High Quality Canvas of Zoo Picture from Meijer

I got my BzzAgent coupon yesterday and Jenn, my wife, tracked down some of her recent pictures taken on our Canon Rebel XS and had a tough choice (we've gotten lucky with some of our shots)  We chose a picture of a polar bear looking our way from our trip to the Cincinnati Zoo, it had good composition and we thought it would be great on canvas.


On my way home from work yesterday, I stopped at Meijer to get the canvas ordered. The kiosks are well setup and I was able to plug in my drive, setup my picture to fit on the canvas, and get my order placed and prepaid in just a few minutes. Today my we picked it up and it turned out great. The colors were darker than the original, but luckily it worked with the photo. The image quality was great, no pixellation or distortion like I've seen with some photo vendors.


Original picture:

Picture of it:

Pros:

• Reasonable price (they were running them on sale for $19.99)
• Good quality
• Photo program was very accurate in presenting what would show up on front

 Cons: 

• Colors were a little darker than the original
• Corners are a little rough (but hard to notice when on display)

 Tips:

• Make sure you keep some background visible around the edge of a picture to account for the 1" crop (the image wraps around the frame 
• If you don't have much extra background in the picture, fire up a photo editor and selectively stretch the edges so you can keep your subject on the front
• Be aware of the deeper color appearance (perhaps lighten it a bit ahead of time)

Original BzzAgent review post

Starting the Fish Tank Anew

Over the weekend that I watched the kids, I had cleaned the fish tank thoroughly in the interest of just getting that cleaning out of the way. Little did I know that it would spark the kids wanting fishies again.

The week after I got the tank filled and get the water chemistry to what it should be for fish. Last time I had tons of trouble getting it stable at the level wanted, but this time it took just 2 adjustments and the water was good. We also got some new decorations: a bubbling volcano and dolphins.

We figured we'd get the fish tank setup after the weekend with Jenn's race (which she got 3rd overall female in!) and after the fun photo session with family at the botanical gardens in Ann Arbor so we could keep an eye on things the week after. Jenn picked up our starter fish Monday: two little zebras since they should be pretty hardy and handle a "fresh" tank before we get the nitrogen cycle managed. So far they are doing good and given the relatively large tank for 2 small fish, we haven't had any nasty chemical changes yet. Eventually we are going to get some catfish to put in (Natalie loves them).

Hopefully this post shows up right, including the tank picture...

Day 2 of October Weekend With Kids

The second day of the weekend was a success :)

Daniel enjoyed his extra reading time before naptime as he had yesterday. Natalie even spent some time resting as well (great suggestion, Jenn!) It left me time to get the fish tank cleaned out as I had been intending to do for a little while.

After naptime, we had a little "Harry Potter" fun-time and watched the 2nd two movies back-to-back. After the movies and dinner Natalie drew some wizard pictures and practiced writing her name a bit.

As for dinner, I made two boxes of Macaroni and Cheese. I'm really glad I made two batches since the kids ate it ALL, aside from my two servings.

Day 1 of October Weekend With Kids

Figure I'd start off my intention to keep blogging w/ little "journal" entries about the weekend w/ the kids.

Day one of my weekend alone with the kids has come to an end.

Jenn's leaving in the morning didn't cause any sort of meltdowns with Daniel even though he was very clingy to her the past few days.

Both kids were pretty good most of the day, not too many scuffles over toys :)

Lunch was a special of toast n' eggs.

Dinner was a California pizza & grilled cheese. Why grilled cheese? Natalie doesn't like pizza sauce! She's missing out big time!

We ended up watching "Air Buddies" about 3-4 times today. Natalie's new favorite movie since I borrowed it from the library yesterday. Later we watched "Howl's Moving Castle".

The kids both loved the movie and actually SAT STILL for it. For a short while I was able to get them both sitting together with me under a blanket.

After getting all of the kids to bed, time to take a mental break and watch "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull".

Signing off this Friday and looking forward to what Saturday brings.

Tom's Long-lost Update

I intended to write a blog-post every 2 weeks and have failed to keep up. My other New Year's goal of writing/publishing a book is also a little bit behind... but more on that later. On with the long-lost update to catch up on things.
Jenn has been keeping up with her running regimen and placing excellently in a few of her recent races, including 1st Woman in the Hammer Run. She's working towards 13.1 miles of running for her half-marathon in September. This weekend she has to run 9 miles, a "small" step up from 8 miles last weekend... quite impressive! She's looking great these days, but is having a "problem" with clothes frequently getting "too big" for her.
Daniel is being a little stinker these days. Nothing terribly new about that. He doesn't talk much, but he's certainly learning words. He "accidentally" uses new and correct words and then refuses to repeat. Our guess is that he is stubborn and/or a perfectionist of words.
Little miss Natalie is starting to play nicely more often with Daniel, especially now that Daniel is starting to use his imagination playing with the toys. It does of course lead to typical troubles, since they want to play with the same toys and get into arguments about them... nothing special there.

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The other weekend we visited family around Indianapolis and checked out the Indianapolis Children's Museum. The kids loved it! On our way out, Natalie told us how we need to go other places and see the museums there. Just today Natalie was talking about dinosaurs and asking about which dinosaur had the sharpest teeth. I mentioned that a paleontologist might now and she brought up the Children's Museum and started going on about how somebody there might know and how she liked all the stuff there.

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I hope to get back on track with my family blog-post every 2 weeks, so look for one coming up the 16th. As for my book writing, I've narrowed down the sort of book I plan on writing first: has magic and can be for Natalie and Daniel now or in the relatively near future. I figured if I added my children to the audience to get a little more out of the writing experience.

Norris Dam Wedding Trip

Jenn and her mom, Lora, were invited to photograph the wedding of a family friends' daughter in Tennessee. They hosted the wedding in a park pavilion in Norris Dam State Park.

The trip provided a great little mini-vacation for the weekend + 1 day away from the house. The trip down put us through Van Wert, Cincinnati, and Lexington. The roads toward the end of the trip were a little crazy, up high in the mountains and large cliffs. Luckily the rain that started towards the end of the drive wasn't too bad when we went in those areas.

The site of the wedding was pretty cool. Getting there involved driving over the Norris Dam and up a short, winding road up a hill. The pavilion was large and had a fireplace built in with two grill stations setup on either side. The wedding day was a little chilly and only later when we were cleaning up did the forecast rain show up.

Both kids enjoyed the trip quite a bit:

• They got to see the Washburn Grandparents and Melissa.
• Natalie found a little buddy at the wedding... though together they were a little trouble.
• Daniel got to people-watch and be daddy's lil' buddy.
• Hotel had a saltwater swimming pool

The swimming pool was a hit for Daniel and Natalie. Natalie insisted on trying to swim on her own... though she can't keep herself up in the water yet. Daniel loved splashing and bounced in and out of the water. The fact that it was saltwater didn't seem to bother at all, probably for the fact that it seemed to be a relatively low concentration of salt (esp compared with ocean-water). One of the nice things about the pool was that it didn't have that used-chlorine smell to it. That could be attributed to the fact that someone somehow added chlorine to it when they weren't supposed to (apparently can't do that with saltwater pools), so they had to drain it and completely clean it out shortly before we came to the hotel.

This Year's Fiction Book Plan

For one of my New Year's resolutions, I stated that I would write and publish a book this year. I believe that I may have finally come up with my subject matter. Watching Netflix movies / television episodes and listening to podcasts, I found a good working "environment" that I can write a story in.

For more and a place to comment, see my original blog post: This Year's Fiction Book Plan

Cool little eBooks for lil' kids

Natalie wanted me to find her a book on fairies to read tonight to her, but we don't have any that she hasn't read yet... So I went looking through Barnes and Noble's kids eBook selection with no success. It's pretty hard to find ones that are for her age group, for the Nook, AND about fairies. They don't have the "Rainbow Magic" series of fairy books by Daisy Meadows that Natalie loves in eBook form at B&N. Looking further into the book series and eBooks, looks like they have them for Amazon's Kindle... or I can buy Nook-compatible versions from the UK.

Now, back to the search for a book for tonight to read to her... I managed to find a picture-book with Dragons: Dragon's Alphabet Soup: Learn ABC with Eric the Dragon by Rachel Yu, Michael Yu. When I brought the Nook to her room after buying the book online, she was surprised that we already had the book ready to read. She's used to picking out books from the library and waiting for me to pick them up from the library when they are ready. After we finished that, she wanted to read another, so I went and bought another book right there while talking about the other book. Seeing that Natalie liked the first book by Rachel Yu, I got another: A Dragon Named Dragon. That one she liked as well.

One of the impressive little facts about these books is that they are written by a 14-year old. Goes to show that anybody can be author books these days with the great ways for self-publishing that have come about.