Sierra Springs Photo Blog » Christmas

Is this the face of our television future?

Karen Schmautz — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:55:27 +0000

My husband brought home a bunch of cool 3D glasses from a store on Friday night so that we could see a couple of Super Bowl commercials in 3D. The commercials were pretty cool, but I thought the people in my house were much more interesting.

Above, the men watch the game in the “man cave”. The women basically stayed out of this room because there was way too much testosterone going on in there. All of the men were rooting for the underdog Cardinals, so they were a little disappointed with the outcome.

The women mostly stayed in this room to watch the game …I guess “watching the game” is a bit of a stretch since I don’t think any of us really watched the game, but we did enjoy each other’s company and the 3D glasses. One young man vacillated between the rooms wanting to hang out with the men in one room and his girlfriend in the other. Poor guy.

Here’s my three men…my husband, and two sons…enjoying the commercials. See what I mean about having more fun watching the watchers than the commercials?

And here are a few of my favorites.

I don’t think any of these photos will go down as my all-time most beautiful pictures, but the memories provided by these photos will last long after the loveliest of my photos have been forgotten.

I found the coolest tool…

Karen Schmautz — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 17:39:28 +0000

It’s called Wordle and it’s free. What is it, you say?

Wordle creates word collages or “word clouds” as they call it. You paste in some text and Wordle picks up words from the text and makes a cloud of the words that are prominent in that text. It ends up looking like this:

The text I used was this:

Little Red Riding Hood took off her clothes and got into bed. She was greatly amazed to see how her grandmother looked in her nightclothes, and said to her, “Grandmother, what big arms you have!”

“All the better to hug you with, my dear.”

“Grandmother, what big legs you have!”

“All the better to run with, my child.”

“Grandmother, what big ears you have!”

“All the better to hear with, my child.”

“Grandmother, what big eyes you have!”

“All the better to see with, my child.”

“Grandmother, what big teeth you have got!”

“All the better to eat you up with.”

And, saying these words, this wicked wolf fell upon Little Red Riding Hood, and ate her all up.

Moral: Children, especially attractive, well bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. I say “wolf,” but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all.

If you are a scrapper, this type of stuff is great fun to use in a layout. (BTW, I love the moral on this story.)

I can think of a few ways to use it in my photography...


Here's a quick redux of a photo that reminds me of the fairy tale Snow White.  I used Wordle, plugged in a brief
text of the story of Snow White, took a screen capture and imposed it over my photo using Photoshop.  I'll have
to work with this a little, but it looks like it could be fun.

Family Christmas Favorites

Karen Schmautz — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 22:27:32 +0000

We had our major Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve this year because that was the best time to get the entire family together. All my children were present along with my mother-in-law and my son’s girlfriend and her little boy (pictured above.) My husband prepared a fantastic meal of prime rib, roasted potatoes, peas with pearl onions, roasted brussel sprouts with parsnips and English pop overs. It was to die for. I don’t why I didn’t take a picture of the food…dumb, dumb, dumb…

Truly children make the holidays magical. I caught the photo above when my son’s girlfriend and her son were checking out the Christmas tree. The tree lights provided the only light for this photo. He’s a cute little guy and I took quite a few pictures of him.

Here’s one of him again with my oldest son. My son loves this kid for a number of reasons…number one being that they are two of a kind…full of energy and a little crazy.

Here’s a couple more of my favorite shots from Christmas…

My oldest son is kind of a goof and he was making these faces as his girlfriend was talking to my husband. She wasn’t even aware he was doing it. She got a good laugh when she saw this series. Good thing for my son that she is a good sport.

I hope your Christmas was a merry one and that at least one of your dreams come true in the new year.

Christmas at my house

Karen Schmautz — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:21:17 +0000

It’s been a rough season for us as my dad has been in and out of the hospital since the middle of November. This will be the first Christmas that he has not spent with his family…ever. He’s in a full care nursing facility at this point after living in an assisted living apartment just a month ago. The difference? A stroke. Strokes are not good for anyone, but it is especially hard on him because he is also struggling with his memory.

So, I’ve been trying to document all of our Christmas activities in word and photos…like a docudrama…so that he will be able to participate through photos. I was over there today visiting him and I brought my little photo book. He was able to pick out several members of the family and even smiled a little.

These photos are for my dad, who has always been there for me.

My brother sent me a beautiful flower arrangement with a candle in the middle. I used my star light filter to get the lights to sparkle.

The other day it snowed and I wanted to go out and take some photos, but the roads were pretty icey. So, I settled for taking a photo of our street on the way home.

Corby has been actively involved in decorating the house this year, unlike years before. Usually he dreads the whole Christmas decorating thing, but not this year. It even makes this little snowman happy to see my husband involved.

We like to make a gingerbread house every year, but this year it hasn’t turned out so well. First, the frosting was too stiff and we couldn’t squeeze it out of the container. Then, we thinned it out a little which made it too soft, so the roof kept falling off and the walls were caving in. Sigh. When the houses (we did two this year) were finally ready to decorate, all the decorators had given up and gone home. I wonder if the dumb houses will last till next year.

This is a picture of my oldest son trimming the tree with some of the ornaments we have collected over the years for him. It was always our tradition to purchase one special ornament per child per year so that when they got their own home, they would have a start on their own ornament collection. Even though my son doesn’t live with us anymore, he put his ornaments on our tree because he didn’t have a tree of his own. Maybe next year.

So these are some of the photos I made for my dad’s Christmas photo book. So far, he likes them. They are good memories for me, too.

Christmas Oldies

Karen Schmautz — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 01:35:36 +0000

I just uploaded the new version of Pro Photo and I am still trying to work out the bugs. Bear with me while I contact my web page guru (aka my brother) for assistance. I think my new web page look will dazzle even the most jaded.

You can look at some Christmas ornament photos while we are waiting…

When my husband and I were first dating we were both on limited budgets, so he helped me make my Christmas decorations for my tree. I bought a bunch of little white plaster ornaments, some paint and some brushes and we painted our ornaments. He painted this little penguin over 25 years ago, and it’s still one of his favorites. I think he is waaay cuter than the ornament.

Some of the first ornaments I ever made were little felt ornaments. I think I made these in the 80′s, and I still love them. Here’s a little Santa from the set.

I bought this little plastic ornament in honor of my husband’s and my first Christmas as a married couple. It is really not very pretty or interesting. I’m not even sure why I got it, but we still hang it every year.

I made this nerdy little ornament (photo shows front and back of same ornament) the year after we got married. I think I was learning to cross stitch and this was my first attempt. This one always makes me smile.

So…I always like to go down memory lane at Christmas time. These are just a few of my memories.

(PS I did a little digital scrapbooking on these photos. I used elements and papers I purchased from scrapbookgraphics.com. There are a bunch of very talented designers over there and these little graphics make digital designing a snap.)