My childrens' parents' bedroom...

Between this vase which sits on one side of our bedroom, and our bed on the other, lies a floor engulfed in laundry, toys and broken crayons. Somewhere, amidst the clutter, are snapshots of a grown-up's room.

If you search the Internet for ways to display childrens' art or displaying childrens' art, you'll probably find that the technique, photographed below, is not represented on the webbertubes. Until now.

Whitney, having had it uptohere with her mom's inability to properly display her art (she doesn't count the refrigerator door), took matters into her own hands and when I wasn't looking, found some packaging tape, a pair of sharp scissors and judging from the height of the highest drawings on the wall, a tall ladder.

Also, in putting this post together I discovered a little something, thanks to my camera lens:

Starting today, I thought it would be fun to give you a week’s worth of tidbits and glimpses into our home. (But don’t get to excited, it’s not like I’m going to show you what we keep under our bed. That’s for me to know and the bedskirt to hide.)

Today, I wanted to show you how I store some of the kids’ most daily read books. See here? I used the baby doll crib they haven’t played with since last Christmas morning. That baby doll crib was unwrapped, then I think someone set a doll inside it and then the last thing I remember is jamming it into the back of a closet so I’d stop tripping on it.

Also, recently, the only books Heidi and Whitney will let us read to them must end in alicious; Pinkalicious, Purplelicious, Goldalicious or any other book covered in a shade of princess.

For some time now, I've been meaning to figure out what all these buttons and bells on my camera do...I mean other than make my camera look really cool. Up until now, I've shot solely in full auto mode and for the most part it's gotten the job done. Still, I knew there were functions on the camera I wasn't taking advantage of, however, anytime I tried to sit down and learn about aperture, shutter speed and F-Stops, I wanted to bite down on my fingers really hard just to reassure myself I hadn't drifted into unconsciousness.

Then I came across several posts on aperture and shutter speed and blah-blah-blah photography stuff over at The Pioneer Woman (links included below). So I decided to knuckle down, sit on my hands and read all four posts. Not only did I make it through, but I understood what she was explaining, mostly. The posts covered photography basics, but I still didn't know where on my camera to adjust my settings so I google searched the kind of camera I have (a Nikon D-40) and found this site: Ken Rockwell. The site's a little clunky but this guy knows everything about cameras!

I ended up going back and forth between The Pioneer Woman's site and Ken Rockwell's site, until I mastered a couple of manual functions on my camera. Today, I put that new knowledge to the test and shot what I've always struggled to shoot: tight shots of inanimate objects. Shooting on auto always limited my ability in this area so I was really pleased with the results after just one try. Of course, these shots aren't perfect, but they're so much better than what my results would have been had I shot in auto mode.

click on the photos for a larger view

Also, I did make some adjustments to color and contrast and other things. I'm working on figuring out how to post my own Photoshop 'actions' on the site here for download. Stay tuned on that.

-----

Here are the links to The Pioneer Woman's posts I mentioned:

What The Heck is Aperture? Part One.

What the Heck is Aperture? Part Two.

What the Heck is Aperture? Part Three.

What the Heck is Aperture? Part Four.