really quite lucky

july 2011

2012-01-26T13:25:00.000-07:00

I need to hurry up and get through the summer because it is bumming me out. It is 22 degrees and we are all considering it a 'nice' day.

4th of july. cousin olivia is excited about the meat. and i think i directed her on the baked beans so she is happy about that. we made one of those pinterested cakes where you cut it open and it looks like an american flag. but sadly didn't take any pictures of it cut open. the cake toppers are our family watching fireworks.

then we did some bike decorating, loaded up lily's handlebar container with candy and put on a parade. the smallest parade ever. we threw candy at anyone we saw.

hanna was embarassed. so I was sure to include a few pictures of her on my blog for all to see.

then one day we had the best party of all. the pop party.

these balloon pictures below are still some of my favorite. I got a big groupon canvas made of one of them.

another summer your-mom-is-cool adventure. the first picture doesn't begin to show the height and steepness of this hill we kind of got lost on but maybe the kids thinking it was a roller coaster will.

yep, somehow we drove up that hill. it it really close than it appears.

finally made it to the wasatch tunnel. my camera's awesome iso is misleading. a little ways in this thing is dark dark DARK and then you spent half an hour making your way to the other side. maybe it wasn't that long. but it seems that long trying to keep 4 kids out of the muddy puddles.

also we may or may not have been trespassing :) I really don't know.

I took family reunion pictures one evening by bear lake and then drove home during this most beautiful enormous full moon on the horizon. grabbed my camera (without even looking at it really) and pushed the button a few times. kind of neat.

lily spits rainbows.

my people are cuter than your people.

sister #3 of 5 found herself needing engagement pictures.

also my mom's birthday! we came up with a surprise sunday evening activity. roseanne cash concert at deer valley. looked like a rain storm the whole time but never actually happened so just a perfect little day with all of our family. I packed this most fancy deer-valley-worthy picnic for us. homemade mini quiches, lots of cheese and bread. chocolate-dipped strawberries and whole foods berry something cake. what's it called? the one with mascarpone frosting. go buy one immediately. I also loved that my sisters and I and Lily worked on friendship bracelets during the whole thing.

june 2011

2012-01-25T09:21:00.000-07:00

the month that I took more horizontal photos than ever before. enjoy.

this was also the month that max seemed to have a forehead lump in constant rotation. the clumsy little life of a 2 year old.

this still hurts my heart. we loved our kindergarten teacher. the last day of school lily walked out so slowly with the saddest face imaginable. she bawled. I cried. it was rough. she still writes her little letters and notes and her teacher still comments how adorable her clothes or her skipping is when we see her after school.

track & field day in the summer with some friends.

you know when pharmaceutical (or something) guys come to doctors offices to get them to buy stuff and they also bring take-out? well my husband brings home leftovers once in a while and this one was pretty. and pretty delicious heh heh heh.

yellow party!

soccer. never has so much whining about socks & shoes been heard by mere mortals. I even cut the feet off her team soccer socks so she could just wear her regular specially-selected comfy socks and then wear the green as leg warmers. she wanted to wear either crocs or rainboots.

a delightfully common view over the summer. this time we were headed to the zoo.

you know that pinterest thing where people make chalkboard paint that looks all luscious and smooth? we did something wrong.

because this happened.

but it was still a good way to spend an hour in the afternoon.

my kids together is one of the best things ever. we are lucky.

may 2011

2012-01-24T11:56:00.001-07:00

my favorite thing about this picture is her outfit compared to the line behind her. my own little pinkalicious.

may 3 we had daffodils! the fall before we'd had a bunch of landscaping/planting done so this was so exciting! even more this year. I can't wait. though I'll have to because they're covered in a pile of snow.

lulu with her best girl. second cousins even.

tres cheers for the cinco de mayo festival in evanston. it's so fun and bright and delicious and happy. hanna was in the little dancing club.

lily's kindergarten program. she sang twinkle twinkle little star as a special duet and wore her most twinklie outfit. afterwards we went to treehouse museum in ogden and played.

my current favorite almost-crawling little friend girl.

more cute girl time for the big girls.

oh man. perfect rainy morning. we'd just dropped lily off at school or something so it was still all grey and wonderful. this was at MY second cousin's dentist office lot. what a good wall, huh?

anniversary party for my parents. (more photos via the link)

fun with kids' faces.

then we adopted a couple of crazy cereal-eating puppies. my kids still love playing puppies (or babies) frequently. lily says woof. max says wooss.

three weeks later and we had these!

one day after school I grabbed a couple of friends and convinced them we were going on a dinosaur hunting adventure. we came up with about 5 different places in town that had dinosaurs. jumped out to take a picture and be crazy.

this one was the highlight. inside is a rock shop with quartz and fossils and other rocky stuff.

morning bed snuggling. we still have a mom/dad's bed sleepover every friday.

plants for the porch.

april 2011

2012-01-23T13:37:00.002-07:00

working my way through 2011 pictures. sorting, editing, backing up...and blogging as I go.

made this delicious baby cake (filled with diapers) for a friend.

when friends are at my house and the light is good and they're happy...they usually get their picture taken. they may or may not be happy when I'm done with them. but we end up with some cute pictures and that's all the matters. jk.

brody (or shall we say, brody's mom) has impeccable taste in head attire.

I became all shop sweet lulu addicted. they are the BEST boxes to open in the mail. see?

made for the same baby. (the cake wasn't just from me..I just put it together). have you ever made a rag quilt? the edges were always the only thing that bugged me. don't mean the chopped up frayed edges. I'm okay with that after a few washes/dries. I mean how all through the quilt there are 2 patterns of fabric bumping up against each other and on the edges there is only one pitiful thin layer. so here's me problem solving. it's a kind-of binding made of minky strips. I think the edges are tucked under on the front and back but honestly can't remember and it honestly wouldn't matter because it won't fray.

we got all bountiful basketed up in here. p.s. did you know I was just in the uinta county herald for bountiful baskets :) i'm a local celebrity now.

playing in the backyard. lily planting seeds. ha ha they didn't live I'm pretty sure. I'm surprised we weren't wearing shorts and running in the sprinklers, the way wyoming people get crazy and think it's spring in april.

max is a scrub.

crafted my most awesome easter craft ever.

Lily's adorable. this was a picture for her beloved kindergarten teacher.

spring break road trip! with sister hanna and my parents! to st. george, ut!

here we are at in-n-out in provo, probably. hanna hearts burgers. just kidding she hates them.

backseat dance party.

shopping for a promotional (from 8th grade dress). it was hot.

zion's.

the creepy animal museum in st. george.

lily was in an artist trading card swap. these are what she sent all over the world. i love her big-butted unicorns.

easter.

I don't know. a random blurry picture of this box of vintage children's records. I'm awesome.

my kids win for the best present-opening or in this case easter-basket-seeing faces.

color-organized books AND easter eggs.

ready for church. sure are cute.

sunday tradition: dinner with my family. usually dad makes sourdough pancakes. both kids always get plenty of grandma ipad time. she doesn't mine the sticky screen.

best nacho libre craft ever. only because i haven't forced one of my children to be nacho for halloween.

yet.

march 2011

2012-01-11T19:20:00.003-07:00

here we go.

if this were real life I would make up a ridiculous melody and sing the captions to you.

this girl turned six.

we had a fabulous colorful party. I would show you all the pictures but I know I already did. so I'll save the room for the rest of the unblogged.

little boy centerfold.

hello there, max's belly.

disney on ice! my friend blogged this photo today too :) yay me for finally getting it uploaded to share, huh. like she said, this was on the trax in salt lake city.

most excited about?:

mom: the bad guys. jack skellington. he's there, trust me. yay ipod pics.

lily: anyone in a skirt.

saint patricks day=green food and tiny green footprints at our house. the footprints usually stay painted on the window until fall.

ya these delights are totally cute reading together. my responsible little girlie doing her reading homework and being such a sweet sister. but really these ones reminded me of the living room mattress! remember, friends? I think my little sister + cousin has a sleepover or something and we moved this mattress to the living room. and it stayed there for a while to be a jumping nest. and then it lived in the playroom. oh, fun. finally found its home as max's big boy bed. and is still jumped on regularly.

"yours take picture horse, mom"

craft night party time. making bowties.

and these trendy numbers.

then on another occasion forcing our little boys to wear our creations.

the baby shower where we had enormous balloons and the most delicious dessert table ever.

ha ha. taking pictures for our tiny friend to be embarassed by one day.

the results of our baby shower. remember, we opted for this project instead of games. and gabby and her brothers looked colorful throughout the year.

max's comfort thing for a long time was just his bellybutton. it currently has morphed into nipples. his own. either one or two. but I can see that this was about the time period when it began. more future embarrassment.

swimming lessons. I think march is about the time of year I deem not-too-miserably-windy-that-I-can-handle-the-cold-wet-haired-kid-on-the-way-home-afterwards. I should hang it somewhere in our home in vinyl.

fun with leftover baby shower decorations. oh and it was.

car dance party. most likely the incredibly annoying hamster dance.

february 2011

2012-01-06T14:01:00.002-07:00

finished the bathroom. hasn't been that clean since.

ate some more breakfast (that picnic table is now turquoise)

100 day at school

cupcakes, of course. because it was february and I have a daughter who loves pink cupcakes.

heart pizza-making playdate

valentine party (that got blogged already)

I took another step towards hippie and started using baking soda + apple cider vinegar as shampoo and conditioner. still do either use that or a sulfate free shampoo. on my kids too.

looks like we took a trip to visit sisters in Laramie. I think Hanna + Livey (aka Juan and Phil) took the place of our daddy.

cute cute student apartment. we slept in the closet :)

freaky robot unicorn from boyfriend seth (now UNCLE seth!)

got ready for an upcoming birthday celebration.

apparently was impressed by these eggs from my aunt's farm.

january 2011

2012-01-05T17:47:00.002-07:00

welcome to a photographic (+little bit of wordy) review of our past year.

done in an effort to get our past year's worth of pictures sorted through, organized and a little bit of edited.

honestly don't know if they're been blogged before and not in the mood to check.

the result you will see is not every photo taken and kept, but for sure all the highlights. until I come back and add ipod photos. basically, no promises.

___________________________________

my two children. they were, and are, unbelievably cute. if nothing else, I always have plenty of evidence of that. also the fact that I rearrange furniture like no other.

max's birthday is in january. I think the party involved just us. or maybe in-town family. I made a fancy cake. fondant is gaggy. he was (and is) all about dinosaurs and trains.

party decoration making tutorial. cut and then tie into pom-poms. it'll probably become a pinterest sensation, huh.

lily was (and still is...wow we haven't changed much) fantastically excited by scavenger hunts. so this one involved a series of clues and ingredient gathering. and ended in cookie making.

I took on toilet removal. mosaic tile laying. faucet changing. all matter of plumbing. and I was dang proud of it too.

and my cute kids ate some more breakfast.

dec 25

2011-12-25T19:38:00.000-07:00

just because

2011-12-12T21:59:00.003-07:00

just because there needs to be more max in the world. these 2 boys looking this cute should brighten more than just my day.

really quite lucky indeed

2011-11-24T23:18:00.005-07:00

I am thankful for Derek.
he is the kind of dad that takes his daughter to serve dinner at the senior citizens center on Thanksgiving, reads princess books at bedtime & makes the effort to make max's peanut butter graham cracker snack just the way he likes it with one corner of the cracker left empty so he has a clean place to hold it. he is the kind of husband that leaves me with an emptied dishwasher in the morning, smiles when I decide to paint another wall or rearrange 17 pieces of furniture late at night & sends me on my merry little way when a sister suggests a late night movie.

I am thankful for Lily.
she is great. she is just such a great human. she loves giving her earned money away to people that need it. she loves writing letters that tell how much she loves people. she is the big sister every little boy should dream of having. she makes up fake homework for herself because she loves reading and writing and learning and wants to be an author, like today. i've heard from her (boy) friend that she is a pro at playing imagine and smart and cool at talking. her teacher said that the class was coming up with all the different ways to add 2 numbers to 10 and Lily was the only one that came up with writing all the numbers 0 to 10 in a list and then all the numbers 10 to 0 to add to them and so she got to explain it to the class. whenever the f a m i l y song comes on tv she always always comes and finds me so we can do the dance where we spread out (even if you're far away) and then run together and hug (or if I see you every day).

I am thankful for Max.

I mean look at him. even with the two-year-old-ness and the fits and the biting (oh, max) and the late afternoon accidental naps that results in more fits...he is truly a joy. before I was a momma I really never thought I'd have a boy and I really never knew what a fantastic thing it was. well blessing upon blessing. thank you for max. he is my cuddlebird. we are rarely not within arms reach of eachother when we are both home during the day. we build trains and destroy cities and paint dinosaurs and glue buttons and throw leaves and dance to the monster song and the tron song and watch bubble guppies. I mostly love how instead of "another" he uses the word "else". want an else show or an else snack because you're don't hungry cheese.

oh but there's more.

I am thankful for the exact friends that my children have. of course they are forming who they are at this point in their lives. we talk about each of them in our bedtime stores (often driving multicolored trains or running from silly monsters). though often through trail and error or learning by mistakes....they teach us about kindness and forgiveness and taking turns and compromise and patience and creativity and fun and not biting.

I'm thankful for the exact friends that I have. that they do awesome things with their talents that I could never do. and they are always 100% up for any adventure (kids in tow) that will possibly involve good-natured trespassing or driving straight down mountains or lots and lots of peanut butter cups because someone in the back seat just won't stop screaming or the worst display of yoga you've ever seen (I don't think you're supposed to fall over as much as I do ha ha). friends that serve and serve and serve and keep making those amazing chicken croissants for baby showers or waking up at 6 am with me to pass out vegetables or watch my own children and treat them as they do their own.

I am thankful for my sisters. and that I'm the old almost-30-year-old one but I still get to go to dumb telepathic werewolf movies with them at midnight and give them ridiculous princess braids. and when I have boy/dating/life/college advice they listen and actually make it seem like they're buying it so I must know what I'm talking about. and I'm thankful for the cousin across the street that might just as well be the bonus sister. and I'm thankful that all of these people just love love love on my children and spend oodles of time showing them that they do and being their nannies. thankful that grandma will play save-the-airplane and watch the sodor bridge crumble for the 17th time and not mind the fruit rollup fingerprints all over her ipad. and grandpa will laugh at lily's knock knock jokes and perfect her sourdough pancake cooking skills with her every sunday.

I'm also thankful for lots of other dumb stuff. but I think that's a good place to end.

lily wants a sister

2011-11-07T23:51:00.003-07:00

but she's not getting it. nor a brother. sorry, babe. your parents are content for the time being.

in the mean time, how about helping me babysit one of the cutest humans on the planet?

what's that? you want them in black+white? because she's just so adorable and you can't decide what would look fabulous?

oh dear. they both do, huh?

Hogwarts

2011-11-07T14:58:00.005-07:00

hum the song to yourself while you look through alllll these pictures, will ya? then maybe just maybe it will be like you were there.

p.s. did you know lavender's my sister and parvati's our cousin?

**should definitely add that this was not created by me. yep, it is COMPLETELY amazing. my friend's family has been putting it on for like 10 years. we are just lucky enough to have them as friends! my sister and cousin joined for the first time this year. I just went as a Daily Prophet photographer :)

link to the real shots (to download). that is, if you can't just magic them on to your hard drive but you want to.

13.8 GB

2011-11-06T21:22:00.002-07:00

My October 2011 folder of photos had 13.8 GB. That's insanity.

No wonder my house is trashed.

Here are a few of them:

preschool make-up day

2011-11-03T15:10:00.002-06:00

so this year max is in preschool. home-schooled preschool co-op. it's awesome. once a friend blogged about the same thing having the theme each time be a different color (hi, sam) so I copied her and that's awesome too.

all our little friends are 3-year-olds or almost 3-year olds. so counting this year they all have 2 or 3 years of preschool before kindergarten (there's a 5-year-old brother in the pics for today). so I'm sure if we keep it up the theme will change from mastering colors to actual letters and shapes and things but we've got time.

max has been loving it. we get dressed in the color of the day. he talks about all his buddies ALL the time. and what their favorite color is. they are all characters in our made-up bedtime stories. it was a good reason to buy a tiny adorable backpack. it's just awesome.

this day though, a mom was sick. so to improvise (and thus not disappoint the excited kids) the rest of us pulled together a last minute plan and went for it.

awesome.

everything was fun. perfect weather. perfect overcast lighting even. perfect leaf pile. just sad not everyone could play with us that day!

the girl pictures at the end are when I got out a huge umbrella and we decided to hide from the leaf-throwing-crazies.

coming soon to a blog near you

2011-11-01T22:45:00.003-06:00

just as soon as I catch up. you'll be seeing:

scary stuff

cute candy collectors

wizards

adventures in home-preschooling

the future mrs. max hoopes

along with university of wyoming adventures and a couple of swoon-worthy (if you are 17) senior boys

stay tuned

your faces here

2011-10-24T09:08:00.003-06:00

daylight savings time ending in the fall always sort of marks the end of family picture season. it just gets dark so darn early that it's hard to coordinate everyone home at the same time in the afternoon. but until then, good light time is still around 5:00. that's doable, right?

so for my last 5 available spots, how about a deal? I think most people on my blog are already relatives or best friends anyway (hi guys) so here is the...

BEST FRIEND/RELATIVE SPECIAL
$90 for about 40 minutes and 10-12 family pictures

(nope you don't really have to be a relative or best friend. anyone reading is welcome.)

these spots are just for family photos so bring everybody. all in town too.

thursday 27, tuesday 1, wednesday 2, thursday 3, saturday 5

alliehoopes@gmail.com

how to do fall on a quarter tank of gas

2011-10-22T14:05:00.002-06:00

my little family found ourselves in provo earlier this month. husband suggested a beautiful drive home through sundance, up over the mountain, to a little hiking geyser spot and down a dirt road to the back door to park city. so glad he did!

how to do fall in a day

2011-10-21T09:18:00.004-06:00

pick a day off of wyoming school so you can experience your utah activities without all of utah there with you (though I'm sure you're lovely). perfect weather is a bonus.

activity 1: apple picking
we went to farnsworth farms. caught the end of apple picking but not quite yet cider milling. still it was a last minute addition to the plan and a favorite. we all pretended we were farmers. max's friend said once that he found a "humongous" one so max spent the day telling us in a big scary voice that all his apples were "mungus!"

be happy that the little boys were content with their apple bags since the big kids took the picture perfect baskets to complete their farm girl/boy look.

playground was part of the apple picking experience. lily tried hard to get me and my 10-month-pregnant friend to participate in monkey-barring with her. she didn't really succeed but it was ok.

activity 2: gardner village (way close to the apple farm)

surprisingly and luckily also uncrowded. we picked a good day. witches, candy store & toy store. all good things. I kept hearing lily and brody say to each other (look at their boobs!) yep, our kids say boobs. but really, look at them!

activity 3: black island farms (a big drive north but gave the chance for a nice little rest in the car)

also, hi lily in the mixed up apple picture.

I need a slide like these ones in my backyard. look at that bottom left slide picture of lily. THAT's how fun they were. only it seemed like we found all of utah there. that's ok.

mmm this place was fun. more like lagoon-farm than quaint little farm girl farm but still fun. we got on the hay ride at nearly bedtime and somehow didn't realize that it stopped and let us off in the middle of the pumpkin patch to get one! oh boy lily was so excited. good job, moms.

the picture I didn't get but wish I had would look like this: nichole back to retrieve the stroller (carrying 2 big pumpkins in addition to her baby pumpkin belly)+ me hauling 2 mungus pumpkins persuading 4 little cold kids to stay close to me through the dark parking lot so we didn't get run over+looking and looking for the car. ahhhhh fun day.

didjano?

2011-10-10T21:56:00.002-06:00

today I was working on fixing a font downloading problem and noticed in the stats that there are still a bunch of people coming to my blog every day. how bored must they be? I post like once a month! ok so in order to not be so boring I'm trying to think of a bigger variety of topics I can share. not just parties and pictures (though guess what I just did another party and took more pictures). here goes.

did you know I have 4 sisters and I'm the oldest?
(did you know that's me on the right? it goes 2nd 5th 4th 1st: middle sister caitlin's in the wedding dress)

and did you know that the oldest 3 sisters are all married and we're all married to wyoming boys?
(don't get out much I guess)

and that I changed my last name when I got married 10 years ago from Pilch to Hoopes. and that Hoopes in itself (pronounced if in some places in WY with the same oo sound as books) is not a bad last name but allieoooops is a little sad. but the other sisters became either Klinker or Marosok so I don't think any of us wins.
(youngest 2 sisters: go find like a Mr. Miller or Mr. Brown or something to date)

did you know we all occasionally still go on family vacations together? and at the last one we scared ourselves silly pretending that a couple husbands running around outside the cabin in cloaks were ringwraiths?

he doesn't look so scary now, does he?

did you know taylor's the tallest? (below)
(I think I'm still 2nd)

but whoever she was talking to must be the funniest?
(let's just all agree it's jessamyn)

and hanna's the only one still at home? high school freshman (just got braces and I never had them)

and did you know that one of my best friends is a 14 year old and another one of them probably is a 15 year old (probably cousin) and the other night at 1 we dressed up in nacho libre masks and they begged me to make quesadillas.

and did you know my husband claims he didn't pose like this trying to be all blue steel, but come on.

also I'm the only one with kids. oh but look how cute they are. I win.

new studio

2011-09-27T00:14:00.003-06:00

a playroom-furniture-rearranging session that freed up a big wall facing the window

the fact that it's now fall which means it's closer to winter which means snow for a long time which means no pictures outside for a while

a roll or 2 of wide photo background paper sitting around waiting to be played with

lily and hanna and I a little bit bored

a couple of nice pictures

I think I keep working on the setup a little. I think I'll pay attention to focusing a little more next time. I think I'll figure out a little extra lighting and a little white balance fix since there is this bright orange roof right outside that big window. I think I still mostly like people in their own spaces or out exploring but I also think I like just letting them shine in a photo with nothing else to look at.

I'll step back and show you the whole setup next time I'm in there.

madly in love

2011-09-15T15:07:00.003-06:00

congratulations, beautiful sister! and welcome, artist-fartist.

Max has been helping me look at pictures and has pointed out Ya-ee, Tatie, and Rar-rar-ar (Seth draws the coolest dinosaurs)

guess what I did

2011-09-12T11:52:00.009-06:00

I blogged! yep, that's right. bet you thought I forgot how.

my motivation? commit yourself to guest post on someone else's rad blog and not want to look like a loser when you don't get anything together.

playing house

don't know rachel but I've read her blog for a long time.

started reading for the cheap mom tricks and stayed around for everything else.

also I like anyone with a Lily.

sneak peek at what you'll get if you simply click the link:

up at 7. what's on the line up?

start on the chores and sweep til the floor's all clean.

polish and wax, do laundry and mop and shine up....

wait, that's not us. up around 8 and I'm not a very consistent housekeeper.

second day of 1st grade for the girl. smoothies for breakfast and pb&j in her lunch tin. I've been firmly instructed to always always include an "i♥u" note so I do. then get dressed and some bed jumping.

read the other 89% of this mega post on rachel's playing house blog

pop party from the summer

2011-08-31T23:14:00.003-06:00

ready? here goes. and if every one of you comments then i promise i'll be back to blog again before 2012 :)

what's a pop party, you say?

well for starters the invitation was hidden inside a blown-up balloon

you need soda pop

pop tarts

pop rocks party favor

popsicles

the king of pop

fresh popped popcorn

pop art

water balloons (264 of them)

that thing where you drop mint mentos into diet coke

bubble wrap

=fun

23 days

2011-08-06T09:51:00.002-06:00

we are too.

we have one extended family vacation to go and one allie-derek-lily-max family mini-vacation.

so I wrote up a list the other night of what we'd need to accomplish to feel like our summer was complete.

1. restock our tie-dye wardrobe

2. lemonade stand with the oreo treat things

3. kid party with friends (spy party, star wars party or talent show)

4. church lady ice cream party

5. another friends BBQ with the twinkle lights

6. cut and install the baseboards in the laundry room

7. watch star wars with lily (make more finger puppets)

8. county fair some more

9. backyard mini pool filled with hot water from the laundry faucet

10. roundhouse festival/car show

we have a lot to do so reeeeaaaaady.......break!

photographer secrets

2011-07-28T00:02:00.004-06:00

I think one of those things photographers are weird about is telling you their secrets about how they get people to pose in their pictures. It can be a tricky thing to try to bring the life out of people standing in front of a camera without letting them feel like they're just not cutting it and their pictures will be totally lame.

I think that's dumb. Do you have any great ideas? Let's share. Please, no saying of things that rhyme with "cheese" or jumping pictures. Oh, I've done my fair share of jumping pictures...and I'll still use jumping as a method to get what I want after the jump. It's just that it's rare to find a person that actually looks good jumping, you know? Though it is super funny when you somehow snap one right as someone lands and their cheeks haven't caught back up to their face yet. I'll keep those to myself.

The Tip: After-jumping is the cutest moment ever. Recently I've become rather fond of the "jump up together and then as soon as you land, squish Lily"

family photo shoot x 7

2011-07-27T23:40:00.003-06:00

a tiny sneak peek from one of those ginormous family reunion photo shoots.

cute kids galore. happy families all over the place. perfect weather.

it was a good day for pictures. lots of them.

so many parties...so little time...to blog about them

2011-07-21T16:24:00.002-06:00

I would call this one: beginning of the summer dinner party where everything was yellow and green (even the trash) and everybody helped with the delicious food and the weather was perfect for debuting my new twinkly light set-up

gone

2011-07-10T11:25:00.002-06:00

one of the words you'll hear max saying a lot these days is GONE

if Lily's upstairs playing in another room and you ask where she is she's GONE

if the snacks run out at the park all because of one small boy somehow they're still mysteriously GONE

if mom shuts off the tv after Dino Dan and says that Dan's done for the day he's not just done, he's GONE

oh man, he's a cute one

other things that are GONE:

that long hair

that big sad forehead bruise

that left shoe (left it at the zoo)

beans

2011-07-09T11:10:00.003-06:00

hey people with cameras:

sometimes when you're messing with a lens or a setting or a button do you just click around and photograph whatever is right around you just to see how your fiddling is affecting things? well I do and sometimes I'm really surprised at what I end up with. here I was sitting at my turquoise little computer desk in the closet in the never-clean art room. which at the moment has the end result of a 6-year-old girl and a 2-year-old boy playing unsupervised with a ginormous plastic tub of beans. at least they had fun.

"nobody can be uncheered with a balloon"

2011-07-08T22:55:00.001-06:00

yes, I admit.

I had another no-reason party.

or maybe 2 or 3.

and while I do like my friends and I do rather enjoy good food and I do have quite the supply of streamers and striped paper straws...

I think possibly the real reason for this party-throwing hobby is the balloons!

after our latest shindig my kids and I took turns waving balloons in the air while one of us photographed from below.

I think the pictures are my favorite ever.

somewhere on the intergoogle it said that the quote up top is from winnie the pooh

kindergarten

2011-06-30T17:18:00.003-06:00

This still makes me sad.

The end of the school year was rough. Lily adored her teacher. She reached disney-princess-status at our house. Lily would draw pictures of her teacher, for her teacher, and show me how she put in the beautiful sparkling blue eyes because she was so nice and happy.

Lily just didn't want it to end unless she knew that Mrs. Ehlers would be moving to 1st grade next year (she's not).

I appreciated her too. She took such good care of my Lily girl while she was away from home. The last week of school Lily'd spontaneously bust out the saddest tears just thinking about it. Walking out of school with her class and teacher the last day was so sad. We both left crying.

Anyway, this was to say thank you:

As she was writing this she made the realization that if one exclamation mark meant something was great or important, than 9 would made an even bigger impact.

We left a little reminder of Lily in our gift as well:

We kind of snuck in the words "techr" and "kndrgrtn" too. We ran out of vowels.

This letter was for her art teacher.

"to use our paint brushes correctly & I love you"

warm weather funny game

2011-06-21T21:07:00.002-06:00

you know that thing....where people on tv are calmly drinking something and then somebody comes along and says something so surprising and/or funny that their drink transforms into a fine mist shooting across the room?

fill up a pitcher and try it.

30 years

2011-05-30T23:19:00.002-06:00

my parents just celebrated 30 years of marriage! they are both such spectacular examples to me and oh how I love just being around them. my sister suggested a semi-surprise party with some close relatives to celebrate and you know I'm not one to turn down any opportunity to have a party. here are just a few of my favorite details.

recipe to make my heart pitter patter

2011-05-30T22:56:00.002-06:00

max +

skinny jeans +

rainy morning after taking lily to school +

orange tractor +

magical blue wall I never noticed before +

lightning and king +

mud +

those superhero boots I bought as soon as I found out it was a boy +

how happy he was when the garbage truck drove by and the driver waved at us +

little blonde head of hair +

hearing him saying "I knowv oo"

he's my lovey boy

more pictures, different baby

2011-05-25T15:27:00.002-06:00

she's a cute one, huh?

holidays past

2011-05-25T11:01:00.003-06:00

while we're on the topic of holidays I skipped blogging about, how about mother's day?

my sister and I came up with the perfect gift for my mom along with the perfect use for my fancy dancy silhouette (no I didn't get one sent for free from the company to show off, I bought it...birthday money)

we are totally sophisticated, no?

maybe a family picture for reference:

permission requested

2011-05-24T15:00:00.001-06:00

baby pictures for a friend

2011-05-24T11:54:00.003-06:00

thanks to the friend for having the cute baby

thanks to lily for the use of her bed

thanks to the other friend for the perfectly sized basket

see the rest

how about a million pictures of a diaper cake? okay

2011-05-16T09:37:00.001-06:00

when you are a bit of a crafty lady sometimes other ladies will get together and convince you that you should be in charge of the crafty part of a baby shower and you will want to because it's fun. you'd much rather be challenged to create a cake out of diapers than you would, for instance, do some public speaking in front of the county commissioners.

I chose to create mine with some straight pins (and a few safeties)

the receiving blankets all came in a pack so they matched (all from walmart too). when I opened them they were kind of folded in long strips so I left them like that. I safety-pinned them into big loops, all different sizes so they'd stack. then turned the loop inside-out to hide the pins. then started sort of spiraling diapers in real tight and stretching it out as I went to keep it firm.

this picture below is the bottom of a layer. the diapers line right up with the blanket. on the top where there was extra fabric I folded it and just stuck pins in to make that nice smooth curve.

the ribbon came with the packaging for the blankets. bonus. I used it to decorate some layers and make loops to attach toys and things. those spoons are stuck into a safety pin.

here's the back where the seams are. the board I put it all on (not needed but I'd bought a blanket for it anyway) is some thick cardboard. I tucked the blanket around the bottom and just taped it down.

little sockies just stuck on with a straight pin again. kind of hidden inside because I'm fancy like that.

this cake isn't, in fact, for the same friend from the red baby shower. something's in the water around here (not my house specifically, mind you)

this is all we've been doing since I posted last month

2011-05-15T09:22:00.002-06:00

remember the balloons from the mantle? they were awesome. but then they magically became a ginormous ball gown which was really even more awesome.

also p.s. this huge circle balloons never lose their air. helium trades for regular air, yes. once the mixture is about half and half they make for a super game of slow-motion keep-the-balloon-up-in-the-air. you should try it.

a baby shower i did for a friend this one time

2011-04-10T23:35:00.003-06:00

details:

lily put the balloon on the chair so heather would know right where to sit

you should probably go buy a chantilly berry cake from whole foods right this minute

if heather's mom were to make another orange poppy seed cake and leave it on her counter you should probably bust in to her home and have a piece right this minute too

my friends are awesome at bringing delightful food. man oh man.

also i insisted we brought in volcano hot wings from suds brothers because that was one of her weird pregnancy things. she laughed.

my sister hanna blew up like 27 of those balloons stuck to the fireplace. lily did 2.

the treat table included aluminum take-home boxes. because i just know i always over do it but instead everybody got to take whatever they couldn't fit on their plate home with them.

my favorite paper straw, huge balloon, striped napkin dealer is shop sweet lulu.

our only activity: tie dye

(enough to fit baby girl all through her first year and matching shirts and underoos for her big brothers)

heather came back with her older 2 after the shirts had been washed so we could set this up and take these:

play with your kids: no. 1

2011-04-04T22:12:00.002-06:00

i've had a lot to do with short people (kids, that is) the past couple years and gathered a lot of ideas. here are some of the fun things we've done. you should do them too.

rainbow day at the park:

*got all the kids and their moms and a couple dads around a big old rainbow-colored parachute. then we sang the hokey pokey. it seems like we had to change a few words. obviously putting your whole self in means running underneath and trying not to crash into someone else.

*gave everyone a long piece or two of crepe paper and sent them to run wild down the hills. bigger kids could handle a whole handful of rainbow. windy days are a bonus. also it was beautiful.

*snack that day=everyone's own graham cracker+small paper cup of frosting+whichever paste food color they wanted+popsicle stick to stir and spread. they felt important choosing their own color. go for the box of 12 by the cake decorating supplies. someone really might be wishing for maroon and you'll make their dreams come true.

*separate into groups of 3. each person gets a squirt of primary colored finger paint to rub all over their palms and fingers. then you stand in a circle and mash your hands up with your other 2 friends. red, yellow & blue turn into orange, purple & green.

*frozen colored ice cubes melting together in a baggy also fun color mixing but not nearly messy enough.

*end the day working together to make the biggest chalk rainbow in recorded history.

who likes to rock the party? we do.

2011-03-30T16:51:00.005-06:00

remember when the girl turned 6? it's still her birthday month so i still have posting rights.

when i was a wee lass i remember how awesome it was when your birthday party fell on your actual birthday. BEST DAY EVER.

and that second picture moment when you see your present and it's exactly what you were begging your mom for at that cool toy store in laramie but she said "no why don't you get one of these little thingers instead?" and then you kind of forgot about it so you're surprised after all? yes, wonderful. the day is starting out well.

party time

while last year our theme was pretty specific (kitty unicorn butterfly party) this year we just went with "lots of colors and you get tickets"

'

so upon their very excited arrival, they got a bag for their tickets. only it had a coin hidden inside so they got to play the claaaaaw while we waited for everyone. no one cried.

then we had some ticket stations. with some expert ticket station helpers. my #1 party girl (and youngest sister) hanna. best cousins of all (sorry other cousins) eli and olivia. and the matching game child whisperer (again, no one cried) nichole (the neck-tied boy's mom)

station 1 was drawing. here's what we drew. they're still up.

next station included lego-extraordinaire eli directing marshmallow toothpick building. he's good. those little boys have something nerdy to aspire to.

station 3 was the hat making station. everyone got to pick the trim color on their party hat and glue the glitter letter on with hanna. no one got stapled.

station 4 was me. get your picture taken and record a video message to the birthday girl.

probably won't post it because then i won't get to it until next year but the highlights were that aaron thinks lily will be an iron chef when she grows up and 3 boys predicted that lily would marry them.

of course everyone got tickets at all 4 stations. but we needed a couple more to get to the magic birthday number 6. so we split into groups to play:

once upon a time fairy tale bingo

and classic matching

also i wore my party shoes.

so once you had collected at least 6 tickets (luckily everyone did) you earned the right to participate in the present opening game. i explained that since lily would get to open so many presents today, we wanted to give just one present to one of our friends. and that since it was wrapped in transformers paper it would have to be a boy. i was amazed that everyone just solemnly accepted their fate at this point.

we started music and passed a ginormous box around until the music stopped and the luckiest boy ever got to open a big huge present. only inside was a little boyish prize and ANOTHER BOX! and it was wrapped in princess paper so it must be for a girl this time!

repeat.

and keep repeating.

it was a birthday miracle that i was able to round up 10 boxes that fit inside one another. all the way down to a baby ibuprofen box. so each kid in fact did get a prize and get to open a box. it was fun. most of them were convinced the game would stop around box 6 and the rest of them would be out of luck. zach finally won a pirate compass in the tiny box and yelled victoriously that it was what he always wanted.

at some point we had some snacks. don't remember. lily requested mini hot dogs and chocolate dipped strawberries. that girl has class. also popped some popcorn (not in the microwave even). i think that was also a highlight.

lily requested this wrapping up game earlier but then wasn't in the mood so we used volunteers.

don't judge. we spun the bottle to see which present she got to open. whichever friend it landed on got to hand her their gift. and they were wonderful and there was lots of shrieking and a few mentions of the words pillow + pet.

candle time.

our birthday cake was rainbow birthday cake pops. which she'll be more grateful for when she's the mom and stays up late molding and dipping tiny cake blobs. like i am for my ice cream cone cake and wooden bead painting crafts and sleepovers.

happy birthday, lu

spinach artichoke dip

2011-03-28T21:31:00.003-06:00

i think i've got it set so that if you just regular click on the picture it will download the good version. like the one you'd want to print. so you can actually read it on day when you're in the mood for some deliciousness. none of this right-clicking funny business. we like it on lightly toasted french bread.

once you've made it once or seen it it's pretty obvious, but i guess i should say that you just mix it all together with a mixer probably and put it in a pie plate-sized dish.

Evanston Bountiful Baskets

2011-03-28T15:20:00.005-06:00

Evanston friends!

Who like fruits and vegetables!

And money!

Lots of you already know all about Bountiful Baskets. Go do some reading if you don't.

I've been in contact with the actual people in charge. Sally even of Sally and Tanya, yep that's famous. And some super helpful people in our area.

In order to get this going I need your help.

We need a list of at least 40 of us that are excited to participate (now is the time to comment, you stalkers) And tell your friends. And their friends (well, as long as their friends live in Evanston. or want to come here Saturdays to pick up their awesome stuff).

Also as the site leader I am going to go train at other sites that have already been going. I'm planning on getting this done pretty quick. I need backups to come train with me though! Backup people don't completely have to be to all 3 training sessions that I'm going to. I can finish training you in Evanston once I'm official. But I really want at least someone to come with me to each.

Right now this is my plan (unless times change or things come up):

Saturday April 2 in Kemmerer

(week A, volunteer time is 10:15)

Saturday April 9 in Lyman

(week B, volunteer time has been 11:45...if it changes we might have to see what works)

Saturday April 23 in Lyman again

We'd need to be there a bit before volunteer time. Pickup time is an hour after that and lasts for 20 minutes. There's probably some clean up time after that...but that's what we're going to find out!

Will you come with me? Please? I have a sweet van. And we'll go to lunch.

If you do want to join me in Kemmerer this week, go ahead and order a basket from them since we'll be there anyway. It's in Lincoln county.

One more reason for you to come:

Do your kids look like this? He's already downed 2 big macs, people.

(ha ha, just kidding. Isaac you are cute and I needed a picture)

Let's get bountiful baskets going and they'll be as happy as this:

"Thanks, mom!"

**hey anonymous who's been in contact with bb also, who are you? have any of your people started training yet? where is your site? (i've heard of 3 that different people have gotten approved but they really just want people trained before they'll pay attention to you and start making calls) i agree we just need to join up and get this thing going. i don't care who does it but i'm tired of waiting.

is that a giraffe with a neck tie?

2011-03-21T18:29:00.002-06:00

this is not so much a tutorial as it is a thanks-family-for-the-birthday-money-now-i-can-cut-out-rad-stuff

i got a super crafty cutting machine that makes me want to bury all my scissors in the dirt and start using "x-acto" as a curse word. anyone who i've made use one of those in the past, i owe you.

so i experimented today with the elephant. probably going to do some bonus stitching on it but seeing as how it's on the red vines-dino dan watching-just woke up from a late nap boy, i'll probably save it for later.

also how great is it when your friend then comes over and chooses a polka-dot giraffe which i was excited about already and then busts out with "do you think we could put a neck tie on it?"

this little neck-tied giraffe has opened up a whole new world of ideas. bow ties on weiner dogs. buttons for dump truck wheels. googly eyes on anything! lily best watch out or the butterfly shirt she designed is going to get some tiny mustaches next time she takes it off.

six

2011-03-21T00:47:00.002-06:00

when she woke up on her birthday she told us she was an inch taller than the night before.

while i'm not so sure about that, i am sure that she is:

1. the sweetest big sister in the history of the universe. "mom, when i look at max's face it's just so cute that i just want to always be nice to him and share my candy" she used half her birthday money to buy him a thomas toy and acted like it was for some other kid the whole time we were at the store to trick us :)

2. a kindergarten phenomenon. she's all over reading, spelling, first place in kindergarten art contest, hermit crab walking in p.e., telling me her favorite color is now rosado, searching for box tops in any kitchen we're in and proving that she knows what exclamation marks are for when she's reading!!

3. a tape master. she'll disappear into the art room and work away using paper scissors + tape and come out with these amazing sculptures. a working pirate chest. safety goggles for me when i was working on the tile. a leprechaun trap.

4. an awesomely healthy kid. she picked out a treat to bring to her class on her birthday. hostess cupcakes and sweet peas.

5. enthusiastic! as a baby, enthusiastic probably wouldn't have been my word choice. she was enthusiastic about screaming. now that she's grown into herself and her sensitivities and her being able to communicate that her socks are driving her crazy, she's just delightful. it makes me happy to watch her squeal with excitement over fairytale bingo or the fact that i cut her turkey sandwich into a heart.

6. nice. just plain nice to people which is one of the most important things you can be.

p.s. i really have been working on birthday party pictures. how about tomorrow?

p.p.s. want to be my friend on pinterest? oh my, it's fun.

100 day

2011-03-12T11:56:00.000-07:00

100 days of helping her find clothes in the morning. no jeans, please. doesn't like wearing dresses with snowpants unless it's a fancy day like your birthday or we're going to disney on ice after school. could care less if her socks match but they should feel the same (both polka dots or both stripes)

100 days of wanting a cold lunch. it happens most of the time. 70% of the time turkey and cheese. 30% pb&j. always buy white milk at school.

100 days of picking you up by the kindergarten playground. most of the time max stays in the car and listens to sesame street tunes and all of the time you say 'I see my mom!' and run into my arms.

100 days of worksheets. whenever you have a shape or letter that needs some simple coloring-in you fill it with rainbow stripes or tiny hearts.

100 days of missing you. is it summer yet?

valentines day party

2011-03-10T23:14:00.003-07:00

before I write about lily's birthday party I wanted to put up this one we planned last minute for valentines day. yes, we like parties. lots.

v

v

let's not talk about that spelling mistake ok? i stare at a lot of kindergarten spelling these days.

they say

2011-02-28T14:35:00.003-07:00

you know those people that say stuff? didn't they something about how the invitation sets the mood for the party? well then. don't you want to come to ours?

I'd told Lily we could make them together but then we ran out of time so I made them one day while she was at school. When I picked her up I showed her and she looked ticked. A little unimpressed. She said, "mom, they're not good..." only then she threw her arms up and grinned and yelled "....they're GREAT!"

blog books

2011-02-16T14:21:00.003-07:00

I think there are 82 different ways to do these and all of them are bomb. here's allie style:

*I use banners I've made during that year for my cover. easy peasey.

*I sometimes forget to type in what I want on the spine so I use a sharpie. and it still bugs me. Shutterfly goes up to 100 pages per book so if I can't fit it in I do 2 volumes.

*I design the whole page in photoshop. all the picture arranging and titles and writing and everything. it's much faster for me that way and I can just put something where I want it instead of looking for a template to match.

*for each year I pick new fonts. fun ones for titles and readable ones for the words.

*using keyboard shortcuts for cutting and pasting and resizing and moving and everything speeds this process up quite a bit. and bonus I feel like one of those cool people on movies that types frantically for a minute to stop the train from exploding or the door on the hatch closing on someone.

*I stuck with white backgrounds. it doesn't get old and it looks like my blog.

*when there was lots of text I found myself dividing it up into columns or trying to keep it near the picture it goes with

*once in a while I knock your socks off with a cute little mug like this one. my books are 12 inch square so that's a lot of Lily.

*when I loved the comments or they made me laugh I included them. most of the time I did a screen capture (you know the PrntScrn button) and pasted it into photoshop. I cleaned it up a little like cropped it down to what I actually wanted and then included it on the page.

*once in a while I'd leave a super dumb post out all together

*if I included links I usually added in the actual url in parentheses (http://www.awesome.com) that's not really one though

*sometimes I'd put a couple of posts on one page if they were miniscule

*back in the day I posted tons of video slideshows I made so occasionally I would show a screen capture of those too just to remind me what I'm talking about in the book

*we love looking at them! my goal this year is to blog enough to make a book....so far, lame.

my baby guy

2011-02-15T15:02:00.002-07:00

it is his birthday only point two seven percent of the year. the whole year. so we've gotta make it special. the four of us spent the day before playing pretend in utah and then had ourselves a little party.

wait, what are those wonderful pom-poms? made of wonderful fabric from grandma ross :)

these: tied together with string

the highlight. the both the cake-maker-experimenter and the cake-eaters

penny tile bathroom floor

2011-02-02T13:33:00.003-07:00

this tale will read a little like the time when I gave a mouse a cookie.

you know that little thing on the bottom of the toilet that covers up the bolt? you know how ours was biggish....like a 2 inch square? you know how Max flushed it one day and it clogged up everything? that was bad.

at the time we didn't know what it was so we tried all manner of ways of fixing the problem. on day 3 (I really didn't want to call a plumber if we could avoid it. he has a really long beard and wants to talk about hunting for way too long) I was frustrated with the no progress and tired of staring at the ugliness of the downstairs bathroom. the one room I'd shown no love to. not a bit. maybe a new rug. here it is when the old owners still lived here

too bad it doesn't show how the cupboards are really kind of yellow with a gold design sprayed on and the wallpaper pattern is like country blue wheat lining the walls. and cheap ugly linoleum.

so since I couldn't fix the toilet I changed out the faucet.

and painted the wallpaper (I liked the texture)

and changed out the doorknob and the towel bar and the toilet paper holder and the light fixture and the switchplates.

and took out the baseboards.

and painted the cupboards and put on new knobs.

and decided to tile the floor. this one deserves like size 74 font but I probably won't do that.

and cut new baseboards and caulk stuff.

and had to spend 3 days of my life ripping out 4 layers of old floor from like all the way back to 1918 probably. not really I don't know but it was hard.

and my legs still have some gray patches where the epoxy grout decided to stick to me.

oh yes and at the beginning of that me and my sister Caiti did get the toilet fixed. we learned all about unbolting it from the floor and discovering the little bolt cover wedged near the bottom and then all about wax rings (gross) and putting toilets back in and stuff like that. that's when we became plumbers.

so it's not like a remodel but it is like a major facelift.

it's weird to love a bathroom floor but I love my bathroom floor.

and the window is because I decorate like a kindergarten teacher and needed something happy in there.

santa gets no love

2011-01-27T22:07:00.003-07:00

in the middle of december I contracted the worst-flu-ever-yuck. I think it was the zombie flu. also anyone else way not into it when people blog all their icky symptoms and sickly details? me neither but the point in telling you that was that during this time came go-see-Santa-at-the-church-party time. recognizing how important this part of Christmas was, my helpful husband took the kids and even took some pictures. and he did great because these are all within about 8 seconds.

at this point I imagine he was doing his hold-still-and-maybe-you'll-go-away-thing. hyphen hyphen. one variety of his tantrums these days involves holding very still, opening his fingers to drop whatever he's holding, then laying face down on the floor in silence with his arms by his sides. good thing he can't see us laughing at him.

luckily Lily was in thoughtful-Lily-mode that day and told Santa that her little brudder liked cars and trucks.

thanksgiving, yep I'm posting it in the end of January

2011-01-23T22:35:00.003-07:00

it was in November.

it was at my house.

it was fun and it was cute.

it was freaking deliciouso.

it made me thankful for my family and my home and my life.

and now since it's only TEN months away I don't have to be all "oh I'm so sad that Thanksgiving isn't for a WHOLE nother year because I'm posting this so soon afterwards and how am I possibly going to wait that long?"

come to think of it, I think I'm going to have end-of-winter Thanksgiving too.

all is calm. all wasn't bright, but now it is.

2010-12-02T13:41:00.004-07:00

3 foam core poster boards

1 set of LED lights (so they don't get hot or waste your power)

a kitchen hole-poker (aka pointy knife)

lots of packing tape

some fabric in whatever color you find in your pile of fabric

an extension cord to make it to the outlet

magic (Max even came down from his nap and said "whoah")

p.s. if you have x-ray vision and you are Lily's friend or my sister please look away or you'll spoil your Christmas gift surprise

p.p.s. did you spy Buddy?

p.p.p.s. did you spy Buddy?

he is our elf on the shelf

spying on my kids

that's a haiku.

stuff we eat

2010-11-30T15:02:00.002-07:00

I was talking to my mom and sister earlier this week about gathering up recipes that mean something to our family. I logged on to Shutterfly to see what deals they had going (first I'll say sorry it's ending tomorrow) and it was perfect. Buy one book and get duplicates for half off. Whoah! I have 4 sisters so that's quite a few 45 page books. After Thanksgiving I got a-cracking and just finished it. It's a To: daughters From: Mom present for Christmas and I love it. Not just because it's been my last 2 solid days gathering and photoshopping, but because it's all the things we remember eating as kids. Lots of cookies. Fancy Louisiana stuff my dad's perfected from a vacation there. Things from grandmas and aunts and church ladies. Things we've started making as grown-ups that we create together. And an 8-step page of instructions for making ramen (haha).

Click here to view this photo book larger

the word cute only has 3 letters

2010-11-21T21:17:00.003-07:00

cute is also not into looking at the camera these days. but if he'll continue to put up with mini fisherman sweaters I'll probably let it slide.

what to get the five-year-old who has everything?

2010-11-04T12:08:00.001-06:00

being five is fun. here's why. from Allie on Vimeo.

my favorites

2010-11-02T09:45:00.001-06:00

October was my favorite month of photoshoots yet. Sometimes it's just magic.

My long-time never-met blog pal, Alison brought her little bunch on a road trip through the mountains to my little town. She's a babe. I loved meeting her in real life. Totally like meeting the disney princesses or a celebrity. You already pretty much know them and then *poof* there they are and they're real. And taller than you would have thought :)

and then Henry (oh to have a baby named Henry) and his sister Emma (sweetest nicest cutest in my preschool class Emma). They're my cousins. Maybe second cousins-once-removed but I adore them so I'll call them my cousins and you and your family treeness will deal with it.

and then Jack the quarterback. Or mini-Mike because he's my friend's little brother. Or maybe not-so-mini Mike because he's a big old football player now. I love working with seniors because I see them just enough as kids that I feel okay acting majorly dorky but I also don't have to wipe their noses or bribe them with treats. Usually. And any time I get to take pictures of a senior like this I'm thinking the whole time about which little sister I can get him to marry because he's such a cutie. Also I told him the secret about how the worst people to photograph are often dads because their wives make them dress up when they want to be watching a game and they're not as into jumping around like batman or climbing in things. And Jack promised that in 10 years when he's back with his kids he'll still do all the batman jumping I ask him to. Happily.

in grandma's garden

2010-11-01T21:32:00.003-06:00

zombie

2010-10-31T14:19:00.002-06:00

sorry these are gross.

I got way way into grossing up my sister's hair and makeup after I picked her up from school Friday and said she looked like a pretty zombie.

then we discovered that my basement is the perfect zombie backdrop.

happy halloween!

under arrest

2010-10-29T21:30:00.002-06:00

my newly sprung hobby involves borrowing people's kids because I think of a good idea to go with their Halloween costumes. I gave them back with I was done.

I put the rest up on my photo site

photoshop trick and a treat

2010-10-29T18:50:00.002-06:00

we have been having way too much fun photographing everyone's costumes

I'll share after we're done with Halloween weekend!

it's like a time machine i'm going so far back now

2010-10-20T13:15:00.000-06:00

my cousin and her family last JULY. I love them. but I love anything that's turquoise and yellow and green. I think she knew that.

to moms of all girls or all boys

2010-10-19T13:37:00.000-06:00

don't skip the totally pink row or the totally blue & red row at the toy store. how else is belle going to get to the ball when her butterfly-unicorn-strawberry-shortcake-mobile breaks down?

another living room corner

2010-10-18T13:32:00.000-06:00

i truly have a disease called moving-household-stuff-around-constantly-itis. for reals. ask anyone that's been here more than once.

living room corner

2010-10-17T13:21:00.004-06:00

happy happy

wild air

granny smith green pray

letterpess temple

i love when old friends come to visit

2010-10-16T10:53:00.003-06:00

last night (while I was asleep and dreaming) Kevin Deiber and I were in a double-wide chicken suit at a high school church dance. most of the other attendants were Latino gang members in skinny jeans. they mostly stood around looking cool until some sharks and jets music came on and then they began dance fighting. things started to get scary when we went out into the parking lot and a bearded David Cross in a reeeally tall Abraham Lincoln hat started chasing us. I think he was either going to get us to join the community jazz band or stay late and clean up after the dance. oh the terror.

also for the record when my husband appears in...husbandly dreams somehow his voice always sounds very much like Don Draper

dino park

2010-10-15T13:06:00.000-06:00

dinosaur park in Ogden (not to be confused with the Evanston playground with a dinosaur slide) was one of our summer fun days (yes still catching up)

max excavating

my sister hanna assisting

lily and aaron, I think one day they might get married. they already act like they have been for 50 years. their grumpy moods and need to be in charge intertwine so that they are either wrestling on the floor to vent frustration that the other person won't follow the 49 rules to the made-up game or being each other's knight and princess taking turns doing the rescuing. plus wouldn't this be just so cute at their reception?

rar

to lily and aaron in the magical golden cave of the allosaur, "look scared!"

"no aaron, not scaRY....scared!"

I must love rainbows as much as lily since most of our friends sat down to rest and I rearranged a couple to make this

but then we tried to add some of the littlse and they weren't as cool on the idea. max wouldn't even get off the sidewalk. stinkin max

the andersons from gunnison

2010-10-14T12:53:00.000-06:00

ah, this weekend was one of our favorites of the summer. in pa school my husband had these 2 great buddies. who not only studied and became great medical people but also enjoyed such traditions as "let's grow ugly moustaches week". so on this weekend we gathered them all to our house (on janie's birthday I might add). here's the oldest 4 of the 8 kids (one of them might be dressed up as a bride):

but then I got to take off with the family of girls for some real live family photos. and their pictures are ones that I wish I could somehow switch out the heads of my own family and have them be my family pictures too. like I love the images and the happiness and the colors and the pink so much but it would probably be weird to order myself a 24 inch canvas for my wall, you know?

please don't make fun of the father's huge head ha ha

i'm not a bum anymore

2010-10-13T13:41:00.002-06:00

but this is

anyway, you can 100% expect a daily post from me for at least the next week! booya.

M

2010-10-13T12:46:00.002-06:00

babe of a senior girl wearing lots of grey posing by lots of grey.

whatever those huge cement kit kat bar things are were my favorite.

uuuhhhhhhhhh

2010-10-12T22:56:00.002-06:00

oops

I'm back

my kids are still cute (phew)

no, nothing bad happened

no, we didn't really go anywhere

no, I'm not pregnant

can I show you the best customer shipping notice email ever?

2010-09-22T12:39:00.002-06:00

Hi Allie!

Thanks for your order with On Gossamer Wings!

Your wings have been lovingly created from the finest of fairy finery with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 fairies inspected your wings and polished them to make sure they were in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your wings into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterward and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Hurst waved 'Bon Voyage!' to your package, on its way to you, in our private On Gossamer Wings jet on this day, Wednesday, September 22, 2010.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at On Gossamer Wings. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as 'Customer of the Year'. We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to On Gossamer Wings!!

.·*´¨)
¸.·`¸.·*´¨)
(¸.·´ ¸.·`¸.·*```Best fairy regards!
(¸.·´
Angelia Doyle, Chief Fairy Officer

action tricks

2010-09-12T08:11:00.000-06:00

I've just gotta tell someone

love it. you can switch back just as easily to edit your actions and rearrange them and load them and things.

and the next one
you know you can alter your keyboard shortcuts
or add shortcuts to things that don't have them?

I wanted a shortcut for flattening an image
with actions and all the layers that come with them
you might be flattening quite a bit

ctl-e merges just fine and dandy but sometimes you just want it plain flat

here's how to change it:

edit > keyboard shortcuts
shortcuts for: palette menus (this is a drop-down menu)
Layers (click the triangle so it points down and shows you the choices)
Flatten Image (keep looking down, then click it)
F12 (that's just what I chose to be the keyboard shortcut)
accept it
OK it
try it

baby pictures

2010-09-11T12:30:00.000-06:00

I took some baby pictures for my cousin recently
I think they're my favorite baby pictures
of all the baby pictures

sorry all you other baby pictures

family photos

2010-09-10T18:10:00.003-06:00

I've been working on lots from the summer.
time to share my favorites.
first up: the Heaven family

this one is my favorite simply because of littlest sister

this one because really? blue eyes that blue?

this one because guess who the daughter's favorite princess is. hint=rhymes with Shmariel. seriously Amy, have you worked at Disneyland?

this one because first refer to picture 1. that's the face brother gave me most of the day. I finally got him with a conversation about why he thought Canada (their home) was better then Wyoming. his answers: they have lots of cows. it's really cold....like 8 foot high snow drift cold....they have colorful money....the John Deere store. hmmm, I'm not quite sold but I'm glad you opened up! tee hee

lots more over here

chugga (more summer fun)

2010-09-10T10:24:00.000-06:00

my giant letters

2010-09-09T13:55:00.002-06:00

my husband actually gets credit for this. you see he took Lily one Saturday to go recycle some things. us poor small town people have to drive all of our own recycling to the place, boo. anyway, I guess since he does it for us it makes no difference to me, yay! so they came back from their short trip with some information they knew mom would like. a certain big ugly store in town had been going through a remodel and good job to them, they were recycling all of their metal signage! hint=it's not Target. he checked with the volunteers working, or maybe you say volunteers volunteering?, either way, they said it was okay to take some. so we got ourselves some M's and some L's and a star even. and these:

do you think Mr. and Mrs. Previous Owner would be into it :)

time to take action

2010-09-08T21:46:00.006-06:00

go ahead, take them!

just click the button

(or try right-click then save as... if not)

this action set does basically 2 things:

nicely done darkened edges (I despise the word vignette)

super easy custom black & white switcheroo

specific action-running instructions:
(if you need help just loading or playing actions try google or give me a jingle)

all actions are meant to be run on a single-layer flattened image

the action set includes:

{spotlight} does some fancy stuff first but basically darkens the very outer edges of your picture. darkens is not the right word because unlike the vignette in camera raw which just adds gray over top of your picture, this action darkens the colors that are already there.

{spotlight closer} does the same thing but just comes in closer to do it. since we're all starting with different picture sizes (like my pixels start out at 2592 by 3872 pixels)...I just wanted a couple options

{spotlight you choose} this action has instructions that pop up while it's playing. basically you get to drag the box to wherever you want it and resize to your heart's content. plus it's like I'm stopping by to give you a little tip every time you play it.

after every spotlight action you can lower the opacity of the layer with the dark edges on it to make the effect less dramatic. I always do.

{BEST b&w} after you've run this action you'll be left with your original background image in color + a basic b&w layer over that + a much more fabulous b&w layer over that. your mission is to adjust the opacity of the top layer only until you're happy and then flatten it all. different hair colors and shirt colors and backgrounds and everything play a part in how a b&w image looks so this lets you have a little control over that in a super quick way

ttv at the lake of the bears

2010-09-08T16:13:00.002-06:00

we had all kinds of fun this summer

this was one of them

I wouldn't take my regular camera to the sandy beach

so I brought along my old backup

(that happened to be hooked up to a ttv getup)

p.s. one of the friends that day asked why I looked like I was taking so many pictures of the sand

stuff i made

2010-08-30T18:38:00.003-06:00

even though I wasn't busy blogging all summer,

I was busy making stuff

this is a bench I made for my mom

I won't lie, it's awesome

plans from the amazing ana white

for the rustic pottery bench

so my only not happiness about this is our lame lumber store

they're helpful, just not big enough to have what I want

if I don't want to drive to park city for home depot...

(because I was making this the day of her birthday)

...I buy the wood there

it's way more than ana estimates wood should cost

plus they have never heard of a 1 by 3

so I have to figure out how to do it with 1 by 4 boards

that are far from straight

in this instance things worked out

I also altered the top because I knew this bench

would be for plants

so the slats would be better than a solid top

for dripping water

then black stain

then poly spray

then hooray

friends, I know I live in Wyoming and all

but I am not a lumberjack

I'm still kind of scared of the saw

and I don't know any of the right names for tools

Derek, hand me Filipe the turner

the point: you can totally do this

back to school

2010-08-29T22:54:00.003-06:00

tonight was the best party ever

to celebrate school starting tomorrow

I've already cried thinking about summer ending...

....when I got the kindergarten information packet in the mail

....when I was telling my friend about the cute letter in the information packet

about how the teacher was going to love the kids like her own

....when my sister moved away to college

.....when I snuggled in bed with Lily all night and looked at the picture of us when she was a baby

....during a special dad prayer before bed to keep her brave and true through the year

I hope I'm good because school's in the morning

and I really am excited for her and how wonderful kindergarten is

I loved school

so tonight we went for a nienie style-ish celebration feast

only old school lunch style

lily's crown: she's going to north elementary

they're the north stars

placecards. my hub in kindergarten

grandpa & grandma

some sisters that weren't in town but are cute nonetheless

ha ha I said nonetheless

the hawaiian crown for my sister heading back to byu-hawaii

aww cute. i still remember that dress's skirt has 7 layers of wonderful

I realized that I mostly loved that I didn't buy anything for this party

besides some food but not much of that either

it just took:

37 minutes of raspberry picking

derek to clean up max's cocoa krispies from yesterday...or maybe 4 days ago

a dig through the party bucket

the surplus new school supply pile and a stapler

finding some olden day pictures on the computer

a google search for 'wolverine'

the party favorites channel from the tv

ha ha. my middle school sister's mascot is the wolverines.

while I don't think the 5-year-old appreciated the lunch-ladyness that went into the menu planning, my dad did so it's all good

baked sweet potato fries

sloppy joes....slop-sloppy joes ya

good eats macaroni & cheese

green beans

a dandee raspberry & cream cake

afterwards we did the new school clothes fashion show

somehow the dancing involved robots, pirates, cats and hobos

sorry for non-attenders, it's not a video

I am such a proud proud momma

Max and I will miss her tomorrow

I love that I got the real & true smile in her eyes smile

she's happy and she's ready

sorry

2010-08-23T23:41:00.002-06:00

I would have blogged more this summer but Max wouldn't let go of me.

And when a little human as handsome as he is with the dark dark eyes and the eyelashes and the summer blonde hair and the lips and the belly and the toesies asks you to play trains all day you pretty much do it.

No matter how loud he sometimes might roar.

buy my living room

2010-07-28T14:13:00.002-06:00

so I wanted to try my skills at making digital scrapbook stuff and here's the result

the living room kit

this kit is inspired by my living room

and it's $4.50 in my etsy shop

tou on this is personal use including your own blog design (banners and buttons and things) if you link to me or my store

50 items

18 of those are 12 inch paper

all 300 dpi

jpg paper files

png everything else

paint

2010-07-25T12:53:00.003-06:00

I've been asked about paint colors I've used before and hooray! i'm finally answering

I wish I had some cute little paint shop I went to and used benjamin moore or martha colors and odor-free green paint but the truth is our town only has a couple options and walmart is usually the quickest and most convenient when out paint shopping with the kiddies

so here's my story

i painted these chairs (and table) because they were much too boring for me

the MOST important thing I'm sure I did was prime them. I was going for the little-bit-of-weathered look like they'd been outside many a lazy summer to watch kids run in the sprinklers but not so much look like your cheap paint just wiped off hours after finishing such a laborious task

so use zinsser primer. it's amazing. zinsser b-i-n is shellac based and while incredibly stinky, when I first used it I ran up and down the streets proclaiming how wonderful life had become

when I painted the chairs I didn't yet know that this primer also existed in spray can form, so I just used brushes.

either buy really cheap brushes and toss them after or plan on cleaning them with even-more-stinky ammonia

the paint colors were then a little bit of see how it goes and keep going until you like it. so i mostly started with these colors (which I had around leftover from other things)

but then rain lily was much too pastel to fit in so I mixed in some brighter yellow spray paint until it ended up something more like this

then each chair ended up getting a double coat in a different color. and that ended up being my most favorite part about them. go light on the coverage so it doesn't get too blobby.

if you're not into all the dings then go ahead and spray poly over the whole thing when you're done.

if you're still with me you're probably into reading about colors so here's a few more

my living room walls are mostly sage smoke but one wall is streambed. if you are an end table that lives in my home chances are you are getting attacked with one of those blues

also lizzie remember a long long time ago you asked about max's room? well it's just plain old medium gray. most of the things in his room are bright red

then lily's room is the room that still makes me crazy. originally I thought jamaican dream would be awesome but there is a full can of it in my basement showing otherwise. way way too dark and bright. so jade bath was my calmer solution but ever since it was done like a year ago it even bugs me. the ceiling is low and the room isn't very light so everyone in it looks underwater. too much. next time I get the urge to torture myself for a couple days I'm going to paint it milky jade and hope that does the trick.

last, spray paint colors. I use krylon from walmart. it's fantastic but what do I know?

our pink picnic table was painted watermelon. not surprising since lily picked it and check out the krylon color page. it's a pretty princess color. perfect.

unpacking

2010-07-25T01:29:00.003-06:00

we've been all around everywhere this summer having 56 people's worth of fun and been photographed doing it.

this week has only one hour of preschool teaching at the park on the to do list.

hooray.

here's a few random/what's been uploaded so far.

deciding

2010-07-14T22:41:00.003-06:00

the longest part of editing a photo session for me is whittling down however many I start with to however many I'm planning on ending up with

I go back and forth comparing similar shots. try to decide on a top 25 or so based on what makes me happy, what moms are going to like seeing their kids doing, who's going to think they look too dorky and collecting a good representation of everybody

this family took 2 tries to get enough good ones due to the craziest thunderstorm ever

then I somehow ended up with 437 pictures

I'm at least half way there and plan on finishing tonight

here's a couple from the keep list so far

lenses for sale

2010-07-13T14:58:00.008-06:00

UPDATE

35mm is sold and shipped

zoom one's price is lowered to $80...anybody?

here's the story. I have these. I don't use these enough anymore. Someone else (that likes a deal) might use them more. neither was a kit lens, I bought them on purpose for different reasons. both are for nikons. also neither will work with one of those d40-style cameras with no internal focusing motor. ask if you need to. both are in perfect condition (once I clean them well) and have their caps.

so this is the nikon 35mm f/2

read about the exact one here

it is a great lens. from my spot on the couch i just took these in program mode

i've used it plenty for portraits and things. good for families because you won't have to back up across the street or be right up in their business.

$250 and i'll pay for shipping

next up, sigma (for a nikon camera) 18-50mm 3.5-5.6

read about it here

plus mine has a lens hood

i bought this for a trip to England.

i really wanted the 18mm side (so you can see a lot of area through your viewfider)

while not quite as good for just portraits, it's great for "stuff"

i recently posted all those pictures of my house.

both the befores and afters were taken with this.

$120 and i'll pay for shipping

email me quick if you're interested.

plan on using paypal if you can.

alliehoopes@yahoo.com

speaking of father's day

2010-07-09T01:43:00.003-06:00

ours was lovely.
backyard magic.
the cafe chalkboard menu.
derek. dad. one of my grandpas.

root beer guzzling babies.

but really, what can you get an 86 year old?

that's a lot of father's days.

my dad and sisters put together a coupon book for grandpa.

notice i did not say that derek and i put together a coupon book for grandpa.

or even knew about the coupon book being put together.

given from my dad and mom and sisters.

and not from derek and i.

but look at what the coupons said.

our kitchen table has been getting neglected lately

2010-07-09T01:28:00.002-06:00

but I don't think it minds. it's only temporary while the lovely summer nights last.

we've had many a pool party, impromptu dinner get-together, photo shoot, pizza-grilling competition and family flower-planting evening

here's the dinner menu from father's day that my sister who doesn't get that she's amazing drew for me. lily helped....can you tell where? :)

i swear i'm getting my next family pictures taken right here

2010-07-06T00:51:00.001-06:00

Wyoming is awesome. junky and old and grungy and awesome.

knock-off picnic table

2010-06-24T17:28:00.000-06:00

1. I MADE this. like bought the wood (with kids in tow). cut it. screw/glued it together. made it.

2. at lunchtime we were at our friends' telling them about my dreams to make this table. that evening they came to dinner and it was sitting there (though not painted yet....come on)

3. our small-town lumber store did not have 1x3 boards. they looked at me like I was crazy. but they always look at moms like they're crazy in there. grrrrr.

4. I switched the 1x3s to 1x4s and only had to figure out one remeasurement because of the substitutions

5. sanded beautifully. spray painted (guess which sparkly princess chose the color). didn't bother filling in the countersunk screws. lots of poly.

you should do it too. the feeling afterwards is one of immense pride. but not like 'I'm better than you pride'. more like 'I'm better than I thought I was and you should try this too' pride.

and then have lots of picnics.

my plans were from Ana White of Knock-Off Wood

wonderful wonderful. I will be back for more.

cure for a bad day

2010-06-24T17:03:00.002-06:00

potty jokes with a 5 year old.

even if the bad day is partially caused by that 5 year old.

i'm thinking about turning these into some wall mounted canvas magic.

with delicate white vinyl lettering decorating my wall that will say:

"what does a poop do when its boring? nothing!!"

ya I don't get it either.

but she's cute.

we ♥ dads

2010-06-19T23:20:00.003-06:00

especially this one

thanks for taking kids to the rodeo (radio if you asked Lily), not minding the furniture-musical-chairs constantly going on around here and giving the thumbs up to put turquoise paint on anything, planting plants and mowing the yard the old-fashioned way, doing the Little Einsteins dance with Lily (or both of them) whenever it comes on, Max+screaming+church+you in the hall, transporting Max back and forth between our bed and his bed for nighttime nursing, suggesting pizza on just the right nights when we're been busy all day, telling me to breathe during Lily's under 4-hour all-natural labor and birth, laughing about the bowl of cafeteria gray spinach during Max's easier-than-flying-a-kite 3-hour-labor, helping my sisters+mom+dad take the recycling or give late-night xrays or clean out the raspberry bushes or learn pointless soccer facts, being a fantastic student and worker, being my grandparents' favorite grandchild, buying me a piano and then saying nice things like you had no idea I was that good (actually I'm not that good), late night quick texts haha, coaching soccer but especially doing the hokey pokey during practice and the made-up handshakes and cheers for the dragonfairies

and I must say that despite the 1982 moustache/grapefruit sized glasses...I'm rather fond of this dad too

thanks for buying Thelonious Monk cds just because I was in jazz band, camping memories (save some for dippin), handling a house with 6 females+you, teaching me about tools and driving (that took a while to sink in obvious by the amount of work you had to do on my yellow geo storm), teaching me about marriage and family and sacrifice and forgiveness and love without saying much about it, still being the smartest person I know, coming to dragonfairy soccer games, scheming about Max's nacho libre blessing day costume, Sunday pancake night with the perfect scrambled eggs, welcoming my then 14-year-old-looking husband as your sports buddy/snickers question stealing/crazy grandma visiting husband, giving us daddy blessings on each first day of school

i spy 8 lollipops

2010-06-14T13:55:00.002-06:00

these are some pictures I'm working on of a cute Evanston family (nearly there, Smiths)

once I'm done the whole shoot will be over on allietakespictures.com

and boy oh boy will there be plenty more

(shown in much better quality too....blogger's not too hot at that kind of thing)

jaime's bib tutorial

2010-06-11T22:21:00.001-06:00

if you know a wee one that happens to be messy during lunchtime, go make a bib! i followed jaime's super-tutorial. she rocks.

but since I'm not friends with lots of laundry, I used some of this here iron-on vinyl before I stitched my pieces together. it wipes clean! boo ya!

cancelled due to rain

2010-06-11T21:49:00.000-06:00