Today, They Meet

Yesterday morning, I received this message in my email.  It was addressed to Furgie.

So Furgie told me what to type in response.

Football Weekend

This past weekend was the VT vs. Clemson ACC Championship game in Charlotte.

The Hokies may have lost, but we still had a great weekend.  Stone and Kristinne came down on Friday evening to get the weekend started.  We spent Saturday morning doing a little shopping.  I tried to talk Matt into getting a purse/wallet thing for me and Kristinne tried to "co-sign" haha and get a bag of her own.  But we both left empty-handed.  

We headed downtown early to get our tailgate on.  Love seeing all the Hokies take over Charlotte!  However, I don't like it when we go to a game and the school colors of the two teams playing are similar.  It wasn't as bad this year as it was at the ACC game last year when we played the Seminoles and you could barely tell the fans apart, but I prefer when the team colors are totally different.  Then you can easily tell the fans apart!  Here's Kristinne and I sporting our Hokie pride, minus our cute almost-purchased purses.

Let's Go.... HOKIES!

Trying to find a spot for our ladder ball.  I'm obviously being helpful.

We cheered on our Hokies, but we still lost :(  But who cares, we had awesome club level seats (thanks Stone!!!!)  

Oh yeah, and I can't recap the weekend without including our Friday spent with our visitor-for-the-day Tom. The day was spent at Bailey Park tossing the football and running drills.  And in true Tom form, he did this with extreme intensity and I was just along for the ride to take photos of the guys.  At least I was able to walk away without getting a black eye.  Here are the silly boys:

The little one enjoyed the day at the park, too :)

Photoshop Fun continued

I've been a major addict to Photoshop lately.  I am a beginner when it comes to Photoshop.  I wish I knew how to use it better.  But I started seeing inspiration through Pinterest and then viewing online tutorials to see if I could achieve the same looks.  Ideally, I would take a Photoshop class.  I really enjoy learning in a classroom setting, but my time and budget does not allow for that at the moment.  So instead, I'm going to set a goal of learning 3-4 new Photoshop techniques a week online.  Here's some stuff I've been playing with today...

The main thing I was trying to learn here is how to sharpen the eyes through layering.  I watched a video tutorial and it was very simple to achieve.  I also changed the brightness/levels in the photo and used a smooth action to even out the skin and hair.  I overdid it a bit with the smoothing which resulted in the After photo looking pretty fake.  But I was trying to over exaggerate to really see the effect.

Next I learned how to make a black and white image and manually select what I want to be in color.  I achieved this by layering a black&white duplicate of the photo on top of the color photo, then adding a mask to color out what I wanted to show through (the stuff I wanted in color).  This was really simple.  There might be another way to do this, but I just tried this way based on what I learned yesterday on laying textures.

Then in this photo, I followed a tutorial on how to achieve back-lighting.  This one I thought was a little more complicated just because it was not as intuitive.  Maybe once I get a little better understanding of Photoshop, I'll be able to recall the steps for this one easier.  Also, the photo that you start with actually has to be back-lit to begin with.  This one was not.  But I did read a good tutorial on how to achieve nice back-lighting in your photos using the sunset.  Then the results will be much better with Photoshop.  I'll practice that in my next shoot.  But here's how my non-back-lit original photo turned out.

I also attempted to edit a ray of light into a photo.  I just couldn't seem to get it to work right.  It completely washed out my photos.  I'll give it a go another day.

Photoshop Fun

Today I stumbled on a Photoshop tutorial through Pinterest.  And there went hours of my day :)  I got a little carried away as usual and spent quite a bit of time editing the photos that I just took over the weekend (see post below for the originals).  Here are a few different looks that I came up with while experimenting with textures.

Photoshoot: Christmas cards for the littlest McCoys

We took the opportunity over Thanksgiving break to try and get some photos of the nephews for their Christmas cards this year.  Jen brought some cute PJs for them to wear and the farm was the perfect setting. 

Which one is better?  Color or black and white?  I can't decide.

I saw a photo on Pinterest of a baby photographed with Christmas lights.  I wanted to give it a try with Dylan.  I think it came out pretty cool!

Thankful

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  We certainly did!  We visited with all the McCoys and some friends in Johnson City, TN.  As per Thanksgiving tradition, the highlight of the trip was a visit to the farm.  This year, it was so great to have such warm weather!  It was almost too warm to even roast s'mores around the campfire, but we did anyways and they were heavenly.  

 We dropped our stuff off at the house and then took off on the fourwheelers.  We stopped in the woods for a minute for a couple of pics.  Here's Davin, Jason and Tom.  Not sure what they are all looking at!

How adorable is his little outfit?

The littlest nephew chilled back at the farmhouse.  All smiles.

Time to set up for the campfire grilling.  YUM!

It was seriously so hot by the fire, but we put up with it for yummy hotdogs and s'mores.

This year I made HOMEMADE marshmallows.  Matt didn't even think there was such a thing.  Made for some amazing s'mores and even better as an addition to Jason's famous hot chocolate that evening.  

Friends :)

I tried to get some cool photos while Matt was getting ready to shoot.  I think I succeeded! 

Can you even believe this photo?!  I shot a gun for the first time.  Yikes.  But if you look closely at my target, I'd say I didn't do too bad for my first time!

And look who else is a first time shooter!  

We had a great time at the farm, as usual, and a wonderful long Thanksgiving weekend with the McCoys.  We have so much to be thankful for!  

Oh, and the rest of the evening was spent in a 3-hour heated debate on whether the guys could run a half marathon without training, and then in what order they would finish.  It ended with Jennifer about to punch Jason, Matt laying on the floor with an ice pack on his back, Tom at one point betting up to $50,000 that he could beat Matt, and Kristinne being super thankful for her hubby and maybe not ever hanging out with the McCoy and Tom again.  Good times!

Life Lately

Things have been pretty cozy lately in the McCoy household.  Filled with lots of early Christmas spirit, warm baked goods, and puppies on pillows.  Or according to Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, "treats 'n snoozin', snoozin' 'n treeats" :)