not your typical family portrait

It's more like a family self-portrait. Can you guess where we are? It's our favorite place to go play. You're looking into a hubcap..........................
.....at Hollywood Studios. Hope you're having a great Labor Day weekend! Go play and have some fun. :)

a new way to budget

Ever heard of the envelope system? I was a big fan of it before I was married and living overseas. Since then, we've tried a few different sytems for budgeting and tracking our expenses, including Principal Plan and Mvelopes. Both were electronic envelope systems. They worked well enough, but both required a lot of maintenance. I want to simplify, so I made a little cash carrier for my new plan.

Here's how it's going to work. All of our discretionary spending will be funded once a month into envelopes. We've agreed upon categories: the girls, our personal allowances, home/gifts and eating out. Once the money is gone, we won't spend out of that category until the next month. Alternatively, we could borrow out of another envelope if we wanted to. There's no need to track this spending because it tracks itself. We can physically see if we have the money or not.



I took five envelopes and glued them together with scrapbook paper to make a binding.


Then, I glued all the flaps inside except for the outer envleope which I glued extra paper to in order to make a larger flap. After adding a button with some ribbon for the closure, I mod-podged the front and backsides to make them a bit more sturdy. Thus, the glossy look.


So, how do you budget? What's your best tip or system?

so much expression...

...for such little feet. I just love little feet! They're just so darn cute!

to encourage a little more sanity at home...

...I made a privilege board, inspired by my friend Emily. Those last few days of summer vacation were getting very whiney, and we were all losing it more than I'd like to admit. The kids weren't the only ones screaming and running around the house! I loved the concept Emily shared on her crafty blog! She used old scrapping materials, but I just used crafty left-overs. Basically I decided upon some privileges my kids often have. Can you tell what they are from my cryptic drawings?


Computer time, afternoon TV, a sweet thing, and Saturday morning cartoons to name a few. I bought a $5 magnetic board and covered it with some scrapbooking paper, ribbons, and stickers. The "privilege magnets" are clear glass pebbles. I drew pictures and glued then onto the back of the pebbles, then glued the magnets onto the paper.


So, each day most of the privileges stay in the "X" column except for the ones that they get for the day. I decide what the privileges are. Usually it's one or two for the day. It's helped with the whining a lot. If they know that we're not watching TV on a certain day, they don't ask so much. The left side of the board sort of tracks their behavior. They know if they get to the bottom, then I'll take away a privilege for the day. Any kind of fighting/screaming results in BOTH of their magnets moving down. They get real motivated to play nicely if they're both on the "2." It's amazing how nice they can be to each other.

additional info

I've been fighting with my computer for the last 30 minutes trying to get this the right size. I apologize if it's insanely large or microscopicaly small. Just come back in a few hours when your cache has cleared, and hopefully it will be legible!

I think that's all the info now. If you have more questions, please contact me personally.

recycling unwanted crayons

Tropical storm Fay managed to gloom-ify our day yesterday by being the cause of a ton of rain and our school cancellation. So, we decided to get creative. I'd had a Ziplock of crayons laying around and decided it was time to do something fun with them. Here's the recipe.

Take your unwanted crayons. My girls enjoyed sorting them by color and peeling most of the wrappers off.


After the wrappers are peeled off, break 'em up into little pieces. Bake in a muffin tin at 170F for 15-30 minutes or until they're totally melted.


After they've cooled, stick the pan in the freezer for a few mintues.
They'll pop right out of the muffin tins, and presto: crayon chunks.

all boy

Being the mother of two girls and an only child, I have very little experience with boys or boyhood in general. Boys are entirely different creatures than girls. These boys were all about showing me how strong they were or how high they could climb. Might, power and strength. Wow! My girls are all about princesses and how pretty they look. Anyway, we had a great session. Thanks for letting me take your photos, C & c.

wide open

I'm referring to both M's eyes and to the aperture at which I shot this photo. Don't think too hard, but the aperture refers to the opening that lets light into the camera. Shooting wide open results in a very small area of sharp focus. I shot this photo with my new Tamron 28-75mm lens at f/2.8. I can't believe how incredibly sharp it is, even wide open! Wow, I think I'm gonna like this lens.

no more pictures, please

I guess it's not always easy to be the daughter of the mama-razzi. Just think how annoying it would be to be constantly photographed and asked to look this way or that. Of course not everyone feels this way, but M has always had a mind of her own, and is almost never in the mood for pictures at all. Lately our conversation goes like this:
Me: M, let's take a picture.
M: What will you give me?
Me: How about a nice photo to look at when we're done?
M: How about some candy?
Me: No, not today.
M: Ok, then I'm NOT going to do it!

A's birthday

Mom and Dad:

Thanks so much for A's presents! She loved all of them. Here she is, our next future photographer?



Our little princess. She's such a girlie girl!




We just had a small family celebration this week. Nice and simple. I think we're going to throw a combined party for M and A next month. Hopefully that will also be nice and simple :)

birthday cake

Making birthday cakes is really not my thing, but because I love my girls, and I know they love special cakes, I decided to give it a try. We started off with an idea from familyfun.com, a Betty Crocker box mix and two rectangular pans. Simple enough, right?

First off, I couldn't get the cakes out of the pan. I think you're supposed to let them cool first, but being the inept baker that I am, I tried removing a hot cake from the pan, and got half of the cake out. Oops.

It's a fairly stressful job during the day because little hands kept wanting to help. Usually "help" is a good thing, but not when inept-baker-mommy is trying to figure out what the heck she's doing. Anywho, here's our result:


Notice how pretty the "door" to the castle is looking here?


Check out Cinderella's nose. Can you guess what happened? Yeah, she fell off the cake...TWICE! And, ruined the front of the castle in the process...


Disheveld, repaired, and all, here's my labor of love.

yippee!

School is starting next week. And, I have mixed emotions. My M is going to start Kindergarten. I was feeling pretty nostalgic earlier this week, thinking about how big she is getting, worrying if she would be ok at school. It's strange to think of her in a big old school building everyday not knowing exactly what's going on. But, then I got a phone call from her teacher yesterday, and I felt much better. She sounded so sweet and kind, and all of a sudden, I felt much more at ease. Tomorrow we go "meet the teacher."

Ask me again in a few weeks, and I'm sure I'll feel more like this photo. Yippee!

Session Info

There will be some more additional info coming soon :)

happy birthday to my baby

I can hardly believe that my baby is four years old today. She's such a little girl now! The Summer Olympics will always hold a fond place in our hearts because little A was born four years ago during the games. It was really perfect timing. You know all those middle of the night broadcasts that you wonder, "Who in the world watches those!?" That's what kept us entertained during the middle of the night nursings. David logged many nights from 3am-5am during the first few weeks when A was wide awake, sure that it was daytime.

So, we're going to celebrate little A today. Happy Birthday, our summer olympic baby.

Portfolio Building Special

More session info coming soon, but for now, you can email me at
wood(dot)kristy(at)gmail(dot)com to book a session. I'm available for a limited number of sessions each month. I look forward to working with you! :)

the world [from a four year old]

A few nights ago I took A out to shoot her four year portraits. We had a beautiful evening and a lot of fun together. As we were wrapping up out little session, she says to me, "So, mommy, is that all you do? Take photos, put 'em on blog, take photos, put 'em on blog, take photos, put 'em on blog, blah, blah, blah?" [her words verbatium] Laughing, I replied, "Yep, you got me." I wonder what other four-year-old-worldviews she'll share with us this year?

something new

We got to celebrate at birthday/going away party with our friends Dave and Cindy in Houston. They're moving soon. I had forgotten this, but one of their daughters and our little A share the same birthday, just one year apart. How fun! It's coming up on August 12th... I shot some photos at the party, and put together a little storyboard, which is something new for me. Thanks to the great ladies at Two Peas who are always sharing their stuff, I got this great storyboard template, and gave it a whirl. I hope you like it, Cindy!

under construction

I've been playing around with my blog to make some changes. If you've noticed that some of the sidebar links are missing, they are! You can now find them at the bottom. Just scroll all the way down.

Also, if you don't like my music, just scroll to the bottom and click on the little speaker to turn it off.

hello, old friends!

One of my favorite things in the whole world are old friends. I just love it when you really know someone and you can just do life together. We got to visit friends like this while we were in Houston. It was fun to hang out again, Cynthia! And, our kids seemed to pick up where they left off too. Here are her little darlings.










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home, sweet home

We're finally home after three weeks away, and it feels good. Just like snuggling with a favorite stuffed animal. I like my home. I'm always pleasantly surprised just how much. There's nothing quite like being with your own stuff in your own style. After being gone for awhile, I always think, "Wow, whoever decorated this place has such great taste." (Heh, heh, kind of silly, I know!)