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Soccer, Morels, Tummies, and Gardens

heidihoho7 — Mon, 18 May 2009 01:22:35 +0000

So i had 1 crazy weekend in mid May that was full of great photo fun. I started out with some cute soccer pics from my niece and nephew’s practice games. It was quite cold, but at least they got to run around to stay warm… all i had was some hot chocolate that they quickly drank

After the games we had Bennett’s 5th Bday party, we took a ton but these are some of my faves.

the next morning i woke up early and bribed my dad to take me out morel hunting. for those of you that don’t know what morels are – they are a type of mushroom that are only found during spring. I believe they grow in both North America as well as Europe and are considered a delicasy by many. Although to many of us farm folk it’s just a way of life- dad/whoever goes out and brings back big bags of them and you eat them for a week or two in many different forms until they are all gone and you are all morel’ed out This was a surprise to my good friend Astrid who got them occoasionally from neighbors or any city people who have never had them. Lucky for Astrid we did find a few on our hunt- just 5 in 1 clump but dad had some already soaking at home so i was able to bring a few home for us to cook up. while i was out hunting i happened upon many other mushrooms growing in the forest, which i thought would be perfect for my faerie photo project, so you may see more them of soon!

After i got back to town, i went over to Kendra’s house to force her to pose for fun pregancy pictures. I didn’t need or want to do anything too artsy but i’m starting to explore portrait work so she’s my test subject! I think a few of them actually turned out too

After a short break for lunch, i had to rush off again to get on the road. This time i was headed to a portrait workshop in Rockford at the Anderson Japanese Gardens – beautiful as always but we were there for the model pics not the gardens (maybe next year!). we got to practice natural lighting with reflectors, then off camera flash, then mac daddy lights. overall a great workshop from Nels Akerlund!

so after 2,000 pictures i had some editing to do but overall a wonderful weekend full of great photo fun!

going greener (actually red)

heidihoho7 — Thu, 08 May 2008 14:44:57 +0000

so our latest excitement has been the addition of our 2nd hybrid car. with gas prices going back up and expected to hit $5/gal this summer i felt it was time to just go for the new car and start saving on gas and feel better about what i drive. Now, don’t get me wrong i still love my jeep and i did in fact keep it so i can take it off-roading or put the top down on absolutely beautiful days. I’m guessing i’ll drive it a few times a month and if not then i will sell it next year. But right now i’m really enjoying the super mileage (anywhere from 43-60 depending on how i drive) and the fact that filling up only took 7 gallons and $29 dollars this morning just makes me sure that i did the right thing considering my Annie took about 15 gallons and recently has cost way over $50 and to go only go 200 miles. So my guestimate is that i’ll be able to go about 4-500 miles on $30 compared to $125! not too shabby

Details: i haven’t named her yet (heck it took bela a year to find the right name for his car… Sybil), but i may go with Ava. She’s a beautiful red, “Barcelona Red” but i like to refer to it as Dr. Pepper Red considering it is actually pretty darn close. It’s an 08 with less than 3,000 miles on it (for now and soon to change). It will soon have a rack on top and probably boats as i start playing my part in carpooling.

That’s about it!

Birthdays and Photo shoots

heidihoho7 — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 20:50:37 +0000

so last weekend i visited my family for a bit of a birthday celebration. Trinity turned 7 and my dad turned 57. I hit canoecopia in Madison first, then worked my way south enjoying the fun backroads which i don’t get to drive very often…

Saturday morning we went to dubuque for a mini photo shoot. I sometimes take photos for work, and my sister’s new office was perfect. So i bribed tiff and the kids, kendra and brandon, and even Adam to come with and be my models. I think they turned out pretty good- got some great shots for work but also some funny cute pics of the fam…

Tiffany kept requesting TPS reports, we had a few good laughs… We were pretty lucky in that the kids were very well behaved, we only had a few instances of bennett freaking out a bit… and then adam had a bit of fun with tiff’s little dry erase board…

We ended up pulling up fun websites for the kids to look at, so most of the pictures weren’t even posed. Kendra surfed on knitting websites, the kids checked out funkeys, and tiff showed the kids cool animal planet stuff.

I spent the night at the beltrans and had a slumber party with the kids. We had a great time hanging out!

Sunday was spent back at my parent’s house with a casual lunch. My grandparents came by to join as well as the whole family. We had fun just reminencing about old times and looking at silly pictures of all the halloweens of the past…

Shower’s Done!

heidihoho7 — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:36:10 +0000

So after much time and effort our shower is done! Following is the update from where we left off.
I honestly thought choosing a shower door wouldn’t be that difficult, until i actually had to do it. After a few trips to Lowe’s and Home Depot I thought I knew what i liked (either an ivy frost pattern or clear with a slight pattern to prevent any peekaboos). Bela seemed to like just about everything- he’s so easy to please. But I, on the other hand, am a little picky when it comes to something that we’ll probably be looking at for at least 10 years and is a huge part of the overhaul. Then once i started actually looking into buying the door i got to thinking about how much work we’d put into the shower tiling and realized that maybe we shouldn’t hide all the excellent work we did! So I ended up ordering a clear sliding door that matched our nickel throughout the bathroom.

Once we got the door (lowe’s rocks and we got it within a week!) the fun began with the installation. We tried to drill the holes for the screws in the tile but it seemed to be going nowhere. We made a special trip out to get the carbide tips and we still seemed to get nowhere. Finally we decided to try gluing since the drilling seemed to be failing. The glueing was a bit of a disaster and we quickly dumped that idea and decided to wait a few days to let it dry and let our frustrations die down. So last night Bela was bound and determined to make it happen, and he started drilling yet again with a new set of carbide tips. We finally had a breakthrough and just realized it took a LOT of pressure and a LOT of time. So i took my 1 turn which helped a (wee) bit, but we just really needed the muscle to minimize the time on the drilling. Once that was done it was super quick, and we were able to install the rest of the door by 10:30pm.
We totally love the new shower and bathroom, and we hope you’ve enjoyed following along with the fun!

Next up, luging in Michigan!

We have color! our semi-finished bathroom

heidihoho7 — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 21:06:33 +0000

So its been a while since our last update, and we’ve made HUGE progress!! The last update showed us in the process of tiling the shower. We finished up all the tiling adding the natural looking accent leaves border, adding a really nice built-in shelf as well as a few corner/soap shelves.

With Bela’s dad helping we jumped on the next major task- changing out the toilet. We opted for a super efficient toilet, which does the job most of the time and we can feel good about saving some water

We were planning on having a few people over for new years so it really got me motivated. I decided we should jump into the painting so we could finish up a few other touches like the lights… so i started by priming the walls. We took a small break while my niece and nephew came to visit. But we were back on the mission after they went on to grandma’s house.

We had a hard time deciding on colors, but as we were checking out some other piece at home depot we happened upon a very cool paint finish- River Rock, a matte gritty finish – which of course was one of the most expensive ones we could find… but we both really liked it and decided to go for it. So we ended up with a “Coastal Sand” for the small side wall and the ceiling and then “Swamp Willow” (a muted blue) for the main walls. So within a 24 hour period we did all the painting, waking up early so we could get in both coats on new years eve. We even were able to put a lot of the finishing touches before anyone arrived.

We’re soooo happy with how it turned out! We only have a few things left to do- finish up the shower, a few touchups of painting, and the door & trim.