15th Birthday Photo Shoot

In just over 2 weeks, my oldest daughter Raegan will be 15 years old. Tonight, it was gorgeous out- sunny, warm, a light breeze... so nice. But, Raegan had to baby sit. By the time she got home, I was busy as well. I had literally only 25 minutes of free time at once point tonight, and I grabbed Rae and my new camera. I tugged her out the door, had her brush her hair in the car, and drove around the corner to a small outdoor "market" place.

The market place has nice richly colored brick columns, which make for nice back ground color.

Here are some of my favorite images from the shoot, which was done in about 15 minutes. The first image below is unedited- it was shrunk and watermarked, but no edits were done to it.

I took this photo intending it to look as it does above- sideways with Raegan laying down on the ground. When I started playing with it, though, I found it looked better right side up, so that's what I did- flipped it.

I do really like it this way- in color. But, I decided to keep trying some edits.

This is what I settled on- I love it in black & white- it's crisp and clean, and she's more striking in it.

Here are some more of my favorites- some have several edits with them.

Frugal Video Games: 6 WII Games for $30!

This was first posted on Gather, which referred to a blog, which referred to another blog.

Here's the deal-

WII Games are on sale this week at Target, Buy 2 games, get 1 FREE! Great deal, right? It gets better. For starters, there isn't a limit, so you can buy 6 or even more all at once, on 1 transaction.

To make the deal sweeter, there is a coupon on Target.com (which is useable ONLY in store, NOT online!) for buy 2 WII games, get $10 off.

http://sites.target.com/images/2009HolidayCoupons/holiday_coupons_print.html

So here's what you do- Pick out 6 games for $14.99, and print out 3 of the $10/2 coupons. The register will do the rest of the work.

6 Games@ $14.99 = $89.94
2 Games@ FREE= -$29.98
3 Coupons@ $10= -$30.00
Total = $29.96!

That's just under $5 per game, or a savings of $10 off per game! This can be done with any games, but obviously, the price will adjust depending on what games you find. There are even a few older titles for only $9.99, so you could probably shave the price down just a bit more.

This hasn't been tested by me, but has been tested by others. Hubby's already plotting how to get 6 cheap games. ;)

UPDATE:

I had to go to 2 different Target's before I found one that had a decent selection of the cheap games, still, but I found one!

I purchased 5 of the $14.99 games, and 1 of the $19.99 games. 2 of the $14.99 were free, and they accepted all 3 $10 off coupons! Now, to decide who gets what for Christmas...

Good luck!