dislike ironing no more

"Ironing is the use of a heated tool  to remove wrinkles from fabric. The heating is commonly done to a temperature of 180-220 °Celsius, depending on the fabric. Ironing works by loosening the bonds between the long-chain polymer molecules in the fibers of the material. While the molecules are hot, the fibers are straightened by the weight of the iron, and they hold their new shape as they cool." (wikipedia)


  I don't know what kind of fabric my hubby's shirts are made of but i can't seem to get the 'molecules' hot enough to straighten those fibers. At least to my perfection - which is not that high, really. This afternoon i had this brilliant idea - i was packing stuff away, and found my quilter's liquid press aid - this one:

light bulbs went off bright and shiny - let me tell ya, i did a lot of ironing this afternoon. Why didn't i think of using it before? It even has a picture of a button up shirt!!

look at this before and after - ah... happy dance and lotsa singing, it was way EASIER with way BETTER results way FASTER. Makes all wrinkles go away and makes the fabric crispy - like brand new.

his and hers - done!

I might iron all of Alex's button up shirts tomorrow. 

wordless

Photo Love. Lens Love.

Alex loves copying everything we do. See in this photo - he stuck his hand in his pocket just like his daddy did, isn't that so darn cute? :) 

We recently went to Arkansas for a mini vacation and i had a great chance to try 70-200mm lense i borrowed as my mother's day gift. My verdict - it is heavy but totally worth carrying it around - it is amazing! 

I normally use 50mm f 1.4 - about 95% of the time - a prime lense which translates into 'zoom' is your 'feet'. It was nice to use a zoom lense that had f 2.8 at all ranges. 

(I am the only person who doesn't like seeing own self portraits? )

I want to blog more but right now things are busy - we are prepping to hold a garage sale on Saturday, pack our stuff and move abroad. Bye for now~

Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness

• I did it! After a few months of paperwork, fingerprints, passport sized photos, copies of variety documents, proof of marriage, proof of living together, etc etc etc - finally it was time to do my US citizenship exam. There were one hundred questions on US civics and history. I memorized them all. Did you know representatives are elected every two years so stay close to their constituents, public opinion and more aware of community concerns? And senators are elected for six years so they could be independent from public opinion? Anyways, i could talk and talk and answer all 100 questions and possibly more. But I was  supposed to get 6 right answers out of 10 questions - which was easy! 

  Thanks a lot for my hubby for helping me to study and watching Alex while i did so. Thanks for endless number of friends supporting and praying for me. I felt very loved and cared. Also, my facebook 'study' buddies. There were quite a few times when i needed help. Here is one example:

  
  

  

  
  

  For those of you who are curious, here are the questions i was asked:

  1. What is an amendment?

  2. Who is the Commander in Chief of the military?

  3. How many amendments does the Constitution have?

  4. What do we show loyalty to when we say the Pledge of Allegiance?

  5. Who did the United States fight in World War II? 

  6. What is the capital of Oklahoma?

  
  

  
  

My rather unusual Mother's Day Gift

(photo by ChristianYves)

This is Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G AF-S VR II.  Is this my mother's day gift - yes and no. Well, i chose one week rental of this big dawg over chocolates, fancy dinners, flowers etc other women probably received today. This makes me so excited! We are renting it from borrowlenses.com. I would recommend borrowing/renting photography equipment before putting big bucks into it - to be sure that's the lens you truly love. We are not planning on purchasing it anytime soon - but i am so excited to play with it for a whole ONE WEEK. It will arrive next Wednesday. Whohoo!!! 

H A P P Y  M O T H E R' S  D A Y ! ! ! 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ALEX!!!

Our son is two year old! Wow, time sure went by fast yet so much has happened. We are so grateful to be Alex's parents and love him to the moon and back and one more time. 

To celebrate his birthday i had this great idea of making a forest of standing balloons... but Alex was so fascinated with balloons that he wouldn't let go of them. So we went with the flow. . .

(love these polka dot balloons)

It didn't go exactly as we had planned, among a few other things, i forgot to undo jpeg setting to raw - because i shot this stop motion video on low resolution, but Alex had a fantastic time. And we took 365 photos!!!!!!! (no, i am not keeping them all)

Riding on daddy's shoulder...

and sitting on mommy's lap...

walking around with balloons...

                                          and of course, eating his birthday cake!


He unwrapped his gift which was a 16 inch version of his favorite stuffed monkey Georgie. Unfortunately, he wasn't impressed with it and dumped into bushes. We are still working on manners:)



Story behind these monkeys. Well, his nana got one (to the right and faded) before he was born. Around six months, it became his lovey, he would sleep, travel and play with it. It even traveled to Uzbekistan with us. Anyways, he grew so fond of it that we thought we would surprise him with another one on his 1st birthday. He sure did enjoy hugging both. Then we somehow lost it and right before making an international trip we decided we needed a backup in case we lost his Georgie during trip. This is a big deal, people, he wouldn't go to sleep without it!



We didn't lose it during the trip, in fact he wouldn't let it out of his grip, for whole 30+ hours.
Well, then one day we found second Georgie - so by now he had all three of them. Somedays, Alex walks around hugging all three of them. So cute~
  So, since he was turning two, big boy needs a big Georgie, I thought. But as you can see, he wasn't impressed AT ALL!!!

All in all, it was a beautiful family celebration time and photo memories for us. Happy Birthday, Alex!!!

Happy Birthday Alex!!!

Today is April 2nd and my son Alex is turning 2. Yay!! We love him so much!! We celebrated with his very own photosession and photos to come once i finish editing. For now, here is a short clip i made for my baby.