At my sister’s baby shower, the one for which I made my kick butt banner, my mom and sister also stepped it up with the crafty skills. We were all very self-congratulatory about how awesome we made everything look. And why not?
My mom and sister made some great cake pops.
My mom made a great diaper cake.
My sister made a wonderful vegetable “pizza.”
My mom mixed some delicious fruit punch.
And we had a super cute clothesline* full of baby outfits along the one window.
I don’t want to speak for either my mom or sister, but I think the key to creating a cute atmosphere for a shower is to be completely paranoid that you’ll host a dud event. We all pulled from a resource of girly skills I’m pretty sure we didn’t know we had. And the result was beautiful!
* Before leaving for the shower I mentioned to Wonder Boy that I needed to grab our clothespins. He got all excited and told me to stay put. He ran upstairs and came back with these adorable bird clothespins. Apparently he bought them for me last Christmas but held them back as a gift because they took him over our spending limit for gifts. A wonderful August surprise gift!
Last night I attended the Neko Case concert and it was wonderful. Okay, so maybe it was the My Morning Jacket concert, with opening act Neko Case. I know where my allegiances are and why I attended the show and it had nothing to do with My Morning Jacket. A while back I saw the New Pornographers live and Neko was playing with them. I used the concert to be able to cross “See Neko Case” off of my 100 list but that was sort of a lie. The concert was okay but the sound was terrible and she was so quiet. It was not at all the Neko I wanted but I adore her so much that I gave myself the event.
Now my friend Ronald Reagan says that when I went to Morocco several years ago and gave myself the continent of Africa that it was a lie because I didn’t stay overnight in the country or continent. I think that’s absolutely absurd. Delicious and I experienced complete culture shock, a lot of which was due to the dramatic differences in sexual equality between there and here. While it was a short visit, it had a huge effect on me and I got more out of that day than I have from much longer trips to other places. (The argument is a moot point now that I’ve been to Ghana.) If Ronald Reagan had called me out on Neko being crossed off my list, that would have been a real discussion and I might have admitted being wrong. Which I don’t do often.
But people, last night I not only SAW Neko Case, I was like 12 feet away from her. And it was beautiful. She was beautiful. Her voice was beautiful. I wish my phone took better pictures so I could illustrate what I saw better but this will have to do.
I don’t think this picture makes it look like I was as close to the stage as I was, but you’ll just have to trust me on that.
Some entertaining points about Neko’s set:
Her band is completely random! She has people that belong in blues bands, hipster indie rock bands, surf bands, hard rock bands and maybe performing show tunes.
The person who belonged performing show tunes sounded fabulous with Neko when they sang so I cannot critique her talent. But she was a little like the daughter of Liza Minnelli and it was very distracting.
I’ve always heard that Neko is prone to freaking out on stage and being a little … unique. For someone who can open her mount and let a huge singing voice escape, her talking voice was little more than a whisper. So she would say a few barely intelligible things and Liza Minnelli would say them to the audience. It was so weird!
The reason Wonder Boy and I were able to get so close is because we had pit tickets. It’s pretty awesome because it pretty much gives you access to the whole venue.
I was grateful for that because when My Morning Jacket came on stage, I was completely surprised. Two years ago I saw Monsters of Folk perform in Louisville and I sort of assumed, that since My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James was in that super group, that the music would be similar. Wrong.
Today I went online and purchased some earplugs because if I ever see another show like last night’s without earplugs, I will be deaf. I might be deaf now. Did you say something? Holy moly was the music loud. We moved back to towards the rear of the venue but it only made things a little better. I tried to video some of the show to show how loud it was, and how dizzying the lights were. The sound is pretty awful on this video but it illustrates my point well.
My Morning Jacket was good. Very good. But I was so relieved when Wonder Boy said he was ready to go. By the end of the show, I just hurt.
The sound on this video of Neko Case from last night is better. Because I didn’t take it.
I’ve mentioned in past posts that I’m teaching an upcoming Photoshop course at work. I’m not an expert but I can make my way around the tool. I’m sharing my class in pieces. This post is about applying filters.
Photoshop offers many effects you can add to images to make them more visually interesting. These effects can be added alone or in combination and there’s no real way to apply them incorrectly because it’s all based on personal preference.
To apply a filter, first open the file you want to work with. Then go to your filter menu. You will find tons of available options.
If this is your first time working in filters, it’s probably best to just start applying them at random. With each filter, a new window will open that allows you to play with the intensity of color, width of brush strokes, etc. Changes to your image will be shown in real time so you can keep playing. After you see how it turns out, select Alt + Control + Z or Edit … Step Backward to undo the filter application and try something new.
Here are some examples of effects you can accomplish and what I did to achieve them.
Lake picture before:
Lake picture after:
This effect was achieved using the Crosshatch Filter, which can be found at Filters … Brush Strokes … Crosshatch.
Bee before picture:
Bee after picture:
This effect was achieved using the Colored Pencil Filter, which can be found at Filters … Artistic … Colored Pencil.
Cow before picture:
Cow after picture:
This effect was achieved using the Colored Pencil Filter, which can be found at Filters … Stylize … Glowing Edges.
None of these edits is in any way critical. But, they can result in an image that looks like it took hours to create when in fact you can accomplish it in seconds.
My sister, mom and I threw a baby shower for my other sister this past weekend. For the event I created a banner to hang across the front of my parents house.
It is important to know that I do not scrapbook. I try to appreciate it and do think some folks do fabulous things scrapbooks. But in general, I like my pictures square against a plain background with no added flair. And yet… I created the cutest banner for the baby shower!
To create the banner, I cut sheets of scrapbooking paper into triangles. Then I freehanded letters onto contrasting colored sheets of scrapbook paper. I used some spray adhesive to attach the letters to the triangles and some scotch tap to wrap each the short edges of the triangles around a piece of twine. To finish things off, I hung a onesie with safety pins before and after each word in the banner.
The past few days I’ve heard clucking. I live in a pretty urban environment and only a half mile or so from downtown. I should not hear clucking. Then Wonder Boy mentions that there is a dead chicken in the street. I’ve read a lot about urban farming and find it a pretty fascinating concept. I thought that maybe one of my neighbors had started their own chicken farm and a chicken had gotten loose?
Then Wonder Boy comes up to me yesterday and says, “Have you seen the rooster?” Um, excuse me?!
Sure enough. Two doors down I see a rooster walking around the backyard. And through some Facebook chatter with neighbors, we learn that our next door neighbor Bertha Knuckles has caught a loose chicken, named it Margaret and it’s living in her shed and yard!
I decided to do the only logical thing. I grabbed some bird seed and a cat carrier and went to catch the rooster. Fail. A little while later I joined some other people in some more successful rooster wrangling adventures.
And most importantly, a little while later I got to meet Margaret.
