166 Seconds

ALERT:  Proud Mom about to do some Major Bragging!

It all started with this board.

This is the board that hangs on the gym wall at school. There's several of them that list the school's top acheivements and records for athletic things like Flex Arm Hang, Pull Ups, Mile, 50 Yard Dash, etc.

Most of us would take a glance and think "That's cool" and never give it a second thought.

But my oldest creature, my Overachieving Neat Freak, looked at it and saw a chance to....you guessed it....overachieve!

He was determined to "get on the board" which meant he had to get at least 98 seconds in the flex arm hang. If you haven't tried a flex arm hang in a while, I wouldn't recommend it. You have to pull yourself up on a bar then hold yourself up there, with your chin above the bar, as long as you possibly can. This is what elementary school students are subjected to now in our public schools. Just a little shy of torture if you ask my opinion.

Back to the story....Overachiever began skipping every recess and practicing his arm hang in the gym instead. His faithful sidekick would go with him and run the stopwatch. He would come home every day and as soon as he walked in the door he'd announce "Guess how much I got today?". I'll be honest, it wasn't very promising in those early days. He started off in the 20's....then slowly moved up to the 30 and 40 second range.

He never lost the vision.

When he started hitting the 70 and 80 second mark the vision became a little more intense. The record was 140 seconds...Overachiever began craving 141 seconds.

After more than 5 months of practice and skipping the social event of the day (recess), the time had come.

The clock was ticking....

He had a goal....he worked hard...he sweated....he smelled really bad when he got home from school!

When he hit the 100 second mark the kids started to cheer.....mom & dad just got more nervous...he was soooo close:)

The gym teacher started the updates...120...130...140...145....150....160....

166 SECONDS!!

He did it!! He was exhausted....he was sweaty...he was proud!

Of course it's really cool that he broke a record, but what we were more proud of is the fact that he he was willing to work so hard and sacrifice to achieve it. It didn't come easy but he never gave up. Hopefully that tenacity will carry thru in his life to more than gym class!

They'll be a new name on that board soon....at the very TOP!

NOW WHAT?

I have 3,558 photos in my iphoto Events.

I have approximately another 2,500 photos living in random places in my computer.

Now what?

I happen have an answer to that age-old question.  Actually, I have several answers.

One of the neatest things I've been doing lately is creating photo books.  They're an awesome way to display all those

photos that would otherwise just be hovering in cyberspace for eternity.  As much fun as all this digital photo technology 

is, the ultimate purpose of a photograph is to be printed and displayed...is it not?  That's so deep....

Here's a few photo book options that I've tried personally:

First, Blurb is one of the coolest book sites that I've seen.  It's soooo easy and the software is a FREE download right

to your computer.  

Basically, you just drag and drop your edited photos into their many, many templates.  There's tons of choices of

page layouts, background colors and patterns, and all kinds of special little touches you can add to make it your own.

I recently made this 13x11 wedding book for my cousin's wedding and I was thrilled with the results.

This is a screen shot of what the cover looks like in the Edit mode while I was designing the book.

This is an inside shot when looking at a 2 page spread....

You can see the page templates in the upper left corner, underneath that is the photos I've inserted and along the bottom is my page view of the entire book. I promise...it's easy...trust me.

Blurb definitely has the most templates to choose from and also several sizes.

Here's an 8x10 book that I created to showcase some photos of the creatures....

...and here's an inside shot of one layout....

But I won't leave you hanging with just one option, I've also made a book using my "book" feature on my Mac computer. If you have a Mac, it's included in your iphoto application. I made the large book and was really impressed with the quality of paper and the thickness of the cover. What I didn't like was the dust jacket....it gets beat up really quickly. As you can see from this photo....

Obviously you're gonna want to show off your book but the edges get worn pretty bad with the dust jacket. The cool thing about the Mac book is that underneath the dust jacket is a hard cover with the title embossed on it in foil. Very impressive.

There's lots more book opportunities out there but these two are my personal favorites....I've also made several calendars and greeting cards. I'll pass along my creation wisdom regarding those items in another post!

the wedding

Earlier this year I had the extreme  {pleasure...honor...terrifying experience}  of photographing my cousin Ryan's wedding. 

Keep in mind, I am NOT a photographer!!  I'm just a mom who's obsessed with photography and knows just enough about it to keep thinking if I buy more equipment I'll get better pictures.  So far that theory has not proved true. I've NEVER photographed ANYTHING for ANYBODY EVER before.  

But for some reason Ryan and his gorgeous bride Allison kept refusing to take my "NO!" as an answer and I soon found myself packing my suitcase to head to a cozy little church in North Carolina.  I'm here to say, I actually enjoyed it more than I could have ever imagined.  

And I really wish they'd do it all over again because I would do soooo much better the second time!  

Anyway...a lot of friends and family have been asking to see the pictures so I'll share a few of my favorites here.  I took over 1,600 shots  in 7 hours!  Whew!  

I'll start with the bride and groom.  (Is there anyone else?)  They made my job so easy: the groom was very dapper, the bride beyond beautiful.  I was dying to use my new Perfect Portrait action to "beautify" their faces but unfortunately they needed very little help.  I need to choose uglier family next time so I can show off my editing skills a little more!

I used Pioneer Woman Actions and Coffeeshop Actions for the majority of these photos.  If you're interested in fabulous FREE actions you need to take a look at their sites.  

Of course the Bride is the main focus of the day.  Why does anybody else even bother to show up?

And of course the dapper Groom looking very dapperish:

And here's a few more of the lovely couple in some great, non-posed and untraditional wedding moments:

I'll share more later of the bridesmaids, groomsmen, fun stuff.... there's so much packed into one big day!

Also I hope this can help 'inspire' somebody to attempt to achieve something beyond their comfort zone. I was scared to death to take on the responsibility of their wedding but I educated myself beforehand and tried to approach the day calmly. (I didn't mention to the bride and groom that I had nightmares for 3 weeks ahead of time that I showed up at the wedding without my camera!)