Staying Warm & Cozy

If you follow me on Instagram, you've probably already seen this photo this week. I received this most adorable red polka-dotted mug from my bestie for Christmas. I love mugs, pottery and anything with polkadots, so she completely nailed it! :) 

Anyway, we are slowly warming up from the effects of the Polar Vortex. It's been a bitter week here in PA. We've done everything in our power to stay warm including bumping up the temperature in the house, dressing in layers, wearing scarves to keep our necks warm, drinking warm beverages and eating soup for dinner. My husband isn't exactly a soup-lover and even he was on-board with soup for dinner! We made homemade French Onion soup for the first time ever. I did document the process, so hopefully there will be a post coming early next week. Last night I made a version of the Olive Garden's Zuppa Toscana. That is one of our all-time favorites around here. I've made it several times over the last few years. You can find the recipe I used at TuscanRecipes.com.

Anyway, we are finally on an upswing. Today is actually suppose to hit 35-degrees which seems much more bearable and temps are suppose to be up in the mid 40s tomorrow! It will be a nice reprieve from all this bone-chilling cold we've had lately. Sending warm thoughts your way! 

xo, 
tish

Linking up With:

Thursdays Favorite Things Blog Hop  Little Things Thursday  The Long Road to China Serendipity is Sweet

Turquoise/Splash | Nurture Photography

This prompt forced me to think a little bit and get creative, but the weather was fabulous this week and allowed me to get outside for the first time in a long time! When looking around our garage for turquoise, I found the sidewalk chalk. These days, it doesn't get used like it use to as my girls are getting older, but it does make an appearance on occasion.  

                  50mm, f2.0, 1/500, iso 500, frames by Fuzzimo,
                        texture Cafe Script by RH West 

I also took a little bit of time to set up my tripod outside. I recently had fun practicing some slow shutter speeds in San Francisco as we walked across the Golden Gate bridge. I slowed it down and caught the motion of the cars on the bridge. You can find one of the photos in this post I did earlier this week. 

I decided to practice fast shutter speeds and freezing motion this week. I used my 50mm lens and set a fast shutter speed. It was actually a lot of fun catching different splashes. I ended up with a lot of photos to choose from. No worries ... I narrowed it down to four. :) 

50mm, f2.0, 1/2000, iso 500, frames by Fuzzimo, texture Edith by Kim Klassen

I can't tell you how happy I am that Spring has finally sprung here! We had temperatures in the 80s earlier in the week. Rain moved in yesterday and its raining today, but the grass turned green overnight. And ... you know what they say, "April showers bring May flowers"!

Hugs,
tish

My Treasures

This week's theme for the Nurture Photography Winter Challenge is Silver|Treasure. To be honest, other than trying to take some photos of some silver jewelry and other silver things around my house, I was completely stumped and uninspired by the silver portion of this theme. I wasn't happy with the photos I took, so instead, I spruced up a photo of my girls from our Christmas photo shoot. I love the way they are looking at each other, it completely melts my heart. I added Life-n-Reflections LoveSpell Overlay, its a great freebie Kristy offers here. I used the StripesCaps font for the xoxo at the bottom. I thought since yesterday was Valentine's day, this photo was appropriate. They are, afterall, my special treasures.

hugs,
tish

Snow Birds

Happy WW!

xo,
tish

Brown

We seem to have an abundance of brown now. The grass remains green, but most of the brilliant colors of fall are gone. You can still see a few red and yellow leaves clinging to the bare branches here and there. 



The leaves that were once vibrant are now browning and beginning to dry out. 



I found all these acorns lying on the ground beneath an oak tree. I gathered them up and brought them indoors to add to my fall decor. 



They are fun to look at. Some are big, some tiny. Some with "hats", some without. 



Cute little nuts ... winter food for a squirrel or a seed waiting to be planted and grown into a mighty oak. 



The acorn ... a sure sign of Autumn.


(The beautiful texture I used in these photos is 1 Artisan Decorative Paper by 2lilowls. You can find this texture as well as two more beautiful freebies here.) 



Happy Friday!
xo,
tish

 

Watermelons

Textured with Paint the Moon's Timeworn Texture

La Tour Eiffel - Textured

A couple summers ago, our family travelled to Europe. We spent half our trip in Rome and the second half in Paris. One of our favorite stops in Paris was the Eiffel Tower. My oldest daughter has had a love for Paris and the French culture since she was about six years old (she is now fourteen). She taught herself many French words and phrases and actually was able to help us out when we couldn't communicate exactly what we wanted during our stay.

I used two of my photos from our visit to the Eiffel Tower for my homework on Day 6 of Kim Klassen's Skinny Mini E-Course. She was teaching us about textures. 

For the first photo, she gave us a recipe. I made a copy of the background and changed the blending mode to soft light 100%. I then created another background copy and changed the blending mode to Multiply at 58%. I added her Paper Stained Light texture  and used the Multiply blending mode at 53%. I then added a second layer of her Paper Stained  Light texture with soft light at 100%. I just love the result! And don't you just love the two people laying in the grass on the bottom right of the photo? 

For my second photo, she wanted us to "add our own twist." So, I copied the background layer, added an adjustment layer and adjusted the levels. I added a layer of Kim Klassen's Paper Stained texture at 46% opacity. I then added a second layer of her Paper Stained Light texture set to 100% soft light blend mode. Lastly, I added the text, "C'est si bon!" which means "It is so good!" 

I'm learning all kinds of new little tips and tricks I hadn't known about. If you need to brush up on Photoshop tools or you need a good starting point, this is the perfect course!

xoxo, 

tish

Wordful Wednesday | Fun in Photoshop

It's been awhile since I've taken my camera out this summer or had even had time to play around in Photoshop. Last week while the girls were away, I finally got a chance to learn a few new tricks. Awhile back, Alicia of Project Alicia posted a great tutorial on How to Fake Polaroids and using Polaroid frames. I've also been enjoying her posts this summer as she has been creating a digital scrapbook of all her family's summer activities. And though I'm jealous of those who can sit down and create amazing scrapbooks out of paper and printed photos, I'm not one who can take the time to make this happen. So the idea of creating a few scrapbook pages in Photoshop and printing them out into a book appeals to me.



So I started with downloading Polaroid frames from fuzzimo.  They download as JPEGs which means you cannot insert a photo into them in Photoshop (they need to be a png or psd file) so I followed Alicia's tutorial on How to Create a Clipping Mask. It was fairly easy and you get beautifully framed photos - perfect for scrapbooking! 



I enjoy shooting summer flowers and then looking back at them in the depths of the winter. It brings me joy and gives me hope as I look forward its end. 



I think I'll make a little book that I can keep handy for some of those cold, dark days. Kristy of Life-n-Reflection put a cute little memory book together. You can find it in a post entitled The Inspired Notebook. It looks like a fun little DIY project that even I could handle! :D 


The Polaroid frames I used in this post are Polaroid.frame-16 by fuzzimo. In the photo above, I used two layers of the Woodlands-3 overlay by Kristy of Life-n-Reflection.



And in this last photo, I used a texture of Kristy's called Springsong to enhance my photo. Its a beautiful free download she shares on her site. 


It was so fun having some time this past week to play around with my photos. Though I'm not the craftiest of people, I am enjoying the creativity I can explore in photos and Photoshop. 


Have a happy day!
-tish xoxo