Its getting HOT HOT HOT

WOW! We are in the middle of a huge heat wave it seems.
I know alot of places in the lower 48 might not consider upper 70s and mid 80s in the shade to be really hot. But here, in Alaska, where it really is COOL most of the time. Its really HOT. A themometer in the sun shows temps above 110 degrees!
Well as you can imagine, we dont have AC here. Whats the point? In the winter its regularly 10-20 below zero and can hit as low as negative 40. And winter lasts alot longer then our three months of summer. It just so happens that July really is the hottest month of the year for us, and poor me, im pregnant through it.

So ideas for cooling down lol.
I have fans, which i move from room to room with me. Oscalating fans are good, celing fans are better. But i also have window unit fans and a stationary fan which just hangs out, well it goes in the kids room especially at night.
2. unplug and/or turn off all appliances. Even off, appliances generate some heat. And when its allready 80 outside ( in the shade) and getting hotter inside, every little bit counts)
3. Dont cook inside, take hot showers, or wash laundry. All three activites generate heat and humidity which can raise the temp in the house. My exception would be my morning shower and if i get super sweaty ill take a quick shower. I also water my plants almost daily, which does put humidity in the air but it cant be helped. Also in the heat, our fishtank evaporates faster. more humidity. Try to avoid humidity creating activities.
4. Shade the windows where the sun comes in. The sun hits our house on the backside, and wouldent you know it, those rooms, our bedrooms, are cooler then the rest of the house. We put double sided fleece blankets over the windows in the summer to block out the insane amount of light we get. But it also works to block some heat too. Even though those windows are open, it helps.

And when all else fails, a cool washcloth on the back of your neck feels really good!
Hope your summer isnt as hot as mine!

Life

Life it seems, is just taking its toll on me. Im almost 35 weeks pregnant now. ( FYI, 36 weeks is 9 months, is full term, so yeah im close and TIRED) Im struggling just to kepe up with my daily house chores. I have a nice cleaning schedual which lets me clean up the whole house, and actually clean one room a day. Which i spread out and take a good portion of the day to do so, but only in 5 or 10 minute spurts lol. So that i dont get too tired.
This weekend was very busy for us! I had fireworks friday evening. A parade, picnic and playdate on saturday, a birthday on sunday. On top of everything else lol. Im really tired. It might not seem like alot to some people, but for a person who lives a very calm life, its alot to do.

But life goes on right? Today im washing baby clothes. Everything was Conners. and im not liking that actually. When i pick up every outit and can remember when Conner wore it, i feel like im cheating baby3. Sooo i decided im going to get rid of about half of it, and buy some new clothes for him, be they used or what. I think every baby deserves some stuff that his brothers didnt wear too lol.
Ugh, Tony gets paid tonight and we need to go to the city so he can get some new workboots. They dont have ANYTHING out here that would fit his big and wide feet that arent steel toe. Im so tired right now im just not feeling it. Good thing its only 11 in the morning! I have 5 hours to wake up, or take a nap lol. which ever works. My stepfather is in town and my kids are with him and my mom. Those kids love their grandparents. And my parents are so involved. Gosh im so thankful for that…
Lord im rambling arent I? Lol.
Ok im going to go! But first, here is Brennan with Matti, his friend from school. Isnt she adorable! Brennan cant wait to play with her again.

Firework Photography

I touched breifly on firework photography before. NOW i have some new photos to share with you all that can help illistrate how to take good firework photos.

First off, all my images are taken with my Canon Rebel XTI, usnig a 50 mm prime lens. my exposure time was usually 3-6 seconds per image.  I could have slowed it down quite a bit more. I also need a wider angled lens so i can capture more of the images.

Other equiptment i used, which made this work much easier. a tripod, and a shutter cable.

For this first shot, i tried out my Apeture mode. I set the Apeture to 14 and took the photo. It took too long and my image was very washed out. I figured that shutter mode was much better. I set my shutter speed to 3 seconds and eventually slowed it down to 6 seconds. The fireworks show was rather short, or i would have made the speed even slower.

The hardest part of taking decent firework photos in Alaska, is that even at 11 pm when the firework show was on, it was still very light out, My images are digitally darkened in Adobe Lightroom, when i processed my RAW files.

Key points to remember about firework photography.

Set up your camera on a tripod. if you want your images to be nice and clear, the color trails to be solid, you need a tripod.

Use a shutter cable to set off your shutter. Even pushing the button yourself will give off a camera shake. And using a self timer makes for unreliable timing of photos.

Set your exposure for a minimum of 1 second and slow down the shutter speed as you go. They can go up to 10 seconds long during a finalie in order to capture many bursts.

Take as many photos as your camera will let you.  Just keep clicking untill the show is over. You can always toss out. I took over 150 photos in our short show and am only showing you a few.

Use a wide angled lens. I used my 50 prime and was rather close to the show. I missed many bursts going off above my camera range and below. If i would have had a wide angled lens i could have captured many more shots.

I hope you are inspired to take some firework photos next time you get the chance to!

Firework Photos

Well tonight is the night for fireworks! YAY!

Thats going to be fun.

Im not that great at photographing fireworks but this year i finally have all the things i need to get some good shots.And i have learned a thing or two in the past about how to do it.
So here are my tips!

Put your camera on a tripod. Camera shake will kill you with firework shots.

Set a timer or use a shutter cable. Ill be using a shutter cable.

Manual focus is your friend here! Auto focus often goes too slow for decent fireworks shots.

Use a long exposure. If you are using a point and shoot, set it for night photography OR fireworks mode. DSLR user? Set it for shutter priority or manual mode and set the exposure to 3-5 seconds.

Set your camera to burst mode. This is so importaint. If you cant use a longer exposure, and you cant if you are holding your camera in hands. Then set it to burst mode and take a ton of pictures at once!

Take tons of photos in general. The digital era means take and toss photos! Utalize those memory cards.

And if you dont get it right the first time, there are plenty more chances! Peopel shoot off fireworks all night long on the third and fourth here. So i can probably get plenty from just about anywhere. In Alaska its not exactly DARK for fireworks. In fact its not even twilight for fourth of july. SOOO ill have to manage that light task too. Hopefully i can get some cool shots to share!

Ice Age 3

Tony got paid yesterday, and will again today ( woo hoo)

So we Took Brennan Conner ( and Ryan) out to dinner and to Ice age3

The movie was cute lol.

We sat in the top row, with over 150 seats below us in the theater. We were SOO worried about the films being sold out because it was opening day, we went to a mataine bought our tickets for a showing 2 hours later lol. We went to dinner, Golden Corral up here Rocks. OMG its so good. With REAL mashed potatoes lol. Never even got to the desert bar. Sadly though it was at 4 when we got there, Dinner prices and all lol. Oh well.

So the movie. There was maybe 30 people in the theater. So that worked in our favor lol. Conner did…. well i suppose. He kept wanting to escape. Tony and i sat on one side and Ryan on the other of the kids and Conner ran between us, tried to get over the seats to the row below us ect. He had one bit of a meltdown and started crying when i pulled him up from the row. Tony grabbed him and put a hand over his mouth for a few seconds and he stopped crying. Every time music would come on, he would dance. He liked it. It was a 2 hour longmovie which was hard on him. Brennan loved it. No surprise there. The only thing that pissed me off. We had to buy Conner a ticket. Only kids under 1 get in free. God at our dinky theater in town its like kids under 4 get in free! I was annoyed but oh well.

When we got out, it was the first regular priced showing of Transformers. Tony and Ryan pouted, They wanted to see that movie lol. There were massive lines everywhere…

This was the first time i had been in a theater since Brennan was about a year old.

So we had fun. Despite it being 80 degrees out, muggy as hell and we have NO AC in our car. We had to drive to the city with the windows down, which sucked SOOOO bad. But on the way home it was much cooler. About 75 degrees at 7 30 and not so muggy. We hit up a walmart and i bought Brennan some crayons and coloring books for in the car. He was rather.. annoying in his boredom lol. I also got redvines. YUM!

Ok i gotta go!

Frustrated

God late term pregnancy is making me so short tempered. Ive been so stressed out, but its getting so much worse. Everything the kids do is just driving me crazy , I know its just the pregnancy. Im huge, im uncomfortable. i only have a few weeks left, but its the longest weeks in the pregnancy and it seems like its so much harder with two boys who cant seem to be happy with anything.
Im trying really hard. I just wish that i was done rather then still having 6 weeks to go.

Lots of Contractions!

ive been having lots of contractions lately. My body is really gearing up for the real thing with all the practice runs lol.
Im actually kind of grateful that i do have the practice runs, because i know that it just gets me ready for labor.
Which is coming up sooner then i keep thinking. Im only 6 weeks from my Due Date. But we are going to try and get this baby out and moving a wee bit early.
im almost ready for him. I have a decent supply of cloth diapers. I do need one pack of mini disposables for the first week. Meconium poo is not fun to clean out! I also need to pick up the carseat, which wont be an issue, gotta pay our bills first. I have tons of clothes and i picked up a bouncy chair and a portable swing at some garage sales last week. I allready have one wrap carrier, but im going to buy a didy here soon. ive been lusting over them for 2 years, i will get one this time! also have a pack and play, going to try really hard to keep this baby outta my bed… HA HA i laugh. Keepthe baby out of my bed hehe.
Anyway, im excited because its sooo close to end time. i just want it to move by faster!!! The last few weeks always take the longest.

Anyways lots of freebies going on on my scrapping blog, so be sure to check them out. www.serenityscrapping.wordpress.com

DPP V.S. Adobe Lightroom

I usually dont use lightroom. ACK Scream, bring on the burning torches. I have Adobe Lightroom installed and i NEVER use it! Scandal right… lol. Usually i use DPP the RAW processor that came with my camera. I actually like its output. On my screen the photos look amazing. But i wanted to try something. Here are two photos. The first, using DPP and my typical editing which takes 30 seconds per photo. The second, with Lightroom, which can take up to 5 minutes per photo, depending on how much i adjust each level in the photo, instead of having red blue and green levels, they that a whole range of colors you can adjust indevidually. So DPP And A.L.

I like both outcomes, DPP gives me more of a red cast to the photos, the skin tones ect are very reddish on my monitor. I think it has to do with being able to edit every other color except red and orange on A.L. So that the photos look much better…. Its harder and takes longer, but the pictures look so much better IMO…. Hrmmm

My second Beautiful son

Sometimes its hard to think of little boys as beautiful. But mine really are. Big beautiful eyes, Wonderful personalities ( most of the time)

Conner is no exception. Total mamas boy, cheesy as can be, happy go lucky little daredevil of a two year old.

here is my second beautiful boy.

My first beautiful son

I have 2.8 beautiful sons. When baby “S” is born, i will have three beautiful sons. And i love remembering every moment of their lives.

This is my first beautiful son, Brennan. Just turned 5, independent, creative, imaginative, energetic and oh so loving!