Let the Christmas Season Begin!

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving was pretty simple this year, just hanging out and dinner with Grandma and Grandpa. Friday we all went Black Friday shopping (at 3:00AM!), which we've been doing for about ten years now, and came home with some good deals. And all weekend we've been eating tons of Thanksgiving leftovers, which I love.

I've put some lights up in my bedroom window, the house is filled with Christmas decorations, we've been listening to lots of Christmas music on Pandora, and I have already watched two Christmas movies. Oh, and we just got our tree. Christmas time is definitely here!

Random Friday

-A couple months ago my sister Tiana got her new camera, a Panasonic GF3 in the mail. It's a mirror-less interchangeable-lens camera, so the body is quite small, about the size of an average point and shoot, but has interchangeable lenses. It's takes great pictures!

-Our friends Rose, Carrie, and Emmalyn had never seen any of the American Girl movies, but had read the books, so whenever we could we've been getting together to watch them all. We watched them all in date order; Felicity, Samantha, Kit, and Molly. We finished this past Sunday and are planing on watching The Princess Diaries next.

-Two weeks ago our family went to a costume party that our friends hosted. I dressed up as a Disney Tourist. It was awesome.
(Follow me on Instagram! I'm "sereinab")

-Tuesday I watched Bells are Ringing, a musical staring Judy Holliday and Dean Martin. I first saw it 2-3 years ago when I was just getting into old movies, but I enjoyed it even more this time. It's got some catchy songs and my sisters had them stuck in their heads for days! lol!

-Yesterday I suddely decided to take some video of all the pretty fall leaves and such outside and made a video montage with music. I turned out pretty good!

(for best quality, be sure to watch in HD!)

What have you been up to lately?

Selfies

For quite a while now I've been wanting some new headshots of myself. The pictures I'd been using for my profile picture here on Blogger and my about me page were two years old, so I though it was time for an update. But the problem was, taking pictures with the timer was difficult. The camera can't auto focus when the timer is being used and running back and forth from behind and in front of the camera is tiring. 

So I finally got a wireless remote for my Sony. It's very simple, just two buttons: the shutter release and a shutter release with a two second delay. It focuses before snapping the photo and was only $7 on Amazon. And I love it!

I was finally able to get some beautiful headshots that I love. The forest area next to our house made a perfect background for some simple and classy portraits.

Which shot is your favorite?

Monday Randomness

{a self-portrait from the other day}

It's already February 6th, my how January just flew by! I've been keeping busy doing quite a bit crafting, particulary sewing. Some of my latest project are a bucket hat and a stuffed cat. The cat turned out kinda funny looking, but it's not too bad, considering it was the first stuffed animal I've made. I've also been having fun making desktop backgrounds for my computer. My latest creations is a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers one and one inspired by the song Blue Skies by Ella Fitzgerald.



{a candle holder I made by gluing strips of fabric to a jar with mod podge}

It's been unusually warm around here lately. The last several days the sky has been clear and blue and the temperatures have been getting into the high fifties. I wonder if it will stay or if the winter weather will be coming back...





Yesterday I turned a purse into a camera bag by adding foam that I covered in fabric to add some protection inside. After months of searching for the perfect purse, I finally found one, and I can't wait to use in on our cruise we're going on at the end of the month.

{a shot of Tiana before she and Alina filmed a little movie}


Saturday I tweaked the blog design a bit. I replaced all the green with blue, which I think fits me a bit more. There are also new images in the header and made several social media icons which are on the sidebar. I also created a Google+ Page as well, which I've been having fun playing around with.

Thankful To Have a Camera

I'm finally posting about my new camera, which I mentioned I would share about quite a while ago.  So lets start at the beginning:

Back last summer, I did a bit of research to decide what camera I would to purchase once I had enough money to buy one. Since I've been able to use my parents dSLR for quite a while I was able to figure out what I wanted in a camera and find one that would work for me. Our Sony A100 was a marvelous camera and I took many photos with it that I still love, but I'd started to outgrow it. So after many hours of searching the web, looking at pictures on flickr, and comparing specs, I finally decided on one: the Sony A580.

I thought it would be quite a while before I would be able to buy it and put most of the money I received in a camera savings. But just a few days after New Year's, our camera died. It was quite sudden and unexpected, but we were glad it didn't decide to die on our vacation next month. 


So, thanks to my grandma was able to help me out with some of the money I needed to purchase my camera, I was holding my first dSLR, the Sony A580, in my hands a little over a week later. I'm very thankful to actually have my own camera, which I got much, much sooner that I ever though I would.

Now on to the fun stuff! The A580 has a lot of great features that the A100 didn't have, such as live view, a tilt able scree, and HD video, which is really awesome. But one of my favorite things is the ISO quality/range. The grain at higher ISO's is much better and has a higher range as well.

I am so happy! to have such a wonderful camera! I know I'm going to get a lot of great use out of it in the many years to come.

Two Years

I can barely believe it's been two years since I started this blog. Time has just been flying by. Looking back at my archives, I can see how much I've improved since then. Some of the photos aren't too bad, but I can't help but cringe at the over editing and the terrible watermarks I made. I had no clue what aperture, f/stops, or any idea how to operate my camera out of auto, but now it feels like I've known that stuff forever.

(you can read my first year blog post here: One Year)

Here are some fun things that happened this year:

-The biggest thing that happened was being able to purchase my new camera (and I'm still working on a post about that).
-I upgraded from PSE7 to Photoshop CS5

-I got to take Senior Photos of a friend of mine

-I purchased a new lens, the 35mm f/1.8

There are so many fun pictures that I took this past year and these are just some of my very favorites:

{Claire's headshots - January 2011}

{Ducks - February 2011}

{Tulip Fields - April 2011}



{Daisies - May 2011}



{Visiting Oregon - June 2011}



{Gino - August 2011}



{Lavender - August 2011}



{Beach Vacation - August 2011}



{Renee's Senior Portraits - September 2011}



{Chocolate Truffles - October 2011}



{Autumn Leaves - October 2011}



{Pumpkins - October 2011}



{Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies - December 2011}



{Winter Wonderland - January 2012}