The Erwins: "Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky

....is hardly a waste of time."--John Lubbock--

Things have still been going along kinda slow and lazy with a few productive spurts mixed in. :) I’ve done a little bit of sewing, a lot of reading/watching movies (laziness here really, it was hot out!), taken some pics (although not many of Evelyn or anything we’ve been doing, I’ve been slacking there, these were actual photo sessions for my friend, more on that later!), and done a LOT of photo editing! Now that I’m trying to do more with my photography I’ve been trying to work on my editing skills as well, which was going ok. I know the basics of photo shop but not the good stuff to really make my pics look awesome (and since I’ve been messing around and trying to learn settings on my camera, they don’t always turn out the way I want so good editing is very helpful!).

So then one day I got a message from a fellow photographer friend who said she found a good website that’s been helping her with editing so I checked it out and am SO glad I did! They are called Pure Photoshop Actions and they are photographers who decided to make actions/effects from the settings they tended to use a lot in their editing. They have quite a few free actions and them some they sell so you buy/download the action, load it into your Photoshop and wa-la! AMAZING actions with AMAZING results! They had a sale right after I found out about them so I got two of their basic packages and it was perfect timing cuz I had just done a photo shoot for my friend Steph and her fam and was having some frustrating moments cuz I couldn’t edit them the way I wanted cuz I didn’t know what to do! Anyway, I’m sure this is more than most of you care about but I was really excited and after editing Stephs's pics(the full post is available here), I went back and started re-editing some of my older pics. So here’s some before and after pics (although now that I put them on the post it's a bit harder to tell a difference, it's easier side by side but oh well!)The first one is before and the second is after I’m VERY happy with the ones of Sierra’s and Sean’s wedding pics. I used my regular SLR camera for that so they were a bit dark/grainy and these new actions I got helped out a lot.

Anyway, I am much happier with my pictures now and am glad I got to take pics for Steph! Great experience for me and great pics for her! :)

As for projects, I’ve made a few more baprons for some friends of my with babies coming soon and I tried out a bit of quilting. I found this quilt tummy time quilt on one of the blogs I follow (can’t remember which one now…) so I thought it would be an easy project to start out with for quilting, and it was and it wasn’t :) I kinda just did what I wanted on the first one, didn’t turn out, then actually did what I was supposed to on the second, which turned out better but still a little bumpy/off on the back. Still very cute though! I’m using it as a baby gift so hopefully my friend is ok with it :) I’m starting on my third one and so far it’s going a bit better than the second but we’ll see how it turns out. It’s just something fun and different to do I guess and a nice baby gift to have around when you need it!

Another project I did was these super cute pillows! I found them online and showed them to Sierra and she wanted to do them so we did it together! She did black and white pillows and I did red. They are super easy and very cute for something so simple. It’s just some linen fabric with pin tucks sewn on the front to make a starburst effect. I love it. Sierra made hers to fit around pillows she bought and I stuffed mine with stuffing. Either way works and both turned out cute!

So as for Evelyn she’s just been her usual self…playing with cousins, playing outside as much as she can (when it’s not too hot that is, luckily this week has been pretty nice!), watching Dora (sooooo sick of Dora I am!!!!), trying to eat as many popsicles as I’ll let her, doing lots of coloring and playing with her trains, play food, and baby dolls (she’s been liking her dolls more lately, brushing their hair, feeding them bottles…very cute :), climbing anything and everything she can (she LOVES to climb), and all the while throwing in some of her lovely stubbornness into the mix. :) She’s pretty stubborn.

One GREAT thing is we broke the binky habit!!! I’ve been wanting to do it for a while cuz I was just sick of binky’s and making sure I had one and trying not to lose them…and it was just time to be done! So a little bit ago I started only letting her have them for naps/bedtime, which she wasn’t too happy about and threw some fits but luckily that didn’t last too long. The funniest part was in the car when she wanted it…I would tell her only for naps so you better close your eyes if I give it to you! So she’d take the binky, close her eyes, and fall asleep! It was great.

But then one day after a nap I noticed there was a hole in the binky so I ripped it off and was like, well, no more binky! It’s broke! So I kept it around for the rest of the day so when she’d ask I would show her and say, nope! Broke! Then later before bed she took it and threw it away! I was like….hmm….ok! And pretty much ever since then she’s been good without it! She asked for it a couple times but eventually forgot about it. So my two big goals for after our Cali/Utah trip are accomplished! She’s sleeping in her own bed and there’s no more binky! Now the next goal to work on is potty training….ugh…wish me luck! She has NO desire at all even to talk about it or anything so we gotta work on that. :)

Anyway, this is getting longer than I thought! Almost done though…I guess the last thing to talk about is my dear Sierra leaving! She and Sean flew out Wednesday and are right now in Alaska getting started on their big adventure there :) It was sad to see her leave but exciting too. The days before she left we spent lots of time together, us girls went out to lunch one day and a movie and the next day we got pedicures, which was very, very nice! I really needed that, nice foot massage and now my toes look pretty! :)

So yeah…I think that’s pretty much it! Except for the best news…which I’m not sure why I didn’t think of this first but whatever….so a month ago Mark told me some news but it wasn’t official so I wasn’t keeping my hopes up about it but then yesterday he called and confirmed it and then today it was facebook official so that completely confirms it (nothing’s official til it’s on facebook :) So the big news is Mark’s battalion is coming home in November instead of December! Not sure of the exact days yet but I am SO GLAD!!!!!!!! That means only 4 months left instead of 5 which sounds MUCH better and much more doable! So yeah for that!!!!! Oh, and in two weeks from today he’ll be HOME! Just for a week and a half but still, better than nothing! I’m so excited for that!!! These next two weeks can’t go by quick enough and yet I’m afraid they are gonna go slow…I don’t have much to do/planned so I need to fix that quickly! :) Anyway….that’s it for sure now! Hope everyone had a great 4^th of July and a great week! (Our 4^th was pretty boring/slow so sorry no mention here…). Here’s some random pics though!