i make things

4th of July

4th of July - Meixner Family Sized!

Me and and all my nieces and nephews. It's difficult to get them all happy at once.

This is butterball. He's my latest nephew out of 5 and his daddy. They look a lot alike.

This is his brother, the Peanut. He didn't want his picture taken so at least I got the lip out of him...for a piece of candy.

When we get together we do a lot of things. First and foremost, we eat.

Oh yeah Henry (my cousin's kid) was going to town.

Jack my nephew.

Some of us like to sit and play on our phones. ahem....

Some of us are taking a rest break.

Some of us are avoiding getting smooched by the cheek pinchers.

Some of us are playing volleyball.

Some of us need help. This is Grace learning how to serve.

Some of us are doing selfies with my camera. LOL

These two are playing bean bags or what I really mean is playing with the bean bags.

Ashton is having fun with the bubbles courtesy of Uncle Thomas.

On to the fireworks. A lot of oohs, ahhhs, oh that's neat, oooh pretty! and so on. :)

How to Photograph 4th of July Fireworks

Would you like to learn how to photograph fireworks? Have your fireworks pictures been just blah or so-so in previous years?

Would you like to go from This to That?

If you answered yes to any of those questions you've come to the right place.

I'm going to give you a quick tutorial on how I like to capture fireworks.

With any good image you've got to have a couple of rules. Yes, I know, photography is an art and there shouldn't be rules when it comes to art. Rules can stifle you. In this case in order to get the good shot you need to follow a couple rules. The rest, as they say, is up to  you.

1. Tripod - you MUST have one.

Why? Because you need to leave your shutter open for a second or more at a time. If you are holding your camera you are going to get camera shake. What is camera shake? Camera shake makes your images blurry. It's that slight vibration or movement that you exert while trying to hold the camera still. Normally you wouldn't notice it but when you are taking pictures with the shutter open (the shutter is what allows the light into the camera), it's visible.

Trust me. If you try and hold your camera you're going to look like you're an alcoholic that hasn't had a drinkin 4 hours. Shaky like a groom on his wedding night. I could go on with the metaphors but you get the idea.

2. Camera with Manual Mode - MUST have

Why? Firework photographs need a long exposure (aka the shutter is open longer than a milisecond). Most point and shoot cameras including smartphones don't have this option. You need a camera with a manual mode that allows you to adjust your shutter speed (Tv) to a second or more.

There is a night mode on smartphones which will hold open the camera's shutter for a a little longer than normal but it's not enough time for you to get grand sweeping fireworks picture. What I mean by that is you with get "THIS" and not "THAT".

THIS is a staccato burst of light. Basically dots of the fireworks light emitted.

THAT is a grand sweeping emission of color. You know those huge chandelier-like fireworks? They come down like a weeping willow tree? You want the shutter to stay open from start to finish so you can capture that entire image.

Those are the two MUST haves.

Somewhat Optional Items:

3.  Remote Control Timer - I like to use this because then I don't have my finger on the shutter the entire time. Which can also cause a little bit of camera shake. You press down and then lift off. There is a little camera shake there.

I also like a remote timer because you have complete control of how long the shutter remains open. You don't have to change your settings constantly to get the right shutter length.

Each set of fireworks is different. Some are shorter bursts and some are longer (chandelier). You want to be able to start and end your shutter at your own discretion.

That's basically it for necessities. What type of camera you have, what tripod and what remote is up to you.

4.  Camera Settings: Obviously there is debate amongst photographers what is best. What I'm going to do is give you my images from the last 7 years and what the settings were so you can judge for yourself which setting you want to use.

A couple of basics for you:

• I use BULB mode so that I can control all of the settings as well as the shutter speed. If you use manual you will have to change the Tv (Shutter speed) manually. Remember, that is how long the shutter stays open and therefore how much of the image you will capture. To little and you'll get staccato images and too much you will get way too much color and it'll look like a blob.
• I like to manually focus my camera at the beginning. If you put it on automatic sometimes the camera won't be able to focus until the firework has started. I'd suggest using the first couple of bursts to focus then start taking pictures.
• Landscape/Portrait - either will work. Fireworks are naturally vertical so this set-up lends well to them. However, I occasionally will switch to landscape and get the entire background as well (you know people, cars, buildings. This will give your fireworks perspective and you can really see how big they are. Plus you can always crop a landscape image to portrait in photoshop later on.
• ISO - I ALWAYS use ISO 100. You want a crisp and clear image not a grainy one so don't be afraid to use 100 instead of 1600.
• Aperture (Av): Aperture is what decides how much light goes into the camera. Shutter is how long the light goes into the camera and aperture is how much light goes into the camera. Aperture is like your pupil. During the day there is a lot of light so our pupil is smaller, letting in less light. At night it's dark and we can't see well therefore our pupil becomes larger thereby letting in more light giving us the ability to see better.

            A small aperture (described as f-stops) is f/32 which allows the entire image to be in focus. An f-stop             of f/1.4 would focus on a small image and completely blur the background.

            I've used several different apertures (Av) ranging from 6.3-32. I mostly stay in the 6-12 range. That             seems to work the best for me and the pictures I like. You can play around with this as well.

• Shutter speed - Generally speaking I hold mine open for a second or two but it really depends on what firework is going off and how much of it I want to capture. This I will leave up to you. My advice, start with a second and work your way from there (assuming you don't have the remote and need to set a shutter speed.)

Now, onto the pictures. A timeline of fireworks form 2007 to 2014:

I hope you enjoyed this post and these pictures. Good luck with your fireworks photographs and please leave links to your pictures. I'd love to see them.

Happy 4th of July!!

Father's Day 2015: The Harbal Family

Father's Day! All about celebrating Dad. I got lucky this year. Dad wasn't working so he was home. I got to see him. YEAH!

Sunday morning I asked Dad to meet me at the Straight River Farm to pick strawberries. He was pretty excited. He had been wanting to go for awhile.

Figured what better way to spend a little quality time with my Dad than picking strawberries (p.s. I paid for his because he's my Dad and I love him.)

This is my Dad. He's never minded getting down and dirty.

This is one of his boxes of berries. Between the two of us we gathered over 28 pounds of delicious berries. That's 4 boxes.

Here he is with his last box of delicious berries. He picked some for freezing and just eating. I'm pretty sure he ate a few while we were picking.

It's funny because Dad picks faster than I do but then again I'm a little more particular than he is. I won't pick them unless they are ripe. If they are slightly under or over I won't pick them. I want to get my monies worth. Plus I go home and turn them into jam and freeze them right away.

mmmm.....Strawberries.

Pretty sure each and every one of my nieces and nephews has loved strawberries and could eat a pound all by themselves. Not kidding. They could just sit with that pound in their lap and eat until everything was gone. LOL

After the picking and chatting was done we went our separate ways. Dad to freeze and me to can.

All of us got together as a family for dinner (or supper depending on your interpretation of the word. I say lunch and dinner others say dinner and supper)

This is Dad aka Gramps aka Papa aka Grandpa aka Grampa depending on the age of the kid hollaring at him.

He loves to give lawnmower rides. The kids go nuts for it. He likes to swerve, drive fast, go up and down the ditches.

Most of the time they are yelling at him, "Go faster Grandpa! Go faster!"

These four are diehards. They have been getting rides from both me and Grandpa for years. They beg and kind of plead for rides. (Korby, Jacob, Jack and Grace) They'd go all day in that wagon.

Here's the whole brood. Ashton (orange stripe) he's not sure whether he likes it or not. He doesn't cry or anything but he doesn't look happy.

Clara (little pony tail sprout) doesn't ride 'cuz she's too small yet. But she was sure happy sitting in there.

Lucas didn't ride either 'cuz he's way too small (a little over 6 months). His brother just got to hold him. (Jacob)

Love the look on Jack's face. :)

Okay after awhile it was time to eat so we had to listen to the whining and crying and pleading again. It was more humorous than anything. It only takes about a minute or two then they start stuffing their mouths with food and it's blissfully silent...for another moment. LOL

Look at this cutie patootie. She's my 2nd niece and goddaughter. This was the first time I saw her with her cute little pony. She hasn't had enough hair until now. I can't wait for pigtails.

This butterball is my newest and 4th nephew Lucas. He's so happy and fat. That's what I tell his mother. She just shakes her head at me. Bruce is holding him because these two were born on the same day and their bald so naturally I need to get a picture of that.

This is Gracer (Grace) and Clara. Grace loves herding these kids. She's taken on the role of leader of the pack. She is the ring-leader in most of their mischief and noise-making. She chases them around and screams and they laugh and scream too.

This is Dad again. We bought him a man crate for father's day. It was pretty cool. Full of bacon-flavored things like bacon-flavored beef jerky, popcorn, sunflower seeds, peanut brittle (yes you read that right. bacon flavored peanut brittle) and even some pork belly seasoning.

It comes with it's own metal crowbar. Pretty freakin' sweet dontcha think? Oh I think so.

He loved that. Pretty sure he polished off the bacon-flavored popcorn in about 10 minutes.

This is Dad's brood. gaggle. herd. pack. family. whatever. :)

Left to right: Angi, Ashton, Nick, Karen, Chris, Korby, Jimmy, Dad, Kelly, Kimmie, Lucas and Jacob, Thomas, Jack, me, Grace, Clara, Bruce, Guy and Michelle

This was the best pic I could get. There's always someone talking or messing around or won't cooperate. I just told Mom to keep snapping and one of them would have the majority of us looking at the camera.

My Dad and his Children:

BackRow: Nicky, Jimmy, Kimmy

Front Row: Chrissy, Dad, Jen, Mitchelley

Do we look alike?

How about now?

 

Dad and the grandkids. Korby didn't want to cooperate AT ALL (orange). So he sat in the back and cried. Not sure why he didn't want to sit by Grandpa. We'll never know. Okay. Moving on. :)

Jack, Ashton, Gramps, Lucas, Jacob, Grace and Clara.

This is like the picture of faces. Here's what I think they could be saying/thinking.

Jack: Ashton what are you doing?

Ashton: Dad why am I sitting here with my sippy cup?

Dad: Woooooaaaaahhhh

Lucas: Help!

Jacob: The stare of death.

Grace: Heeeeeeeyyyyyyyy

Clara: What are we doing?

Korby: Don't look at me?

Let's try one more...well, most of them are smiling and sort of looking at the camera. Eh. Good enough. :) If they were sitting there are prim and proper looking straight at the camera I'd say, "Who are you and what have you done with my nieces and nephews. Give them back!"

My niece and nephew Jack and Grace with their Dad. Who is my brother in law and is now rivaling my other brother-in-law for the whitest legs.

I should start a contest. The winner gets some free tanning sessions? or fake tanning spray?

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to my Mom and all my other friends and family who have children.

This picture is of my Mom with her brood.

This is everyone! All of my  mother's kids with their kiddos and any significant other (except Bruce because he's taking a picture...I forgot my tripod).

This is me and my Bruce. He's a little red in the face...he went fishing for Opener in Minnesota yesterday and got a little burnt. It just makes me look pale and need a tan.

All my nieces and nephews. I almost got all of them to look at the camera at once. One day I hope to accomplish this. (p.s. Missing the littliest, Lucas)

My sister Kimmie and her two kiddos.

My nephew Ashton and his momma, Karen (Nick's gf)

Me and Bruce on the combine Mom bought Dad.

Easter: family-sized

Easter at Auntie Shelly's this year. Most of the entire Meixner fam. came so this is the group. It's a lot of people which equals a lot of noise. A lot of food. A lot of talking...a lot of everything.

This is the Harbal's: 2 parents. 6 kids. 6 spouses & significant others. 7 children. One big ol' family.

the Meixners. Well, most of them anyways. Lyndsay's group was missing.

Kimmie and her hubby and the two kiddos. They weren't really cooperating so this is the best I've got. The boys have matching outfits and I suspect they didn't have a shorter tie for Lucas (he was born 11/2).

Me and Bruce...with his hat on.

Now with the hat off to get rid of that shadow over his face.

Jack on the hunt for his Easter eggs. The last couple of years we have been hiding a bunch of eggs for all the kiddos. The youngest ones, as in, they don't understand or aren't old enough to walk around themselves still go they just have to take a parent.

Ashton trotting along looking for his eggs. He needed a handler so Tristan got the job.

He gets oranges eggs because his Daddy, my brother, loves orange. One day he'll get to choose his own color like Grace (pics before). She gets purple because that's the color she loves.

Jacob filling up his basket.

After egg hunting always comes some horsing around. A couple of the kiddos at a time.

Family standing by the sidelines watching the antics. Often times shouting out, "HEY BE CAREFUL!" "Tristan, you're bouncing too high."

Tristan is bouncing the 3 boys around; Jacob, Korby and Ashton

Pigs in a blanket. Two sausages in a pan.

The kids like to horse around so now Tristan is doing tricks while Korby puts Jacob in a headlock.

Grace decided to join the bunch. I'm really surprised that nobody bonked heads at all. As many kiddos that were in there and as much as they don't pay attention. LOL

Tristan running in place in the air. I thought that was pretty cool.

Dunking the b-ball.

Doing flips.

December Daily | Day 19 | Gift Wrapping

December Daily - Day 19 - Gift Wrapping

Gift wrapping is a one-night job. I like to get it all done at once. I grab all the empty cardboard boxes that I've been saving all year; shoe boxes, paper boxes, shipping boxes, etc, my wrapping paper, bow, ribbon and tape and go to town.

Sometimes I wonder what my gift wrapping "regime" will be when I'm older. Will I use a table instead of the floor? Will I only have 3 rolls of wrapping paper instead of an entire rubbermaid bin? Will I stop using bows and ribbon? Will I use only one color? Will I be able to use only "3 pieces of sticky tape?"

My entire page. I only had one picture that I really wanted to showcase so I kept it at one.
 I had fun with this one. I added a bunch of embellishments to this one that I thought fit the "wrapping paper" theme. For instance, the red striped paper looked like wrapping paper to me.

The top of the page was lots of fun. I ended up using the huge gold numbers and added a bow to keep with the gift theme.

Left side of the top of the page: I used a couple different embellishments here: a circle die cut (I can't remember the brand) that I stamped with a stamp from Ali's kit, a "Do Not Open Before" tag, a plastic star from Ali's kit and a circle puffy sticker, also from Ali's kit.

It was so much fun to layer these embellishments together. I just happened to find something that fit together like a T and fit the page so perfectly.

I put my journalling directly on some empty space on the wall. Then I added an Ali stamp in the corner with a red-striped sticker with a red puffy heart in the middle (all Ali's kit).

I wasn't originally going to add anything on the page but the black interior of the cardboard box was distracting so I added some embellishments to it to fill the space.

I also ended up adding the red glitter tape to the corners (simulating ribbon on a package.

I didn't really intend on making the page look like a wrapped gift but it ended up going in the direction.

I love when that happens. I love when it all turns out and ends up being something that I think is cute and proud of.

 

December Daily | Day 16 | Christmas Movies

December Daily Day 16 Baby! Movies Movies Movies Movies Movies!!!!

I LOVE me some Christmas movies. Oh yeah! There definitely had to be a page solely related to Christmas movies....and here it is!

For this page I knew I had to do something special and that something special was the movie reels on the left page. I ended up buying a layered template from Designer Digitals because it was absolutely perfect for the page.

In the reels I used pictures of my favorite Christmas movie covers. I just took pictures and then scaled the size down and put them in the blank spaces of the reel.

I used my top 10 favorite movies.

Top of the page.

Bottom of the page.

Totally loved doing this digital page and printing it off. It was fun to play with something I don't normally do.

The right side of the layout where I put most of the journalling.

It's a little word-heavy but I think it balances out the left side well.

Top of the page.

For the Day 16 card I used paper from the Ali Edwards December Daily Kit and printed in a light gray and darker red another digital layout from the template I bought (above). The red stars and heart are from Ali's as is the 3-star set stamp. The 16 is from a Dear Lizzy chipboard alphabet.

The red card on the left...I can't remember where I got from. It's just something I found in my stash.

I printed on top of it using Remington Noiseless font. The 1 and 0 stickers are from Ali's kit.

Note: What I like to do when printing journalling on a card is to print out a draft on a piece of 4x6 paper. Then I hold the card behind the journalling up to the window or a light box to see if the jouranlling lines up the way I want.

It's kind of an old school technique but it works.

My journalling printed on a card from Ali's kit.

Thank you for reading this post.

If you have any questions or comments on this post please comment below. I LOVE comments. I look forward to hearing from you.

December Daily | Day 12 | Shopping

Day 12 is all about Shopping. I didn't do all of my shopping on Day 12 but this was the day that I happened to record my shopping adventures.

The longer I scrapbook this project the more I don't necessarily do layouts on the day they happen. Some I do and some I don't. It really depends. Some days in December I have specific activities going on and then some I don't. I like to use the days I don't have specific "Christmas-y" activities to use my filler items; shopping, gift-wrapping, my favorite ornaments, etc. That seems to work really well for me.

In fact this year I printed out a freebie December calendar from a Stitch in Time and wrote down all of the days I knew I had something going on then filled in the empty days with different items I wanted to scrapbook; ex. Christmas Music favorites, favorite ornament, etc.

I had a lot of pictures in this layout that I wanted to put in so I added an insert for the date marker.

I used a large 2 circle from an Ali Edwards December Daily kit from a couple years ago. (I don't believe you can still get these). I painted it red with a paint pen then added glitter using Stickle. I also added the 1 in front of the 2 to make 12. I glued the circle in the middle of two tags and then punched holes using the page protector as a guide.

I added one of Ali's "Be Merry" stickers from this year's December Daily Kit.

Shopping!!!! woohoo Every year Christmas shopping is a bit different. This year we had my 3 week old nephew Lucas with. He was a trooper.

The paper is from Ali's kit as is the green puffy heart. I made the "Waitin' on Kimmie"  using Remington Noiseless font. The alphas are from American Crafts

p.s. that was the theme "Waitin' on Kimmie". She was always off doing something and we were waiting for her. We'd be done in a store and sit waiting outside for her. It got to be a thing where I'd take selfies of my sister and I waitin' on Kimmie. LOL

The right--hand side on my layout.

I put a 4x6 picture and all of the journalling on the right-hand side and added a smaller picture of all of my loot.

 

I wanted to try and balance out all of the craziness on the left-hand side...which this layout was crazy because shopping during Christmas is just nuts.

I put the small picture on the back of the tags because I just knew I had to document how much stuff I bought.  Plus I tried to lessen the opacity and use it as the background of my journalling but by doing that you couldn't really see how much stuff there was. So I ended up adding it to my tags.

My journalling.

A picture of my sister's and our stroller which mostly carried our shopping bags instead of the baby which was carted around in the Baby Bjorn holder.

I bet we just looked ridiculous. In fact I'm pretty sure we had a couple people glance our way trying to find the kid amongst the stuff until they realized my sister was carrying him.

I should probably mention that all of us like to get all of our shopping done on Black Friday so this may look like a lot of stuff but it's everything! well, not quite everything but close.

We have a huge family so there are lots of gifts to buy. I have 7 nieces and nephews so just that can rack up the bags fairly quickly.

 

 

Dec Daily 2014 | Day 9 | Secret Santa

This was by far is my favorite page. Day 8: Secret Santa. I put a couple hours worth of work into it...which includes figuring out what I was going to do then designing it. Honestly 2 hours isn't that bad for this page.

I wanted to make something specific because I was concentrating on doing Secret Santa at work. So the first thing I thought of was a Top Secret CIA file.

Once I had that in my head I ran with it.

 Basically the front is supposed to resemble a file folder complete with tab on the right for flipping.

When you turn the page you see the Top Secret memo and I added the pictures of what I got my secret santa on the left. (I made them into polaroids...it just seemed right.)

Here's a close-up of the page. So you can read it. I added some brads at the top just to make it look like it was tacked down.

I got the idea of the verbiage from a wedding invite I saw on pinterest. I took that an modified it to fit my purpose...Secret Santa.

The edging is cut up strips of red-striped paper from the Dec Daily Ali Kit.

Dec Daily 2014 | Day 8 | Wants for Xmas

Day 8! I'm trying to get caught up. :)

I didn't have a whole lot for today. No pictures so I kept it to 1 page. I like the huge "coaster" 8 from an old Ali Edward kit. I just shaved off the eding so I could put it in the pocket.

I thought it would be neat to look back and see what I asked for, for Christmas presents so that's the basics of this page. I used a reptitive star theme too.

 

 I didn't realize it at the time I was doing it but my journalling looks like a present...kind of.

It has a striped edging, a ribbon, a bow (the tie)...so that was kind of cool. I didn't really plan that I was just trying to add a little bit of embellishment to the page to make it more interesting.