Jam Jams

There is nothing cuter to me than Roosta in his jam-jams. These are my current favorites, because they are so little boy, but tiny.  This past weekend J partied hard. Went to bed super late both nights (relative to his usual 7:30 bedtime), a result of the time change and getting together with friends.  Monday morning he woke up with a cold.  Super sad.  Most likely super our fault because of the late nights. But, I believe the following pictures do justify the late bedtime. This child was AWAKE (and, I suppose you could argue delirious).

These pictures were taken at 9pm inside (duh) with my 35mm lens, no flash. I love this lens. I'm not saying these photos would win prizes, I'm just excited that this lens can catch the very active Roosta with no natural light available.  If you care, here are the settings: manual, 35mm f/1.8, ISO 1600, 1/25 (the shutter speed varies slightly picture to picture).  I do all editing in Picasa because I understand it. I have Photoshop Elements, but it's over my head.




It's all about this basket, lately.



You have a nose!



How do you put this child to bed?



(I'm in love with this picture... and child)



Reading Go Dogs, Go. I like to think this is his favorite book. Aunt Anna gave it to J before he was even born, and I've read it to him since he was tiny.





I had someone tell me once that they want (and I quote), "their children to look like mine, because my child looks like a precious baby duck."  Might have stemmed from here.

(It's funny how self-deprecating we can be about ourselves-- but, our children? I'll repeat and brag on every compliment they get.)



Playing (M was putting the basket on J's head)...



Playing with Mama and #2...

I cropped in on this one, I think it's a little grainy because of the 1600 ISO. Anyone?



...and, Dada.  I cannot get over how cute it is when J realizes that M is home or even when they are playing together.  He freaks out.  When I tell M this, he says, "well, he's my buddy."



And finally, the next morning before church.  Unfortunately, I still had my settings from the other (darker) evening, so these are over-exposed. But, you get the idea...





a little oatmeal on the go...



and we're off.

My thought when I see this picture is, "my son and I will both be wearing elastic jeans shortly."

Have a great weekend everyone!  This weekend M and I are dropping J off for the night at Momo and Popo's and heading to Atlanta for a college roommate's wedding (Whitney).  First night without J... ever. How will I do this?!  Once I get past that... I am so looking forward to a weekend with so many old friends, including these girls! Barnhouse reunion!

Guest Photographer

One of my dearest friends is my sister, Anna. Our lives are pretty different. We live in town, they live out-of-town. M practices putting in our front yard, Mark shoots clays in their's. They have horses, we have cats. Well, they do have barn cats, for as long as they survive Lady (a very zealous dog).

All these differences make it fun to visit.  And when visits are too few and far between we rely on pictures.  This winter Anna has sent me some beautiful photos that I want to share.  It also gets me off the hook for having not taken any great pictures of my own lately.

My favorite...



amazing how much the landscape can vary within a country...







My brother-in-law

this photo was featured on the front page of Lubbock's local news website



Last, but certainly not least, my nephew Riley.  I would not want to get in a snowball fight with this guy.



Hope you've enjoyed a little change of scenery!  Thanks, Anna!

Playing Catch-Up

I'm a little behind on blogging.  Blogging among other things, but blogging is more fun to check off the list than laundry.

So, what have we been up to?  For one, our little Roosta is about to be one. How has this happened!?  Everyday he becomes more himself.

Which can be pretty silly...



excited...



happy...



and just downright sweet.



J is constantly on the move. His few steps are getting more and more natural. He can proficiently use a sippy cup. He just might reach the 20lb minimum to face forward in the car seat by his birthday.  And, he is now willing to at least try foods other than yogurt, oatmeal and cheese sandwiches. Bravo.

Oh, and standing? It ain't no thang.

which certainly makes dancing more fun.

What else do I want to catch you up on?

#1. I now know what it means to take pictures in manual mode. I just thought I was doing it before. Retractions about this post to come.

#2. I haven't had many recipe posts because every month I've done this:

(okay, 2 months now)



I LOVE having meals frozen. Takes 1 afternoon, and you've got meals for a month.  This past time I made taco soup, chicken tortilla soup, vegetable soup, meatballs and spaghetti sauce.  From the spaghetti sauce I like to make a baked ziti that will last several meals, and obviously, spaghetti.

(However, I will be posting soon about the delicious meatball subs we've been devouring.)

#3. I have high hopes about making J's birthday cake. But, I fear it will end up here. Maybe I should leave it to publix. Advice?

#4. The tunnel.

This was J's Christmas present that KAZOO TOYS (that's right, go give them a negative rating on Amazon... nah, I'm just kidding, it's a nice tunnel) did not deliver in time. No matter, Roosta was pretty easy going about it.





and finally...

#5. I am SO excited about the final season of LOST.

Thanks for stopping by to catch-up!

Cooking in a Dark Kitchen: A Tale of ISO

*Disclaimer - All ISO information in this post has now been debunked by myself. Enjoy the musings of a person who did not understand the manual setting yet. And still only gets it a little bit.

I thought I'd share what we've been eating the past week, and use my photography woes to learn a little bit about ISO.  These recipes (if you can even call them that) are neither fancy, nor impressive, but, if you're looking for a quick weeknight meal with zero preparation- this is it.

We love Costco. M loves chicken fingers. I was skeptical at first, now I'm a believer. It is real chicken. I promise.



We eat them 2 ways:



-Photography Freeze-

This photo was taken in terrible light, at night, in our kitchen.  I've obviously done some editing, but this is an example of when upping your ISO is very useful.  ISO is your film speed, the measure of your camera's sensitivity to light. I know that is probably an over simplified definition, but I personally would rather really understand the least common denominator rather than sort of understand the high level stuff. The ISO in the above photo is 1250, which is high. Not super high, but high. The regular intervals are 200 (the lowest- least sensitive to light), 400, 800 and 1600 (I know some cameras go outside those ranges, but that's the norm).  An ISO of 1250 gave my camera enough sensitivity to light to get a passable photo in my dark kitchen without being grainy (aka "noise").

Now to the chicken at hand...

Chicken Parmesan Sandwiches

1. Bake chicken according to package directions.

2. After chicken is cooked top with Ragu (straight out of the pantry or fridge), then top with any kind of Italian cheese, shredded or sliced.

3. Lightly butter sesame seed buns (or spray with Pam) and place on the baking sheet with the chicken (butter side up).

4. Put it all back in the oven until the cheese is melted and the buns are toasty.



ISO here is 560, in manual.  Also, dark kitchen, not a great shot. See how the baking sheet and edges are darker than in the other photo where the ISO was higher?  The ISO is also tied to your exposure composition.  If your exposure is really low, you might try a higher ISO, balance them out according to your light source.  The exposure on the last two shots was -0.33.  Probably should have tried exposing the photo more with a lower ISO, maybe it would have worked, maybe not.  For me it's trial and error, sometimes I have the time to mess with it, sometimes I just edit to oblivion.

All you folks that actually know what you're doing- I'd love your comments and advice!

Back to the chicken. Easy, right? And no effort.

Great if you've been working all day, or chasing after a Roosta.



The above photo is a perfect example of having the ISO on your camera too high for the light available.  I had it set at 1600 ISO and -0.33 exposure on aperture priority mode (which I am liking less and less, no surprise that I want to have control over more aspects of the photo).  1600 is waaay too high of an ISO, especially considering all the great light I've got coming from the window.  400-600 would have been fine.  But, if J is doing something cute I usually snap before I check the settings. Such is life.

Bottom line, when the ISO is too high the picture gets "grainy". See the sides of his face? Grainy.  Makes me think of the pictures you always see of an award banquet taken with a disposable camera.

Moving on to easy recipe #2.



On this photo the ISO is also set to 1600, however, the camera needed all that extra light, so it's not grainy.  But, the lighting is bad, so the color is not great.  Product of M and I eating dinner after dark and me hating the flash.  I probably should have played around more with the exposure settings and metering. But, I was hungry. And I know nothing about metering. Gotta do a post on that so I can learn about it.

Chicken Caesar Salads

1. Bake chicken according to directions.

2. Prepare/wash romaine lettuce

3. Make your salad: Lettuce, parmesan cheese, THEN dressing, then chicken and the rest of your toppings. If you put the toppings on before your dressing then slip all over the place.

4. We top with croutons, sunflower seeds, craisins, sliced almonds (me) and black pepper. Or, just Parmesan, dressing and chicken. It's your canvas.



Also 1600 ISO. Same story, it's dark, so the color and photo suffers. However, a high ISO makes it so you can at least capitalize on the little bit of light available.  Other things that will help? Wide open aperture to let in as much light as possible, and a slow shutter. Although, too slow and the photo will be blurry unless you have a tripod.

I've noticed that having the ISO higher than 1000 (with decent light) is when the film grain really starts to show up. Here is a cloudy day in September, with the ISO set to 1000...



See how much crisper that is than this one, taken at 1600 ISO?



Go the other way and the photo will suffer too. Cloudy day, 400 ISO, -0.67 exposure. I might as well have put my hand over the lens to keep out all natural light.



Ah, sweet editing (notice the thirds). Much better. Not a framer, but better.



I would once again like to reiterate that I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm just playing, experimenting and learning.  My philosophy is to keep practicing like crazy and hope that my eye for composition will improve.  I'd love for you to muddle through it with me, learn from my many mistakes and maybe we'll end up helping each other in the process.

Have a great Thursday!

For Now

I got nothing.

Well, not quite nothing. I do have this...



and this...



and while this may not technically be a recipe, I can show that we have been putting our pepper jack cheese to good use.



And Roosta cut bottom tooth #2.  He's a little shy about it.



I suppose this all really is something... for now.

I wanted to do a photography post on ISO, metering and white balance.  The above photos were supposed to be my examples, but I forgot what setting I was doing and why.  I seem to forget what I'm doing and why a lot these days. And because it's nap time, I really should be getting things done instead of blogging. Alas, my photography post will have to wait.



I'll just have to snap away at our sweet J again, darn.

How to Catch a Roosta

J is all over the place.

I'd like to say I have found a painfully easy way to catch movement, but as you can see, I'm muddling through blur after blur.



As my amateur mind understands it, you need three things to have a clear picture of a moving Roosta: 1. A fast lens 2. A fast shutter 3. Good light.  You can get away with less light if your lens is fast- meaning it has a very large aperture allowing lots of light in. This allows the shutter to be faster, freezing the image, because of the extra light from the wide open aperture. Really fast lenses are really expensive. You can set a fast shutter on any old lens, while that will freeze J it'll also produce a dark photo without ample light. ISO plays a role, but I'll save that for another day.

So, I open that aperture real wide, let in the natural light, and-



I suppose I did catch the movement.

Sweet, Mr. Nanners. So photogenic. So still.



He even poses.



Then somebody got a little jealous...



I think shutter speed is a lesson in persistence.  Chase your child around long enough, and you'll catch the one that makes it worthwhile.