Face Smash

What could be better than smashing your face on the sliding glass door?

A freaky picture taken at the dentist....

This is Roxanne's mouth. Notice that not all of her teeth have come in yet.

4 pictures of my dog and 1 poem about him

Roxanne wrote this poem about Friday for me.

Friday
by Roxanne Haverland

Friday has that glare in his eyes
His wet black nose is like a strawberry
His flappy ears are floppy like a noodle
When he brings out his love...
His brown fur is like chocolate
but not just any chocolate... delicious chocolate
When he wags his tail he is happy
What can be better than this? Nothing

THE END

Iphone photo apps

My friend, Nikki Kelly, just wrote a blog post about iphone photo apps, which has inspired me to do the same thing. Read mine first, then read hers.

It's sortof come to the point where I prefer my iphone camera to my SLR camera. I like the convenience of it, and I like being able to immediately edit and play with the pictures (instead of waiting until I get home to use photoshop). These are some of my favorite apps to play with my pictures:

1. Camera+ ($1.99)

I downloaded this app a long time ago, but just recently started realizing how wonderful it is. I particularly like it's "clarify" function. Below I'll show some "before and after" shots of original pictures, and then the same picture put through the "clarify" filter:

Before:
After (really brought out detail in the sky)

Before (Matt sleeping this morning)After (Matt still sleeping)
Before (Roxanne happy about the snow day last Friday)

After (now you can see better how happy she is)

2. HDR Pro ($1.99)
This app is fun, and is especially useful outdoors. While a lot of picture apps have an "HDR" filter, this app truly takes an HDR photo, by taking two pictures (about a second apart from each other) at a low and high exposure and then combines the two images. That way, the darker sections of the photo become more highlighted, and the lighter sections don't get washed out. However, since it takes two pictures, the camera and subject must remain still (although it does its best to "align" the two images). Here are some examples:

This picture demonstrates how well the app works with a sky background. Normally, this image would have had a pure white sky and the silhouette of the chairs. The app under exposes the sky and over exposes the chairs, bringing out the color and detail in both.
This picture shows the downfall of the app. Between the taking of the two images, I moved, and that's why you see the double image of me bending down taking the picture of Leonard, and then also standing up looking at my picture. (An iphone picture of me using my SLR).


3. PhotoStudio (.99)
This app has tons and tons of filters and options. Almost too many. But if you have a lot of time to play around and edit, and can be fun. In the following picture, I used a firey overlay to make the fire in the photo seem even more firey. It's not really cool to admit that I do things like this to my pictures, because it's kind of deceiving people into thinking that my life is more awesome (and more firey) than it really is.


4. LensFlare (.99)

I love lens flares. They make it seem like something magical or spiritual is happening. This app lets you add a variety of lens flares so that your pictures seem magical even when they weren't. I know you've already seen most of these pictures before. I'm just reshowing them to illustrate the function of the apps.

This picture was taken with the HDR pro app (thus the blue sky). Then the lens flare was added.

This is a hexagon lens flare (there is all kinds, even hearts).
This lens flare is supposed to look like the sun... or God.

5. Lenslight (.99)
Lenslight is Lensflare's counterpart app. It has things that are like lens flares, but are different.
Added a spectrum ring around the cross of salvation mountain:
I added little magical light orbs to this picture of Roxanne in church this morning:
This picture of Roxanne's eye has rainbow light radiating from it:

6. Percalator ($2.99)
I know... the price is steep for this one. BUT, if you are passionate about circles, it's worth it. It works best with pictures that are high in vibrancy and low in detail.

This is my painting of Roxanne put through the percolator:

A photo of a lion fish that I took at the aquarium:

A photo of a body painting a did last year. If you squint your eyes you will be able to see the virgin Mary I painted on the front of a woman.
And this is a close up picture of my paint palette:
7. WordFoto($1.99)

Rocket made me this portrait of himself. Awwwwwe....


Roxanne made this one....
I made this one...

Penny Room

The penny bathroom is done... PHEW! I would never ever do it again, but I'm happy I did it (that's a weird concept)... it made me a stronger person; it built my character; it refined me.... but it sucked.

I used a dark brown grout- grouting was fun! After the grout dried, I applied 2 coats of polyurethane (did you remember that's one of my favorite things? If so, you are a loyal blog reader).

But it's not REALLY done. Because I've passed out 20 toilet seats to 20 different female artists in the church. Each one has been artistically transformed in different styles and mediums, and will soon be hung at equal heights around the room (there are 20 hooks equally spaced around the top rim of the room for toilet seat hanging). An art opening for the seats will be held on the first Friday in March, since the church is perfectly located along the Denver art district. So stay tuned for that.


The gigantic wall:

The toilet in the handicap stall (I also mosaiced the lid of the upper tanks).

Apparently one of the stalls is already out of order due to a toilet leak. I don't think I had anything to do with that.


This is the mirror portion. I actually experimented with mosaicing a 3D surface by sculpting a 3 dimensional frame around the mirror that flows seamlessly into the wall. I was nervous about this because if it failed I would feel pretty stupid trying to explain what I was trying to do. I'm still nervous that one day the mirror will break. Because replacing it would be a difficult task.

This is me taking a picture of myself and the mirror. The other person is in the bathroom for legitimate purposes.


Same picture really... just another angle.


This is a close up of the sculpting around the mirror.

There are quite a few "special" coins placed sporadically throughout the room. A "fan" of the church from Australia mailed me some Australian coins to use (one of them seen below- depicting a native Australian). There is also some carwash tokens, a Chuck E Cheese token, and many other foreign coins.

Interspecies Cuddling Contest

NOTE: I dont know why this blog post overlaps the next blog post. Blogspot is being a jerk. I've tried deleting pictures, thinking maybe blogspot thought I had too many, but it doesnt fix it.


Last Wednesday I posted this as my facebook status:

Before school this morning my kids and I had a conversation about how one of the best things in the world is when animals that are different species cuddle with each other. So we're going to have a contest. Find a picture of interspecie cuddling and post it on my page. We will vote on the best one on Saturday and the winner will get a surprise.

If you look at my facebook page you'll see that it got flooded with the most ridiculously cute pictures, providing hours of entertainment for me and the kids. We got exactly 30 submissions.

As promised, today we voted on the winners using a voting technique that Rocket designed. We each got to rank our top 5 favorite photos- with our top vote receiving 5 points and our 5th vote receiving 1 point. Rocket explained to me that that method helps to prevent ties from occurring. Here are the winners:

In third place, submitted by John Swanger:

Second place, also submitted by John Swanger:

And first place, submitted by both Daphne White and Traci Lotter, but Traci Lotter submitted it first.

What did the winners get?! Only the first and second place winners got a prize. They got an original drawing of their winning entry by Rocket or Roxanne!!!
This one by Rocket:

This one by Roxanne:

Here are some other notably cute.... or notable not cute entries:

This one was submitted by Matt:



The following one illustrates a Bible verse, which proves that God also likes interspecies cuddling and there will probably be a lot of it in heaven.

This one was submitted by my pastor:



I dont know why this post is screwed up at the bottom....