So, the Brigitte Diät starts today. We went shopping-crazy yesterday to get everything I need for the menus and Sven was not happy with how full the shopping cart was. Hopefully it works out and wasn't a waste...I'll try and update every 2 weeks or so - kilos disappear a lot slower than pounds...

Here's hoping that ticker moves to the right...

My apologies for not updating in so long with my trivial, day-to-day life. I'm just not feeling it right now, what with all the sadness going 'round. Besides, my bandwidth for the month is about to run out no one will be able to access my site anyway.

Sven snapped some photos of Georgia and me on Saturday, because I was trying so hard to cuddle her and she didn't quite cuddle back, but was rubbing her face in my face and then yelping in delight. She was tired, really, and instead of rubbing her eyes with her fists, she used my face.

And actually, she went and caught a cold last night and is having serious congestion problems. No fever at this time, just a very stuffy and very runny and very snotty nose. She absolutely HATES it when I come at her with the tissue. She turns her head away as far as she can get and when I still come after her, starts to cry. Heart-breaking. however, it is also exhausting as she has trouble going back to sleep after waking up at night.

Click on the photo at the left for a few more in the series, as well as the eye-rubbing photos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For those who were praying for a miracle, I thank you. I would now ask you to continue to send strength and prayers to my friend and her family, as her husband passed away today.

Whew, I totally need to play catch-up!! I've been scrapping and playing with web design (redesigned Zane's whole webpage). And the scrapping..well, if you have NOT seen Tracy Robinson's newest scrapping kits, then you will never understand why I feel the need to scrap every spare moment I have!! I'll share a few layouts here a little farther down for those who don't regularly stop by my gallery, and for those from scrapbookseite that read my blog, since I cannot access scrapbookseite anymore and therefore, cannot share my work...!

So, a few people asked me how to do the text-face picture I had in my last post and I went looking for the tutorial and I CAN NOT find it! I can't figure out where I found that particular tutorial, I visit so many PS tutorials. It's not in my history either. So if you arent interested in how it is done, skip the next section, because I am going to run through the steps quickly for those who asked:

To create the text-photo in PSCS2:

1. Open your photo, change it to black and white using the CHANNEL MIXER (this is so that you keep as many shadows, highlights and midtones as possible).
2. Create a text box the same size as your photo and paste in your text at Arial 8pts so that it fills up the photo with very small spacing and no space between the lines (I used this Lorem Ipsum generator)
3. Make sure the text is black. Copy your text layer twice (ctrl/cmd+J) and then change the 2nd text layer to dark grey and the 3rd text layer to light grey.
4. Hide your Text Layers by clicking on the eye.
5. Select your Photo, go to Select-->Color Range-->Shadows and click OK
6. Using the lasso tool, right click on your photo and invert the selection
7. Show your black text layer, select it and hit the del key, then hide the layer again.
8. Select your photo, repeat step 5., but this time choose MIDTONES
9. Repeat Steps 6 and 7, except on step 7, choose the 2nd text layer (dark grey)
10. Repeat Step 7, choose HIGHLIGHTS
11. Repeat Steps 6 and 7, on step 7, choose the 3rd text layer (light grey)
12. Show all three text layers and hide your photo. Your're done!

Now, I take no credit whatsoever for this tutorial. I found it online and learned it there and would really love to give that person credit, if only I could find it again!

Moving right along! Georgia had her 2nd set of vaccinations this morning. In fact, we just got home. She was dead to the world at 6:45am this morning, in fact, I'm not sure when she had last been awake, she usually wakes me up around 6 or 6:30am and I expected the same today. No luck. So I had to wake her, poor thing. Got her off to the doctor's and as soon as we got in and he started talking to her and putting the stethescope on her, she started screaming. Yes, screaming hysterically. I think she was tired and hungry. The shot went by fine, she continued to scream, but not because of the shot, right? So as soon as she was allowed back in my arms, she settled down, only to start screaming again when we got her dressed. She is now sound asleep.

New measurements? 7,250g (16lbs) and 66cm. Now, at first I thought: what? she didn't grow any taller? Then I remembered that the measurement last time was a little off, the tape was not flat when she measured and I think they had her longer than she really was. So my guess is that she DID grow, but it wasn't registered due to a little "oops".

In other news, Georgia has found her voice. She enjoyed sweet little coos up until last Friday when they suddenly turned into screeching yells. The sound is horrible. It makes my skin crawl, just plain ugly. She does it when she's happy, unhappy, excited, mad, playing, crying etc.

And now for some layouts. I actually got all gung-ho on the layouts again because I realized that MyPixx Fotobuch offers a square book and that I could totally put that together and fill it with the digi layouts I've been scrapping of Georgia. And suddenly, scrapping felt 'real' again, like these layouts are going to be real true layouts that you can hold in your hands! So then I started converting all the 8.5x11 layouts I'd done into 12x12's and resizing ALL the layouts to 8x8 to fit the book. Very Cool. I can't wait to order her first year book. Yes, this DOES Mean I have to scrap chronologically (eep!) and can't add layouts to the book at a later date...but then again, I could also make an addendum book with random layouts later as well. So it's all good and I starting having a blast scrapping, and scraplifting!

So, without further ado (click on them to see them bigger):

Title Page This one uses Tracy's Newest Kit: Random Pink - love, love, love those fun pink words! The patterned paper says: Nursery Ryhmes, which you can't really see that small.	three months This one Uses Tracy's "Amber Girlfriend's Set (the best of the bunch by far...)	my little burrito Tracy's Fabrications "flit" Set...talking about how to soothe this high-needs baby of mine!	first shot Tracy's fabrications "candy" set. Timely layout, considering she just got shot #2, eh!	Georgia Mae Tracy's Olinda Papers. This one is a total scraplift of a talented gal at twopeas, i loved it when Is aw it and had to see if I could copy it (half the challenge/fun of copying digital layouts, is figuring out how they did it!

Been playing around in photoshop for a while now. Love finding new tutorials and trying them out.

So I found a tutorial today to turn a picture into text - no idea what I'm talking about? Check it out to the left. It looks better the smaller it gets. I'm thinking Georgia doesn't have enough contrast in her face yet to make a good test subject in this case. A lot of hair and a light background, darker eyebrows and lips...that would all add to the contrast and make a better text-face. But hey, there ya go. Something fun for today.

back to the 'mommy group' tomorrow. and we're having nasty weather. Might be walking there in a snowstorm. I just can't wait...

Okay, here's an Amber Post, please give me advice for REAL. Here's the thing. I need to take off the baby pounds because I am tired of wearing maternity clothes and feeling like a frump. I lose initial weight best by cutting calories, after which I start the excercise program. Problem? I can't cut back on calories like I am used to while breastfeeding. So, you say: start excercising full-blown and forget cutting calories. That brings us to the next problem (and yes, I am great with excuses): I prefer to do my excercising outdoors, but not when it is snowing so hard it blinds you the moment you walk out the door (damn winter!). So this is what I want to know: can anyone direct me to a good breastfeeding diet that includes MENUS and a step-by-step 'this is what you should eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks'? I'm about to go look now, but if anyone out there reading my blog has a good resource, I'd love to read it!!

Can I tell you that I so did not inherit my Mom's skin? She might be thinking "lucky Amber" but all I can say is: I have more smile lines at 29 than she does at - much older (no Mom, I won't announce your age to the world!). She doesn't have to smother her face in lotions every morning to keep it from flaking off all day long. Ew. Okay. That's it. I'm out.

I swear she was playing with that giraffe before I got the camera out. That's why I got the camera out in the first place, right? Because she was staring intently at that giraffe, grabbing it's nose and talking to it. Her Grandma says she is already a HAM, gives her all for the camera at 4 months. I can't decide. She certainly stops whatever she is doing (crying, talking, smiling, laughing) as soon as she sees the camera and turns those big grey/brown eyes on it. That's why the past few months worth of pictures have seen such a serious baby. She doesn't dislike it, but that camera isn't getting any smiles, not even when Mommy is behind it...

On Saturday we bundled ourselves up and drove to PEP to go shopping. None of us was really in the mood, the weather was grey and we were sort of exhausted, but the memories of Tuesday's disastrous carride convinced me, that we need to get Georgia out in the car more often. So we went. I naively thought she'd make the first half of the trip (in Kaufland) for groceries, while calmly sitting in her carseat in the shopping cart. Yah, not a chance. We made it to the entrance of Kaufland, that was it. So I took her out and carried her from one end of Kaufland to the other. She was content to be held and look around at all the people and colors and I never heard another pee out of her. We never make it through that place in less than an hour, and by the time we got back upstairs and were headed for the check-out stands, she had fallen asleep! She had fallen asleep, facing out my arms around her belly, her back to my belly. Usually, she leans forward to see better, but she had slowly given up trying and by the time she was asleep, she was leaning back against my chest. We put her back in the carseat for check-out and headed back up to the car, exchanged carseat for baby björn and headed to Saturn. She woke up when I transferred her to the baby björn, but she still never said a word.

We went into Saturn to check out digi camcorders. We let a guy help us. I said all I wanted, ALL, was to be able to put my video from the camera to the computer. He assured me I could do that with the simple panasonic we looked at, and that there was software included. So of course, when we got home and opened it up, there was no USB cable, no software, and as far as we can tell, it will be the same process to get the data from the digi camcorder to the computer as it is with the analog camcorder. SO. We are going to have to go BACK (PITA) and say: WTH? fix it. If they won't fix it, then the camcorder goes back as well. Sad about that. I was all ready to start videoblogging.

Sunday we went to visit Liz and Patrick. Liz found out last week that she is having a GIRL and I wanted to shower her with gifts because in Germany, they don't get gifts until after the baby is born, and what's the point? If you start getting gifts after, then you don't have any idea of what you don't need to get! and how can gifts be practical and things you need? Sometimes, I just don't get Germans. However, I came bearing gifts and got lunch in return! Georgia was fairly good, she did get tired and very fussy. So we decided to go on a walk, conked out in the stroller for a little under an hour before waking up and terrorizing us again. Finally, she fell back asleep and continued that way all the way back to the apartment. When we returned, she got to eat and then she lay in a big soft armchair with her teething ring for an HOUR! She lay there kicking her legs around, biting the ring and talking up a storm while we had apple strudel and tea.

She was ready for bed at quarter to 7, but still didn't fall soundly asleep until around 9:30pm. I went to bed early and Sven stayed up to watch the SuperBowl (hey, the Seahawks were playing...) at 1am. Ah, and Georgia just woke from her nap and is crying...I'm off.

Nothing of great excitement to tell today. I'm wracking my brains, but only coming up with pure exhaustion and more exhaustion and can't even remember what I did (or didn't do). It is Friday. That's something. Anyway, I try and take a daily picture of Georgia for my family and was pretty happy with the way this one turned out. An unusual angle...

The newest photos can be seen by clicking on the photo above. Assuming that is, Flickr isn't striking again...seems to be doing that a LOT recently.