Habitat for Humanity

This week several members of our company volunteered for Habitat for Humanity. I'm sure majority of people know what that is.  But to refresh your memory.  This nonprofit is executed primarily by volunteers. There aren't many "paid" employees.  They get a group of volunteers, whether it be companies,  families, church groups, a random volunteer from here or there and build a house for a family in need.

I've done this volunteer project several times, and really do enjoy it. This time around we were actually the first group of volunteers on this project and so primarily worked on flooring (well the men did), while the women worked on removing boulders (well large rocks) from around the house. I'm STILL sore from lifting rocks all day!

To keep this short and sweet I'll jump right into some candid shots from the site.  You may notice that our good friend Megan was out there with me too!

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I See, You See.

It's that time of the week again.  It's "I See, You See" time.

This week's theme is: LOVE

After we determined the theme last week, everywhere I looked I wanted to catch "love" in a photograph.   I was being overly picky majority of the time, and I didn't really feel like using the wedding photos I took (which I will show you later this week).

What I felt like was true "love" this week was seeing my mom and my sister this weekend.  I love them SO much. Seeing as my mom was not having it with the pictures this weekend, I opted to take a photo of my sister, Katie, and her "love" Harley. You remember Harley don't you?

My sister loves her dog more than ANYTHING, well other than her family, but basically Harley is her child.

Any who, this is what I saw:

And this is what Megan saw when she was visiting her friend and her new little babes. Mother and child.   Can't show love better than that can you?

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Bosa. Bosa. Bosa.

My friend Angela "Bosa" from work is so incredibly sweet, funny (I mean hilarious), and accident prone.  She is probably on the top of my list of the most accident prone friends I have.

Coming back this weekend she was having some problems with her eyes which she wasn't thrilled about.  Then on her way back from running some errands she discovers that she has a flat tire..... She asked if I could follow her to a gas station to fill up after work and I of course agreed.  When we were headed out of the office her tire was all the way on the ground! No way she was going anywhere.  We of course had ZERO idea of how to fix a flat tire.  Sad I know. Between Bosa, Bailey and I we were hopeless. We immediately called Matt (our other friend from work who had JUST left) and he was so sweet to come back and help us. We got as far as removing the new tire from the back of the car and taking out the equipment  to fix the flat tire by the time Matt got there.

Matt saved the day! He just jumped right in and got to work.  Not to mention he had helped me do the same thing with my old car less than six months ago ;) So a big THANKS goes out to Matt for being awesome!

Oh wait it gets better.... Bosa then went to go get her tire patched after we found two nails shoved into the tires to find out that they refused to patch them and told her she had to get new tires.  Wah. Wah. Poor Bosa.

Love you Bosa - Wishing good luck for the rest of the week!

Now onto my job while Matt was hard at work. Picture taking. Hey.. I needed a picture for today, right?

Matt Fixing the Tire.  I experimented with CS5 filter "Photocopy"

Bailey (left), Bosa (upper right), Matt (bottom) hard at work. Here I experimented with the Cross Hatch filter

Not going to lie... I experimented with ALL of the filters and was cracking myself up as some of them turned out pretty whack! Oh.. it's the little things in life that amuse me.

Hope you had a great Monday friends! Can't wait to show you the "I See, You See" photos tomorrow!

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I'll Be Right Back...

 I'm heading to Norman, OK with the BF this weekend for wedding #3 (that's 3 of 8 if you are wondering).

We are heading out in a few so wanted to tell you all to have an amazing weekend. I'm sorry I didn't have time to get a picture for today and won't probably get one back up until Sunday night or Monday.  I promise after I get a break from these weddings I will be much better on the weekends!

MWAH!

Goes Megan from ChasingDavies!

We were talking yesterday about "red" as our theme for our "I See, You See." The idea of bright red lips for a picture came up, but I thought it sounded like it would be better served as a full on post for today so I had more time to mess around in Photoshop.

Immediately after taking the picture outside the airport fence by our work (weird sounding I know, but we literally walk out the doors and the private airport is right there), I knew I wanted to highlight the red lips by turning most of the picture black and white.  The question was do I simply just want to do red lips  OR take it a step further and use some of the fun Photoshop tools?

You shall see.

Here is what I started with:

From here, I first tried what I initially thought about doing.  Turning down the saturation and popping her red lips using the eraser tool in PS.

Then I decided to try out the Sumi-e filter on the picture and popped the lips again and decided to also add in the color from her shirt since it matched perfectly with the red lips!

Then I was having a little too much fun with PS as you can see and decided to try one more filter.  The diffuse glow filter.  Ever tried it?  I kinda like it!

So what do you think? What's your favorite of all of them?

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Choo Choo

Yesterday afternoon I was feeling a little restless at work so opted to go out for my lunch break. I attempted to  get my license plates (which the dealership so conveniently LOST when I got my new car only putting one instead of two of my old license plates on my new car- Missouri requires you have one on the front and the back). After being told I didn't have some of the paper work I headed back to work and since it had really only been 20 minutes since I left I wanted to do a little site seeing near the office.  There is this road that veers off near my work and I have always wondered what was back there.  Well it was time. I wondered back there and came to find it was nothing TOO interesting. A few businesses here and there and then there were a few railroad tracks.  After driving past the second railroad tracks I thought I could possibly get some cool pictures of them. 

This is what I came out with:

 What do you think??

I See, You See.

Apologies for the delay in my post tonight.  I idiotically signed up for the mile in our Kansas City Corporate Challenge months ago not remembering that the races all start at 9 p.m. Then I got suckered into the 4x400 (once around for those not familiar with track) which was 30 minutes AFTER running the mile. Needless to say I'm EXHAUSTED! After running track my whole life through college, getting back on the track for this stuff still makes my stomach do back-flips and want to throw up. Heck I even jumped when the gun went off.  Guess I will never learn....

Onto the more important topic for this evening.  Our weekly "I See, You See."

Our theme this week: RED

I know, I know. We are REALLY going to get better at coming up with more creative themes.  Next week we are planning on "love" as our topic. Unless one of you fabulous readers wants to suggest something else which Megan and I would be SO thrilled about.

But for now, how about you take a peek at what we came up with this week:

This is what I saw:

Here is what Megan saw (it's her BLT sammy which looks yummy!!!)

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Age is Only a Number

To most people... but to my dear friend Tricia it's adding another pill to her medicine carry bag ;) For years Tricia has been battling arthritis and she is only 26!!! Crazy stuff.  Even having arthritis she still managed to swim all four years at KU (University of Kansas NOT Kentucky). Knowing that she is a medicine junky, well not really... our friends Kelly and Kate got Tricia the cutest little medicine carry case from Coach.

As for me, I knew IMMEDIATELY what I wanted to get Tricia for her birthday. A Jodi Picoult book.  The NEW one called "Sing You Home."  I remembered it recently came out and was praying she hadn't read it yet after I decided on what to get her.  To my surprise, she HADN'T read it. WAHOO!

So this post is to wish my good friend Tricia a HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Cheers to many more to come!

Defining Love in Defiance, Missouri

You ask where in the world is Defiance, Missouri?  It is about 25 minutes outside of St. Louis, MO.

Our good friends B.J and Katie got married this weekend on Friday June 3 at a winery in Defiance, MO. There was a perfect amount of people at the wedding making it very intimate and a lot of fun getting to know everyone that was good friends and family with the bride and groom.

Thursday we went to the rehearsal dinner where I took lots of candid fun shots, and proceeded to keep on snapping away during the wedding on Friday.  I was SO excited to show you all of these great pictures from the rehearsal dinner and wedding, however, in the midst of switching out my memory card I bent a pin where the memory card goes and and SOL.  I have to either A) repair my camera for $250+ B) get a refurbished camera from Canon at a great discount.  I am going with option B since it seems to be my best option and I am NOT pleased with myself at all considering I can't even show you the pictures I took from the beginning of the wedding.

The good news.  I did bring my Canon G11 as my back up should my batteries run out or if I needed more memory space. Little did I know I'd end up VERY lucky that I'd thought ahead and brought it with me since my SLR broke.

With that said, to keep this semi-short and sweet, here are some of the candid wedding photos I got:

I See, You See.

Ya, ya, ya... I'm a little behind on my days and I know I typically do this on Tuesday, but apparently when I posted yesterday I thought it was Monday due to the long weekend! Did any of you happen to do the same thing?

This week has felt so weird with having Monday off for Memorial Day, and then leaving TOMORROW for my friends Katie and B.J's wedding in St. Louis. I'm so excited for their wedding and to take a billion pictures of the winery, their wedding, and friends.  So I promise to come back with plenty of pictures to show off for my absence this coming weekend (starting tomorrow).

So back to the reason why you are reading this.  I See, You See.

Our theme: Road Signs

Here is what I saw:

Here is what Megan saw:

Hope you all have a fabulous rest of your week! Be back on Sunday!

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