proud owners of a new picnic table...

after changing our minds at least 100 times, we finally decided that our backyard furniture would be a picnic table. glamorous, it is not. but practical is far more worthy a characteristic. at 6 feet long, it will easily seat up to 8, maybe 10 if we don't mind getting cozy. and that was the goal.

so a few weeks ago, we were about ready to buy the wood for our pattern, when we decided we'd make one more last-ditch effort to find a kit at Home Depot/Lowe's. after some spontaneous errands, we did indeed find the picnic table kit at HD, and it was on sale for $73. killer. ('specially since we would've spent about $180 on wood to make a table from a pattern.)

but the best part of the purchase was when we hauled it out to the car - matt noticed a sticker peeling off the box and he pulled it to reveal a markdown "Reduced to $45". he took it back in, and they gladly refunded the difference.

my inner cheapskate rejoiced. of course, we still have yet to determine if it's missing something, and we're assuming the worst and fully expecting to have to replace a few pieces of wood. but no worries - it'll still be cheaper than if we'd built it ourselves.

i write this today because we've set aside the evening tonight to stain the pieces, so the completed table can make it's entertaining debut for a small bbq on the 4th of july. sunday, i'll run to joanns and buy the fabric i've been eyeing for the tablecloth, and i'll finish the few atmosphere-setter projects i've been working on. finally, my (nearly) dream patio is coming together!

P.S. photo is a stock - not my picnic table. ;) if only my grass were that green...

Welcome back, Griffey!

(originally posted on my blog at the original groupee.com social networking site.)

friday's mariners game was an awful thing. but what made it worth the trip was the opportunity to see ken griffey, jr. return to safeco, for the first time since he was traded in 2000.

a short ceremony before the ball game marked the occasion and included a 3-minute-long standing ovation from a crowd of 46,000+ people, and jay and edgar stopped by to hand junior a framed photograph of safeco field, titled "the house that griffey built". i was not the only one moved to tears by the festivities and the memories in the stadium that night; and recalling the look on griffey's face as his old buddies walked out onto the field still smarts a bit.

it was the video of memories spanning griffey's career with the mariners that reminded me of my introduction to baseball and our home team. in first grade, my elementary school held a father's day fundraiser, selling tickets to a game. my dad and i went - my first game, and if my math is right, junior's first year.

as the short, sweet ceremony came to a close, i looked over at my best friend and baseball-buddy and said "well... i could go home now." but there was still a game to watch. sadly, the reds handed us our [bats] on a platter, as we lost graciously (ha!) 16-1. i'll claim that we were distracted by the festivities and the sold-out house! (but clearly we recovered, because we returned the gesture on saturday with a 9-1 win.)

Welcome back, Griffey!

i can't believe i actually debated as to whether or not i should bring my camera.

i'm really, really glad i did.

friday night was the first time in 7 years that Ken Griffey, Jr. returned to play in seattle. we traded him in 2000, and this game against the cincinatti reds was a sort of homecoming, in a weird "you play for our opponent, but we still absolutely adore you" kind of way.

the game itself totally sucked - we didn't even stay through the 7th inning. but what made the whole thing worth it was the ceremony before the game, honoring junior's visit. so cool. seattlites might be the coolest people ever.

so, after a 3-minute+ standing ovation from a house packed with 46,000+ screaming fans, my other favs (and junior's mentors) - edgar martinez and jay buhner - stopped in to present him with the coolest giant photo of safeco field, with the words "the house that griffey built" plastered over the top.

i'm tearing up again, like i teared up that night. and i wasn't the only one.

it was the video of memories spanning griffey's career with the mariners that reminded me of my introduction to baseball and our home team. in first grade, my elementary school held a father's day fundraiser, selling tickets to a game. my dad and i went - my first game, and if my math is right, junior's first year. man, i love baseball. (just wish i had more of an attention span for it.)

i was totally ready to go home after the ceremony was over. ballgame? i don't need no stinkin' ballgame. it was worth it just to see the ceremony.

seattle was terribly kind to griffey as he played for the opposing team. we cheered for everything he did (then laughed at ourselves for cheering for the reds). and we let them win - 16-1. (heh.)

and just before we left, we hung on a few minutes longer so that we could see this:

that's our new pitcher Rowlands-Smith making his MLB debut. his very first pitch was to Ken Griffey, Jr. how cool is that?

so, that was the highlight (and the lowlight, if you consider the final score) of my weekend. allie spent the night friday, and we had a liesurely breakfast with matt saturday morning, and ran errands the rest of the day. saw my mom & stepdad off to the airport on their two week trip to italy, and tried to take the rest of the weekend easy... "tried" being the key word.

happy monday, all.

what i've been up to...

ok, as promised, some photos, and an update.

first off, i've been sewing up a storm. last weekend i made a "two-minute shrug" (they lie. it took 45 minutes, easily.) which turned out super cute, except that i'm allergic to something in the fabric. then, i covered my camera strap with this cute pink & brown striped ribbon. better than that old stock "canon eos" strap. excuse the terrible photo - any idea how hard it is to focus on your camera strap in a mirror, while taking a self-portrait? yikes. anyway, after the camera strap, i started in on some curtains for our bedroom. next on the list is a pair of outrageously-paisley pajama pants, followed by a new shoulder bag.

last weekend, matt's mom & sister hosted a family barbecue. we were there early, so i played with my neices for a few minutes, which included my camera of course. then i set it aside for the barbecue, so i could visit. i kinda regret that. it was great to visit, but i don't have any photos! catch-22, huh?

anyway, this awesome trike seemed like the perfect prop for some photos, but becca grew quite frustrated trying to pedal in the grass - with her sister weighing down the back end. i'm 60% sure beth just thought she'd have a ride, without realizing she'd halt progress... but i'm also 40% sure she's a little imp and knew exactly what she was doing. look at that mischevious smirk.

after being thoroughly frustrated by her sister, becca gave up, and beth gladly aprehended the trike. she looks pretty stinkin' proud of herself, no?

that didn't last long, though. she discovered flowers. do you remember when dandelions were treated with the same respect any other flower got? look at how happy she was with her find.

and here's that vehicle fascination again. "honk honk..." hey kid - that's the wrong button.

then we noticed that grama's roses were huge this year. and momma picked some for them to enjoy.

and becca decided that she needed to feed hers, apparently by putting dirt right into the center of the flower. you know how nutritious dirt is, after all. :)

loved this photo. love that face and that huge giggly, grin. had some funny color cast on it, so i turned it black and white. love it this way too.

so, it's friday. i'm just getting through the last of the photos from the choir concert. matt, allie and i are going to a mariner's game tonight. the usual weekend plans, and the launch of our summer program with the kids on sunday. looking forward to that. have a great weekend - i'll be back next week!

wii, wii, wii, all the way home...

note: "wii" is pronounced "we" and is the newest game system out of nintendo.

(props to those who got the reference in the title... you have either recently had kids or recently were a kid...) ok, on with the blog post...

matt's been wanting a wii since, well - before they came out, and the "gimmes" got him bad right around his birthday, so he started saving. and for his birthday, i topped off his savings to cover the cost of the wii.

it took us a few days to actually find one - they sell out quickly, and you have to be in the store early on the day they receive a shipment if you have any hope at all of taking one home. and we were. and we did.

i can read your thoughts... "kate, why are you blogging about a video game system?"... because this isn't just any video game system. this thing is amazing.

first of all, it's interactive: when you play a baseball game, you actually get up and stand like a batter, or throw like a pitcher. we played tennis last night. and bowling (best game i've ever bowled. ever.) and of course, baseball.

and as soon as we have one more "nunchuk" (yes, really) controller, we'll play boxing... why spend money on marriage counseling?

second of all, it's personable. one of the first things you can do is create a "mii" (read: "me") - a wii-version of yourself.

so, yeah - we're addicted. and we're finding any excuse to use the word "wii" in conversation...

you know - "i'm wii-in' all over the place." i'll leave the rest to your imagination.

now, if only i had the free time to waste.

happy friday. more pictures next week. i promise.

more of my favorites from the show...

"mr. cellophane", also from "Chicago" (well, the movie anyway)...

and this one's for my dad...

wish it were a little crisper, but i had to do manual focus, and it seems that my eyesight is generally crap. time for surgery, i guess.

she fell for it...

i like to use the old "don't mind me - i need to fire a few test shots" line to let people loosen up in front of the camera.

she reeeally loosened up.

so, this is allie, my best friend of 11 years. we realized a few months ago that during our friendship, we've lived at least across the country (and for some time, across a country and an ocean) more than we've lived in the same state. if my math is correct, she was in england for 2.5 years, at undergrad school in massachusetts for 4, and now in boston for grad school - one year down, one to go. that's 7.5 years, right?

but she's still my best girlfriend, and no matter how long it's been since we talked last, we can always pick up right where we left off.

and she'll sit in front of my camera anytime i ask. definitely a bonus.

on with the show...

yes, i'm still proofing photos show photos. and it seems that i'll be proofing show photos in my free time for the next 6 months. ah well, at least it's (usually) fun.

want to see some more?

"save the last dance for me" - salsa style:

i love how the footlights make the ensemble glow in this one. sinatra's "come fly with me". (that's my mom dressed in pink, in the center):

"blue skies", featuring an umbrella dance. (ahem. nepotism at it's best, there's my mom again, 3rd from the right.)

then they did a medley from "chicago" - one of my all-time favorites. here's roxie:

and if you've seen the movie, you may remember richard gere's fabulous performance during the especially smarmy "all i care about is love". this guy nailed it. in fact, i loved his performace so much that when it came to proofing, i couldn't choose a favorite. so you get three.

wheew. that's alot of photos for one day. sorry. ;)

more tomorrow!

the flag.

it's done. and what an undertaking. i knew we'd be in for some work, but i'm really glad i did all of the prep work saturday night, because there's no way i could've squeezed it into my sunday morning.

so it measures 75 inches tall, and 142 inches wide. i was careful to keep the correct perspective, which required a little research and a little more math (and for the curious, the proper ratio for the dimensions of the american flag is 10:19.)

saturday night, i worked at the church, on the gym floor, while matt set up for sunday services. the flag wouldn't fit in my livingroom, and the even surface of the gym floor beats my aged hardwoods anyway. i cut the paper, assembled the flag, painted the blue, promptly wore myself out to the point of a nervous breakdown (it was a really long weekend), and then sketched in some guidelines for our stripes.

sunday, the kids and i spent the first 45 minutes of our time together working on the handprint stripes and stars. it turned out cooler than i'd imagined, and it's flaws just add to its charm.

on july 1st, our church will have a free pancake breakfast, and the flag will be proudly displayed in the gym where our "big church" (adult service, as the kids call it) meets. the kids will lead the adults in the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance.

total, i spent about 3 hours crawling around on the ground. not sure how it's related, but my hamstrings are killing me.

happy friday!

let's see if i can fire this post off before i walk out the door...

big weekend ahead, but what's new. i'm especially looking forward to making a giant (think king-sized sheet) flag with the kids on sunday, using handprints to make the stars and red stripes. this will be used in our "big church" service on july 1st, and the kids have been asked to lead the adults in reciting the pledge of allegiance. i hope this flag looks as cool on paper as it does in my head. will require alot of work though.

the rest of the photos are coming along. proofing the stuff i do for the choir is alot of work - i have to noise filter everything since i shoot at a high ISO, and of course the usual sharpening and such. multiply that by a slow machine and 300 "favorite" photos. but i'm overall very pleased.

hank williams, "your cheatin' heart":

and remember i said dixie chicks? here's "cowboy take me away". oh man, that song. the lyrics are just amazing, and i love me some dixie chick harmony. just women on stage for this number, fittingly so. well, except for the musicians. the cowboy you met yesterday was back with a... what is that? i'm ashamed. that's not a banjo... it's a... love the riding crop fly-out hanging behind him.

running out of time, let me squeeze in a couple more:

"crazy little thing called love" - super fun line dance.

and this it for today: "this joint is jumpin'"

aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(that's a good kind of scream.)

ta da!!! check out the photo.

aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!

wheew.

i didn't mean to disappear for a week, really. last weekend was totally packed and then the week just got away from me.

so the concert went great. i shot all evening on the stage and around the theatre friday, and then a handful sitting in different areas of the audience during the shows on saturday. (i'm near the top of the "most obnoxious audience member ever" list - right behind the guy who sings along and the gal who loudly unwraps cough drops during every other number.) i walked away with about 8 GB of photos. many were duplicates - in this kind of an environment, where "do-over" isn't an option, i find the most success in making sure i can choose between a handful of photos. i also like having the option of different angles, which is why i shoot multiple shows and change my location in the audience.

enough already, on with the photos. i'm whittling my way through proofing, and i'm still very much ensconced in photos from the first half of the show. the theme was "Songs for the Open Road". the first half was "Americana" (think "Oh Susanna", and even Dixie Chicks), and the second half was "Route 66" (which included a medley from Chicago).

the show opened with a lone cowboy and his harmonica aside a campfire:

and included some square dancing:

and one of the gimmicks they used to set the scene was a bit of a flashback to the 30s and 40s (through the early 60s). not being remotely of that generation, i had to do a little research to fully appreciate these, but the audiences totally ate them up. a company called Burma-Vita manufactured shaving cream, and was made famous by their road-side advertising. short, amusing poems were broken into pieces and placed on highway billboards, spanning several miles.

so to mimick this, the choir used people instead of billboards. during transitions between scenes, a group of people would carry the signs across the stage, one at a time, as if you were driving down a highway passing them. great idea. i knew that photos of each individual person would be rather ineffective, so i arranged them into storyboards. i still feel that some of the effect is lost outside of the context of the live performance, but you get the idea. they're cute:

(click to see full-sized view.)





i'll post more tomorrow. :)