christmaspic2010

Peppermint Dots Christmas Card

Shutterfly Christmas cards

View the entire collection of cards.

Free Shutterfly Christmas Cards

I love the holidays and one of my favorite things is making our Christmas card and sending it to everyone. This will be our fourth year to do a photo Christmas card and something special will be featured-my baby bump! I've tried to include our dogs in every picture, but I have a feeling someone small and precious will be taking their place in our next Christmas photo. These are the only 2 previous Christmas cards I could find. Neither of these came from Shutterfly, but this year I will definitely be using them. I've already made a wedding photo book using Shutterfly with my new printer/scanner, and if I get 50 free cards that's even more incentive to use them! We are having professional baby bump/Christmas pictures taken in December so I'm going to use those as double duty for our Christmas picture. I wanted to get belly pictures when I'm still cute and pregnant and not fat and pregnant.




You can find Shutterfly's photo cards here: http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-photo-cards . It's so easy to upload your pictures to their website. I use a Mac desktop and I have a tool where I can send photos to Shutterfly directly from my iPhoto pictures. I also highly recommend signing up for their emails. They send me discount codes at least once a week. Once this baby comes I know I'll be using their website even more to make baby photo books and order prints to send to relatives!

Bloggers get 50 free holiday cards from Shutterfly http://bit.ly/sfly2010

It's a Boy!

OK so it's been 3 weeks since we found out but I thought I'd go ahead and post this anyway. We can't wait to bring this little guy home!

Bun in the Oven

Time to update the old blog with our wonderful news. We're expecting! Baby Fuqua will make his or her appearance sometime around March 22nd, 2011. We couldn't be happier. So far everything is going well. I've only had a little nausea and although I get very tired in the afternoons most of the time I feel great.

Had to put in the obligatory pregnancy test shot.

Our baby's first pictures! I think at this point he/she was the size of a blueberry.

Erik's parents came to visit in early August and we had such a good time telling them in person. I ordered a cake and they were so surprised!

My new hobby-experimenting with Photoshop

I've been working PRN at an outpatient surgery center and I decided to buy a really nice camera with some of the money I saved up. Part of this interest came from the Pioneer Woman website that I've mentioned before. Not only does she have a cooking section, but there's an awesome Photography section as well. Many times she goes through how to take certain shots and how she edited them in Photoshop. She claims to have no professional photography lessons so I figured if she can do it then certainly I can too. I haven't gotten my camera in the mail yet so I decided to mess with some of my pictures from last year's vacation to California.


This first shot is straight out of the camera (SOOC) at the winery we toured. They had a gorgeous garden and I took some really pretty shots.

Part of Pioneer Woman's photography help comes in the form of Actions. These are free and downloadable from her website. You basically download it and apply it to your picture. The awesome thing is you can add multiple Actions on top of one another and it creates cool effects. I can't remember what all I did with this one except I know I did "Seventies" and some kind of texturizer. Mostly I'm just playing around at this point trying to figure out Photoshop. I believe you can click on the photo to enlarge it. I really love the Seventies action; it makes it look like this is a vintage summer photo.


This one I used "Fresh and Colorful" and "Boost" and "Edge Burn." I love how it makes the flowers look like they're center stage.

We are headed to Denver for vacation soon and I can't wait to take some awesome pictures!

We Interrupt this blogging strike to bring you a recipe...

Make ths and you will not be disappointed. This is the best thing I've eaten in a long time.

Pioneer Woman's Twice Baked Potatoes

Ingredients-
baking potatoes, as many as you want, just be sure to adjust the other ingredients accordingly
cheddar cheese, shredded
seasoned salt
crumbled bacon, from a package or you can cook it
green onions, diced
butter
sour cream
pepper

Bake the potatoes (no matter how many) at 400 degrees for 1 hour and 15 minutes. After they've cooked cut them in half and scoop out the insides. Be sure to leave enough on the skin so it will still hold up. Combine the potato you've scooped out with the other ingredients. I didn't use specific measurements because her recipe calls for 8 potatoes and I only used 2. Spoon the filling back into the potato skins and top with more cheddar cheese. Put back in a 350 degree for 10 to 15 minutes.

Here's the link if you want to see the original recipe.

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2007/07/twice_baked_pot/

I could do an entire post on Pioneer Woman-she's amazing and her website is awesome. I've made many of her recipes and all of them have been great.

Meanwhile Erik and I are fine-we've been playing Rockband 2 and I've been working like a dog. I started a PRN job at an Outpatient Surgery center and I'm loving it.

Taking a Break

As the title implies, I'm taking a break from blogging. There is a season for everything, and right now that includes not sharing in this forum. Thanks to everyone who has read so far, and I promise that I will return someday!

Jessica