Today at I ♡ Faces they are having a special day. Instead of the regular Fix-it Friday, where I edit one of their problem photos, today I can enter one of my own and get constructive feedback from the pros.

I had a hard time deciding between two photos, but I finally settled on this one of my niece. I think this is a pretty nice photo, but I still think the skin needs some editing. I especially think the skin between her eyes needs some work to take out the blue. I just couldn’t get it to look natural. Maybe a new crop would give it a little something?

I took this photo in my living room in my makeshift studio. I used only natural light. I use Photoshop CS3 for my editing.

f/2.8
ISO 200
1/125 s
50 mm

Here is the original:

I can’t wait to see what some of you can do with it. I’d love any and all constructive feedback! Should I have framed it better? Used more DOF? Anything will be helpful. Thanks!

Well, NaBloPoMo is officially over for another year. Once again I was able to post every day, and I really enjoyed it. This year, I felt like I was able to come up with something pretty interesting to write about every day. I think I improved over last year. I went back and looked at some of my posts from NaBloPoMo last year, and some of them just barely qualified as a post.

Every year in November I have great intentions of keeping up with the daily postings. I can usually do it for part of December before I start tapering off. I have been tempted to join Blog 365 where you blog every day for a year. Maybe I’ll do the December NaBloPoMo and then see if I feel up to starting the Blog 365 in January.

Either way, I am happy that I had another successful November NaBloPoMo! Maybe I’ll even win a prize this year

Here are a few portraits I took this week. Hopefully I am not boring all of you with the same photos of my kids over and over I added one of Scott and I and one of my parents just to change it up a little bit.

Please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom to view all the Weekly Winners participants.

I went to another spinning class this morning.

I haven’t been feeling well the last few days. I think the cold I have been fighting finally caught up with me. Yesterday I was thinking I wasn’t going to make it to spinning. But, Vicky called me in the afternoon and told me that she had signed up both up. So I was stuck

I got up this morning and dragged myself there. The Saturday class is an hour and a half. I haven’t done the Saturday class so I wasn’t sure what to expect. It ended up being 75 minutes of spinning and 15 minutes of ab work.

I was really glad that I went. I felt pretty good in the class. Today I felt like I was able to push the tension a little bit higher and still kept my cadence up. My heart rate didn’t get quite as high today, either. I felt like I pushed myself hard. At one point we were supposed to simulate climbing a hill. I always have a hard time with that. Today I imagined myself climbing up Brown’s Canyon like I did in the Summit Challenge. I figure the harder I can push in class the easier it will be when I get out there and ride it again.

I think I’ll be glad I pushed myself when I am out riding the hills of Maui in a few weeks. Thanks, Vicky, for helping me get to class today

A few years ago we bought a TV on Black Friday.

The last few years we haven’t been home on Black Friday, so I was never tempted by anything.

We really don’t need anything now, either. But the last few weeks Scott has been talking about how the TV in our bedroom is our worst TV in the house. It is by no means a piece of junk, but it is our worst quality TV. The bad part is it is the TV we watch the most.

Yesterday we were looking at all the Black Friday ads with Russ. He was looking for a TV. Scott and I started talking about it and we decided to splurge and get a new TV for our bedroom.

Walmart had the best deal on the TV we wanted. Scott got up at 4:30am and went by himself. I really wanted to go, I kind of enjoy the shopping craziness, but I just wasn’t feeling well.

He said when he got there there was a line of people. There were no shopping carts and you could barely move when you got in the store. He set up a base on the towel isle and stashed all his things there. The first thing he went for was the $125 BlueRay player. He got one, but they were gone almost immediately. The TV we wanted was a little easier to get because it was a little more expensive. It took him almost 2 hours to get it all done, but he scored a great new TV for our bedroom.

We had a really nice Thanksgiving day. It was nice to get to spend time and share good food with both of our families.

We started out by having breakfast with Dava & Russ. I made my favorite egg souffle recipe. It made me feel a bit like Christmas, because that is our traditional Christmas morning breakfast. I think that the last time I ate it was last year in Maui. It was a hit with Dava and Russ too. Dava made a delicious fruit salad and a pumpkin bread. It was nice to spend the morning with them. I really had a nice time. I felt very loved and I could tell how much Dava appreciated us being there.

After that we drove back to Park City and went to spend the afternoon at my parents house. We decided not to cook the whole dinner this year. Actually, we hardly cooked anything. My mom wanted to make the turkey, but we bought almost all of the sides from a local restaurant. The only thing I made was my Potatoes Romanof. It just isn’t Thanksgiving dinner for me if I don’t have them.

Bryan and Mary came, and so did Gert and “little” Michael. It was nice to see Michael. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, and it was nice to spend some time talking to him. Gert seemed like she was doing well and we all had a nice time together.

I spent some time taking photos, but I never got any of the traditional holiday photos. I was just too busy getting all the food out and I forgot I did have my mom take some photos of Scott and I so that I would have at least one photo of me on Thanksgiving. After the last time I went scrapbooking I realized I really need to make a better effort to get some photos of me.

I had a really nice day with Ian today. We spent the whole day together, just he and I.

I started out by spending the morning in his classroom at his Thanksgiving feast. I am the class photographer, so I went to take pictures. It was fun to watch him interact with the teachers and the other kids in the classroom.

After that I took him to run a few errands, and then we headed down to Salt Lake City to get his hair cut. I scheduled him an appointment with Eddie, who has been cutting my hair for years. Eddie really doesn’t cut kids hair, but I knew that Ian would behave there. He has always done really well for hair cuts. I am loving his longer shaggy hair, but it really needed a trim. It needed to be shaped by someone who really knows how to cut hair, especially curly hair.

Ian loved it. He felt like a big guy and Eddie even put gel in his hair. I think his it turned out great! I think I’ll have to keep taking him to Eddie from now on.

After his hair cut we went out for ice cream. It was so nice to spend some time just one on one with Ian. I really got to enjoy him, rather than herding him around, as Vicky said Excuse the blue teeth in the photo. I took them after he finished eating bright blue cotton candy ice cream.

Ever since Flora’s visit to the vet a few weeks ago I have been keeping her in the laundry room.

The vet said she might need some time to get retrained to use the litter box. Also we never really ruled out cystitis, due to the blood in her urine. I wanted to keep her confined to the laundry room until we ruled out a medical problem.

We were supposed to recheck her urine after 2 weeks. A few days ago I went to the vet to pick up a little box and this really cool litter called “Nosorb“. You are supposed to put only the Nosorb in a litter pan. It doesn’t absorb urine, but gives cats the feel of cat litter. I thought it was neat, but Flora didn’t.

The first thing she did was go into the box and scratch all the litter out of it and spread it all around the cabinet where her box is located. I kept checking to see if she peed, so I could collect the urine to take to the vet. I kept looking in the box, but it was dry. Then at the end of the day I noticed that she had been peeing all around the litter box. GRRRR! I was able to suck some of it up with a syringe so that I could take it to the vet.

After that I spent forever cleaning up small black pellets of Nosorb and cat pee. I dropped off the sample to the vet yesterday, and expected a call with the results today.

I did get the call, but no results. Apparently the lab spilled the sample in transit! Why did this have to happen to Flora, who is such a pain to get urine from???? For plenty of other cats it would have been no problem at all. But for Flora it is a total pain to get urine.

The vet was super nice about it and offered to do just about anything for us. I decided to drop her off there tomorrow morning and let them worry about getting the urine this time!

Emma is going to take a break from voice lessons for a little while.

When she first started going to the Utah Music Conservatory, I signed her up for a group class. She loved singing and she loved the class. This fall I signed her up for another group class, but they didn’t end up getting enough kids and they canceled the class.

She enjoyed singing so much, that she didn’t want to quit. I decided to sign her up for private lessons with her teacher, Janet White, from the summer. She started out strong and really enjoyed it. She constantly asked me to put on her music CD in the car so she could practice. But gradually it has gotten to be more and more of a chore to get her to practice.

She is supposed to practice for 30 minutes a day. At age 6 1/2 I think that is a bit too much, but I would like her to practice a few times a week. I have been feeling like she isn’t getting anything out of the class. She goes to her lesson, and then doesn’t open the books or sing again until lesson time next week.

I talked to her about it and asked her if she would like to take a break. She answered with an emphatic “Yes!” Last week I talked to Mrs. Janet about it, and signed the resignation form. She keep going until the end of this semester, which means she has just 2 more classes.

I think Emma has singing talent and I just don’t want to ruin it for her. She loves to sing and I don’t want it to become a chore for her. I think part of what she loved about the first class was the social aspect. Hopefully they will have enough kids over the summer to run the group class again. By then, Emma will hopefully be ready to sing some more.

I was really blown away by the moon photos posted on Pioneer Woman’s site last week. I was really inspired to try to take some of my own. It hasn’t been a full moon, but I thought I’d practice a bit now so that when the moon is full I will have my technique down.

Here are a few of my attempts.

Please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom to view all the Weekly Winners participants.