here.

on saturday the girls and i stopped by schuh farms. we've gone nearly every year to pick out christmas ornaments for the girls. it's a little farmers market in town. at christmas time she has bunches of trees each with different themed ornaments. the girls roam around until they find the one that they love more than all of the others. it's fun to see what they love each year, and how it changes over the years. we've had brides, frogs, guitars, coffee mugs, ballerinas and snowflakes, but this year we came home with an ice cream cone and a santa in a dome.

then came a few days worth of pictures just because. nothing in particular noteworthy of the day... but still a picture to walk away with. something to look back at from the beginning of the year to now.

tuesday my sister and i took my grandma out for a day of antiquing and shopping in a cute little local town. we never quite get out as often as we'd like... especially the three of us together. but it worked out rather magically and at the last minute. (that's just how we roll!) to my very special grammy... happy birthday! i love you!

i swear my girls have clothes other than this red coat! it's been so chilly outside, it seems it's made an appearance in a lot of pictures lately! guess that's how it goes this time of year.

today we were feeling motivated to get some hairdo's done. emma's was a repeat, but torrey's we made up this morning. she said all of the kids at school thought it was a peace sign. maybe next time we can really try for making it into a full peace sign with the circle and all.

Supplies: patterned paper: Family Ties Kit, Fei Fei’s Stuff (white) and Berry + Charcoal Kit, Paislee Press (red); notebook paper: Photogenic Kit, Audacious Designs; acrylic frame: Family Ties Kit, Fei Fei’s Stuff; brush and staples: Paislee Press, Chasing the Sun, Photogenic Kits; grid: Family Ties Kit, Joyce Paul Designs; heart: Adobe Photoshop; fonts: Lainy Day and Courier New

and i thought i'd give a little sneak of a project i have in december's issue of scrapbook ellaments. the article and project are here. (but promise not to tell my new sister-in-law, because it's for her!) and while you're visiting ella, be sure to sign up for their email list. you'll get a monthly link to their free eZine along with coupons and info on their latest books. but wait, there's more! i'm going to have a giveaway coming up, and signing up for the email list will give you an extra chance to win! :)

d-day and other details

it finally came. the day you that's been inspiring us to spend every possible moment together as a family. deployment day.  i'm pretty much a live-in-the-now sort of girl. i don't worry too much about what will happen tomorrow, or what didn't get done yesterday. sometimes i feel very blessed to be saddled with that particular personality trait in this military lifestyle. being able to enjoy every last moment until goodbye, gives you that many more precious moments to enjoy.

monday the girls and i took stan out to the base to send stan on his way into harm's way. we got him all checked in, and we ended up with 4 more hours of free time together before goodbye. i'm not sure i've ever been so thankful for the little slice of heaven on the base with the bowling alley and games. they have a whole area with foosball, ping pong, kid's pool table, play area, bouldering wall, etc. it afforded us several hours of playful family bonding. a perfect way to spend together.

there were no tears until goodbye finally hit. and it did hit hard. torrey really took it hard. there's all of the changes that come about in 4th grade have made this a bit of a different monster for her this time. with all the new reasoning skills and a drop of hormones... life seems harder to take sometimes. but with those new skills and hormones, come new ways to cope and see your world that make those hard times manageable at the same time.  i am thankful God only gives us what we can handle! the whole thing didn't hit emma until we got home. that first night brings its own kind of loneliness. thankfully it is only one night, and anyone can make it through one night.

on wednesday torrey and i were talking and she described it this way, "it's not like you're so sad you're about to cry all of the time. it's really only like that on the first day. after that, you're just kind of gloomy." it put to words the first week better than i had been able to describe. so we're trudging along, doing quite well, counting our blessings and checking off days. i am always amazed at how much seeing your blessings makes each day a blessing to be a part of. especially now, but really, for always.

i couldn't decide which picture i wanted for monday's moment in time... so i went with two. stan taking his bags and one with him and the girls. he always gets a little something special for them each time he deploys. this year, he asked a wonderful lady from church, who makes stamped silver bracelets, to make a little something special for them. he had part of a verse from 1 corinthians 13 put on the front, love never fails. and a special message to each of them stamped on the inside. i am amazed everyday at the incredible man i am married to. we're lucky girls... the whole lot of us. there are a few more d-day pictures here.

Supplies: patterned paper: Leiko Beck Designs - Veteran’s day gift kit; stitches: Kathryn Wilson, Eastbourne Kit; poloroid frame: Taylor Made, Composure Kit; staples and tag: Paislee Press, Chasing the Sun; flower brush: Fei Fei’s Stuff, Embrace Kit; dream word art: Paislee Press, Philosophie Kit; font: Century Gothic

with all of the magic moments of the past couple weeks, i've been in the get-these-puppies-on-paper sort of mood. a 10 year anniversary seemed a very good place to start on the paper putting-on path. Especially with the beautiful veteran's day digital gift set from Leiko Beck Designs. thank you oscraps and your designers for your generous support of our troops!

tuesday life started back to normal. the girls both went back to school after monday's craziness. torrey was met with the book order she'd been waiting to get her hands on. the latest installment of the diary of a wimpy kid books. if you have a kiddo anywhere near this age group, you've probably heard much about greg. it's goofy and funny, and reminiscent of the real life humorous awkwardness of jr high from the view of a kid. she had the entire book devoured in a little more than an hour. now if that next sister's grimm book will come out, i think she'll be really happy! :)

wednesday night was a kind of uninspired photo day. so it was a one with the lensbaby & the star thingy again. this time we were trying to get the catchlight in her eye into a star shape. it is in this one... although i'm not sure it's very easy to see unless it's way zoomed in... and if it's really zoomed in you can also see how blurry the picture is. so i guess it's best just like this. lol.

thursday was parent/teacher conference day, and the first day the girls got to talk to stan! they got to have a nice long web-cam chat with him in the morning before conferences. is it silly to list skype toward the top of the list of things i'm thankful?

conferences went well. it's always reassuring to hear your kids are doing ok in the middle of a bit of craziness. definitely another blessing there. that, and they both have amazing teachers.

thursday night torrey went to a slumber party. the perfect opportunity to have some one on one time with emma. she helped me make dinner and we drug out a bunch of scrapbooking stuff to make notebooks for the "treasure box" in her class. the bind it all got a work out, and we got to keep the memories. friday morning, we had a bit more hang out time before picking torrey up, so i grabbed a couple of quick pictures outside.

Supplies: Patterned Paper & embellishments: In Good Company kit by Paislee Press; font: Courier, Chicago House; photo by Becky Van Hofwegen

a quickie page i did today while snuggling under a blanket with the girls. definitely a good way to spend a rainy saturday when you're waiting for the oven repair man. wednesday the oven decided it wanted to join stan on deployment... at least the numbers 4, 5 & 6 on the touch screen did. so we cooked wednesday's dinner in the oven at 330 degrees for 30 minutes. the funny thing is... after not working for 4 days, they decided to randomly start again about an hour before the fella got here. they ust have heard he was coming! good thing it was under warranty!

i got a chance to catch the girls with the camera talking to daddy on the web-cam this afternoon. love stan's big smile... giggling with his girlies. there is so so much to be thankful for.

are you a happy scrapper?

i remember when i first started scrapbooking "for reals" (i.e. with actual scrapbooking products) i was sure that i had to scrapbook every single picture i took. why? i'm not exactly sure, it's not like someone told me that's how it had to be... or else. but nonetheless, it was a rule i had for myself. it took all of one album to break me of this self-imposed unrealistic expectation. after 40 some pages of torrey's first two months of life, i realized i would never be able to keep up. so rather than taking less pictures (clearly not an option for me) i decided to scrap only the pictures i felt like scrapbooking. FREEDOM! without the stress of crazy mad-minded rules, a whole new world of happy scrapping opened up for me.

ella publishing's latest book, a combined effort by stacy jullian and lain ehmann,  20 simple secrets of happy scrapbookers, nails real-life right on the head. with one of lain's tips, it's how you think about it,  as inspiration i scrapped about a little change of heart that changed my perspective in a big way.  check out this very cool book today, and watch the ella blog on wednesday for a chance to win some very fun goodies!

falling in love all over again

so i was browsing the blog of the amazingly talented moon ko the other day. while falling in love all over again with her beautifully simple graphic style i ran across a line of digital stuff that i love. i've looked through their stuff before, but in my sort of vast collection of favorites, paislee press had been placed somewhere on the back burner. all that to say, it was a day full of falling in love all over again. and the happy as a lark kit, seemed to fit perfectly with a painting emma did with stan's mom while we were on vacation (and some of the papers from the oh happy day mini kit). just love rediscovering inspiration!