Spring Break!!

It's almost here!  A week from Friday, the kidlets and I have off for nine days.  We five are going to Chapel Hill for the weekend, as that will be Easter and my dad will be postop from a big operation and hopefully up for some wild-child visitors.  Then it's on to Topsail for rest of the break.

With Beach Season quickly approaching, the children are almost in a frenzy.  Especially Alice, who declared going to the beach more fun than going to Disney World.  Now that's saying something.

And unlike our long August sojourn where we have lots of visitors (basically all of our immediate relatives are in and out - aside from Andrew's parents who long ago declared themselves "mountain people") including my parents, Ashley, Allison and her family, Meg and her family, and sometimes friends...Spring Break at the beach is just us five and Goose.  And it's heavenly. 

It's not too hot.  The weather is gorgeous.  The fishing is prime.  We kayak, the children swim (notice I say the children...Andrew and I are not that crazy), we do puzzles, take boat rides, watch movies, eat out.  It's just good, fun family time.

In thinking about the beach, I decided to do some editing of photos from last year.  I've recently discovered the lomo effect and I love what it does to pictures!  I had to look this up, but lomography is a type of photography taken with specialized cameras that creates beautiful photos.  Wikipedia describes lomography in this way:

Lomography emphasizes casual, snapshot photography.  Characteristics such as over-saturated colors, off-kilter exposure, blurring, "happy accidents," and alternative film processing are often considered part of the "Lomographic Technique."

Below are some photos I took last year with my run-of-the-mill Canon SLR and lomo'ed up in post-processing. (Don't tell the lomo-purists, who vehemently insist that the only way to really lomo is with lomo-specific cameras.)  Mine are not the artsy square prints as valued in the medium format film world, but some judicious cropping is simple enough. I love the fading-to-black around the photo edges in addition to the slight saturation the photo's colors receive.

You can use Photoshop, of course, or this new service I recently discovered called Picnik, which is like Photoshop for people who don't know how to use Photoshop, or would rather not deal with all those layers and masks and stuff. Check it out, it is rather pleasing, and free as well.

(my absolute favorite, above)