My Family Loves It » Pictures

DIY bug jar

Heather — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:56:19 +0000

I try to look at everything that is garbage or recycling to see if I can reuse it for something. Usually I save things for art projects but this time I made a bug jar from a mayonnaise jar. I used a sharp hole puncher (that looks like an ice pick) to add a bunch of holes to the lid and then added 2 holes at the top of the jar to add the rope. The orange rope was actually the handle from a Gymboree shopping bag (nicer stores usually use nice rope or ribbon for handles and I always take it off before recycling the bags). I had intended to write “bug jar” on the finished product but I hate my handwriting! We have lots of bugs, toads and critters my kids like to look at and then release and with a friend over one day they really filled the jar! I guess I should have called it a “toad jar” but that sounds weird! So this was a very simple thing to do but I think it came out nice, the green lid with the orange rope make a nice combo.

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Eagle Spotting

Heather — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 15:50:59 +0000

Yesterday on our way home from Lego club we decided to drive to a nearby reservoir to see if the Eagles had come home for the summer. I took the boys there 2 years ago and we had a fun little adventure, but didn’t see any eagles. This trip we hit the jackpot. We saw about a dozen bald eagles in total. At one point we counted 9 in the air while others were hanging out on the ice. We even saw 2 locking talons. The eagles were too high for good pictures, but we got a few decent ones.

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Reuben pictures

Heather — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:40:32 +0000

He may be a big pain but he is a very handsome old pain and he looks good on the brown couches!

John just bought us a new camera lens and he used it to get the best pictures we have of our dog Reuben! I am excited to see if I can get some nice pictures of the kids with it too. I finally decided to be ready for some Spring and I am excited to take pictures of the kids outside on GRASS soon! Oh and extra sunlight is going to be wonderful!

John’s Note: I got us the Canon EF 28-135mm with image stabilization.

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Name that snow creature!

Heather — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 19:17:02 +0000

We got a few more inches of nice wet snow so we finally set out to build a snow man in our yard. I felt inspired to try building a snow troll or goblin creature. Building the 2 legs was fun and easier than I thought. Since we had 2 legs that meant we need a snow butt.

I wimped out on the arms and just made them crossed and attached to his body. For the head I started with a rough shape, a big nose, simple eyes and started adding horns. As the horns grew they started looking like ears…and oddly familiar. I added 2 buck teeth and then I knew who it was. Look familiar to you?

Here he is completely assembled.

And here are my helpers.

Know who it is yet?

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Snow Eater

Heather — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 20:15:55 +0000

Jillian is obsessed with eating snow.

So I try not to think about why she didn’t like the taste of this particular snowball.

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September pictures

Heather — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:14:11 +0000

I have to admit that facebook has really interfered with my blogging plus just life with 4 kids makes it tough (especially with the start of school and several illnesses lately). I just wanted to get some recent pictures of the kids up before I do a string of reviews that I have been neglecting!

Yes the kids still have been going in the pool in September, Ben was just in on Monday night and the thermometer said 56! I think that might have been the last swim of the season but last October the boys went for a chilly swim on a warm day.

The boys still love their Hero Scape, we have quite the set up going right now complete with castle, bridge, swamp, forest and mountain.

We all went to the Herkimer Diamond Mine and the boys LOVED it despite John and I thinking we weren’t getting all the “diamonds” we expected. They want to go again but it might not happen this fall with our germs!

Ben with his zombie paint at a birthday party, he was too busy with his pizza to look at me.

Jillian loves to clap still, here she is wearing the hat I made and it just happens to match the cute outfit she was given by a family friend.

The gazillion Legos that we got at a garage sale, I had to wash them in the tub before I let the kids play with them. They now have more Legos than I ever dreamed of as a kid. I hope they know how lucky they are to have parents who believe there is no such thing as too many Legos!

Ethan and Jamie at the local Labor Day fair, they had a lot of fun there as always.

Jillian did a lot of sleeping at the fair, turns out that was the afternoon that she got sick. I bet her temp was just starting in this picture.

Well that was a lot of pictures and the last 2 were really from the last week in August but I had to post Ethan after he lost his 6th tooth!

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Jillian

Heather — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 12:30:39 +0000

Now that I’ve rediscovered one of our camera lenses, I thought I’d try for some cute pictures of Jillian. I really love this Canon lens. All these pictures were taken using full auto and the built in flash. The only pain is that there is no zoom, it is a fixed lens. So if you want a wider shot you need to backup, and backup. The lens has a pretty narrow field of view. All these were taken from about 4-6 feet away.

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Roller Hockey

Heather — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:42:05 +0000

The boys had their last roller hockey game of the season last night. I am always amazed by how much kids improve during the course of the season. Ben is skating better and Ethan has decided he loves playing defense and has been making several good plays each game.

We brought our digital SLR and I played around with taking pictures in the terrible lighting at the rink. In the end I found that playing with the manual settings while using our old telephoto lens was no match to using our newer fixed lens. It boils down to having a big, fast lens inorder to capture as much light and detail with a fast shutter speed.

I also took some pictures of the girls. Here’s the full gallery. The lens I liked best was the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Camera Lens which was used to take the clearest of the action shots and the close ups of the girls. One of these days I’ll have the break down and buy a better telephoto.

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Ben & Jillian yesterday

Heather — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:07:37 +0000

I love that I got a baby girl version of Ben just like I ordered! Ben really loves her and is always trying to play with her. He unfortunately always uses babytalk with her and will get right in her face being goofy but she doesn’t mind yet. Next I’ll have to do pictures of the other lookalikes!

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Turtles on the Trail

Heather — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:39:19 +0000

This has been a great Spring for spotting wildlife in our area. Within a 2 week span I had to stop on my to or from work for:

turkeys crossing the road (many times)
horny grouse putting on quite a display
young porcupine moving very slow
snapping turtle and the good samaritan who stopped to help it
deer, lots and lots of deer

I’ve also spotted lots of hawks in the trees and another bald eagle. Unfortunately, I’ve never had a camera handy for any of these encounters … until today.

During my lunchtime walk we saw 2 snapping turtles laying eggs alongside the trail. I only had my cell phone with me, but the turtles were very cooperative.

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