Life is in the Details

August Break: 8-16

I made three different salsas this morning that I now realize was an attempt to procrastinate. What was I trying to put off??

Shopping.

Ugh.

Don't get me wrong, I love shopping for homemade soaps/toiletries, food, kitchenware items, and art supplies. But clothing?? Not so much.

Today i was shopping for dresses in particular because I'll be attending 2 upcoming events and most of my wardrobe consists of workout wear and casual tanks and shorts (or the winter equivalent: khakis, jeans, and long sleeve t-shirts). And those won't cut it.

But you know what?? The shopping wasn't so bad. I found a few things that I liked and that will hopefully work for the future events nicely (they might be too dressy for one of the events but this successful trip gives me confidence to try a shopping outing again once the kids go back to school... whereas usually I avoid shopping as much as possible).

The dress in the photo didn't make the cut but was the best photo of the bunch if you can believe it... But I'm never showing the one the kids took of me in this hideous dress that made me seriously doubt the judgement of the salesgirl that was helping me. I need to go delete those right now.

Self-Portrait Challenge

This is me....
i dream , i create, i am a perfectionist, i get frustrated when i can't be as good as i want to be, i am in entrusted with the lives and well-being of others, i am creative, i am kind, i get cranky when i'm hungry, i cry and feel better after, i am down-to-earth,i strive for the elusive balance, i crave delicious food, i have routines, i have a thirst for knowledge, i like to try new things, i like to make things, i like to cuddle, i feel.

Here's me playing around with the tripod and taking a self portrait for the Self Portrait Challenge with NO makeup because that's how I usually am - and I also didn't do any skin retouching... all those marks, and crevices, and freckles are all mine... collected over moments and days and years. This month's theme is Introduction - so it's a great time to get started if you've always wanted to play along like me! Then I took the photo and played around in PS real quickly. Trying not to think but do what I wanted without censoring... hence why it's so simple. I used a layer masks in PS on my photo later to "cut-out" some swirlies and circles brushes (for the scalloped edge I used a hard-edged circle brush at 100% opacity and spaced it out to around 100% and brushed away while holding down the shift key to get a straight line. For the swirlies some were at 100% some were at reduced opacity).

I took a bunch of photos but it was hard because I felt a lot of the time I had to still keep my hand on the button (I don't have an automatic shutter button attachment thingy)... if I put the camera on auto and then used the self-timer then things were often out of focus... any ideas on how to move past this annoyance?? :-)