Time has flown since we found out, and we’ve been focused on finishing up many different projects around the house.  First, we still have a few finishing touches left on the main floor bathroom.  The majority of the work is done, and with just a few more hours of work, I think it will be 100%!  Here are some in-progress pictures:

Above is the shower surround… half grouted :)  The grout is now 99% done, and needs to be sealed and caulked.  The fixtures are also installed.

The picture above is our beautiful very-in-love-with-it sink and faucet!

Below is our overhead light fixture – hard to photograph, but it’s beautiful!

Hopefully the entire bathroom will be done soon and I will have some before/after pictures for you!

Next up is a quick sneak peak of the nursery.  We’re probably about 90% done with it – we just need to hang some curtains and add some artwork to the walls.

So that’s it in a nutshell – we’re expecting, and we’re busy getting our house ready for the baby!

Here are the “after” pictures:

I love all of the details – the fresh coat of paint on the wicker furniture, the brand new pillows, the box of fall goodies, the pear candles, the new door mat, the filler for the urn, and the new hanging baskets with ferns!  It makes a huge difference in how our house looks, and I couldn’t be happier!

I haven’t had a chance to rehang my ferns yet, but here’s the progress the roofers made.  I think our house is looking much more like a normal house now!

And here is how our backyard is looking these days… we actually had the fallen tree removed last summer, I just never updated our pictures (shame on me).

So there you have it!  A big change, but one that was “easy” on us, since we didn’t do the work!

I actually said I wasn’t going to share these photos in blog-land yet… because the room is very much not finished.  But I have a feeling it might get stuck here for a while, since most of our attention is on the bathroom at the moment.  So please look beyond the unfinished parts :)

(The mirror in the picture above will go on the wall directly above where it’s sitting.)

Obviously there are quite a few things that need to be updated still – namely, the floors, closet doors, curtains, and rug :)  I’m still playing around with other things like pillows as well.  But it’s clean, painted, organized, and we’re very happy to be upstairs!

First, here is the shot taken right out of the camera.  This is where most people stop.

Next, I adjust the image in Adobe Camera Raw, because I shoot all of my images in Raw format.  I make a few adjustments here; exposure, vibrance, fill light, contrast, etc.

Next, I fix the skin.  I remove blemishes (but never natural beauty marks) and smooth things out a bit.  This can sometimes be time consuming, as I remove each blemish individually using the spot healing brush in photoshop, and then use a method involving manually “painting” over the skin to smooth it out.  I also fix any harsh under-eye shadows.  At this point, I would also do some teeth whitening if needed.

Now, I’m going to work on the overall lighting of the image.  This mostly involves using curves layers in photoshop and is pretty quick.

Next up are the eyes.  I sharpen them, and I use a curves layer to make them a bit more intense.  Sometimes I also remove extra redness from them.  In this case, each eye was lit differently, so I tried to make them more consistent.

Next is the easiest and most rewarding part.  I run MCP Actions Fusion set, and play around with the different color combinations available to me.  It never ceases to amaze me how much this can enhance my images.

For this image, I also decided to crop it.  Usually I would do this at the beginning, but I wanted to show you my process first.

At this point, I save my image as a full resolution JPEG.  Next, I run another MCP Action to resize my image for facebook, sharpen it for online viewing, and add a watermark.

Here’s the final before and after for you, since you know I love those!

So there you have it.  A fully edited image.  I do this for each image, first in color, then in black and white (although not as much is required for B&W since most of the beginning edits remain the same).  So for each photo shoot I do, I perform this basic process at least 15-20 times.  Each individual edit takes me between 5 and 10 minutes, depending on the image.  Honestly, the price of any photographers photo shoot isn’t so much getting them during the shoot… it’s the editing afterwards.

Editing is also the major difference between getting photos done by individuals rather than at a large box store.  They may edit a little, but they will charge an arm and a leg to correct things like removing blemishes or whitening teeth.

Here is another example that took a bit longer.  I performed most of the edits listed above, but also needed to combine 2 images in order to get everyone’s faces looking great.  I also edited out mom as she was holding the baby.

And another I recently edited of my cousin, Sarah.

It’s always easier to edit when you start off with a strong image, but I do feel that it is a very important step to any image that I take.  I love how it just gives that finishing touch to the images and really makes them pop.

I hope you enjoyed this little peek behind the scenes!  If you’re a photographer, I’d love to hear if you do a similar process, less editing, or more editing than I’ve shown here!

You may have noticed a few recommended sites on my sidebar, and there happens to be a new one, called Shoot Fly Shoot.  I’ve been familiar with Kevin and Layla Palmer’s home blog, The Lettered Cottage, for some time, but just recently found out that they also have a photography blog.  They offer camera and photoshop video tutorials for a very reasonable price (to the tune of $69!).  I haven’t advertised on my blog since I switched it over to wordpress, but I thought that this was worth advertising for those who would like to learn to use their camera better and get it off of the auto setting (and for the sake of honesty, there is a monetary benefit in it for me)!

As you may have seen on facebook, this is the current view of our living room.

So what this means is … progress!  And as I mentioned on facebook… motivation.  The drywall is for the bathroom on our main floor.  We’ve been plodding away on it for quite some time now.  We gutted it all the way down to the studs, including all fixtures.  Everything is going to be updated, because honestly, there was nothing worth saving.

What we’ve done so far, with help from my dad:

• Gutted everything
• Installed new subfloor
• Installed a new bathroom fan
• Replaced the plumbing
• Installed a new tub
• Replaced and reconfigured the electrical
• Insulated the exterior wall
• Put up a plastic vapor barrier
• Began to install drywall

We’re really excited to see the drywall going up – it’s making it feel like a real room again!  Then our next adventure will be learning how to tile…

Other things that have been going on include painting the master bedroom upstairs (sorry, no pictures yet), and picking out paint colors for the bathroom and future nursery.  We always jump when we see Sherwin Williams having their 40% off sale.  It’s a great way for us to get their paints at a better price!  Here are the colors we chose for the two rooms:

Obviously the color might vary a little from screen to screen, but the top one, for the future nursery, is a pale seafoam green, and the bottom one is a faint greige.  It’s similar to our living room color, but a few shades lighter.

This summer has been a really busy time for getting things done on our house.  We’re actually getting a new roof as well, and the work is starting tomorrow.  I’m extremely excited about it!  We’re going with a black roof and white trim.  Here’s a mock-up I did a while back showing how it might look with a black roof (although in this image you can see we were considering a tan trim, but we ended up going white instead). Hopefully soon we will have a real image to show!

So it’s been pretty crazy around here, in between photo shoots and painting and drywalling.  But we’ve still made plenty of time for having fun as well.  In fact, we just got back from vacation a couple weeks ago.  So I’ll leave you with this drool-worthy beach I photographed  from the top of a lighthouse.  We had an absolutely amazing trip!!!

The mantel is ever changing as I find new things I want to display.

For instance, just today at a garage sale, I was fortunate to find an original painting, painted by the owner’s grandmother in the 70s!  I knew the colors would work and I loved the painting, so it found a good home on our mantel for only $2.

Another painting has also found it’s way above our couch… but this one was painted by me, and is still waiting on a frame.  (And of course I noticed AFTER I took the picture that it’s hanging slightly crooked.)

A couple of the pillows on the couch are new, too – I found the far left pillow just yesterday on clearance at HomeGoods.  The next pillow over I made out of vintage barkcloth I found up the street from us at a flea market.  The tiny pillow was a garage sale purchase.  And I made the far right pillow a while ago.

The yellow stand below was a free garbage find down the street.  The accessories on the table were either gifts or garage sale finds.

To match the barkcloth pillow, I made the ottoman.  I’d been itching to try using a big electrical spool as an ottoman, so after checking during our many trips to Lowe’s, I finally found one – they will give them to you for free!  (Are you noticing a theme, yet?  Free, free, cheap, cheap!)  I loosely followed the instructions I linked to above, but honestly I just made it up.  I got the idea and the basics from Design*Sponge, but just went with what worked for me!  To do the tufting, I followed (again, loosely) a tutorial I found here.

And to wrap this up, my favorite: the before-after shot!

Before any of the bushes were taken out:

Again after the first bush was taken out…

And then I showed you another picture with the bush gone.  But … I took it with a different lens.  And it bothered me, because the house wasn’t in the same perspective.  So I retook a picture today, trying to crop the house exactly the same as I did above.

Notice anything else different besides the bush disappearing, which you’ve already seen!?

I love seeing the progression of work we’ve done so far this spring.  It’s so gratifying to look at the changes!  If you noticed A.) the black shutters, B.) the hanging ferns, and C.) the potted urns, then congrats – you spotted them all.  I’d be pretty impressed if you noticed everything!

We took down our existing shutters, which turned out to be plastic (wop-wop), and spray painted them black.  I used Rustoleum glossy black lacquer on them, and here’s hoping they hold up to the weather!  Obviously the last paint used on the shutters didn’t fare so well, since you can see it “dripping” down the front of the house (anyone know how to fix that!?).  So I’m hopeful that the black will stick a little better!  Or maybe if it doesn’t, it’ll just cover up the white stains… hmm… :)

Just as a flashback, here’s a comparison of where we started when we bought the house to today.

I also potted my urns this week – they were looong overdue.  I got all of my flowers at Harbison’s nursery in Natrona Heights, if you’re in the area.  They’re super nice and have great quality, even if they are on the more expensive side.  There are two urns – if you look closely above, you can see the second urn on the left, partially hidden by the railing.  I’m still considering other placement options, and I’m open to suggestions!

As for the ferns, I purchased them at Lowe’s for $8.88 each.  New coconut liners for my hanging baskets, and we were good to go!

I’m loving all this nice weather – it makes it so enjoyable to work outside!

Starting before…

1 down…

Ta-da!