Is your lip gloss killing you??

Did you see the recent news story about the lip gloss/skin cancer link? Supposedly wearing lip gloss can make it easier for UV rays to penetrate the skin, plus the moisture helps break down your skin’s natural defense in the outer layer. Oh, please. What if it has shiny reflective glitter? Does that block UV? Just kidding.

But what doesn’t cause cancer these days? If I do get skin cancer (which is certainly a possibility with my family history) it will be because of my uber-pale skin. I always have to pick the lightest foundation shade, and sometimes that still isn’t light enough. Urban Decay used to have a Surreal Skin foundation named Apparition that worked well for me. That’s just sad. I guess I truly am as white as a ghost.

For the most part I embrace the pale, but I do miss tanning. I started to tan before we went to the Bahamas two years ago and stopped once I found out I was pregnant. Didn’t want to cook Daphne or run the risk of any neural tube defects. Now I completely understand how people get addicted to tanning. It was so relaxing and tanning just makes all those little skin imperfections disappear. Maybe I need to break out the self-tanning lotion.  At least until the next news story about self tanners causing cancer.

Hairdos

When I was in elementary school I wanted to wear my hair in two French braids like the girls in Toni Basil’s Mickey video. In hindsight, it’s not a great look. But my best friend Jane wore her hair in French braids as well as most of the girls my class. The problem? My mom couldn’t French braid. I was outta luck until I got older and learned how to braid my own hair.

So when I saw Girly Do’s blog & Hair Today I bookmarked them for future Daphne reference.  Yep, I think Daphne & I are going to have years of hairdo fun.   And for older girls, I’m loving Heather Bailey’s Trash Ties (she also designed the Fresh Cut fabric line).  I’ll never have hair long enough for something like that, but I love the different looks you can achieve, like the Tara bun.  Cute!

Photo Presets

I don’t ever want to see another elderly folk dancing group. Ever. Or ballet dancers with embarrassing personal wetness issues (Chris, is that a dust spot in this photo? Um, no. Eeewww!!! Get that woman a panty liner).

What am I talking about, you ask? I just finished editing 772 photos from last Sunday’s Magic City Art Connection (still have Friday and Saturdays photos to do). Since ONB will be using the photos for promotional purposes I didn’t have to get too creative with them, mainly just cleaning up dust spots and slightly adjusting the exposure and saturation. Luckily since I was doing the same thing to most all of the photos I created a preset in Lightroom. Here’s an example:

This photo isn’t a great example, actually, since there is so much going on, I just love the little girl’s expression. It’s like she’s saying, “What am I doing up here with all these crazy white people?” Anyway, the left is straight from the camera. The right is after the Jenny Fix It preset. I was going for a subtle change, not obviously Photoshopped, slightly deeper blacks and colors.

I will do a little more tweaking on this one, but you get the idea.  I love Lightroom.

Hobby Overload

I have way too many interests and hobbies. But I suppose that’s pretty obvious to those of you who read my blog. One day I could be talking about sewing, the next photography and photo editing software, then maybe cooking or decorating or baby poop. I realize it makes for a Forrest Gump/Box of Chocolates kinda blog (you never know what you’re gonna get) and I’ve considered changing this site to a crafting/project oriented blog, then creating another Daphne/personal blog. I don’t know. Most of my traffic (other than friends and family) comes from people looking for baby/pregnancy info, crafting, or different items I’ve reviewed (like Etsy items). A few weeks ago Chris was looking at my site analytics and was shocked at the amount of traffic. He encouraged me to promote my blog and try to get even more readers. Nah, I’m not good at self-promotion. Plus a blog is pretty much like a baby, the bigger it gets the more you have to feed it and care for it. I don’t know if I want blogging to be my main hobby right now. No, I think I’m content with blogging being a diversion from Daphne care/house cleaning and a way to let the family know what’s going on in our lives.

Ok, coming back from my blog tangent… In a way having so many interests irritates me because I bounce around, not really mastering anything. But after years of working in a job I hated, without the energy to do anything fun, I’m cutting myself some slack. But I am to the point of saying “no more.” That neat screen printing kit, or book on jewelry design or knitting is not coming home with me. Nope. Let’s get more proficient in sewing or crochet first. I really want to learn to take better pictures. I’ve taken some decent pictures before but it’s been dumb luck (In fact, before I got my Flickr pro account a number of photos in Chris’ Flickr stream were actually mine, like this one. See the comments? Where’s my photo credit? lol) Camera on auto, point, click. It helps a little to have an artistic eye (and a good camera, and PS3 and Lightroom!), but if I really applied myself I’m sure I could take great pictures.

So expect to see more pictures soon as I make it a point to pick up the camera more. I’ll still be rambling on about my other interests, so don’t think this will be a photoblog. I’m sure some of you can’t live without my Daphne poop and hairdo updates. And the Daphne fashion show posts. I get a lot of crap from friends and family about those, but I don’t care. It’s my blog and I’ll post what I want, so there

8 months

Dear Daphne,

You are 8 months old today. I can’t believe how fast you are growing up. In the last month you’ve decided that maybe baby food isn’t as horrible as you initially thought. Although you were quite the drama queen last week when I mashed up an avocado for you to try. That’s ok, I don’t like fresh avocado either unless it’s made into guacamole, with a margarita close by. Eating baby food definitely takes a little pressure off me (since you never did like a bottle, at least now I can run to the mall leaving you with your father & a jar of carrots until I can get home to feed you) but has opened up a whole other world of poop. I prefer cleaning up breast milk only poop, no contest there. It’s also making me reconsider the whole cloth diaper thing, lol.

For the last two or three weeks you’ve been pulling up on everything in sight, especially me. I’m like your own personal jungle gym. We’ve dropped your crib mattress down a notch and need to drop it down again. You’ve also started to take a few steps when we hold your hands. I’m not ready for you to walk yet. You need to slow down, missy.

Bath time is more fun for you now that you are out of the plastic infant thing and have the entire tub to yourself. You really like to chew on the washcloths. I could have saved money on bath toys. It’s funny to watch you go after your duckie. You either lunge forward and get it, or start kicking your legs which usually results in you going backwards, away from the toy. You’ll figure it out.

And I’m sorry I scared you to death this morning with the blender. You were sitting in your high chair, minding your own business, when I decided to make another batch of salsa. The last time I heard you shriek like that was when you were a few months old and got a blanket stuck on your head. Poor baby.

This next month I promise to take more pictures and video of you. And also keep updating your baby book. I’ve been slacking, especially with the baby book.

We love you Daphne and are so glad you are in our lives!!

Love, Mommy

Daphne, 4-28-08

Interpretive Dance

Daphne & I went to the Magic City Art Connection for a few hours today. The weather was perfect and we both really enjoyed the art as well as the bands and different dancing groups. We didn’t stay too long because I didn’t want to distract Chris from his picture taking. As I was going through some of his photos this evening I came across an interpretive dance group. I don’t know if I was just tired, but I couldn’t stop laughing. See what I mean:

This is very Ally Sheedy, Breakfast Club.

“Let’s do the Time Warp again!!” Doesn’t she look like Magenta from the Rocky Horror Picture Show?

Don’t put your head down, the chick in the blue is going to EAT YOU!

Interpretive Dance or Medical Emergency? BTW- I’m loving the Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? makeup.

And the troupe. In a weird way, it actually looks like fun.

This one is my favorite. You know the scene in Arrested Development with Kitty, Michael and Cal Cullen (I believe the episode was Spring Breakout), after Kitty flashes them Cal makes the comment, “Oh, they’re crooked.” I don’t think I need to explain that anymore do I?

Greased Lightning

A few weeks ago Christopher Walken hosted SNL again. I love Christopher Walken. One of his skits, Greased Lightning, reminded me of my elementary school music class. We had a “bring a record from home” day, so I brought my two favorites: the Grease soundtrack and The Captain and Tennille’s Song of Joy (you can quit laughing now). The class got to vote on which song we listened to from each record, and let’s just say that no one wanted to hear Muskrat Love, Butterscotch Castle or Shop Around. No, no, no… they wanted Greased Lightning. You should have seen my music teacher’s face when it got to the “You know that ain’t no shit we’ll be getting lots of tit” line. She rushed over and pulled that record off the player and said something about it being a bad song. At the time I had no idea it was such a dirty song. But seriously, the music teacher must have seen Grease. Hasn’t everyone seen Grease? She should have vetoed. I wonder what lyrics schools use when they perform Grease.

For the record, when I asked Chris what he would have taken to school his answer was either Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs or Frampton Comes Alive. He’s always been so much cooler than me. Did I mention I used to like Barry Manilow and still really like the Bee Gees? Yep, I have questionable taste in music. Someday I’ll have to post my iPod playlist.

Little Notinee Dancers

Today at the Magic City Art Connection:

How cute are these little girls? I love their brightly colored costumes.  And the colors were really this intense.  I actually turned down the saturation and vibrance a bit in Lightroom.

Shopping Bags

I saw these shopping bags from Violet.com on one of the design blogs I follow. All 5 fold up into this cute little pouch.

Aren’t they adorable?? I have several basic reusable grocery bags, but none as cute as these. I also really like these Carrybags by Reisenthel:

They fold flat, and even have mini kid sizes (So Daphne could have one too!!! You know, in a few years.  Can’t you just see Daphne & I strolling around Whole Foods with these cute shopping bags, or a picnic in the park?).

Now if I could just remember to put the bags in the car before I went shopping.

Editing

What are your plans this weekend? Me? I’ll be editing about a million of Chris’ photos. In fact, he just ran in from the Mayor’s Sackcloth and Ashes prayer rally and threw the SD card my direction while he was on the phone with one of his buddies who runs a Birmingham information/news site. He wanted to get the photos out before the major media outlets had a chance. Hey, no problem. Tomorrow I’ll start on his shots from the Magic City Art Connection. He only took 500 photos today in 3 hours. And he’ll be there a total of another 10 hours or so.  Not that I’ll have to edit all those photos, maybe only 10 or 20% of them.  Thank God for Lightroom presets.

I actually really enjoy the editing process. We went ahead and got a year subscription to Lynda.com, so I need to get back into learning more about Photoshop and Lightroom.  I constantly amazed at Adobe products.  You can do so many different things with them, if you just take the time to learn.