Project Revealed

Well we are finally done with our little project. The wait is finally over and you can now see what we have been up to the past couple of days.

Here are a couple of photos of the finished product. We plan to hang it in our office when we move at the end of May.

The how to:
First we painted our wood with a gel medium

Next we put the images we wanted face down on the wood. We choose a black and white picture of an old airplane, a spitfire, Alex's favorite airplane.

After the gel medium had dried we wet the paper and rubbed it off (this took a long time)

One panel after we had rubbed off the paper

painting on the mod podge to seal the picture to the wood. 

Our inspiration came from this piece from Pottery Barn. It cost $299, the total cost for making our project was $45.23!

Here is another picture we made with the leftover wood:

Park and Zoo

Elise and I took my sister, brother and niece to the wonder that is the Irvine Zoo (apparently it's actually the OC Zoo) this past Monday.  Here a few shots from the day.  We had to play on the park for a short time while we finished our drinks because no beverages are allowed in the zoo.

Golden Peacock - I missed this animal during our first tour of the zoo a month ago.  It is tucked away in the children's petting area which we happened not to visit.  It is a beautiful bird.

Here are a couple of pictures from the park; Alexis refused to give up her crackers and water bottle.  It was quite entertaining watching her attempt to navigate the park without hands.

And a couple from inside the zoo:
At first she refused to pet the goats (from fear of my parents dog); she was very proud of herself once she did.

Inspired Crafting

This afternoon I (Elise) was flipping through one of my favorite home furnishing store's magazine and saw something I really liked, then I looked at the price. Needless to say Alex and I decided we could not/would not spend that much money on it. Then Alex says, "we could make that." My initial reaction was "yeah right." But then I started thinking about different blog posts I'd seen of people being creative, which gave me some ideas. That's when I started to figure out how we could make it happen.

Now, I'm being pretty vague about all of this so far. That is because we are going to do two blog posts. This first one we are not going to tell you what this thing is we are creating. See if you can figure it out. Once we are finished we will post the second part of this blog and then we can get more detailed.
So without further ado here is our inspired crafting thus far:

Here are some of the supplies:

After the wood pieces were cut into various sizes:

Laying out the pieces into a pattern we like:

Clamping the wood together to keep it in place:

Alex hard at work screwing in the supports:

Supports to hold the pieces all together:

All the pieces connected at last:

Where are we going with this piece next? Any guesses? We would love to hear what you think! Excited to continue creating this and excited to show you the finished product!

Family Fun

Here are some pictures of my niece exploring my parents garden last night.  Although I took most of them, Elise snapped some of them as well.  One of her favorite things to do is open and close doors (opening usually requires assistance); this extends to gates as well.

 A couple of shots with her uncles:

"Fourth of July"

My sister and niece are in town this month.  They live in Japan, where Erika and her husband are stationed with the navy.  My sister loves all things holiday; to help give Erika the sense of home, my mom has gone about celebrating different holidays during Erika's visit.  This past Saturday was the "Fourth of July" (unfortunately we couldn't make fireworks happen).  Elise and I were asked to bring dessert over.  Elise got creative and came up with these cupcakes for the holiday.

I missed capturing one key part of the cupcake - the colored layered inside.  You can still see it through the cupcake wrappers though.  They are red on the bottom, white in the middle and blue on top.  I just lost track of capturing the image once they were brought out to eat.

Trader Sam's

It's been awhile since I made a post here.  I missed using the camera but found myself busy with other things.  My younger sister, Gretchen, turned 21 this past Thursday.  That means all four of us siblings are 21 now.  On Saturday my family went to Trader Sam's bar at the Disneyland Resort to celebrate.  If you have ever been Disneyland (or any of their main parks), one of their classic rides is the Jungle Cruise.  At the end of the ride is Trader Sam - the head salesman of the jungle (the pun being that he actually sells heads).  The interior of the bar and the menu all play on this personality.  Here are some pictures I took inside of both the decorations and my sister sampling some of the different drinks we ordered (with six of us there we had a wide sampling off of the menu).  The lighting was difficult and I didn't want to use the flash and disturb other people there.

These last two pictures are of this drink called Oh Aou (Actually I have no idea how they spelled it, just think of two grunts).  They bring it and light the middle and you throw cinnamon on the flame.  It is a drink "for two or more people".

Continuing Pfotography

During my month of daily photos, I came across this website about tips to help improve and advance personal photography skills.  I have decided to focus specifically on #19 on this list but will try to tackle a couple of others as well.  Below is a list of things I am challenging myself to continue doing by the end of 2012 in photography.  Since expanding to "Family Pfoto", this will be a list that Elise and I both try to conquer.

1. (#19) Make a list of 20-25 local places you want to shoot by the end of the year.  (I changed the wording slightly and my list is still being built):

• A sunrise
• Great Park Balloon Ride
• San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary
• Irvine Spectrum/Ferris Wheel
• Capture home projects

2. (#3) Enter a photography contest.

3. (#12) Make a large print of one of your photographs and hang it in your home.
4. (#1) Learn every function your camera is capable of performing.

Recap

Last night I took a look back through all of my posts during the month of February.  Some had a lot of writing, others had only a couple of sentences- but there was not much of a pattern where that happened.  Some had one picture, others had many; I noticed that more of the ones with many pictures were towards the end.  And in other posts towards the end I would think about the pictures that I had taken and left out.  I realized that in doing this I came to enjoy taking pictures, messing up, figuring out the shot and trying to capture what I saw in my head with the camera.  I learned a lot about the camera, yes, but I also learned a lot about creativity and capturing beauty.  Some days taking the 'daily pfoto' felt like an obligation but most days it was something I looked forward to doing and writing about.  In that spirit, I will be continuing with my blog here.  My posts will probably no longer be daily (although at times they may be), but certainly will be more than weekly.  In the next couple of days I will present another goal for pictures to take and posts.