October: More Birthdays

In addition to Sara, one of my other favorite girls also had a birthday in October.

Svetlana also turned 8 years old.

Decorating cupcakes (or eating icing straight off the spreader if you're Dan Credle)

To add to that, another someone special also celebrated a birthday this month.  I say this "month" because I do like to drag it out a bit. In fact, my last celebration (lunch with my friend Mary and my birthday dinner with Mom and Dad carried over to November this year! Hurray for milking my birthday all the way to November!). 

Dan, Belle and Daddy made me a red velvet cake. Yum!

My birthday fell on Columbus Day, so I got to spend the entire day with my three favorite people.  We went out to breakfast and then played outside and took advantage of the warm October weather.  Mom and Granny met us for lunch and brought me another red velvet cake! Yum, yum!! 

Every year I inch closer to 40 and farther and farther from 30....Solomon wonders how many that is in dog years? (I do not want to even think about it!) 

Mom got me a Keurig coffee maker along with a shirt identical to the one Granny is wearing in this picture along with a pretty scarf that matches (I do love birthdays!). 

Chip and the kids gave me an especially useful gift- a photography workshop!! A hands on "beginners' workshop" guaranteed to teach me how to get my camera off the "auto" mode! Hurray for that smart husband of mine!!

Since I'm about a month behind in my blogging, I've already had the class and learned so much.  I learned all about how to use shutter speed, aperture and ISO to my advantage so that I don't have to use the flash that pops up so frequently when using "auto" mode.  I also learned that I need a new lens (husband take note- only it's like $800 so I may need to wait for a bigger birthday for that....oh my).

I could do an entire post on what I learned, but since I"m so far behind anyway, I'll just share a few of my photos and save that post for when I tell my story about how I got started (you know when I start my photography business and all). :) heeehee

This was testing different apertures- see how dark she looks here?

Lowering the aperture makes her appear brighter  (and blurs the background).

See how the flower is in focus and the background is blurred? 

Water bottle on "auto" mode in our dimly lit clubhouse

Same water bottle with my newly acquired skills. 

If anyone needs pictures of water bottles, close up pictures of flowers or waterfalls, please contact me.  Moving subjects such as 3 year olds and dogs.....still working on that:

This was without the flash in our dim den....not too bad. 

Solomon says he will happily oblige to posing as my subject.
(as long as he gets an equal amount of time on my lap upon completing his session)

Is my husband the best, or what?!

And, as if that's not enough, the person who told him about the class is a photographer herself (a teacher at his school). We did a photo shoot with her this past weekend and got the best pictures we've ever had of the four of us.  Love them! Too bad we have to wait until after Christmas to share them  as we are giving them as gifts to our family.   

 

But, I will leave you with a sneak peek:

I let them take "yehyeh" and bear because they are so special to them and we hardly have any pictures of them with these favorite childhood treasures.  They are only featured in a few pictures, including this one, which is definitely one of my favorites.