Of Calendar Making, Photoshop Playing, and Just Plain Fun...

For the last ten years or so, I've been making family photo calendars for my parents and my in-laws.  Last year was the first year that they didn't get done and I had decided that I wouldn't continue making them since the kids are getting older now and aren't as "cute" but my mom really, really wanted me to make her a calendar so I've been scrambling, trying to find enough pictures of the kids and get everything done before January is over.  :)

In my tried and true tradition of making things much harder than they need to be, I decided that I would try making some of my own backgrounds using Photoshop.  After all, I have a book I bought years ago that I thought I really ought to use.  :)  It's called Digital Designs for Scrapbooking  by Renee Pearson.  

After a whole day of dinking around, I finally got realistic and found some editable backgrounds to go along with the ones that I had made.  After a few color changes to make some variety, I had enough to get started adding photos.  I digitally cross-processed most of the photos to make them more interesting looking (well, at least I hope they're more interesting).

I really like the way they turned out.  These are a few of my favorites.

  

I'm definitely looking forward to playing around some more with making background pages and other things like tags and stuff that I can use for scrapbooking or mixed media art projects.  

Almost Famous

Last Friday night was a night to thrill any mom's heart.  After an awesome day spent with my bestest friends ever, I got to jump in the car and head down to Tacoma to watch my oldest son's film "The Match Girl" on the big screen.  The film was a selected film in this year's Tacoma Film Festival. 

Notice the ticket stub :)

It was such a fun evening.  The first thing that happened was that my daughter and I stood in line right behind the actress that played the grandmother.  I recognized her and introduced myself and we had a really nice conversation.  I even asked her for her autograph for a little "mom"erabilia.   

Then we noticed that my sister-in-law and brother-in-law were in line ahead of us (too far ahead to visit with but we at least waved).  And then my budding superstar filmmaker showed up with his friends and fellow filmmakers and I got a huge hug and an introduction to the executive producer of his film.  He was the one who believed enough in the film to shell out money for post production costs. 

After the film, one of  Alex's other filmmaker friends somehow recognised me as Alex's mom and came up and introduced himself to me.  That was fun.  :) 

I was hoping to post a pic I took of Alex and friends after the film but I took it on his phone and he didn't get it sent to me before he had to leave for Seattle for a paid shoot.  If I ever get the photo, I'll post it here--he looks good all spiffed up.  Black shirt, black pants, white tie, blond hair sticking straight up.  :)