REBECCA'S BLESSING DRESS

What fun it was to gather as a family in Langley the beginning of March to celebrate the birth of our new granddaughter, Kaia Renee Pederson born January 27, 2013. Now that we have 3 married daughters it is harder to get together but it's always wonderful when we do! I just have to remember to take pictures! This was Kaia's blessing day in our church.

This moment was also special because we were able to use Rebecca's blessing dress that my friend Nancy Hill made for her 16 years ago! I was so happy that we could use it again. It was a treasure to scrap and I love the memories it brings back....

So this page (using Jana Morton's, All Star Graphics class)  is for Danielle, Rebecca, Kaia and my special friend Nancy from Oregon, who I still miss!

Rebecca and Kaia!

Baby Kaia!

5 Mathieson Girls!

Proud Papa, Tim Pederson!

The Mathieson Kids....

The Mathieson Kids with Spouses....

The Mathieson Family now....

BASKETBALL CHAMPS

Mitchell's team, the Grade 8 Brocklehurst Broncs not only won the city championships this year but were able to attend a provincial tournament in Pitt Meadows where they placed 15th. We were proud of their team and how hard they worked. It's been fun to be a "basketball" Mom and watch 4 of my kids play basketball and I have to admit it's one of my favourite sports to watch. It's always fast paced and every year they seem to get better. Now that Mitchell is playing I'm seeing a definite difference in the level of play between boys and girls at this age! I'm also thankful for all the wonderful team skills he has been learning because this is such a good group of boys!!

When I read that Jana Morton was doing an All Star Graphics class, I signed up right away! I'm happy to be using all of my sports pictures in a new way!! Look for some more of these coming.....

WEDDING PICTURES... LAMBS/MELCHINS

I was grateful to have the opportunity to photograph a wedding in Calgary last weekend. One of our best friend's daughter, ALYSSA LAMB was getting married in the Calgary LDS Temple. It was the first time I had seen this temple and it was absolutely breathtaking. Don and I were able to see it in the distance as we drove into town on Friday night.

It was a beautiful, spiritual ceremony and I was thankful to be a part of it. Some of my favourite pictures have been taken at weddings because there is such a feeling of joy and happiness there. ALYSSA and BRANT were both so happy and you could just feel that all day. It made it fun to be with them.

They both come from large families so it was a bit tricky to get all the shots I wanted but their families were very accommodating and helpful! We were grateful for the weather in the morning! Calgary can be difficult in February but it was warm and beautiful. We were not so lucky in the afternoon but the bridal party were troopers and really tried to work with me.

I love some of the pictures that I was able to take and Don and I had a lot of fun! Looking forward to the reception here in Kamloops this Friday! Here they are.....

ENGAGEMENT PICTURES... LAMBS/MELCHINS

I was so happy to be able to take Alyssa and Brant's engagement pictures last December when they were in town for Alyssa's brother's wedding. They were a wonderful couple to work with, fun, happy and definitely in love which made it easy. I use Aperture to process my pictures and  Photoshop CS3 to work with them.  I've also included several shots that have CoffeeShop BW Actions on them.

Alyssa is the daughter of some of our best friends and she has grown up with my children! I remember her as a baby, a toddler and then as a young woman and now she will be getting married this month. Time goes so fast! This is why I love to take pictures...they freeze time for a few minutes so we can remember the happy times, the loving times and the times we do not want to forget. They capture who we are at this brief moment!  

Here are a beautiful couple in love and starry eyed...my favourite pictures to take! 

 

For other engagement pictures see:  http://kasmath.blogspot.ca/p/engagement-pictures.html

WAITING FOR SPRING

So by the end of January I have to admit, I'm pretty tired of the snow, the cold and the dark! It just gets so dreary and depressing. I keep telling myself that we are lucky to live in Kamloops where the snow really doesn't last very long, but it's hard to believe it when you look out the window and the snow piles are still up to your back steps.

So I was delighted a few days ago to have the sun out beautiful and bright melting the snow and I stepped outside to take some pictures. I found this one in my stash and loved it. I knew that I wanted to try to Colorsplash it, like I can do with the app on my phone. It didn't take long to Photoshop it and it totally fit my mood!

Anyone else out there who can't wait for spring?

FAMILY SLIDESHOW...PEDERSONS

Happy 26th Birthday Danielle! Had fun making this and hoping you like it! Hard to believe you will be a Mom again in a few weeks...thinking of you lots and sending love your way. I think you will love these pictures of Everett!





I had fun learning to make movies on iMovie this time! I'll be sure to send you the photos! Feel free to take a look at some other videos I have made with Aperture...one is my Vanessa Pierson's Wedding slideshow and the other is my Melodie Smith's  wedding slideshow! 

IPHONE PICTURES

I would have to say that this month has been my iPhone month! Taking Jessica Sprague's Motography Class opened up a whole new world for me regarding picture sharing and picture apps. I learned a lot about Instagram and love seeing photos that other Instagramers post especially the "artsy" ones. The hashtags also make it easier to find and figure out what other apps are out there. Here are some examples of pictures I have played with using Diptic, Phonto, Bokehful and others. I now take more pictures with my iPhone than any other camera and I love how easy it is to share them! Will keep trying to blog more of what I am doing with them! 

WEDDING SLIDESHOW...SCOTT AND VANESSA

After doing Melodie's slideshow, I decided I better work on Vanessa and Danielle's! I'm still working with Aperture learning a little more every time. I like how easy it is to just use the pictures I've already rated to quickly set this up,  but think I'm going to keep trying different platforms to do this. The text on the slides was pretty touchy and I had to keep trying to make them line up right.

Have to admit, it sure brings back good memories to be working with these pictures! Weddings are such a time of joy, love and fun. They celebrate not only the couple getting married, but the community that they belong to. It was so wonderful to have out of town guests, family, friends and even teachers come to Vanessa's wedding. I am always so grateful for everyone that comes, they truly have been a wonderful influence on my family in one way or another. So even though weddings are a lot of work, they are so worth it in the end. This video is made from the stupendous wedding pictures that Russell and Jennifer McCue took!  I plan on putting together another one of the actual reception because I don't want them to be too long.

So, this is for my Vanessa and Scott.....so thankful for these two!!

WEDDING SLIDESHOW...KEVIN AND MELODIE

I'm working with Aperture's slideshow feature and was really happy with how this slideshow of Kevin and Melodie's wedding turned out. These pictures by Carol Kerfoot of KaceyJane Photography were so stupendous. We loved them and were so amazed by them. Carol did a fabulous job!

This is Kevin and Melodie's wedding song, "Forever and Ever, Amen" by Randy Travis.

Next will be pictures of the reception....

HALLOWEEN 2012

Well it was certainly a quiet Halloween last night at our house although we had a record number of kids at the door! Mitchell had decided not to go trick or treating to my surprise! So he stayed home with me and let me answer the door, even though it was often a group of cute girls hoping to catch a glimpse of him! Thank goodness Melodie stopped by and told him to come trick or treating with her. So he quickly threw on a pink cowboy hat, pink bandana and his BB gun and off they went. I think Melodie was glad she grabbed this wig because it made it hard to guess how old she was...apparently she hadn't been trick or treating in about 8 years. He came home a happy boy with a bag full of treats, just enough to be fun but not so much to be sick!

So there you go Mitchell....I know it's hard to have 4 sisters, but they do come in handy sometimes.

By the way, I couldn't post the pink...a cowboy needs to be country, in sepia...

I AM GOING TO HEAL SAYS MITCHELL

I found this template challenge at Designer's Digitals and knew I wanted to use it for this story. Don and Mitchell were wrestling one day and when Mitchell said this, we all laughed. The other funny part of this picture is that Everett was on the floor crying because he was scared of the fighting! I'm pretty sure he will be joining them soon.

Thought I would show you one of the pictures I started with:

 The black and white pictures were done using Coffee Shop's Coconut BW action, one of my favourites. 

I had fun with this page, but have to admit the angling was really challenging and probably makes the journaling harder to read, but I still love how it turned out! I also wanted to give this a cartoon feel, thus the word bubbles from eNKay Designs, Comic Kit found at the DigiChick.  This page makes me happy and I'm grateful to be able to document these memories. I'm thankful that Don has one son that he can wrestle with, play soccer with, eat pizza with and love!! These days are going so fast, he's almost as tall as his Dad....

THE MANY FACES OF MEL!

So happy to sit down last night and scrap again. I haven't actually done a page in awhile... I read lots and study lots but sometimes just need to sit down and do it. I need to learn to quit working on every detail as well. This is for my Melodie! So happy that her and Kevin live in town now and that we can see them more!

I saw this template on my Jessica Sprague Digi in Deeper in Deeper class and decided to give it a try. It was fun to go back and look at new techniques. I used some of her ideas but made the page my own.
There's not as much journaling as I usually like but it was still fun. I made the brackets into stickers, the main picture into a graph and tried clustering again. The fun script font is CK Legacy.

I'm looking forward to another class being offered by Jessica Sprague called Motography being offered in November! It's another iPhone class that's supposed to "rock your camera phone!" Should be fun!

Here's my new layout:

MESSY PIANO

I've been wanting to scrap this page after seeing Hannah Clark's Shabby Melody kit, just had to find the right pictures. Although all of my kids have played piano, Vanessa was the one who practised without being asked or told to... and who went the farthest in lessons. I really do love to hear the piano, no matter what stage they are at. I know some people wince at the "plunk, plunk" of the new little ones but I always loved listening to them. My favourite time of the day was making supper while one of my kids was practising piano in the background....it made everything right in the world!

My advice, start them early, not too early but once they are teenagers too many other things take precedence and the piano gets forgotten. During the elementary years, piano music makes your house a home!

Scrapbooking Notes:

HClark Shabby Melody Kit
KPertiet Starglows No1
Fonts: Impact, Century Gothic

Not sure I would fill the word again if I have a blended photo...thinking it looks too busy. I loved Hannah's frame and was happy with how it framed Vanessa. I'm using Cathy Zieske's Tips for Better Types when I journal which has helped a lot.

PERU PAINTING

 This was one of my favourite pictures of Don and Melodie that I was able to take when we were visiting Mel in Peru! We had so much fun and were amazed at the beautiful Peruvian architecture. I thought this  watercolour technique would do this picture justice and bring it to life. This brings back wonderful memories of seeing our missionary daughter, Hermana Mathieson for the first time in 18 months...it was an amazing, joyful trip!!

Supplies:

Lynn Grieveson In Distress Papers

KPertiet Defining Words No4

KPertiet Starglow No1

LMurphy Discovery Elements

SPCom Festival Village Frame

WWC Malihini Solid Papers

Fonts: Impact, Georgia, Beautiful ES, Century Gothic

PICTURE MAKE OVER

I took this picture of my Mitchell and Rebecca at the park and love how it turned out. What was even better is that Rebecca liked it!

Using a tutorial, I decided to boost the colour and contrast and add an embossed stroke with a drop shadow. I think it really emphasizes how much they look alike! Funny to see how these last two (the tallest in the family), who used to fight all the time are good friends and they talk and hang out together. Makes all the time outs, go to your rooms and "quit bugging each other rants" almost worthwhile. It also makes me wonder what the future will bring....my last 2 babies!

DADS AGAINST DAUGHTERS DATING

A friend of Don's sent him a picture of the new movie ad for Arnold Schwarzenegger's "The Last Stand" and said it reminded him of Don. It made me laugh but as soon as I saw it, I knew I had to make this page! It took some work and a couple of tries but I am happy with the end result.

This is a picture I took of Don years ago in our living room and I had fun extracting it and putting in on a new manly background. As the father of 4 girls, 3 of them married, he's fighting a losing battle but he still keeps trying! I have a feeling his 3 sons-in-law are going to just laugh at this picture....

Supplies:
Lynn Grieveson In Distress Paper
Fonts: Century Copperplate Light, Century Gothic

GRANDPA'S KEYS

I'm in a scrapbooking mood lately and have been working on more projects than I have in a while. I found this picture today and had to laugh when I saw it....knew it would make a fun layout! I used some of Hannah Clark's new kit, Shabby Melody and then added some embellishments from some other digital supplies that I have from Katie Pertiet (using her "Painting in Progress tutorial) , the Ettes and LMurphy. I struggled with some aspects of this page but eventually decided that I had spent enough time on it and I like it the way it is. My cute grandson, who is not very happy in this picture...I think it was because he was tired of Grandma taking pictures!!!

 I'm trying to increase my Blog membership, feel free to join my site!

BEAUTIFUL OREGON

I was so happy to have this picture even though it was taken accidentally! I wanted some shots of the kids boarding in the ocean while we were in Oregon, but because the sun was behind them the pictures came out really dark! I decided to try and make them silhouettes and they turned out wonderful. So I decided to scrap them! I've been wanting to use Hannah Clark's scrapbooking kits that she has recently designed and her Butterfly Bliss kit had some beautiful colours that fit perfectly! Thanks Hannah....

I thought you might like to see the original picture....

Here is the layout I made. I made my own template using 8 rectangles and moved them apart. I then clipped the same picture to each one and put a drop shadow on the rectangle. When I added the paper behind I reduced the opacity and I loved how it turned out! I added some embellishments from Hannah's kit, a starglow from Katie Pertiet and now I have a page that makes me happy. It really was a memorable vacation.... have any of you visited Oregon? Any favourite memories out there....