Friday-5 : Obon!

It's the end of July already! I can't believe that summer is almost over. It's Friday and it's an early Friday-5 for a change! Today I'm sharing some photos from the last weekend's Obon.

Here's my mom and all the kids, decked out to dance!

... a little dancing action. There was a good turnout... three circles of dancers!

Here are the BIG kids, Chris, Cheryl and Hana, getting ready for the Fan Dance.

Jim decked out, LOL!

On the way home!
Cheryl is not going to be happy with me for this one, hehehe...

I hope everyone has a GREAT weekend!

Crafty Share

It's been a while since I've done a papercraft share. As I was downloading photos from my camera tonight, I came across photos of the two cards that I made for my mom's and dad's birthdays. Here they are:


I used copic markers to color the images. I'm not quite ready to break out the coloring books, but coloring with these markers is a lot of FUN!

Stay tuned! Coming this weekend is the Scrapbook Deals for you Summer Blog Hop!

Happy 5-Friday!

We are now officially in the middle of summer and this is the time of year where we usually go to Kauai. I love Kauai! The air has a wonderful sweet smell, it's beautiful and green, and I have family there. It's a great place to rest and unwind... eat and be lazy... hike and swim... Here are five of my favorite shots from summers past.

OC Fair 5K - Opening Day

We finally have the results from the OC Fair 5K! Chris and I both have new PRs!
Chris's time was 20.10. He came in 3rd in his age group and 21/625 overall (19th in men) that means only two women came in before him.
I came in at 24:03 (that's more than 5 minutes off my old PR). I came in 2nd in my age group, and 87/625 overall (23rd in women). The first place woman in my age group beat me by 2 seconds...

Unfortunately, they gave prizes to only the top three overall finishers, or Chris and I would have ended up with prizes :o)

This is the only photo I have of the race. You can see me pretty clearly. Chris is just to the left of me in the photo wearing an orange shirt and orange hat (you can just see the top of his head and a little of his shoulder).

New Classes at Jessica Sprague

I'm really excited about the new classes at Jessica Sprague! After taking my last class, I got a 20% off coupon that I put toward two more classes. In the first class, we'll finish a 20 page digital album in 20 days. I have an album I've been wanting to work on. This will be a great way for me to get a start on it! I was hoping to finish it before Christmas!

This class is all about digital brushes. I'm actually pretty good with brushes, so I was going to give this class a miss. But, since I had the 20% off coupon, I decided to go for it. The last class was so much FUN! I'm in the mood for more and don't want to wait until the end of August for the other class to start. The brush class starts in just one more week!

Happy Monday!

And what a beautiful Monday it was! Sunny, HOT, and just an all around good day :)

And it was a good day for changes, hehehe... Chris says that bleached blond is so LAST YEAR! The new color is ORANGE, LOL! Jim stayed home from work today. He worked on Chris's hair, after Chris got home from summer school. (BTW, Chris is getting an A in geometry! Way to go Chris!)

Chris LOVES his hair! He wants to get it done again before school pictures so that his hair will be orange on his ID card... well, that will liven up his portrait, that's for sure!

Photoshop Class Day 13

Yesterday's class was an extension of Friday's class. Instead of a three photo storyboard, it's a nine photo layout. The size of this one is 8"x8", at least this one will print on our printer. I don't know where to get Thursday's 7"x14" storyboard printed.

These photos are from our trip to Hawaii last summer. I'm working on a photo book of our 2008 trips. This will be one of the pages in the book.

This is our last day of instruction. The very last class (which is today) is just another test. I haven't logged onto the site yet to take it.

Registration for Jessica's new classes starts tomorrow. I'll post again tomorrow to remind you! If this class was any indication, the new classes will be GREAT!

Friday-5... 5K Mud Run!!!

Here are promised photos for the mud run. It was less than exciting... I mean the mud run AND the photos. I didn't marry my husband for his photography skills, that's for sure, lol!

It was HOT, it was CROWDED, it was CRAZY! Every time we got to an obstacle, there was a huge backup of people. I ran with Cheryl, and Chris took off with the front pack... there's no holding that guy back. He even admitted that he's too competitive. It drives him crazy to have anyone pass him.

Here we are before the race. We couldn't find the staging area, so we waited at the starting line.

Here's Chris going by. You can see one of the mud pits behind him.

Here's me... or at least half of me.

Here's Cheryl. She ran the entire way (except of course where the group came to a dead stop.)

Here's our after photo. You might be wondering why Chris isn't muddy... well, he fell in crossing the lake.

There were photographers on the course so maybe they'll post some photos of the race. If I find some good ones of us, I'll post them later.

Maybe I'll feel different about it in a week or so, but to sum it up in a nutshell, "That was kind of FUN, let's NOT do it again..."

I hope everyone is having a good weekend!

Photoshop Class Day 12

No Friday-5 today... I'll post my 5 photos from the mud run tomorrow!

The class is almost over, BooHoo! I'm really enjoying this class. I read on Jessica's blog that the next class will be a 20-paged digital book completed in 20 days. I'm definitely going to take that one! It's supposed to start at the end of summer. I'll keep an eye out for the registration and let you all know.

Today's lesson is on storyboards. I loved the clean professional look! Can you just image these printed out and framed?




Note: FONT - Renaissance

Photoshop Class Day 11

Today we learned how to use layer masks to mask off colored areas of a photo. I've done this before, but I used a duplicate layer and erased the areas I wanted colored. The teacher said that this works much better because it's easier to fix mistakes. I don't think that's true... with the undo key, I can fix ANYTHING! LOL!

I took this photo of my daughter and my niece last summer. They are showing off a few mountain apples that grow in Kauai.

NOTE:
Hue/Saturation layer - hue:35 saturation:5
Paint black on the Hue/Saturation layer to show the color underneath.
Add punch to a B&W photo - Add a levels adjustment layer and move sliders. move left slider to right, move center slider to left, move right slider to left.

This is your chance to go to Mars!

How fun is this?!!!
Enter your name, and it will be included with others on a microchip on the Mars Science Laboratory rover heading to Mars in 2011!