Nursery Updates: New Wall Art and a Goodwill Chair

Early last week I had big plans of finishing off some projects and posting about them. It didn't happen, but it's a new year and I'm starting fresh by actually posting.

Along with a number of other little projects (Miss Norie pretty well ruled out any major projects) I put up some new wall art I got from my sister for Christmas in the nursery.

I sent my sister this picture of it while Norie was napping and the lights were off. It's the best I've got of the room at the moment since my camera battery is dead. I'll post a better one along with the long delayed name art tutorial.

It is absolutely perfect in every way. I love how its all shiny and pink and aqua and the little poem on it makes me cry.

I read it every night while I'm putting Norie to bed. .

LOVE IT!

I also found the perfect chair for nursing in the middle of the night at Goodwill for $6.99.

I was ecstatic.

The people in the store thought I was nuts.

Austin asked why I didn't just keep the pair I had in college that looked just like it only in green and swiveled.

Where exactly does he think I would put a pair?

Baby Photography and ShootFLYShoot: How I finally Learned to Use my DSLR and You Can Too

Hey kids. I've been way too busy Christmasing to post recently, but I took some pictures this week that were just too freaking adorable to keep to myself.

Isn't that just the cutest little sock monkey hat you've ever seen? It's even cuter when the two of us where them at the same time, but I don't have that documented.

Austin really wanted to get some pictures of her with he light saber, but really good ones haven't quite happened yet. For some reason they turned out pretty well with her new paint brush toy though.

And then yesterday I took some pictures of Norie practicing her almost crawl while I was working on some other stuff. 

I am so happy I decided to take the shootFLYshoot Photography 101 course and learned how to use my camera.

It only took me 7 years. Yep, seven whole years. Not the actual learning. That only took a couple of hours thanks to Kevin and Josh, but it took me seven years to do something about the fact that I didn't know how to use my camera. Sound familiar?

My husband bought me an amazing Cannon EOS Rebel DSLR as a graduation gift circa 2005. I had never used anything but a point and shoot before, but had a lot of fun with the program settings. They worked pretty well and I liked the pictures I took on vacations of landscapes and flowers and other pretty outside stuff.

Then I started a blog and wanted to take pictures inside. It was a whole new ballgame and my pictures were okay at best. Mostly they looked like were amateur shots taken with the flash in poorish lighting. I knew they weren't great, but I didn't know how to do any better.

One day Layla over at The Lettered Cottage linked to a series of posts by Centsational Girl about blog photography. I read them and got motivated to try my hand at shooting in manual mode. I busted out my camera's manual and figured out how to adjust the settings she mentioned to the ones she used, but since I had no idea what they did I couldn't adjust them to the picture I was trying to take. I was lost.

Then Layla's husband Kevin started a photography website called ShootFLYShoot.
I liked the facebook page and added the RSS feed for their blog to my Google Reader, but I didn't actually sign up and pay for their Photography 101 course. I wasn't quite ready to commit. I mean, it was $69 whole dollars.

The conversation in my head went something like this.

$69? That's kind of a lot of money. Like more than half a week of day care. Can I really justify spending that much?


Then I realized that I wasn't able to use my several hundred dollar camera the way I wanted to because I was too cheap to spend 69 bucks.

I bit the proverbial bullet an paid for their Photography 101 course. It was totally worth it. probably the single best $69 I have ever spent. Kevin and Josh are amazing and I actually understand what all those setting do.

I feel like my own personal photo taking super hero. Not that I'm suddenly a professional photographer. I'm not, but I do know how to take a great blog or baby scrapbook pic.I''m sure it helps that my baby is ridiculously adorable, but I take credit fir that too.

What to do...

I don't know if you've noticed, but I use this blog as a place to sort out my thinking about as much as I use it to tell you about cool stuff or post tutorials. That's just how it is. At the moment there is one big thing I need to sort out, that I haven't really thought out. That's not good since that One Big Thing happens in six days.

We're hosting Christmas and to be honest I haven't thought it out the way I should have. I asked my sister, the planner, if she could share any helpful spreadsheets from when she hosted and to my dismay she claims they don't exist. I'm pretty sure that's not the case or is only the case because she lost the files somewhere, but she did share a helpful nugget of wisdom: Planning Christmas can pretty much be broken down into Food, Gifts, and Decorations. I think I need to add Experiences (like finding a church with carol/hymn heavy  service to attend on Christmas Eve - if you know of a good one in Wamego, KS let me know. Otherwise we might head to Manhattan to the closest ELCA church).

So, Food, Gifts, and Decorations....

Food - I have this under control I think. Thanks entirely to being forced to sort it out at Thanksgiving.

Gifts - Yeah, not so much, but since the people I'm buying them for read this blog I shouldn't really get into them.

Decorating - This is where Steve, my ever rational office mate laughed and said, "You can't do it in the last six days." He's right. I can't do everything I ever hoped to get done in the last six days especially since I really need to clean the house. Or at least the guestroom/office/craft room. My siblings-in-law and their kids are staying with us and right now that room is well, terrifying.

I guess that's my answer: Clean.