From the category archives:

holiday

lightroom plugins

December 27, 2010

in holiday,lightroom tutorials,photography tutorials

Do you use Lightroom? I do.

I love Lightroom. (Well, I have LR2. Dear Adobe, you are more than welcome to send me LR3. Just sayin’)

Did you know that there are a bajillion plugins for Lightroom? There are.

I love plugins.

My latest favorite is Export to Facebook – this has really come in handy lately, because I was able to send all of the photos from Ken’s family Christmas party to the Hoskins Family Christmas album in Facebook with just one click.

Easy peasy!

I also just installed the Storyboarder plugin, and it is fabulous for making quick and easy storyboards for my blog. Now, this one requires a donation to unlock full features, but they leave it up to you as to how much you want to donate … it is definitely worth $5!!

I ~~am supposed to~~ need to add this disclaimer … Ken does NOT throw like a girl. He was “slowing it down” so that I could get good pictures. He did not tell me to say that. Did you, Ken? *ahem*

So I was all ready to type that LR doesn’t have the ability to apply my brush watermarks, but then I found another plugin, installed it and figured it out.

And I. Am. In. Lightroom. Heaven.

LR/Mogrify 2

I will spare you the details on how to install this plugin (maybe a tutorial later?) but I just saved my watermark as a .psd file (straight up Photoshop) and then used the “graphical watermarks” portion of the mogrify plugin to put it on the image as it was being exported. (Somewhere in Georgia, my mom’s head just exploded from having to read that sentence … I will post more pictures later, Mom.)

Voila!

The only thing I don’t like about this is the freedom to mouse+place the watermark. I just kind of have to make a wild guess about where it’s going to land based on the parameters I plug in … so that’s kind of odd. Especially since I don’t like things centered and am no stranger to blown highlights and a lot of white in my images.

But this can be a huge timesaver when I want to do a blog post with a lot of pictures. Oh wait, that’s every blog post. Hmmm, I guess I’ll use this one a lot.

I would also love to be able to use Export to Flickr, but I prefer putting watermarks on my Flickr images due to some stealing issues I had a while back. And even though nighttime sleep is going great, my brain may still be too mushy to figure out how to do the watermark + Flickr export.

And oh yes … WE HAD A WHITE CHRISTMAS!!!

My first white Christmas ever! It was Emma and Lucy’s first white Christmas, as well, but I’m 32 and have never had snow on Christmas. So exciting!!

(For those wondering, Ken spent the first 10 years of his life in Michigan, so not his first white Christmas)

Anyway, we’re taking down the Christmas decorations today, and I’m happy. I love having them up, but I NEED my house back. I need to get these Christmas boxes out of the hallway. My depression is kicking in, and I’ve got to get this place cleaned up before I shut down completely.

We had a wonderful holiday with family and friends, and we are so very very blessed.

Miss Lucy enjoyed her first Christmas (I think) and it was so good to have her here with us. Sometimes, it just hits me in the gut how close we came to losing her, and I’m just so thankful that she’s here and healthy as a horse. And almost as big as one, too.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday!! xo

{ 11 comments }

from our family to yours

December 25, 2010

in emma,holiday,keli,ken,lucy

Merry Christmas!!

ken * keli * emma * lucy

give thanks

November 25, 2010

in emma,holiday,lucy

From our turkeys to you …

{ 3 comments }

tap, tap … is this thing on?

December 31, 2009

in emma,holiday,pictures

Dude. I guess it’s time to blow the dust off of this blog and post a little update on what’s been going on.

You’d think after waiting this long to post, I’d have tons of things to say, but I really can’t think of anything other than, “We had a great Christmas, how about you?”

Santa {*ahem* Ken/Daddy *ahem*} was really good to us this year, and I got a beautiful new camera.

And a beautiful old camera from my grandparents, too.

I cannot WAIT to load this puppy up with some film. And then pay to have my photos developed. No, seriously. It’s going to be awesome!!

Watching Emma open her presents this year was one of the highlights of my life.

She would start gasping before she even got the paper ripped off, and every single present was like the best thing ever.

She is currently in a toy transition period from large-sized baby/toddler toys to smaller sized big girl toys that she can sit and play with for hours. Okay, maybe just a few minutes, but it seems like hours when kids are occupied, am I right? So she ended up with more toys than we would normally buy for her in a given year, but I cleaned and purged and ended up with a small box of toys to keep for a future baby and then a HUGE box of toys that will be going to a local shelter.

And she’s also a kid that needs a lot of choices, as is evidenced by the fact that she is being moved up to the next preschool class due to her boredom with the toys in her current class. She is her momma’s child, that’s for sure. Always needing more options and choices.

Once I get the discarded toys out of here, I’ll be enforcing a rotational system so that she doesn’t have the same 274 toys to choose from every day. It’ll be like Christmas once a week!

Anyway, not to make it sound like it was all about the presents, because it definitely wasn’t. There was food, too.

Those? Oh those are oreo cookie balls covered in chocolate.

Lord have mercy on my soul.

Which is one of the reasons Ken and I ran 7 miles while Emma was spending the night with her grandparents. *ahem*

I hope each of you had a wonderful Christmas full of joy and peace and reflection.

And really good food.

Are you subscribed to the new Kidnapped by Suburbia RSS feed? It’s not broken … I just took some time off during the holidays. But if you’re not subscribed and you want to follow along with my Photoshop & Lightroom tutorials, you can do that here. Lots of good things coming up in 2010!

{ 7 comments }

long weekend

May 26, 2009

in emma,family,holiday

The last 4 days have been go, go, go all day long. I am literally JUST NOW sitting down at my computer to catch up on the weekend emails/blogs I didn’t read on my Blackberry and also to finally go visit the bloggers who commented on my last You Capture post. :)

I kind of took a camera-free weekend. Mostly not on purpose, but we were literally going from one place to another so fast that our time at home was scarce, and I don’t like lugging it around just to leave it in the car, especially in the southern heat.

We took Emma to her first movie – Monsters vs Aliens 3D. She did really well for about the first hour, but then we ran out of popcorn, and she got bored. She was very quiet and non-disturbing to the other movie goers, but she liked flipping the seats up and down and looking at the exit lights on the rails. Overall, it went really well. A 30-45 minute children’s matinee would be perfect for her.

We also went to Georgia yesterday – kind of a surprise trip. My mom called while we were in the movies, so we literally ran to Target, bought some diapers, and got on the interstate without even going home. I’m sad I didn’t have my camera, because Emma got into their freezing cold pool and rode Pappa’s tractor for the first time. She is fearless – just jumps into any new thing feet-first without even flinching. I’m so proud of her independence and strength. She’s going to be an amazing little girl! And quite the tomboy. ;)

The weekend also included a fun bbq at Ken’s brother’s house, a trip to the new, improved playground next to the G’ville Zoo, tennis in the rain, and lots of time on our new Wii fit.

And fun w/ bubbles in the backyard …