Because I Love Them

It's Valentine's Day, so I just felt like posting a picture of my two little loves from our trip to the park yesterday.

On the subject of photography:
I don't have a super-fancy camera, and every day of my life I think "...someday I REALLY want a DSLR..."  For now, I do the best I can with my Sony, which is the nicest point-and-shoot I could find.  I edit all my photos in photoshop - cropping, adjusting light and exposure, fixing alignment, that sort of thing.  You probably can't tell, but my younger son has a yucky eye infection at the moment.  This is why I love photoshop.  Admittedly, I am not a photoshop rookie, I've been using it for years professionally to doctor up early hand-sketched architectural concepts and make graphics for presentations, but I really know nothing about editing photos as far as effects go.  While I know my way around, I am not a photoshop whiz, by any means.  However, I can usually figure out how to do what I need to do with enough tinkering - so I was able to actually copy and paste parts of his healthy eye/lashes on top of the one that is pretty crusty looking and voila! a much more attractive munchkin. 
Recently, I discovered picnik, which is a free photo-editing software put out by Google.  It requires that you use the Chrome web-browser to download and use the software, but it is worth it!  Picnik helps with everything from cropping, editing colors, soft-focus, and all sorts of other effects like what I did above, which is called "cross processing."  The best part about picnik is that it is SOOOO easy to use and can add some artistic flair to fairly ordinary photos.  You don't need to take a class to figure out its whistles and bells.
Sometimes I mourn the fact that I don't have a little girl to dress up and take lovely photos of.  My husband was teasing me that we needed to dress our kids up in pageboy caps and knickers and have them run through a field of wheat or something.  Anybody know where I can find a good wheat field and a sunny day?  A couple weeks ago, I spent some time playing around with a photo of a friend's little girl in a beautiful white dress. 
Here is the BEFORE shot:

...and here is the photo AFTER editing:

As my friend said even before the photo was edited, this is one of those pictures you cry over 20 years later.  With just a few minutes of artistic tweaking by me, a complete novice at this sort of thing, it looks even more precious.  This was a combination of adding some soft color washes in photoshop and then a couple of effects in picnik.
If you're interested in a few pointers on photography, I found this great series of tutorials on one of my favorite blogs.

Being "Green" is hard sometimes

My husband likes to joke that he is all for saving the planet, but couldn't somebody else do it?  It's a joke.  Don't worry.  We recycle.  Have you seen Tapped?  Scary stuff.  We live in Seattle where going to a bus-your-own-food restaurant is the most confusing experience ever since we are now faced with *THREE* garbage receptacles: garbage (which you are basically not supposed to put anything in), recycle (you know, the traditional cardboard, plastic, glass) and now compost (food waste, used paper products and these amazing plant-based fake-plastic products that are being used all over the place including my younger son's yogurt containers).  I think we all have a love-hate relationship with these garbage choices, but since I have young children who are someday going to grow up, I like the idea of reducing the amount of plastics being created and garbage being hauled to landfills.
That was me making a short story long.  Getting to my point:

See?  It even looks sparkly-clean!

Today is supposedly National Peanut Butter Day.  I'm not sure what this means since November is apparently Peanut Butter MONTH, but alas, today is a good excuse to post this somewhat lame but actually very helpful tip.  My preschooler consumes an unbelievable amount of peanut butter.  It's a good thing because he's a really skinny kid, but it leaves me with this huge moral dilemma at the end of the jar.  Do I get lazy and just throw it in the trash because it's such a pain to clean that peanut butter out of the jar (particularly plastic ones)?  Or do I take the time to scrub out the peanut butter like a good citizen of Mother Earth and recycle that plastic jar?
Yesterday, I tried something that maybe everyone else knows about, but it's new to me.  Maybe it's new to at least one other person out there.  I filled the jar up with soapy water, screwed the lid back on and left it over night.  This afternoon, before removing the lid, I shook up the water inside for about a minute, then dumped it out and guess what?  ALL THE PEANUT BUTTER WAS CLEANED OUT.  That's right, folks.  I didn't have to scrub anything but the upper rim of the jar.  Environmentalism made easy.  You're welcome.

Baking Soda

I'm really not a jewelry-person. I wear my wedding ring (which I adore), but that's the only jewelry I wear from day to day at the moment. Probably something to do with two little boys, but also because I am just not good with accessories. If someone wants to be my accessories-consultant, I would greatly welcome the help.
Anyway, it occurred to me yesterday to wear a necklace. Thinking to myself that this was an unusual thought, I decided to pull out a necklace I used to wear a lot but haven't since oh, I don't know, the birth of my first son.
My grandparents brought this back for me from Finland. I absolutely love Finnish art and architecture. The Finns have such an interesting and clean, modern style. Since I am part Finnish, and seem to prize that part of my heritage more than all the others, it is that much more special. I love how this necklace has all of that textured sterling silver. It is completely my style.
Well, the necklace was very tarnished. So tarnished that toothpaste and an old toothbrush didn't make a dent in all that texture. I decided to go without embellishment once again. Sigh...can't say I didn't try.
I was talking to a friend about this and her eyes lit up and she got all excited. She told me she had the greatest tip for polishing silver AND it was really easy. Since it is such a great tip, I am sharing it in the blogosphere:
~~Take a pan (I used a glass loaf pan) and line it with aluminum foil.
~~Lay the sterling silver jewelry in the bottom.
~~Cover it with a healthy dusting of baking soda.
~~Pour boiling water on top.
~~Let it sit for a few minutes, maybe shake the pan once or twice, rinse and voila! Completely clean jewelry as seen in the picture above.
No scrubbing involved. No harsh chemicals. No minty-fresh smelling jewelry. I was completely amazed. Apparently there is some sort of reaction between the baking soda and the aluminum when water hits it that magically cleans silver.
Try it! You'll be amazed too. It made me wish I had more jewelry just so I could watch the magic happen.