Six Years Ago.

I recently posted about my thoughts on words and how they touch us. 

Over the past few weeks that I have been thinking about words, I have reflected on how thankful I am to have words written down.  I also miss the good ole’ days of blogging.  In honor of the good ole’ days, I thought it would be fun to re-post an oldie.  So I went back 6 years.  I wanted to see what I was writing about 6 years ago this month.  Since I was pregnant 6 years ago, and that baby is now going to Kindergarten; I thought this would be a good walk down memory lane.

Here it is:

A repost from:

August 10, 2009

On Friday….

I turned 31 years old, and 28 weeks pregnant with our fourth child.

.... is this where I expected to be at 31?

I don't really know what I expected, but I wouldn't have it any other way.  Yes, of course, there are days when I think; "Is this really my life?" 

Another load of laundry

Time to do the dishes

Another floor full of crumbs to clean up

... and then one of them walks up to me and hugs me, or my husband says you look beautiful today.  That's when I realize that I didn't really expect any of this, and do I deserve to be so loved and blessed?

I thought it would be fun to share a few randoms about ME, since I never take the time to do that.

I am a Mother and Wife

I think in color schemes and fabric swatches

I know that we have a Latter-Day Prophet

I want my children to grow up knowing that they are loved

I have way to many things on my to do list

I wish there was more time in the day

I miss living in the Caribbean

I fear loosing a child

I feel overwhelmed

I hear my children laughing

I smell CHOCOLATE!! (wishful thinking)

I crave sugar cookies

I usually follow a routine

I search blogs for new creative ideas

I wonder if I am doing everything that I can to be a good person

I regret the way I behaved as a teenager

I love being creative

I care about my kids appearances

I always try to do what is right

I worry about being on time

I am not selfless

I remember my childhood with fondness

I dance with my kids on a regular basis

I sing to just about anything, as loud as I can

I don't always put my laundry away

I argue with very few people

I write whatever pops in to my head, and not all that well

I win at hardly anything

I lose my car keys, and random things on a regular basis

I never go to bed with a messy house

I listen to the scriptures online

I don't understand politics

I can usually be found doing something for my kids, or the house

I am scared that I will make mistakes

I need lots of love and hugs and kisses

I forget just about everything these days (thank heavens for calendars)

I am happy when I make a new friend

Thanks for indulging me and my memories about all about the Good Ole’ Blogging Days.

Love is spelled T.I.M.E.

I haven’t had much time for blogging lately.

We have been really busy around here being a family.

My time has been spent hanging out with those I love, and doing for those I love.

I hope they know that my time is how I show them my love.

There are moments that I wish I wasn’t human and didn’t tire easily.

I always feel bad that by the time my loverboy gets home I am wore out.

It is good to remember that a little bit of time can go a long way.

Sometimes it is best to drop the things we think are so important, and share our time.

Which is what I have been up too lately.

I hope to squeeze this blog in when I am not so busy loving and doing for this family of mine; because my blog doesn’t need my time as much as these people do.

Photos taken by Jill Burton.

Thanks Jill; I love them.

Perfection or Happiness and a few fall touches.

I sit here at my computer with heavy heart; and insecurity in my pointer finger.  Should I push the publish button on this post?

Do I share what I had planned to share today?

or do I share what is in my heart?

Today.  I have to be real and share both.

I had planned to share some of what I have been doing for fall around here.

Last night, I went to bed questioning if I would do that.

I lay there thinking once again about, “Why I blog, and what my blog portrays about me?”

Today I am going to be real with you; I have to get this off my chest before I can move forward with a fall decorating post.

I want you all to understand why I blog, why I love blogging, and what my purpose is.

I blog for 3 specific reasons:

1. First and foremost; I blog for myself. I learn more about who I am by writing and rereading what I have wrote then any hobby I have ever had.

2.  I blog for my family.  I started so our family far away could see what we were doing.  Now, I do it so my kids can have a history of our family, and what we did; in my words.

3. I blog to make friends, to learn from great women, and to hopefully inspire others with what I have learned.

I DO NOT BLOG FOR ANY OTHER REASON.

The purpose of this blog is not to make you believe that I am perfect, or that I live in a perfect world.

Just so you understand why I am on my soap box about this I must share a comment that was left on my blog last night.

The comment said, “It must be exhausting being so perfect.”

The commenter left the comment, and then decided to delete it.  Little did she know that I receive emails about all comments and that can’t be deleted.  Maybe she felt like she just had to say it; and then realized it might sound hurtful.  Which it did.

It made me wonder if that is the image that I am portraying on this blog.

Am I making you think I am perfect?

Believe me when I say that is not my plan at all.

Let me tell you what I believe about perfection.

I believe there is only one way I am ever going to be perfect.  That is through my Savior.  It is through him and his redeeming love that I can be perfect.  I know that in this life, I can never ever be perfect.

I believe that my quest to be happy, may be perceived as a quest to be perfect, and for that I am sorry.  I am sorry if you have perceived my happiness this way. 

Do I want to be perfect?

Yes, I do.  I want to be perfected through my Savior; some day.

For now; I want happiness.

…and that is why I do what I do and share what I love here on my blog.

I decorate my house because it makes me happy during the process and it makes me happy to live in a space whose beauty I helped create. 

I don’t decorate my house because I want our home to look perfect; it never can because we live in it.

I exercise because it does my brain good, and I find happiness in pushing my body. 

I don’t exercise because I want the perfect body.

I plan parties for my kids because it makes them happy; and that in turn makes me happy.

I don’t plan parties that are perfect.  They are far from perfect.

I blog to share what I love.

I don’t blog to make you think I am perfect.

In fact; I blog with the intent that you know that I am real.

I am a real person who makes real mistakes.

Like yesterday when I went to the gym and totally forgot that my daughter had dance.  It broke her heart to find out I forgot about her dance class.  That in turn broke my heart… mom guilt.

…or when I was teaching 15-eight and nine year old girls how to make bread yesterday; and totally forgot where my son told me he was going to play during the process.  Then spent 15 minutes calling neighbors to find out where he had gone. 

YES!! That made me look like the crazy neighbor and mom.

So.. my purpose in this is that you know that I am real.  I make small and large mistakes.

I hope you know that what I share here is more about my happiness; and never about perfection.

Perfection is between you and God.

What I work on within my inner self, who I am striving to become, and the sins I must repent for on a daily basis; are more about striving for perfection. 

…and that kind of perfection really is more between me and my Savior.

It’s not between me and the blogging world.

Nothing I share here can be or ever will be perfect.

So if at anytime you don’t like the content of this blog, that would be a good time to find a blog whose content suits you.  I can only share what brings me happiness, because that is who I am.

On that note:

Fall bring me more happiness than any other time.

Here is how I enjoy that in my happy home:

I think that fall decorating on the outside of the home is the best place to start.

Any one can decorate for fall, by just buying pumpkins, mums and cabbages.

In my case; buying a grundle of pumpkins, mums and cabbages.

I bought so many small pumpkins for indoor decorating, that I decided to paint some of them.

I didn’t want the orange to take away from some of the calm colors of my home.

Painting pumpkins was so fun.  An enjoyable afternoon for sure.

Every cute pumpkin needs your kids initials on them.

I got creative and added some peacock feathers to my fall décor.

 

I feel like peacock feathers and fall pumpkins look great together.

I also finally got around to making my table a runner.

I decided to make a  table runner that is layers stacked one on top of the other.  That way it is so easy to change for the seasons.  It is also a good way to keep your base color the same.  I chose a gray burlap for that.

I kept the fireplace simple; by adding a few painted pumpkins.

Just so you realize all these painted pumpkins are real.

My family has to hold me back when we drive by pumpkin farms.  I really like pumpkins.  They are just so cute.

Pumpkins are part of the reason I love fall.

If you came for a visit this time of year, you would leave my home with this sweet little message about Autumn.

Which is probably so true now that I live in the most northern part of Utah; and it snowed in the mountains here yesterday.

Once again, I thank you for being here.

I thank you for reading my blog.

I thank you for adding to my happiness.

Blogging tips and Instagram Loves.

I have been blogging for five years now.  I wanted to share a few little tricks with you that I have learned from reading blogs and also from having my own.  These are three ways to make communicating with your blog readers easier.  Three things I think every blogger who uses blogspot should do:

1. turn off the letters verification.  It really is just annoying, and doesn’t do anything but annoy your readers.  Especially when we can’t figure it out and have to do it like 7 times.  Here is how:

It can be found under: setting/posts and comments

and then show word verification; choose no.

2. If you blog, did you know you can have your comments sent to your email?  It is wonderful.  I just came to realize there are a lot of people who didn’t know this.  Here is how:

It is under settings/mobile and email

Then enter your email address into comment notification email.

Now instead of checking your blog all the time, you can read your comments in your inbox.

3. Connect your email with your blogger account.  Even if you don’t have a blog, you should connect your email with your account.  That way when you leave a comment on my blog or anyone else’s, we can easily email you back.  Which I love to do.  This is such an important tool for bloggers.  It is a way to stay in touch with each other.  Unless you have connected your email address, I won’t get back to you if you leave me a comment.  It is too hard to track you down.  If I can email you back, your email will show up in my email when I receive your comment in my inbox.  If not, it says noreplyblogger.  I hate noreplyblogger. I want to stay in touch with my readers.  Please help me by doing this.

   Ok so this is how you do it.

Up in the right hand corner of your blogger will be your picture.  See it.  It says Andrea.(except yours won’t say Andrea, it will have your beautiful picture and say your name)  Click on it.

Then you will get this drop down menu.  Click on blogger profile.

Then click on edit your profile in the right hand corner in orange.  Add your email address.  Once you have done that, you will see email show up under contact on the left hand side of your profile.  Now, I can email you back when you leave me a comment.  I can’t wait to stay in touch with you.

Today, I am going to overload you with information.  I also wanted to share some of my favorite apps for photos on my phone.  I am also going to share a little bit about photography and what some of the big photography words mean.  Put your thinking caps on…turn on those brains because I am about to give you lots of information.

I am loving Instagram right now.  I feel like it is a quick way to blog.  Instagram is a way to share a quick photo and a thought.  You can see my Instagram photos here. 

When I first started it, it threw me for a loop because my iPhone pictures just weren’t doing it for me.  It was a hard adjustment to look at those pictures when I have photography in my brain all the time. After a little research, asking around, talking with my BFF, and trying a whole bunch of apps; I have a few favs that make sharing iPhone pics a whole lot more fun.

My first tip: make sure you turn on the HDR feature.  An HDR picture is a set of methods used in imaging and photography, to allow a greater dynamic range between the lightest and darkest areas of an image.  Using this feature, you will get two images in your camera roll.  One that is normal and an HDR photo.  This allows you to choose which image looks best.  HDR does not work well with images that have a lot of movement.

Ok, lets Instagram and have fun getting creative with our photos. 

My favorite all time app for editing iphone pics is Snapseed.  It is like my Photoshop for my iphone.  It cost $4.99.  This is the most I have paid for an app, but I wanted one that I could essentially use like Photoshop.  It does that for me.  It was worth the money.

NOTE: photoshop has an app.  You have to have ios6 to download and I haven’t added that to my phone yet.  It is also $4.99 and looks really fun.

I use the tune image to spruce up the pictures.  You can adjust the white balance, contrast, brightness and saturation here.

I also use details to sharpen.

Here is a before Snapseed:

After:

Picfix is fun for adding some “actions”(photoshop talk)or effects to your pictures.  Actions allow photographers, at the click of a button, to enhance and enrich their photos in a fast and efficient way.

Before:

After:

  I also love the Bokah feature.  Bokah is defined by out of focus points of light rendered by your lens.  This is something you can just add to your photo; while those of us with big time camera’s try to actually do this with our lens.  It helps give it a creative flare.

I believe this app was $1.99; and well worth it.

I also love to change my photos to black and white in this app.

Instaframe is a new one I learned about from Krysta.  It is a fun way to put more then one photo in a collage.

It also has the capability to add labels; and the labels are really cute.

This app is FREE!!

Picframe is also very similar to Instaframe.  They both have different features so I keep both of them around. This app is also FREE.  It has more labels; only different.

Instaeffect is a great app for adding overlays.  That is a fancy word for adding texture to your picture.  If you have used overlays before in Photoshop you will know what I mean.  I believe this app is Free.  I can’t find the price, and my phone won’t tell me anymore because I have it installed.

Once you add the overlay, you use the erase tool to erase the areas that you don’t want affected by the overlay.  This is a fun way to add  a little warmth to your photo as well. The overlay on this photo is around the outside of the picture.

Bubbleframe also introduced to me by Krysta.  This is actually a way to create mini-scrapbook pages on your phone.  It was fun to play around with and would be fun to share on Instagram once in a while. I figure this is a great way to get my digital scrapbook fix on my phone. This app was $.99.

Retromatic is a fun app just to get those creative juices flowing.  You can turn your pictures in to retro art.  I took this picture:

 

and did this with it:

Kind of fun to get creative.  Can you say FREE app?

Phonto is my favorite font app.  It has a ton of fonts and allows you to write on your pictures.

 

It also allows you to put it on a colored square so the words pop.  You can even reduce the opacity so as to see the picture behind it. Opacity is the how opaque you make something.  I could have left this yellow square in the corner dark and solid.  Or you can slide the opacity down and make it more see-through and allow your photo to show through.  Opacity is a tool used often by photographers.

 

Also a free app.

Two other apps that I have and I am just trying out are Camera+ and Camera Awesome.  They have some fun actions and frames in them.  Camera+ is $.99, and Camera Awesome is free.

This is an example of what I did with these apps:s

I also use some of the Instagram effects to edit, and my favorite is the blur feature in the right hand corner.  It makes the picture a little less harsh.  Once you select the blur tool, you spread your fingers apart to make it less heavy and blur only where you want. 

All of these little tricks are things that we as photographers use in Photoshop to edit our pictures.  Now you have the ability right on your phone.  Many times I am combining more then one app to get the desired look.

I hope you enjoy doing some simple editing right on your phone, using some big time photographers tricks.  Apps make it so helpful.

Ok… one more thing.  Blogging and Instagram are such fun outlets for so many people.  Lets remember to leave positive uplifting comments in both places.  These should never be a place to hurt someone or complain about what they share.  I think a good rule is what my mom always said to me, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, just don’t say anything at all.”  It is so easy to hide behind our computer and just say what we are thinking.  I think it is important to remember that those of us who share via the web are not hiding behind our computer.  We are putting ourselves out there.  These two forms are such a beautiful way to connect with others and make new friends.  Lets remember that. 

I hope you enjoyed hearing a few little tips and tricks that I have learned. Now go put them to use.

Reverence. Guest Blogger on Time out for Women.

Don’t miss my thoughts on Reverence, and the parable of the butterfly.

I am sharing them today on Time out for Women.

I am also sharing how to make this fun butterfly art, which goes right along with the parable of the butterfly.

Go here to read all about it.

P.S.  Don’t forget about the calendar giveaway.  Learn more about that here.