Sweet!

Due to the prohibitively high cost of maple syrup, I have kept my children on a strict Mrs. Buttersworth syrup diet since their first bite of pancake. Since then, of course, I have discovered that sometimes cheapest isn't always best. Not that any type of syrup is healthy, but when choosing the lesser of the two evils, maple syrup certainly beats high fructose syrup on pancakes and waffles.

Unfortunately, once conditioned always conditioned...the last time I purchased the liquid gold, the children declared they did not like the taste at all. So imagine my surprise when they all but drank some maple syrup during our last field trip to see the process.

We began our tour in the barn so we could have a chance to visit with the animals.












After the barn, we kind of headed in a backwards fashion through the tour. Since there were three other groups doing the tour with other leaders, our next station was the pancake station to sample maple syrup. And that is where the kids decided they do indeed enjoy real maple syrup. Unfortunately, this was not syrup from the farm as this is a 4H teaching farm and therefore does not produce enough syrup to sell. They loved it nonetheless and may have even licked their plates.




After sampling the syrup, we learned about how to identify a maple tree in the dead of winter and then how to tap it. We followed our indoor instruction with an outdoor trek to check out the sap that was draining into the buckets of some tapped maple trees.

Following that, we went to the sugar house to see how the sap is boiled in the evaporator until it becomes thicker and develops that beautiful amber color. We learned that it takes 40 gallons of sap just to make 1 gallon of syrup! No wonder it's so expensive!


I probably don't have to tell you that I stopped by a farm on my way home to purchase some real maple syrup!

Pennsylvania Farms

I absolutely fell in love with Pennsylvania last week. I have driven through the state before, but I don't remember noticing its beauty. I definitely want to return during spring or summer because I imagine the rolling hills in green would be even more amazing.

And the farms...I didn't realize agriculture was so big in the Keystone State. I can't tell you how many pictures of farms I took from the car (don't worry - I was very careful!). This is the first one I came to in going through my hundreds of photos. I love this photo. If the rest of them are like that, I'm sure you'll see lots more of them!

Meadow Road Barn

I can't wait until spring! There are so many things I would love to photograph, so many barns out there, so many New England beauties to capture. But...whenever I see something I want to photograph, I'll get almost close enough to get a shot, but then there will be a 6-foot-tall snow bank I have to scale. Or not. I am not really good at scaling 6-foot-tall icy banks.

Other times, I'll see a great shot, but the snow here has taken over the shoulder, sometimes even whole lanes on the road, so there is never a place to pull over.

So my camera and I usually lose out.

I got lucky with this one. I was able to get the shot while turned halfway onto a side street. It was just the right angle that the tall snow banks weren't in the way.

Toto, I don't think we're in Georgia anymore!

On account of the crud that invaded our house this week, we had to cancel our plans for the science museum today (Note to self: Do NOT pre-pay for anymore field trips!). Since I had no school planned, the kids lucked out and got a day off.

We had fun anyway. We played Guesstures, a new game I picked up a couple weeks ago.



Although we had fun with the charades, Jacob and Alex, the two who feel 100%, were DYING to go back outside to work on their snow fort.





I would not let them until after lunch for two reasons: First of all, it was still 18 degrees outside; and secondly, I didn't want any nosy neighbors knocking on the door. "Are schools still out because of the snow?"

After lunch it had warmed up to a balmy 21 degrees, so I let the wild things out. And then I ventured out. It's the first time I've been out since it snowed a record 2+ feet. It was a new experience. I sank up to my thighs in the powdery stuff, rendering my new snow boots quite useless since the snow snuck in to the top.







I got a grand tour of the kids' really cool snow fort and then trudged back through it because I had had quite enough of my snow-filled boots.

Good to Wow: Winter Edition, Edited

I've had a lot of fun over the last few days playing around with my new toy. There is still quite a steep learning curve ahead with Photoshop Elements, but because I've worked with Corel Paint for the last 2 years some of it is familiar to me.

I know layers from Corel; however, layer masks are new to me. You know how you can have something on the tip of your tongue? That's how it is with layer masks for me: they're right there on the tip of my knowledge pool. On the edge, just dipping their feet in. I'm hoping 1 or 2 more YouTube tutorials will shove those masks right in with a splash.

That being said, I did nothing fancy with my photos from Monday. But I like how they turned out.

Picture #1:

A reminder of what the SOOC looked like:


I went a little overboard in my first edit, but I still think it looks kinda cool:

I increased the saturation (obviously!). And then I created a layer to which I added a blue hue. I placed that layer under the first layer and then erased the little stream so the blue would show through. I realize that is opposite what you are supposed to do in PSE where you use a mask and paint on black or white, but I did it the Corel way. I'll learn, I know I will.

This next edit is more subtle, and I like it better:

I did the same thing, just not with such intensity.

Picture #2:
The SOOC:


I did several different edits with this one because it was my favorite of the two (don't worry, I'm only going to share a few!).


OK...hold on to your hats! With this one, I applied a Coffeeshop Vintage action. I know! I am proud of me for figuring out how to download and install actions too! Of course, it would probably be prudent to learn the basics before jumping to all the fancy stuff, but, in the words of my oldest daughter, "That is just the way I roll."

So anyway, I applied the action and then I also applied a PSE texture, Old Photograph, maybe? Something like that.

Here's the second edit:

Nothing fancy with this one: just intensified the color and balanced a few things.

And the last. Sort of.

For this one, I used the Guided Editing feature in PSE9 and I performed the Style Match.

I said "sort of" before because this last one is the same exact photo, just framed.

I actually used layer masks for this one, though I couldn't even begin to tell you how to duplicate it. I did it step-by-step while watching a tutorial on layer masks. And, through the tutorial's host, I picked up a bunch of free frames!

So that is it. Maybe next week I'll have the knowledge to be fancy. OR I'll just use some of Ashley's wonderful tips to edit. I probably should have waited on these to edit them using her tutorial, but I was too impatient to play!