- this beautiful dress I finished

- taking some really great pics of Olivia

- the rain

- only 28 days until I get to see my family and husband.  WOOHoo!

I promise I have not been hiding.  I have been busy trying to set up a website.  I am tired of having my blog in one place, my pictures in another, and my shop in another.  It is time to group them together under one name, and it has been a lot of work.  My advice to anyone thinking about it, pay someone.  I bought my website at Photocrati (http://www.photocrati.com), but it is a tedious and time consuming set-up.  I don't recommend it to anyone who does not know what they are doing.  I have been on the phone for days talking to people.  One of the reasons I wanted to undertake this long journey by myself is because I am so picky about what I want everything to look like, and what I want to portray to my readers and customers.  The main thing is that you will be able to find me at Kinder Kouture (http://www.kinderkouture.net or http://www.kinder-kouture.com) no matter what.

On another note, I have been trying to play catch-up after being sick last week.  The above dress - July 4th Party Dress (http://kinderkouture.etsy.com) has been in the back of my mind for weeks.  It was sitting on my cutting board just wanting to be sewn up.  I finally got to it yesterday.  I had 2 hours before Nicolas came home, and I was determined to finish it and post it to my new website as soon as I went live, but not everything can go as planned.  So here are the pictures of Olivia modeling.  

It is a simple pattern, made out of red and white seersucker.  The white satin ribbon holds the dress up.  The reason behind this choice of pattern was simple.  On July 4th, we are headed to a huge 4th of July neighborhood party.  They have watersides and make-up artists for the kids, and of course we will be grilling.  I bought her a cute red and white polka dot bikini, which she can put underneath the dress.  So she will look great for the first part of the day, and later on she is free to take it off and run around the water games.  Add a little bit of blue to the outfit, and it is perfect.  As you can see from the top picture, she can wear it during any other time of the summer season as well.  Seersucker is the choice fabric for the south.  It is so light and easy to care for.

Ok, now I am off to clean my house, because tomorrow I want to start on my next sewing project, and hopefully get caught up before the weekend begins.

- HAPPY KIDS

- Poohsticks

- spending the morning at the park with friends, who just happened to buy donuts......yes....that is what friends are all about

- a major project that I am working on

- talking to my hubby

- knowing that my mom is going to Carmel for her birthday

It was an awesome weekend.  A little bit of this, and a lot of happiness.  My friend jumpstarted my day at 8:15am by calling me.  Yes, I immediately jumped because I thought it was Lance, and I was getting an early phone call this weekend.  She pretty much made me smile when she told me that she was headed to the park with the kids, and some donuts, and invited us to join her.  I am so glad that she got us out there early, because it was hot, and it was humid.  By the time we got home around noonish, I could not get my body to cool down.  It was at that moment that I decided that we were not going to the beach this weekend.    The thought of sitting in that hot sand for several hours with no relief was too much too bare.

So, I spent the afternoon setting up the pool, and the kids had a grand time playing outside all afternoon.  They never stopped.  They played zoo, and Olivia was a dolphin, and Nicolas was an alligator.  They filled up buckets with water and leaves, in which the leaves represented turtles.  A rainboot was a Lion, and another an Elephant.  I knew that they would be incredibly exhausted at night, so I cooked dinner early, and at 5:45pm, Olivia was fast asleep in her bed, with Nicolas close behind.  I enjoyed spending the weekend with them, and I was hoping to have a little more me time, but oh well I will have to wait until Olivia gets a bit older before she can do things without mommy.  I just know that after listening to my son whine after our park date, that we were going to have such a boring weekend at home, tonight his only words were "AWESOME Mom"  "I have  not had this much fun in a long time".

Here I was practicing my shutter speed and trying to freeze the action.  I am pretty amazed at how well this picture turned out.  Yes, this is my little devil in action.  I had originally asked Nicolas to jump in and while I was setting my camera, she got up on the stool and said Mommy Look.  LOL.  She did start off with a bathing suit, but hey you know how 3-year olds can be.

1.  Corrected the white balance in PS using the Image ~ Adjustment ~ Curves tool.

     That pretty much did away with the red color cast.

2.  Ran MCP Actions Peek A Boo and Oops I Blew It.

3.  Ran a new Adjustment Layer Color Channel to correct skin tones

4. Ran Magical Clarity and Magical Contrast

5. Adjusted Overexposed skin area.

6. Applied Gaussian Blur and reduced opacity to 20%.

7. Ran Darker and Richer MCP Action.

8. Ran Noiseware.

I did the best I could.  The eyes are not perfect.  However, the picture was in pretty bad shape.

My last and final edit

Although yesterday was the perfect day, it ended on a sour note, when my stomach decided to give me a few problems throughout the night.  I assume I got some kind of adult version of the stomach bug, and up until about an hour ago, I was incapable of doing anything that did not cause some kind of nauseating feeling inside of my body.  Oh well, it is over, and I managed to eat some soup and crackers, so I am moving on.  Food still tastes and smells yucky, but hey I have been trying to lose five pounds, and maybe this will prove to be the ultimate diet yet.  I told the kids that I was incapable of cooking anything with a smell or texture for tonight's dinner, but they were fine.  Olivia agreed to share my soup and Nicolas settled with Spagetti O's. We all had a banana for dessert, and read a few books before heading to bed.

I wanted to tell everyone that I registered my domain name with Blogger.  This means that my blog is located at http://www.kinderkouture.net.  I had no idea whether or not Blogger would post a page stating that my blog can now be located at this new page, but since I have received a few comments regarding this issue I thought I better post about the change.  It humbles me to know that so many people really enjoy my life and my pictures.  I enjoy them too.

I spent the other day watching Jasmin Star on Escalate Live. http://www.jasminestarblog.com/.  It was so much fun to listen to her talk.  She has a wonderful blog, and she has such a fun personality.  I love her photography, and all the information she gives to others.  The important message she was trying to send out to others is that blogging helped her to connect to an audience.  This audience in turn helps her to gain customers.  She blogs about whatever she wants, and has fun doing it.  That is always how I felt about my blog.  Sometimes I blog about my family, my fears, my anger and frustration, my sewing projects, my store, my cooking or my life.  Whatever I blog about, it reflects what i am thinking and doing.  There are times, when I go back and read some of the things I blogged about and I laugh.  I even printed out last years blog as a pdf file to give to the kids one day.  A blog is supposed to be fun and about you.  There is no right way or wrong way to maintain a blog.  It's a reflection of me.  It is whatever I want it to be.  It is special.

Today, my uncle got his new camera a Canon 5D Mark II. http://www.mmoraskiphoto.com/  He is a professional photographer, and for as long as I can remember he has had a camera in his hand.  I wish I showed some interest in it back when I lived with my grandmother.  He could have taught me a few things.  I know he is going to be extremely excited in the next few days, because although that camera is extremely expensive, it is awesome.  I, on the other hand, only got to calibrate my monitor today.  For all the non-photographers out there, it basically consists of a software and a device that is attached to your monitor and adjusts colors and lighting.  It does this so that you can see color casts as they actually appear.  Please by all means, feel free to critique my pictures if you see a purple skinned little boy on your monitor.  LOL.  The Mac is very bright, and the first thing I noticed is how it adjusted my brightness.  It will be interesting to look at some of my pics and see if my mac calibration did a good job.  I have a funny feeling it did.

Ok, it is time to disengage.  Grey's Anatomy is on, and I can barely breathe.  I cannot concentrate on writing anymore, so here is wishing everyone a good night.