I Love My Dog(s)

Okay, so only one of them is mine. The jumping dog is Marcie (our neighbor’s dog is named after the Snoopy character). We kind of claim her, too, as Cole has taken care of her almost daily since she was just a puppy. Daisy: I do love her. Even if I didn’t touch her for the entire 9 months of my last pregnancy and she has now been banned from the master bedroom since my allergies flared (with said pregnancy). I do know that she is spoiled, however, because other dogs are not even allowed in the house (gasp!). Perfectly beautiful dogs. I do not think I will ever have enough restraint to enforce that. I am a doormat for dogs. Daisy spent the weekend frolicking in the wild and when I was getting ready for my run this morning – with baby and stroller and happy to go sans dog – she looked at me so expectantly that I gave in almost instantaneously. I couldn’t help it. She was so perfectly excited for the run that I was not nearly as excited for – I could not deny her.

I put the pic of Jack in. He’s not a dog but I love him, too (just in case any of you wondered about that!).

General Conference Packet from Deseret Book

The 2008 packet isn’t available anymore, but here’s a link to the current Deseret Book October 2020 General Conference Activity packet. Enjoy! Happy Conference!

Quilting Blog – The Jolly Jabber

PhotobucketGreat blog. Great sales. Great vintage style fabric collections. What’s not to love? I enjoy buying the fabric, apparently, even more than quilting. Just build the stash, right? The quilt doesn’t magically appear?!?

Nebraska Camping – Grove Lake & Niobrara!

More. Camping. Soon. It is so fun to be outdoors. There’s something magical about camping that transforms the all-too-common question of “So, what do you do for a living?” into a much more interesting and valid one: “So, how far have you come?” Always nice people and dogs to meet. We camped at Grove Lake and took a couple of side trips to the Ashfall Fossil Beds (extremely great place) and also to the Niobrara State Park for a quick hike (another great place – who knew we were so close to Yankton, South Dakota – with even more interesting things about Standing Bear and the Ponca Indians) and found a very small, old cemetery to document for genealogy as well as an historical monument built for Newell Knight, an old friend of Joseph Smith’s. It put many of his family’s stories (including the famous Provo resident Jesse Knight) in a new light! I’ll post pictures of the monument soon. Our newest 4G SDHC card isn’t being read by my old computer so this post will only have pics from the small 1G card.

What I Designed Today: Photoshop Family Silhouettes “How-To”

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A few of you asked how to create family silhouettes in Photoshop. I’m sure there’s a zillion ways but here’s how I did it.

Step 1: Take the digital photo.
Stand each family member, sideways, against a blank wall. It would make it so much easier if you had a really white, plain wall with no shadows (i.e. no flash if you can manage it).

Step 2: Get it on your computer.
Transfer the photo to your hard drive (remember where). If you don’t know how to get a file onto your computer, please, just stop now. Just teasing – just email me and I’ll try to help! Open the file using Photoshop or another photo editing tool. This how-to will be using Photoshop CS2. Be sure to save your work as you’re going along!

Step 3: Make your selection.
Using the magnetic lasso tool, make a single click at the bottom left edge of the person. This is your starting point. Continue to make single clicks to help guide the magnetic lasso where you’d like it (if it places a node where you don’t want it, just hit the delete key and it removes the last node). Continue single clicking and following the outline as close as you can around the top and back down the right hand side. Once you get to the bottom on the right hand side of the silhouette, double click and the loop will automatically close. Alternatively, you can manually hover over the original click on the LH side and you’ll see a small circle appear indicating you are closing the loop. If you accidentally clicked elsewhere or “lost” the marching ants, no fear – just hit CTRL+D to deselect everything and start over with the magnetic lasso.

Step 4: Edit your selection.
There are a few options for editing your selection. While the marching ants (dotted lines) are activated, you can choose modify and smooth on your drop down menus. Or, you can use the circle or marquee square tool (while holding down shift) to enclose additional portions that you wanted to select. If you want to SUBTRACT portions, hold down the ALT key while you make the marquee and it will subtract those portions. My favorite way is to use the polygonal lasso tool while pressing CTRL and click to curve out a pony tail or any other feature I want – just click away in the approximate shape you want and be sure to double click to close the shape.

Step 5: Once you have the outline or silhouette selected how you’d like, fill in that area with black from the drop down menus (Edit / Fill / Black), or Shift F5 brings up the same menu.

Before clicking anywhere else and while the marching ants are still there, choose Select / Inverse from the drop down menus. Now click Edit / Fill / White (you can also just Edit / Clear if you are on a white background but Edit / Fill / White works every time).

Step 6: Touch up with the air brush or eraser or however you’d like. This is where I remove double chins and stray hairs (and stray hairs on double chins, just kidding)! It’s easy to add hair flips and pony tails, also, with the shape/pen tool (the one that looks like a fountain pen tip).

Print on a laser printer or alter proportionately to fit the final size dimensions you are looking to create by using the Image Size and Canvas Size options. Be sure to do this proportionally. Save your file as a grayscale tif or, if you prefer, convert to a bitmap (very small file size).

Email me at liz@sparkbark.com if you have any questions or need any help with this – it’s really fun to do on an annual basis to see how everyone changes over the years. Be sure to email me your best silhouettes – I’d love to see it if someone took the time to do their pet!

Serena & Lily – New Blog!

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I wanted to write my “how-to” page for the Photoshop silhouettes I made and displayed earlier in the blog but this came into my in-box and thought I’d share for today instead. Look for the photoshop silhouette tutorial tomorrow. Mostly, Bennie is throwing crayons and playdough from his high chair and he needs some actual human interaction (I’ve already put in 6 hours of work today, good thing he slept in ’til 10:30 am!).

Apple Treats for Kids

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Yummy “candy” centered apple circles!

I have a bushel of apples so I’m getting good at thinking up treats for my kids. We exhausted the caramel apple dip recipe over the weekend and here is another.

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Mix 2 T. peanut butter with 1/4 c. uncooked rolled oats and about 1T. honey (or to taste).

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Core your apples and stuff ’em with the mixture.

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Slice into desired thickness and eat – it’s like having a “candy” center! My kids love this. I used my Pampered Chef Crinkle Cutter today but it’s absolutely not necessary – but cute.

White Boys Can Jump! Nikon D90 Adventures

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Yesterday, I drove to the Branched Oak Farm to get grass fed beef, eggs and raw milk and the farm is next to Branched Oak Lake so I drove out there with the new Nikon D90 camera, dog and Ben to see what it was like…beautiful! We were the only people there on a Tuesday morning at noon so everybody ran free and Ben liked playing in the gravel. There were some empty Budweiser glass bottles on the ground and Ben kept saying, “There’s a juice drink.” when he saw them (yes, he speaks in very advanced complete sentences). I took pictures of many things, lots of textures for Photoshop of bark, trees and gravel, but my favorite picture is this one of Ben after I told him to stand VERY STILL and NOT to jump. Man, he can get some air for a 2 year old! The flying hair is just a bonus.

15% Off Coupon Code for Kiss My Face!

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Love their products. All of them. The discount just makes it even better! Happy shopping!

Donate Your Old Running Shoes!

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What a great idea! I had another post prepared for today but ran across this news item this morning and thought it was worth sharing. Time to clean out closets and gather up shoes – now that I know what to do with them! I know my kids, especially, grow out of shoes quickly. This is even better than donating those old shoes to Goodwill. Of course the rattiest ones should go in the trash but those that have just lost their cushioning for high impact running (as mine do) would be great to donate (since they’re still in great shape for everyday wear). The article here gives many other resources, too, such as shoe recycling by Nike. Check it out!

The Applejack Festival in Nebraska City

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Picking up the parents!

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The boys taking a ride.

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Adorable – I love this witch!

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Yummy steak dinner afterwards – Jack looks afraid, no?!

This was one of the best years yet! Everyone was in a good mood and feeling good. We bought a bushel of apples and had the best time (hooray for homemade caramel dip). Homemade Caramel Dip recipe: 1 brick softened cream cheese (best at room temp), 1/2 c. or more to taste of brown sugar, squirt vanilla and OPTIONAL item a) half bag of toffee chips or b) broken up skor bars. Even my kids will down a bunch of apples with this dip – but it’s great for all types of fruit. Enjoy! It really does taste like caramel, I promise. It’s amazing!

Mary Engelbreit’s Recipe Contest

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Pull out your best recipes, girls (and I know you have ’em). Link to the ME site and cook away! I’m sure it will be a great cookbook but it would be even better with a recipe in there from someone I know.

Martha Stewart’s Blog Contest

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Wow. Martha found WordPress. Good for her! I hadn’t seen her blog before but visited there yesterday for the first time and, lo and behold, it was a blog contest day! Great way to check out other blogs in the comments – you never know what you’ll find there. I also loved the link to Everyday Food’s blog entitled Dinner Tonight. Hope you love them both as much as I do. I do enjoy a little Martha now and then.

Wordsplosion
Need a good laugh? Try Wordsplosion. This is better than America’s Funniest Home Videos — at least for a spelling stickler like myself. I know I’m not perfect but these make me feel much better about myself. Reminds me how much I enjoyed Lynne Truss’ bestselling book Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Enjoy!

Stephenie Meyer’s Midnight Sun

I am so sad. Somebody illegally distributed Stephenie Meyer’s latest book she’s working on via the internet. This book is really interesting, too, it covers Twilight but from Edward’s perspective — very thought provoking to go back and hear the same conversations from his thoughts! To combat the illegal copy she has posted her own online copy here. Read about it and weep. We may never see the book in print!