A Week in the Life...Monday

This year I decided to hop on the Week in the Life train. It seems to be a pretty popular and fun thing to do. Plus it gives me something else to do besides all the other things I need to do. lol  For those of you who have absolutely no clue as to what I could possibly be talking about, AWITL is a really fun project where you chronicle your every day life for a week using photos, journaling and maybe even a few scrap supplies.  It is all about recording the every day moments.  Visit Alie Edwards blog for more info and to sign up.
 Here is my first day.

10:00-11:00 am
Time for a little My Little Pony, Transformers and Wii games for the kids.
Mommy took the quiet time to take a shower and get dressed
Kale is a great little babysitter.  He sat and watched Kaitlyn while I was in my room.
Kiara colored at the table.

12:00
Lunch time
Kale had Pasta with butter and Kiara had Beanie Weanies
Kaitlyn fell sleep on the floor in the living room with her milk.  So cute.



1:00 - 3:00
Naptime.
Blissful quiet.
All of them asleep at one time.
SHHHHHHHHHHH
Mommy is resting, too.

3:30 
Precious peace is interrupted by Kale running in my room to tell me that Kiara had colored all over her carpet with a marker.
I thought for sure it was the Sharpie I left on the counter.
Thank goodness it was a washable marker and came right out.
Really wish I had gotten a picture but all I could think of was getting the marker out of the carpet while it was fresh.  I am sure there will be plenty more naughty things to take pictures of over the next few days.  They always find something to get into.  :)

4:00
The floor is clean, mommy is calm and Kiara has been properly scolded for her behavior.  Order has been restored once again.

5:00
Making Chili Lime Tilapia and fries for dinner.

6:00
Daddy heads off to softball and the kids and I get packed up to go to the little playground at Kale's old kindergarten.

6:15
Make it to the park.  It is still 100+ outside so we don't stay long.
I did get a few pictures of them at play.










Kaitlyn's first time in a real swing.  She had a very fun time. 


7:30- 8:00
Got ready to shower but the hot water heater was off.

9:00
Still no hot water.  The water heater turned off again.
Guess they will have to shower tomorrow.



That is pretty much it for Monday.
We don't lead the most exciting life but it is the life we have to live so we make the most of it.  Every day is a gem to be discovered be each of us and it is the discovery of the day that makes life so exciting.  I am so glad to be making this WITL journey so I can stop and appreciate the joy in each day I live here with my babies.

Recipe time!!!

I have this picture of my youngest baby.

It is just a little snapshot of my baby growing up. Not too special but something I wanted to share with family and not be embarrased about.

There was a annoying basketball hoop on the left side so I cropped it out. Here is the original after the crop.

I have some blown highlights and the white balance is a bit off so I took care of that first.

Then I used a Levels layer with the grey dropper and adjusted white balance. (I forgot my WB cap and had to use auto. DOH)

Flatten the image then duplicated the background and set to Luminosity at 40%

Open up Shadows/Highlights and adjust the settings to:

Shadows

Amount: 75%

Tonal Width 51%

Radius 30px

Highlights

Amount 89%

Tonal Width 60%

Radius 85

Adjustments

Color Correct +6

Midtone Contrast +4

Opened up a curves layer and set my output to 235

Reverse (fill the mask layer with black)

Use a soft brush to reduce the blown highlights a bit more.

Right now it looks a little dull and a tiny bit grey to me so I flattened it and ran Clowning and Painted lady from the Carnival set (unavailable but coming back soon) over it.

Here is what it looks like before adding my favorite two actions.

For this image I ran Clowning (Carnival set) first.

The saturation was a bit much for this photo so I reduced it to 0%

I also adjusted the density of the filter layer to 45

Reduced the color fill to 55%

Reduced the opacity of the entire action to 55%

Merged the group

I selected the "background" layer and ran Painted Lady (carnival set)

I then moved the Painted Lady group to the top of my layers and reduce the opacity to 65%.

Here is the final image:

And the before and after to you can see how it looks. :)

All in all it looks much better to me. Still a little bright on one side of her face but not as bad as the original. I also reduced some of the shadow on the right side so it balances out a bit more. Definitely something I won't be embarrassed to share with my family very soon.