Category Archives: Reviews

Books, Movies, Music, Games, even Blogs that we review.

Blogs & Websites, Project 365

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Building the Blogging Community

I recently read an article on 5 Minutes for Moms regarding the difference between writing and blogging. Blogging, according to author Jim Dubin, requires more than good writing to succeed. In order to build a dynamic, growing blog there needs to be a developing sense of community. “Blogging is more than writing. It’s forming friendships, and sharing inspiration, and working with others to build something greater than you are alone,” Dubin writes.

david and sarah

These two definitely share a precious friendship.

Interesting. It has certainly been my experience that as I connect with other bloggers, leaving comments and partaking in an internet conversation, my own blog grows and blossoms in response.

Of course, many of the faithful Duckabush readers are family members and friends scattered around the states. They aren’t particularly interested in engaging in a global, blogosphere dialogue, but come to the blog to catch the latest family news and enjoy pictures of the kiddos. As Tim would say, the blog is not lacking in the photo department. Hardly a post is published that doesn’t have at least 3 pictures.

boring!

Without pictures I am going to fall asleep, Mom.

The one time I posted a blog without pictures I received no end of fussing from family and friends. I’ve surely learned my lesson, even if it means handing the camera to a random child to ensure Project 365 integrity.

In an attempt to “have my cake and eat it too” I thought I would introduce some fellow bloggers while being careful to scatter about a few family pictures.

princess Sarah

Token picture of a cute five year old.

  • If you haven’t already discovered 5 Minutes for Moms, I recommend stopping by for a visit. This blog, run by sisters, strives to connect moms and establish a community for mothers on the web. They continually present giveaways and product referals, everything from preschool books to vacuum cleaners and clothing gift certificates. There is an extensive blogging directory and Susan and Janice regularly feature “mom-owned stores.”

  • Every Day Mommy has a beautiful website and offers affordable blog and graphic design. Look over some of her sample designs and see if you aren’t as impressed as I was. As Tim and I work on our own blog and additional projects for church, we are reminded over and over that graphic design is not one of our gifts. In fact, we seem to be anti-gifted in this area. Thankfully there are creative people like Jules to come alongside and help those of us who are artistically challenged.

  • I stumbled upon a wonderful collection of game reviews when I was wandering through a trail of blogs one day. Katrina, at Callapidder Days has done a marvelous job of reviewing board games. Her posts are colorful, well organized and thorough. Many of the games are geared toward younger children but we saw several favorites among her reviews and others I am eager to try.

  • Another helpful blog, this one with a focus on personal blog consulting, is Mama Blogga. Jordan hosts regular Group Writing Contests and encourages “mommy bloggers” to develop and refine their blogs. Her post on Guest Blogging was particularly intriguing. Since then I’ve been thinking about several friends who would make excellent guest writers.

favorite book

Super Blogger!! David loves this book.

It was difficult selecting just a few blogs among the amazing collection I have discovered in the past year. This is definitely only a very small sampling. I use RSS Reader to manage my blogs. Google also offers a Reader for RSS feeds. The readers make keeping track and organizing blogs very efficient and nearly effortless. The program is structured like an e-mail program (Outlook Express) with a preview pane for reading posts and numbers indicating unread blogs. I can quickly identify who has written something new and move among the blogs with ease.

In April I tagged several blogs with the Thinking Award. These are blogs that I continue to enjoy and read regularly.

Hope you enjoy this assortment of blogs. Leave a comment and share other favorite blogs.

Doing my part to build up the blogging community. :)

Kathy
Project 365 – Day 250

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Books, Photography, Sarah

Photoshop Elements 5 Class

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Today the children and I went to one of our favorite haunts, the library. Twenty-five books, fifteen dvds and a handful of Archies later we were merrily on our way. So few books. We’re obviously easing back into school. Rachel and I were especially gleeful to pick up books we had reserved online.

Normally I spend the precious free moments of my day on the computer: perusing blogs, reading and writing e-mail, and working on various other computer projects. Not this afternoon. Not once I had this book in my hands.

photoshop book

Author, Scott Kelby, is the editor of Photoshop User magazine and the training director for Adobe Photoshop seminars. He’s written over 20 books and has an informal, easy-going writing style that makes his work highly readable.

After five minutes of reading (only at stop lights, I promise), I was hooked and prepared to spend the rest of the day devouring the Photoshop Elements 5 book. If you own Photoshop and have been too busy/overwhelmed/scared to dive into the editing experience, head straight to the library or Amazon.com and check out this excellent book. Don’t be intimidated by its thickness, there are hundreds of step by step instructions and illustrations.

Included in the book is an entire chapter on retouching portraits – removing blemishes, whitening teeth and eyes, lessening wrinkles, and even giving a digital nose job. I am only a Photoshop novice, an amateur at best, but I thought it might be interesting to tackle some basic steps using a sweet picture of Sarah.

Here is the original photo:

original cutie pie

My flower girl.

The first thing I did was to remove some mild blemishes (freckles, a small scar on her forehead, etc). I used the Healing Brush tool. This is a fantastic editing tool as it allows you to easily make very subtle changes.

Next I thought it would be interesting to try softening the circles under Sarah’s eyes. Kelby’s book had a helpful section on this topic (offering three different ways to approach it). I tried the Clone Stamp but couldn’t get a natural look and went back to the Healing Brush tool.

blemishes and circles gently erased

Circles under eyes softened and few blemishes faded.

There are instructions, in the book, for whitening eyes and teeth. I tried both on another picture and it found them to be incredibly easy. Select the area to be lightened (using the Lasso tool) and then go to Enhance — Adjust Color — Adjust Hue/Saturation. For eyes select Red in the Edit Box and then slide the bar all the way to the left in the Saturation field. After making that adjustment, you change the Edit Box back to Master and then slide the bar to the right in Lightness field, adjusting it slightly. This will brighten eyes beautifully.

To whiten teeth, select the teeth (being careful not to include the gums or lips) and then follow the same procedure choosing Yellow in the Edit Box of the Enhance — Adjust Color — Adjust Hue/Saturation function. Slide the bar all the way to the left in the Saturation field (removing the yellow tints) and then switch the Edit Box back to Master and brighten slightly with the Lightness guide. The Preview feature in the editing panel immediately reflects the changes made.

Note to self: Be careful to use a deft hand and light touch in photo-editing.

After whitening Sarah’s eyes slightly, I decided to soften her skin tone. For this procedure I went to Enhance — Adjust Color — Adjust Color for Skin Tone and selected a spot on her skin. I liked the overall color change this edit applied to the picture so I didn’t adjust it further. There are controls within this editing box that allow additional alterations in the colors — Tan, Blush and Ambient Light — and a wonderful Reset button. I was able to fine-tune and modify as much as I liked, nothing like a handy “reset” button.

skin tones

This is probably the most dramatic change – warms and deepens the entire picture.

There was a detailed chapter on color correction. Much of the editing in Photoshop can be accomplished using the Quick Fix application. I didn’t use it with this picture because I wanted to explore some other, more complex techniques. Sure enough, there was a a complicated process of color correction in this chapter that involved setting the values of target colors for the shadow areas then using those default numbers to adjust the overall picture. I don’t exactly understand the mechanics behind the various steps (okay, I don’t understand them at all) but Kelby outlined each stage so clearly and with full-color illustrations that I had no trouble following the directions.

I saved Sarah’s picture after each step of editing but some of the differences are so slight, I didn’t include them here. As it is, this is a LOT of focus on one picture. By the end of this post we’re all going to be bored to death of Sarah and her flowers.

I thought it would be nice to heighten the color in the roses and Sarah’s blue shirt so I used the Magic Wand tool to select the pink flowers and blue shirt. It took several clicks (holding the Shift key down) to be sure everything was selected. There are other ways to select a portion of the photo, this just happens to be the one I used for this step. After I had the areas selected I clicked on Enhance — Adjust Color — Adjust Hue/Saturation and then increased the Saturation just a bit by sliding the bar to the right. I might have made her shirt too bright. It’s hard to find the line between enhancing and transforming.

Note to self: Keep working on that gentle touch. Don’t be afraid to use the undo button and start over.

brighter flowers

What pretty roses, Sarah, and such a nice, bright shirt.

Scott Kelby says most (okay, all) pictures need a bit of sharpening after the colors have been adjusted. Who am I to argue with an expert? I followed his instructions for sharpening a portrait. Kelby explains the reasons behind the various settings and includes numbers for basic sharpening, sharpening soft subjects, portraits, as well as moderate and maximum sharpening.

I’m telling you, this is an awesome book!

Again I went over to that wonderful little Enhance menu (seems like I spend much of my time there) and clicked on Unsharp Mask. I set the numbers to Amount 75% — Radius 2 — Threshold 3. Now that I look over the pictures I don’t see very much change after applying the sharpening (or rather unsharpening) tool. Interesting. Of course, subtle editing is theoretically the goal in this operation so I should be pleased.

I thought Sarah’s lips looked a little pale so I selected them and darkened the saturation level just a bit. Too much and she looked like she was wearing makeup. I wanted to try out one other tool in Photoshop’s portfolio so I decided to give Sarah a few highlights. I used the Dodge tool to “paint” some lighter streaks in her hair. I’m not sure it looks natural so I probably wouldn’t use this in my final picture but it was fun and certainly more affordable than going to the salon.

highlights

Would you people STOP looking at me, please.

So there you have it, a nice little tutorial on Photoshop Elements 5 from someone who knows little but can obviously read and follow directions. :)

Here’s a set of before and after pictures, side by side:

before after

Tune in again for another unique modification of this picture.

Kathy

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Music

All Down Through the Ages

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Beware: this blog entry has no pictures! Kathy went to bed early without blogging, and so, like an eel, I slither into the vacuum she left. Unfortunately, I have no pictures to share. You have been warned. :)

About ten days ago I wrote a post (Gotta Tell Somebody) about the powerful and touching Bible stories told in song by Don Francisco, a Christian musician I enjoyed in the 70′s and 80′s. I promised that I would post a review of Too Small a Price (another of Francisco’s songs), but I’ve changed my mind, and that will have to wait.

Yesterday, as we prepared the house for the Small Group Bible Study that often meets at our house, there was a moment of uncharacteristic silence, and I noticed that there was no music playing. This is pretty unusual for us, especially on Sundays when we do much of our cleaning — Kathy and I love to have Christian music to lift the spirits of any who are discouraged.

Because my wife is such a variety chick, we try to have a lot of music available — Kathy doesn’t like to listen to any one song or album too much. I tend to fixate on a small group of favorite songs, and it is not uncommon for me to listen to a single album (on shuffle repeat) for a whole day. Whenever there is no music playing, whoever notices it first gets to choose what we listen to (at least for a while), and so I quickly fired up Media Player on my computer and launched one of my favorite Don Francisco songs.

When the song was over, David (who was quietly playing a computer game in the kitchen) piped up:

“I like that song better than Blessed Be Your Name.”

This is nearly an heretical statement in our family, because that song (I first heard it recorded by Tree 63) had a huge impact on me, as partially discussed in this post from 2005. My children know that it is my favorite song, and several of them share that preference (or pretend to, hoping I’ll share my ice cream with them).

But it is true that this song is my favorite of the Don Francisco songs. I have a lot of favorites. This one is a particularly pretty and poignant song about God’s love for us ‘all down through the ages’ and His desire to be reunited with us, in spite of our sin and our rejection of Him. Please click on the Audio MP3 link below … I hope you enjoy it.

Adam, Where Are You?


Unashamed and naked in a garden that has never seen the rain,
Rulers of a kingdom, full of joy — never marred by any pain,
The morning all around them seems to celebrate the life they’ve just begun;
And in the majesty of innocence the king and queen come walking in the sun

But the master of deception now begins with his dissection of the Word
And with all of his craft and subtlety the serpent twists the simple truths they’ve heard,
While hanging in the balance is a world that has been placed at their command
And all their unborn children die as both of them bow down to Satan’s hand.

And just before the evening in the cool of the day, They hear the voice of God as He is walking
And they can’t abide His presence, so they try to hide away;
But still they hear the sound as He is calling:

“Adam, Adam, where are you?
Adam, Adam, where are you?
Adam, Adam, where are you?”

In the stifling heat of summer now the gardener and his wife are in the field
And it seems that thorns and thistles are the only crop his struggles ever yield
He eats his meals in sorrow ’til he sinks into the dust whence he came
But all down through the ages he can hear his Maker calling out his name.

“Adam, Adam, where are you?
Adam, Adam, where are you?”

And though the curse has long been broken
Adams’ sons are still the prisoners of their fears
Rushing helter-skelter to destruction with their fingers in their ears
While the Fathers voice is calling with an urgency I’ve never heard before
“Won’t you come in from the darkness now, before it’s time to finally close the door?”

“Adam, Adam, where are you?
Adam, Adam, where are you?
Adam, Adam, I love you!”

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Music, Project 365

Gotta Tell Somebody

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When I was a boy, there didn’t seem to be many ‘contemporary’ Christian music artists cranking out CDs. This may have been because CDs hadn’t yet been invented — in that day, it was 8-track, LP record and that latest in audio technology, tape cassette. Or maybe they just weren’t trying hard enough. At any rate, I remember Amy Grant, DeGarmo and Key, the Imperials and 2nd Chapter of Acts. Later I came across Petra and that new punk kid with the weird name, Michael W. Smith. But for a long time, if you wanted to hear something new in contemporary Christian music, you had to wait 18 months for one of a handful of artists to record a new album. Sometimes it seemed a bit of a long wait — I doubt modern kids with their iPods can imagine the barren nature of the soundscape. We old folks also walked seven miles to school in blinding blizzards, uphill both ways.

Don Francisco

Somewhere along the way I acquired a Don Francisco record or two, and was captivated by the first-person Bible stories he told in song. Now, when it seems as though you can’t shake a tree for fear that a Christian musician will fall out of it onto your head, these kind of songs seem to have fallen out of vogue. Ray Boltz (author of Watch the Lamb, my favorite first-person Bible song of all time) has a few under his belt, and Carmen wrote an excellent, amusing song from the perspective of Lazarus. Apart from those songwriters, though, most seem to have neglected this powerful literary device.

One of Francisco’s Bible songs, Gotta Tell Somebody Gotta Tell Somebody retells the story of Jairus, as he appeals to Jesus on behalf of his dying daughter (the gospel of Mark, chapter 5). If you know the story, you may remember that Jairus’ daughter dies while he is still escorting Jesus through the streets back to his house. It still brings a tear to my eye whenever I listen to it, as I imagine Jairus’ desperate faith, hoping against hope that his little girl might be raised from death.

The resurrection of this twelve-year-old girl is one of only nine such miracles in all of scripture, not counting the unspecified number of dead people who were resurrected when Jesus died on the cross (Matthew 27:52). (I reach the count of nine as follows: Jesus, Lazarus, the Zarephath widow’s son, the Shunnamite’s son, the unknown man with cowardly friends in 2 Kings 13:21, Jairus’ daughter, Dorcas/Tabitha, the Nain widow’s son, Eutychus).

Don Francisco
Don Francisco — picture borrowed from his website

But I digress. The cool thing about these songs is the way Francisco communicates the emotion that the people in the stories may have felt — the songs really help me to identify with the characters in the Bible stories, and reach my heart rather than just my head. Click the MP3 audio link above to listen to the song.

As soon as I saw the MP3s were available, I rushed out to download a handful of the Bible stories, in particular. I loaded them up on Daniel and Rachel’s MP3 players, and strongly encouraged Joshua to listen to them — I want my kids to feel these stories in the heart the way I did when I was a boy.

Joshua listens to a Don Francisco Song
Joshua was a good sport for this staged picture. Doesn’t his new haircut look nice? Please feel free to comment — tormenting our teenager is a major perk of parenting.

Francisco adheres closely to the scriptural account, but adds some believable reaction, as in this line:

And although I tried to steel myself I trembled when he said
“Why bother the Teacher anymore, your little girl is dead.”

… or in the way Jairus’ wife is finally able to cry after her daughter is healed:

She rose and walked across the room and stood there at our sides
My wife knelt down and held her close and at last she really cried

Although having ready access to the written Word of God is a huge advantage that many Christians today enjoy, I think that sometimes we become so familiar with some of the stories that we lose some of the passion and excitement. Francisco’s songs touch my heart and renew my exhilaration with the awesome power of God and how I ought to react to His love.

Recently, Don and Wendy Francisco made the decision (which I applaud) to post MP3 versions of their music for free download, asking only for donations in return. If the music ministers to you, I encourage you to download and donate as your conscience dictates.

Tune in next week for a review of Too Small A Price, a song told from the perspective of a thief crucified next to Jesus.

Project 365 — Day 228

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Blogs & Websites, Homeschooling

Homeschool Conference

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Last weekend I said goodbye to my darling husband, adorable children and set off for the big city. Since we live in the suburbs this doesn’t have quite the dramatic flair it could have, say if we still lived out in the country. Ah well, we take our flair where we can, exaggerated if necessary.

I wrote about my search for beauty during the weekend (found it in my feet, of course) but I never blogged about the homeschool conference itself. I thought it was obvious that the conference was just an excuse to go away for the weekend, enjoy some time with an old friend and shop, but I guess I should at least write a little bit about the conference.

I would certainly be remiss if I didn’t mention one particular individual I saw at the homeschool conference – Lee Binz. Lee is an amazing woman I first “met” through an online homeschool e-mail group. Last year we visited over coffee with another loopie, Cynthia. My family has learned to accept the fact that a good portion of my “friends” and homeschool buddies are known to me only through cyber space.

cindy, lee and kathy

I met Cynthia and Lee “in real life” at Starbucks June 2006. Nothing bonds a trio like legally addictive stimulants.

Lee homeschooled her two sons through high school, graduating them both last year. Since then she has developed a consulting business for families homeschooling high schoolers. She offers help with transcripts, scholarship search, general record keeping and assignment scheduling. Her website, The Home Scholar provides more information on these different services.

lee's table

Lee also has a wonderful blog and e-mail newsletter available. Her blog features links to articles, tips, product samples and more. I highly recommend grabbing a cup of coffee (or mocha smoothie) and spending some time reading Lee’s blog. You can even listen to a radio interview of Lee and her son from Seattle’s KGNW 820 AM.

Lee and her husband had a beautiful table at the conference. They probably had the most stylish and attractive display of any of the vendors. Featured at one corner was a drawing for a lovely (huge) gift basket. At another spot they had small give-aways for the children. Everything was coordinated, the colors bright and fresh. It was a delight to look over all of Lee’s materials and talk with her about her business.

Last summer Lee came to my house and directed a course on teaching math through games, using the book, Family Math. She was an accomplished teacher and did a wonderful job. She could easily have led us through another entire workshop. Perhaps next year she will be one of the speakers at the homeschool conference as well as one of the vendors.

lee and kathy

It was lovely to see you, Lee!

Kathy
P.S. The rest of the conference was nice too. :)

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