Day 244: Fargo Space Aliens

Do you have Aliens in your town? Space Aliens? Or is this a North Dakota phenomena? (Emphatically off-theme. These are NOT my family members!)






PS: I'm having significant internet connection issues. . . I probably won't get to comment on others' posts until tomorrow :(

Day 243: Two Reasons to visit Grand Forks

Two Reasons to Visit Grand Forks:
1. Visit me.
2. Go to Widman's, a real Grand Forks icon. George Widman is an 87 year old 4th generation candy maker who shows up to work every day, with his wife, to make chocolate treats. Delicious chocolate treats! He says, "I'll be here till they haul me out." They're particularly known for "chippers", chocolate covered potato chips. Sounds weird, but OMG, they are SO delicious! I like the dark chocolate.

Not the greatest picture of the inside of one of the display cases. But I lose all reason when I'm face-to-face with such blissful chocolate and don't process the details of photography as well as I should during such passionate moments. I mean, there're more important decisions to be made than f-stops and shutter speed. . . like chocolate-covered pistachios or dark chocolate and jalapeno?
If you visit me, I'll buy you some chippers! And George often gives out free samples!

Day 242: Brian as a Baby--21 years ago

And in the interest of fairness (and because he's so darn cute!) here's a picture of my 22 year old, more than 21 years ago, as a little 3 month old. (I was younger, too, then.) Isn't he cute!

One thing we had to be alert to in our family as our kids were growing up was "fairness."


Often, with our 3, we'd say, "We're not trying to make it 'fair.' We'll give you what you need." But they'd argue "fairness." It's said that sibling rivalry is actually quite good for kids, especially girls; it helps them learn to argue and stand up for themselves, to look out for themselves, as well as others. Yeah. Great for kids. Horrendous for parents!

Which is why Doug and I are going to be buried with our chandelier. Our GLASS chandelier! (I'll post a photo of it someday.)

Our kids insisted it was jewels of some sort. And would argue shamelessly over dinner who'd get it when we died! (tactful, huh?) Finally, Doug and I had enough, and LITERALLY WROTE IT INTO OUR WILLS that we'll be buried with our chandelier.

They found something else to argue about.

Day 241: Symbols of Beloved Family Members

My three younglings (word?) don't live here anymore--so these are symbols of where they are now. Scott's still in Japan with the Navy (claiming to be traipsing around Asia, according to his last Facebook update).

Brian has just moved to Minneapolis, is about to start a job with a hotel, driving the shuttle (during the RNC!!!!! I want stories!) by night, working on his portfolio for an ad agency by day.

Dianna is back at St. Olaf for her junior year, and contemplating some really cool, study abroad programs over the next year. (I'm going to have to sneak into her suitcase!!!!)


I don't normally live these things out on the front steps by the geraniums. FYI.

Day 240: Things Left Behind

. . . . by Dianna. Dianna was here this past weekend, and left behind a few things. I'm always amused by these things, and tend to feel quite sentimental about them, especially when they seem so quintessentially "Dianna" to me!



And doesn't Bonnie look sad that Dianna's gone back to school, too?

While Dianna was home, we went to see Mama Mia. OK, another confession. Where have I been all these years? Under a rock? I've never heard of Abba before!

I loved it! Except for the very weird guy sitting two seats down from us. He was just way, WAY too into the women in the show, and his abundant squeals of delight were unnerving! Dianna called it right when she said, "Let's leave now!" just as the credits rolled, and we fled from the theater. He was right behind us, and given his general, ummmm, enthusiasm, he should have stayed until the very final credit was finished. I was glad to see Dianna has good instincts about these things. . .

Anyway, if you haven't seen it, go! If a mother or daughter will go with you, even better. But avoid the Weird Guy if you can . . .

Day 239: Dianna 1993

Another photo from long ago, the 1993 five year old version of Dianna, scanned in. Again, I used the technique of reducing some noise by feathering a selection, using darken blend mode, and shifting downward a few pixels. But I also white to change the exposure a bit.

I used Scott Kelby's technique of taking a jpeg file, and opening it as a RAW file to adjust white balance settings. In CS3, you use "open as", select the file, and open it as a "camera RAW" file. Then it opens just as if it had been shot in RAW! You can adjust the white balance, saturation, etc. I also increased the "black" setting, and then used "fill light" to recover more detail.

Then once I opened it in photoshop, I did a "defog" and popped the colors just a little, and touched up the eyes a bit.

And don't you just love the green shag carpeting! Oh, how I LOVED getting rid of that eventually!!!!!! Almost as much as the red, flocked, wallpaper in the dining room!

Day 238: Scanning old Photos

This week's theme is "family" and I don't always have the, uh-hem, most stellar cooperation from family in getting photos these days (during college breaks, etc.) And our extended family all live far away.

So I thought I'd play with some old photos of family. I'm actually getting ready for Scrapfest at Mall of America, in September. Two of my sisters and I meet in Minneapolis and have a lot of fun hanging out with each other and strangely participating in this scrapbooking addiction.

I'm scanning some photos for some of the workshops, and one thing I've noticed about scanning old photos is that you can get a lot of noise or what looks like "dust spots" when you do any sharpening action on the photos. I tried a process decribed in Photoshop CS3 by Blatner, Chavez and Fraser.

I'm not sure that these two photos will be as clear in showing this as I'd like, but it's really evident when you print the photos!

The first photo (23 years ago of my son, Scott, playing with the sandbox in our back yard) is how it looks when scanned. I'm not sure why, but scanned photos also seem to end up with this little tag in the upper right and bottom left corners.

Especially in dark areas, like the shadow in the upper left, especially after defog, or sharpening, there are lots of noise, or little white specks.

I used CS3 and first defogged. Then I used the polygonol selection tool to select most of the photo. But you can actually just select a small section if you want to just did with a bunch of dust-like specks in only one section. Set "feather" to 1 or 2 pixels.

Hit control "J" on windows; command J on Mac. This creates a new layer with just the selection.
Now, for white specks, select blending mode to "darken." For black specks, you'd set the mode to "lighten."

Now use the move tool and move the new layer just one or two pixels up, down, left, or right. Instant fixing of a bazillion specks! Now you can flatten the layers and run any other kind of actions you want on it, or pop the colors, or paint with light, or sharpen. I just wanted a slight boost in saturation, so I ran Lady Ren's gentle boost, and reduced the opacity.

I cropped the photo slightly to get rid of the weird tags, saved and printed. I don't know if you can see the difference as much on-line, but you would if you printed them!

Day 237: Lines leading to Doug

This is a line of sun flares/circles leading to Doug, as he sits in /at a display at Heritage Village last weekend. I just like the way the sun flare looks like little "thought bubbles" and thought I could stretch it to fit "leading lines."

Day 236: A Couple of Llamas (I think!)

And ROTFLOL about the comment yesterday about whether she hoped this wasn't the way I did MY laundry!!!!!! Oh, thank God, no, no, no, no, no NO!

Day 235

Not my idea of a delightful laundry day!



And this, because it's just so incredibly moving and inspirational!