They're Whoopie Pies!

There is great debate over what their proper name is. I had never heard of them until I married my Pennslvania-born husband. Some call them Whoopie Pies. Some swear they are Gobs. Recently, I even heard someone call them YoYo's. They are a cookie sandwich. The recipe my mother-in-law gave me is for chocolate ones. Personally, I don't care much for chocolate, but I LOVE Pumpkin Roll! These are an easy version of that sometimes difficult recipe. The pink things and I used this recipe from Martha Stewart. She calls them Whoopie Pies and so does my hubby, so I venture to say they are right. Although personally, I think they look like YoYos!

Annual Fall Photo Shoot

A couple of posts back, I talked about my new camera and our fall photo shoot. We haven't missed a year yet, in 14 years. The last 4-5 years, we have done our own. The kids are more relaxed not having to pose for a stranger and I think the adults might be too. They fall a little short of professional quality, but doing your own is ever so much cheaper.This year, we went all casual in sweaters. In the past, I have had everyone match (sewed 5 dresses and bought a coordinating shirt for dad.) Nothing wrong with that, except that I have a LOT on my plate right now and don't like sewing, and blah, blah, blah. :)

I thought the train tracks near my parents place would be a fun place to shoot some pictures. I have fond memories of walking those tracks with the family on Sunday afternoons as a kid.Here are some of the sweet things in my life, riding the rails.

Even though they are all spread out pretty evenly in age, they are kind of two groups right now:

Big Sisters & Little Sisters.

A fun shot of me and the hubby. :)

I love that man!

Our oldest and my right hand. Kayla is such a sweet pretty girl!

Kalli. Quite possibly the most affectionate person you will ever meet. So sweet and cute!

Kammy our animal (especially horse) loving girl. Here she has 'Browie' who happens to be a dog. Think it not strange, he is a cowdog! :)

Quite adorable as well!

May I introduce the baby?

Kaite.

Quite honestly, I think this photo is a prize-winner. Not because of the photographer, but because of the subject matter!

I'm lovin' the soft colors and sweet smile.

I mentioned in this post, the editing that had to go on for this picture to work. In the above edit, I used 'paint' to color dad's arm out of view. That way I could keep the picture upright. I had so much fun that I decided to try and give the whole photo the appearance of a painting. I think it turned out a little Norman Rockwell-ish. :)

I think this one might be my favorite though. I added a few light rays to the lantern. So...let me know what you think. I do a photo card each year for Christmas and I can't decide which pics to use.

Demonstrative Tiny Talk

This is my very most favorite 4 year old! She loves to lay in mom and dad's bed for a few minutes each night and visit. Then she is fine to go to her own room. The other night she said, "Look mom, I can make a 4 with my legs!"

Cute kid, huh? :) I'll be linking up for Tiny Talk again and looking forward to reading the cute things your little ones say!

Photo editing

We took our annual Fall/Christmas pictures this weekend with my new camera. I'm not posting all of them yet, but I thought it might be fun to see what can be done with photo editing tools.

Here is a picture of Kaite that I really liked (minus her daddy's hand that is). Little ones are sometimes so difficult to get good pictures of, since they tend to be quite busy. I used picnik to edit this one, but there are literally hundreds of free online photo editing sites to choose from. First of all, I used the 'rotate' button to tilt the picture until we got rid of daddy's hand. Next, I turned the picture into 'sepia' adding just a tiny hue of color back into it. Finally, I used just a bit of the 'boost' feature.
With a family of six, group pictures are a challenge, but I think we got some pretty good shots...at least for ametures, and the best part, is that there were no sitting fees. In fact, until we order prints, they don't cost a dime! Last year, I was able to get 50 free photo christmas cards, so I'm holding out for another deal like that!

Oh, and the camera? A Canon SX120IS with a 10X optical zoom lens. $249 at Target, $130 on sale at Best Buy.