Gabby has been going to choir practice for a few months now and we finally got to see her in action. Unfortunately, Stephen is TDY this week so I went alone. The concert was very good, they sounded almost like a professional children’s choir in some parts. Here’s the video, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. You’ll probably ask why she’s not in the center shot all the time, I wanted to get her friends (two girls on her left) in the shot too. I am so proud of her! She sings at home all the time, and to see her on stage with the group is quite amazing.
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I honestly miss writing blogs! Since I started school three weeks ago I haven’t had time to do anything else online. The first week of school was a pain! I seriously wanted to quit and go back to a lazy bumm, but I worked through it. I forced myself to do some research on how to use Autodesk Maya and found that it is a pretty fun program. My introduction to Maya brought back feelings I had of Photoshop when I first run the program. I wanted to punch my monitor or crush my mouse! But all is good now, it actually is pretty fun. I’m so happy to be back in school learning totally new things. My other class is on InDesign, I didn’t think this class would be useful to me but there is so much I can do with it.

Steve left for Washington, D.C. yesterday. I’m lonely, again for a week. It’s girl week in the Sipes’ house. He doesn’t return until Sunday so I’m thinking about taking the girls (Gabby, Kookiis, Vandy) for a girls day out. The puppies are allowed in the mall so we might just do that.

I’m really proud of my work in Maya so check out the photo album to see what I’ve been doing the past three weeks.

January - I turned 21 for the 8th time.

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February - We drove down to Los Angeles to see Valerie. She was there for a week so I had to take the opportunity to see her, especially pregnant with her baby girl! We spent the day at the Getty Center. I don’t remember what we did for Valentine’s Day, but I know Stephen got me beautiful flowers!

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March - Uneventful.

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April - Stephen took me and the puppies up to San Francisco for a week! I love that city and I was so happy to be there with the person I love most in the world and my babies. Our trip could not have landed on a perfect time; we didn’t know that the 2008 Olympics torch was scheduled to be ran through the city 2 days after our arrival. It was a controversial one because many protested the Olympics held in China, there were protests all over the place. The Embarcadero was packed with people pro-China and human rights activists. Chinese flags flooded the streets like a blanket of blood (how ironic) and then there were the Tibetan flags scattered all over the place as well. It was great to experience the rallies.

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May - We find out we’re moving to Stuttgart, Germany! Stephen applied for a job and got picked up for it a couple weeks later. For a few days we were stressing out about it because the people he worked for didn’t want to give him up and they tried their best to stop his move. Thankfully people in high places put their foot down and confirmed his orders.

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June - I resigned from my job at GS&ES to get ready for the move. We didn’t have much time to prepare because his orders were to report in Stuttgart no later than the second week of July. I spent the entire month of June packing and preparing for the move. We also decided that Alex and Gabby come with us to spend a school year in Germany.

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July - We celebrated three years of marriage! Stephen got older. We moved out of base housing into a hotel for a week and then on the 1oth we flew out of LAX into STR. This was a very tough time for the puppies. It was a very long flight and they were cooped up in a travel carrier that fit under the seats in front of us. They were very well behaved but I knew they hated it, whenever I checked on Kookiis she was shivering. I wish I could have taken her out of the carrier and put her on my lap. Vandy did very well; I think she slept through most of it. When we arrived we stayed at a hotel for over a month.

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August - Alex turned 11. Kookiis turned 4. We finally found a house to move into! Moved in as soon as we could, we have lived in a hotel too long! Thankfully, we didn’t have to pay for the bills. Of course if the military had a better process they wouldn’t have spent over $10K for our hotel stay! Talk about tax dollars down the drain! Tay becomes very sick from GBS and begins his stay at the hospital.

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September - Vandy got older, we think she turned 3 this year; we chose this month for her birthday because we adopted her from the shelter in September 2007. We start to settle in and the kids start school. I get on a plane to Manila, Philippines to be with Tay and Nay. I arrived on the 2nd, by that time Tay has been in the hospital for about 2 weeks. I stayed the entire month, around the middle Yen joined me; she and I left at the end of the month. During our entire stay, Tay was in the ICU. He was in a state of paralysis and was unable to speak. I was giving up hope and my heart has broken.

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October - I am back home. I missed my husband and my babies so much while I was away. Seeing Stephen at the airport filled my heart with warmth. Tay remains in the hospital, critically stable. What does that mean? It’s an oxymoron to me.

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November - Stress starts to build in our home. Alex has become rebellious and very unhappy. He expressed his feelings about wanting to return to Texas with his mother. Tay remains in the hospital, still critically stable. Some great news ~ Mama Len has become an American, after years of waiting it finally arrived. Yay! Obama is elected president of the United States!

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December - Gabby turned 10. It completely escapes us that Christmas is near. The stress at home and the condition of Tay took away the Christmas spirit. We fought to get into the mood by going to Christmas markets, I attempted to decorate the house but when the tree was up and the lights were set they burned out! Christmas spirit killed. The catalyst was Alex depression manifesting into an unacceptable outburst, this time he had gone too far ~ he finally got his wish… to go back to Texas as soon as school was out for Christmas break. Needless to say there was nothing to celebrate.

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I welcome 2009 with open arms! Hopefully this year will be a better year for us.

Since I’ve learned how to retouch photos I’ve been practicing and experimenting on my own. I said on my previous post my next project would be “Weightloss through Photoshop.” I tried but I just couldn’t get it right, so I will continue to play around with that project until I get it right. In my frustration with it I decided to do more makeovers for more practice and experimentation. I found a great website, Hollywood Celebrity Pictures has a bunch of celebrity photos downloadable for personal use. I browsed through the site and did makeovers on Hillary Swank, Claire Forlani, Fergie, Jennifer Lopez, Lindsay Lohan, and Minnie Driver.

Here are the final images… click on them to view their transformations.

Since this Christmas was the most un-Christmas Christmases of all we decided to treat ourselves with a trip to Sensapolis. A huge indoor amusement park packed with kiddie fun. It has a spaceship, a castle, a jungle, a pirate ship, a rock climbing wall, a restaurant, a mini version of the Discovery Museum in Los Angeles. The place is packed with slides, I didn’t go down any of them because #1, I’m fat so I’ll go down much faster and these things are like dead drops! You actually lift off your ass as soon as you start sliding. #2, I was afraid. The photos I took couldn’t fully describe the place because there’s so much to do and frankly we were having too much fun to concentrate on taking photos. My favorites were the science experiment sections they had all these cool stuff like the pyramid bubble, the facial expression camera, and so much more. The sad thing is that my boobs are so big that the camera thought it was another person (you’ll see the photo)! It’s really time for me to starve myself for a few months.

Here are some photos from our adventure….

Click on the photo to view larger images.

I am having way too much fun playing with Photoshop. I’ve learned so much about the program this week more than any other time I’ve used it. I could help but dig through photos I want to fix-up! The bad thing is that I hate all my photos now! I just want to airbrush all of them! In this project I cleared up my skin, lightened my eyes, put some makeup on, and extended my eyelashes~digital mascara!!

I would like to thank a couple websites for this project “5 Second Eye Enhancement” for teaching me what the “Dodge Tool” is for and ObsidianDawn.com’s “Eyelashes Photoshop & GIMP Brushes” for my mascara.

Click on image to view before and after photos in larger formats.

During the past couple weeks I’ve been playing with Photoshop, and the past couple days I’ve watched a bunch of tutorials about how to do makeovers. So I looked through my photos and found one I wanted to do a makeover on. No drastic changes, I just wanted to have smooth skin like they do on magazines. I also did photos of the kids I took for their passports a few months ago. Gabby was really sunburned so her freckles were out in force and her skin was a bit red. I also added some eyelashes and emphasized her eyebrows, being in the California sun bleached the poor girl’s eyebrows. Alex was sunburned too so I wanted I decided to do his photo to remove blochiness and whiten his teeth a bit.

So I did a Google search on “Photoshop tutorial airbrush” and clicked on the first one on the list “Airbrushing – Natural Smooth Skin Photoshop Tutorial” I always hesitated trying these tutorials because they just look so complicated. Initially, they were a few months ago when I first installed Photoshop CS3 I was so frustrated with all the controls! It’s like learning to fly a plane, maybe more difficult… I’ve met quite a few pilots in my day and a lot of them aren’t that smart. So now that I have a faster computer and having more knowledge on Photoshop I released my fear and actually read the tutorial. Now, I’m kicking myself in the ass because it is so simple! I could have learned this a long time ago! Any way, here’s my first attempt to airbrushing my face. My next project will be “Weight Loss Can Be Achieved Through Photoshop.”

I can’t believe Christmas is next week! This year has been a roller coaster ride and it continues to be. I feel like there’s nothing to really celebrate about. I mean of course there are but it just seems inappropriate to celebrate the holidays when there is so much drama going on. What is up with all the drama this year? 2008 just blows past and marks my heart with pain. Will 2009 be better? I hope so.

A few things I’m really looking forward to the new year are…

1. Yay! Back to school for me! I can’t wait till the 9th of January when I start school again!

2. Barack Obama takes over as the new president!

3. I turn 20! Yes, twenty! Go to my Kaboodle list to buy me a present!

4. I finally get to have a summer and Christmas alone with my husband!

5. We hit our golden anniversary! 5 years baby yeah! It’s the new 50!

Thank you PSDtuts.com for the “Create a Spectacular Grass Text Effect in Photoshop” tutorial!

For no apparent reason I got up at 5:30am this morning. By 10:30am I had nothing else to do, so I sat down on my desk and started stumbling through websites. StumbleUpon is one of the best web surfing tools around. You just click a button and ta-da you’re at a web page you probably never would come across. So here they are, the 10 interesting sites I stumbled upon today.

10 – Скульптуры из песка (43 фото) – Sculptures of sand (43 photos) – what if it rained?

09 – The Vampire Library – get your fill of vampire lore here.

08 – Eye Spy: Filmmaker Plans to Install Camera in His Eye Socket – oh the things people do for art!

07 -The Rise of the Machines – I don’t remember meeting a robot in Japan, South Korea, or Singapore when I was there. I don’t even know of any here in Germany. I need to get out more, I guess I haven’t traveled enough.

06 – Males of All Species Are Becoming More Female – the environment is turning our men into women!

05 - Cheap First Class Airfares: Airline Secret Exposed! – the key word here is Y-ups, just remember that every time you make flight reservations! Get first class tickets for almost economy class prices.

04 – Who Needs a House Then? – where’s the pool? Gotta have a pool?

03 – Brain Pop – yep, knowledge is power, learn something new.

02 – The Simpsons parody iPods, iPhones, Apple Stores, Steve Jobs, and even Apple’s 1984 commercial – I have a white ear buds!

01 – Cookie Recipes – this has to be the best site ever! I’m starving for some Margarita Cookies!

I can’t believe Christmas is almost here! This year flew by so fast it seems like we just celebrated last year’s Christmas yesterday. I’ve felt the Christmas spirit creeping up but now that it is December I feel like I need another month or so to be Christmas ready. I usually have the house half way decorated by now, but this year… we haven’t even decided what colors to do. Last year we did red and gold, I love that combination, and this year we can’t quite decide. I think we’ll go with the traditional holiday colors.

Christmas cards? Last year our Christmas card was a photo of Kookiis and Vandy wearing their holiday couture. This year I decided to design the card in Photoshop and here is what I came up with. I will be sending them out soon, I hope in the mail, but if not you’ll get it as an e-card.

click on the photo to view larger image

Thanks to PSDTuts for the tutorial. “How to Create That Last-Minute Holiday e-Card in Photoshop“