The perfect breakfast

One sourdough or whole wheat English muffin, split in half and toasted. Cream cheese schmeared over each half. Several tomato slices piled on top and lightly salted. Add a stick of sharp cheddar cheese and a granola bar on the side, and voila! The perfect breakfast.

I can't decide if it's healthy or not, though. It sounds like it might be, what with the fresh produce and all, but I like a lot of cream cheese (fattening, right?) and I probably use too much salt (though my blood pressure, even while pg, remains miraculously low, thank you very much). Plus the granola bars I've got are the chocolate chip kind, lol.

Oh well. It's tasty and I like it.

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday to K2's kidney!
Happy birthday to K2's kidney!
Happy birthday to K2's kidney!
Happy birthday to you!

And, as always, my condolences to Uno Kidney on the loss of hers. :-)


~RCH~

Uno among the flowers

Taken yesterday, June 20, 2007.


~RCH~

It's not nice to kick old ladies, and other ramblings

Ponybelle. Ugh.

(For those of you who hadn't heard the update -- or did I blog about it already? -- Tres is definitely a Ponybelle and not a Joe Bob. As I suspected all along, DH doesn't make Joe Bobs. Email me for the name, if you're curious!)

Somehow pregnancy -- starting at about the half-way point, which I'm a little past now -- morphs me into a 90-year-old woman. After sitting or lying down for any length of time, I can't simply rise to the upright position like a normal person. Oh, no. I get these wonderful twingy pinches in my lower back that cause me to hobble around, hunched at a 45-degree angle, for several moments while I work through the pain and hoist myself to standing.

Darn babies.

The hobbling was particularly bad last night -- so much so that DH couldn't help chuckling any time I stood up (rude, yes, but in his defense I really do look funny doing it) and Uno created the Oh! My Back Hurts game wherein she and Dos wandered around the living room hunched over, moaning faintly and rubbing their lower backs. Just like mama. How sweet.

Not to be left out, Ponybelle decided she should get in on the act: Nearly every time I had to get up to use the bathroom last night (which, as you know, for pregnant ladies is quite a lot) she'd kick me rather forcefully as I struggled to stand. When she gets here I'm going to have a little talk with Miss Ponybelle about why it's not nice to kick 90-year-old women. Especially pregnant ones.

In other news, I'm beginning to contemplate the new baby's room. This is the first time I've been able to do a real nursery nursery: The first time, we were in an apartment (Uno shared space with DH's "office" -- she may have felt cramped, but I like that she was surrounded by books from the very start); Dos had a place of her own, but we had no money to make it anything more than a crib in a square room; this time we have new furniture -- frivolous, I know, but I love it! -- and a budget for paint and accessories and an actual design plan. Um, if I could figure out what that plan should be.

Here's the room. The arrangement feels tight because of the bed, where Dos currently naps and which I insist on keeping for night-time feedings, and because of the placement of the vent. Kind of annoying, but oh well. I don't like the previous owners' paint choices, baby poop green on the bottom (apropos, sure, but still...) and white on the top. But I found a cute sheet set (see below) and hope to pull a couple of nice yellows out of that.



I've got it narrowed down to ~12 paint chips:



I'd like to play up the colors of the orangey-yellowy butterfly, with a darker yellow on the bottom half of the room and a lighter yellow on the top and ceiling. Keeping in mind that color never translates accurately from real life to the screen -- and more particularly that I think my monitor is wonky so these pics are probably a terrible representation -- anybody have any ideas for me? LOL.

If any of my design-savvy, DIY seesters or friends would like to come up and help me rearrange furniture for a better fit, choose colors, and/or help me paint the room (it's small; it won't take long!), you are more than welcome!

All right, and now for my final ramble: Father's Day. We had a lovely one yesterday; DH slept in while I made an actual breakfast (as opposed to our usual Pop-Tarts or off-brand toaster waffles), we gave DH our gifts after church, and for dinner I made him steak and potatoes and deviled eggs (as opposed to our usual hot dogs or frozen pizza or desperate leftovers).

I gave DH a few things for being the father of my children: A couple of framed photos for his office, and a new George Foreman grill that I found on sale (the one we've had since we got married is the small kind that only cooks one thing at a time; this one is more practical for a family). Pleasant gifts, sure, but nothing spectacular. The honor of spectacular present-giver actually goes to Uno, who found this trophy at Walmart and just HAD to have it for her dad -- at first, simply because it's a trophy and trophies are cool, but even more so after I read her what it said. It may be cheap and plastic and kitschy, but she thinks it's the most beautiful, unique, special thing in the whole wide world and obviously the only perfect present to give to her daddy. She'd been keeping it a secret for four whole days, and she looked about to burst as he pulled it out of the Happy Birthday gift bag (hey, we recycle). She's adorable. Her belief in the fabulousness of the $3 trophy (lol, can you believe it cost that much?) is what made it so. :-)


~RCH~

Splendor in the grass

Dos sat down in our next-door (absentee) neighbor's tall grass this evening, just as the sun was starting to set. It made such a lovely picture that I told Uno to keep her there ("and both of you, no talking to strangers or bad guys!") while I ran inside for my camera.

Of course, party-pooper DH made me check both girls for ticks after we finished our photo shoot. Apparently they have those here. I don't think they did in the suburbia of my youth -- or maybe ticks just don't like more manicured lawns? Eh, who knows. In any case, no ticks for the girls. *Whew!*

I had to shrink the picture down in order to fit the blog's column width; in case you can't read the text I added, it says: I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars. -Walt Whitman


~RCH~

I likes me some Photoshop

You may recall my recent Sisters picture: It was lovely in its way, but sadly the girls' legs were cropped off at the bottom and I wasn't happy with the color when I got the photo printed (I think I need to calibrate my monitor, but I'm not sure quite how). So I decided to work on it some more in Photoshop.

The first order of business was to give the girls some legs. I used bits from another pic we took during the same photo shoot to add legs (and more greenery) to the bottom. If you look closely, you'll see that it's not a perfect match, but it'll do for our purposes. (This change also allowed me to size the photo in a 5x7 ratio instead of 4x6.)



Next, I decided to remove the color all together since I don't think I can quite trust what I see on my computer monitor. I made a Hue / Saturation adjustment layer and overlaid it on top of the original. Oooh, but look how dark it is. Time to tweak!



First we'll work on Dos: Using masks and Curves adjustment layers, let's lighten up her jeans to add detail, then brighten her arm, hand and face.



Uno's next: Her face, hand, and Dos's hair were all way too dark so we've used the same technique as before -- masks and Curves adjustment layers -- to lighten them.



Aaah, look how pretty they are! But it's still too contrasty and harsh for my tastes, so let's make one final tweak: We'll add a lens blur to soften the background and make everything look a little dreamy (with the added benefit of hiding the imperfections at the bottom):



Ta-da!

You'll note that I also changed the font and style of the text from the original; I love my Photoshop CS2 because you can type on a path (in this case, in a semi circle) whereas in previous versions text had to be in a straight line or weirdly warped. Hooray for CS2!

I printed this version on metallic paper at Mpix.com and it turned out beautifully! That metallic paper is some pretty cool stuff; I wish I could show you, but I don't think the effect translates online. I guess you'll just have to come visit me to see it, lol!

And thus concludes our Fun with Photoshop for today. :-)


~RCH~

Postcards from Grand Teton Nat'l Park

We spent Memorial Day weekend in Jackson Hole, WY. We took a local teenager (the daughter of an EMT DH works with) to help with the girls -- I think the original plan was for DH and I to spend one of the evenings on our own, on an actual, real live date, but that never happened. We had loads of fun all together, though, so no problem!

In town we enjoyed a bevy of local restaurants, the (overpriced) Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum, and portions of Wild West Days. But the best parts of the trip by far were those we spent in Grand Teton National Park.


We took a boat ride across Jenny Lake and hiked some trails on the other side.


It was windy and cold on the water, but as soon as we got to the shore we had a perfect day -- sunny but not too hot.


Hiking away! (That's our Girl Friday carrying Dos.) Actually, the little girls insisted on doing most of the hiking themselves. They're tough like that.


DH doesn't like to have his picture taken, so this non-closeup is the best we're likely to get.


DH showed the girls how to skip rocks in a stream ... and for the entire rest of the trip, Uno and Dos were picking up rocks everywhere to throw in whatever water was handy (including puddles on city streets).


I don't like to have my picture taken either, frankly, though I recognize it's important to be part of the photographic record. I think one thing we can glean from this picture is that jackets tied around pg bellies are not flattering.


Trees, trees, everywhere!


I stitched together several photos in Photoshop to get this otherwise impossible panorama (my eye couldn't take it all in, let alone my camera lenses!). I think I need to work on the color of Uno's jacket, and I wish I had some detail in the waterfall, but otherwise I think I did a decent job. :-)


Uno waits for the boat ride back across Jenny Lake.


Wildlife! I was hoping to see some moose (mooses? meese?), but no such luck. We did, however, see several herds of bison.


A quick shot taken from the car window as we drove through the park.


A look across Jackson Lake, where DH has tentative plans to take his dad fishing when he comes to visit at the end of next month.


I've got plenty more photos (I ended up with 204 after deleting the obviously bad ones) but I think these give you the general idea. Jackson and Grand Teton were absolutely gorgeous. I'm not even much of an outdoorsy / naturey girl, but I loved it. Everyone should go when they get the chance!


~RCH~