Weddings

This summer Miguel and I went to two of Miguel's high school friends' weddings. The second one was this past weekend. We had a great time but we are happy to be back! After driving back and forth all summer we are happy to be able to just chill in Savannah for a while without having to travel.

The first wedding was Miguel's friend, Jeff and his fiance, Jesslyn. This wedding was so beautiful! It was in the north Georgia mountains and the views created a picturesque backdrop for a wedding. We also especially enjoyed being able to see friends we hadn't seen in a very long time. Here are a few pictures from Jeff and Jesslyn's special day:

This was the setting

I loved Jesslyn's dress!

The cakes were really neat! A bear for the grooms cake and really tasty cupcakes for the bride's cake. It was really clever too, because they had little boxes that the guests could box up the cupcakes to take home with you!

The Collins Hill kids and their dates

High School friends

High School Friends

Juan and Jessie

The bride's shoes! Keds that her mom dressed up! So cute!

The second wedding was a friend from high school as well as a Georgia Tech track friend of Miguel's, Veronica. Veronica got married in downtown Atlanta at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ off of Peachtree Street. The reception was at the Trolley Barn in Inman Park. Such a neat place for a reception! One of my favorite things about this wedding was the bells at the church ringing after the wedding! I also thought it was really sweet when Veronica teared up over her vows. Very sweet couple and very pretty bride! Here are pictures from this wedding... I didn't have a good camera with me and the majority of my pictures came out super blurry...

Us before we left for the wedding... Miguel was obviously very excited to be taking this picture

The beautiful Basilica

Jessie and Juan

The bar at the reception for cocktail hour.... oh they had great spicy grits for hor d'ourves!

Instead of having one wedding cake Veronica and Michael had multiple cakes! So yummy and pretty!

At the cocktail hour they had fans as favors. It was toasty outside so I was thankful for these! 

The venue

We had a great time at each wedding! Congrats to the couples and multiple blessings during their marriages!

1 Year Anniversary, Emma!

I can't believe that Emma has been part of our family for a year already! This past year seems kinda fuzzy in my head... in some ways it seems like it flew by, but in some ways it feels like it crawled by so slowly. What I do know though is that I definitely had a hard time transitioning and Emma was a true companion to me during my struggles. She has definitely added joy to our family and I'm so thankful for her!

Here is a link to the first post I ever blogged and it's about how we decided to adopt Emma. Check it out click here! =)

Posters

My best friend is a high school English teacher. She asked me to create some posters for her bulletin board that depicted some literary devices such as Tone, Plot, Protagonist etc. I was really excited she asked me because it gave me something to do to fill my days with and let me have a creative outlet. I was also a little nervous because I had never worked with Photoshop before. But I told her I would do it! I started out with the idea of using a Snow White theme to depict the protagonist, Snow White, and the antagonist, the evil queen/step-mother/witch. A friend of mine was kind and agreed to model as Snow White for me! She was such a good sport! Here are the before and after pictures of the first three I did: Antagonist, Protagonist and Theme. The original picture is on the left and the edited final project is on the right.

I added the before picture twice because it was just a lot of blank space.

I learned mostly how to change the shadowing and coloring and also how to blur the photos doing these three. I was pretty happy with how they turned out.

The next two I did a couple of weeks later. I took pictures of myself for the witch because I was the only 'model' I had access to. I also took three separate pictures of an apple depicting three parts of the Snow White story: the witch picking the apple, the poisoning of the apple, and Snow White falling after eating a bite of the apple. I combined these images to do the Plot poster.  I actually feel like I did more work in Photoshop for these. I learned how to combine photos, make smoke, and do things like make the witch's teeth yellow. Probably pretty simple stuff for all of you out there who know how to use Photoshop well, but I am pleased with the results for teaching myself. Here are those before and after pictures side-by-side:

Here are the finished projects just larger if you want to see more detail. I printed them out on 11 by 17 inch paper. Can't wait to see them hanging up in Ms. Wilder's classroom!