I do have a bunch of cool pics to show you guys from halloween (I assume you still want to see the awesome food and costumes, even if I am 2 months late?), plus some cool stuff for xmas coming up.  I’ll really try to be better this month!  I also have a cool giveaway coming up, as soon as I put the post together, so stay tuned for that.

And I’ve been trying to get in shape (a better shape than round) and I’ve been working out 4 times a week (that’s going from 0 times per week, so you see it is a bit of a change)–I’ve been doing FitWit for the last 2 months, which I’m really liking… well, as far as Dot could like anything related to exercise.  And now, this month I’m try to actually add eating healthy into to mix and see if I can lose five pounds by the end of the year.

Oh yeah, I promised a recipe:

Speaking of eating healthy, I posted a great roasted chicken and roasted cauliflower dinner over on Foodwhirl — super easy and tasty and healthy.  If you have any recipes I should check out, let me know, or post them to Foodwhirl too!

And book recommendations:

It seems to be the fashion these days, at least in my intown Atlanta circles, that everyone belongs to a wine… er I mean book… club.  So I figured you guys might like to know what I’ve been reading, and maybe you have some suggestions too?  Cuz that would be awesome, I need some new books to read!  :)

So for book club, we’ve read both of these lately, and both of which I’ve enjoyed:
Gone Girl: A Novel     Where’d You Go, Bernadette: A Novel

Very different books, but both excellent reads…  And good ‘book club’ books with lots of discussion possibilities.

Not for book club, but because I needed more stuff to read and libraries exist, I’ve also been reading this:

(The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making)

Which I’m totally unsure of how to describe, but it inspired the title of this post. It reminds me of Alice in Wonderland (or maybe the Wizard of Oz), and I read it, then promptly started reading it to my 7 yr old son for a bedtime story (although the language is definitely on the high end of child reading comprehension). I have no idea if you would like it, but read the first page, and you’ll know if it’s your kind of book.

I’m a big fan of Young Adult Fiction, so I’ve also recently read The Maze Runner which was an interesting apocalyptic YA book with a boy hero, and The Scorpio Races which I also liked.  And because I managed to check it out on my Kindle from the library (which you can’t ever find any books ‘in stock’) I got The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, which I’d never heard of, but it was a pretty interesting fantasy book with a female heroine.  Not a ‘oh my god awesome’ book, but a nice read.

So, you have any suggestions for me?

PS as always, support Dabbled for nothing by using my affiliate links above if you wanna buy these books!

New Stuff on Dabbled:

I cleaned up some stuff I’ve been meaning to do around Dabbled yesterday, so you’ll notice a few changes – nothing major.  I added Facebook comments as an option, and changed out the font, and cleaned up the formatting of the comments section.  I also added new and better share buttons, including Pinterest and Google Plus (and a “Pin It” hover link on photos, that I’m not sure I’m keeping, it seems a bit buggy – let me know what you guys think.)   I’ll be making a few more changes in the next few weeks if I have time, to make things easier to find around here.  So stay tuned!

Lazy Sunday

Today, however has just been pure lazy.  This morning early, The Boy & I walked down to the market to pick up some food for breakfast (my fridge is pitifully neglected!) and even then it was starting to get hot. So we’ve stayed in the rest of today while the Boy and the Husband played LEGO Batman 2 on the Wii (which I totally recommend, they are loving it).

Phone Photo Photoshopping Tips

So here’s the before and after on the photo, and the basic steps to get there:

Your quick and dirty photoshop tutorial (assumes photoshop knowledge):
1) Crop to a better size (I went for square)
2) Use the Levels sliders to bump up contrast a bit
3) Do a faux cross-processing using Curves
4) Draw a large oval in the center and use Feather to feather the edges of the selection greatly (amount will depend on the pixel size of your photo). Use Curves (drag up) to lighten the center just a bit.
5) Select and feather another large oval, then select inverse. Use Curves (drag down) do darken the edges.

Your mileage may vary, of course, as every photo is different, but play around with these ideas on your next mediocre phone photo!

• For our first night we stayed at a little eco hotel in downtown Cancún, El Rey del Caribe. It was lovely– a little oasis in downtown with a jungle like courtyard with a pool, hammocks, and a huge banyon tree. Great for a single night before we trekked off to the wilds. We also ate a great little italian pizza place called Tigre Y Toro, that was walking distance from the hotel.
• Our favorite part of the trip to the ruins was Ek Balam, where you can still climb the pyramids–it’s not as extensive as Chichen Itza, but definitely worth a visit. Although it was hot as the devil, we all had a great time doing that. We also stopped at a cenoté outside Valladolid, which was basically a natural pool inside a cave. Very cool, the kids loved swimming there.
• We spent the remainder of our time on Isla Mujeres, which we loved.  We stayed at the Ixchel condos, and had a hot tub on our rooftop deck that doubled as a kiddy pool for the boys to play in when we didn’t feel like going down to the real pool or beach.  Great location on North beach.
• We did a golf cart tour of the island, and found a fabulous beach restaurant with some of the best fish I’ve ever had.  More on the food later, we had incredible ceviche at this little beach bar too.
• All in all, a great, and mostly kid friendly vacation!

Plus, when we got home, the Tiny Prints cards I ordered for Father’s Day came in… Here’s the Scoop on that – and a free card for YOU too!

It was great to hang out with everyone and get pampered for mother’s day..

Now for punctuation: What the heck is this? You’re NOT supposed to use 2 spaces after the period at the end of the sentence? Who came up with that? I’ve always done it that way (I’m doing it that way right now, but of course, html will strip out the extra spaces, so you’ll never know.)
Seriously, do they not teach double spacing at the end of a sentence anymore?

2 years ago my resolution was to do Illustration Friday every week, and I succeeded!  And my art got better in the process.
Last year I worked on several big projects, like Foodwhirl.

This year?

ART:

Well, I think I want to start the Illustration Friday thing again.  It really did force me to draw, and I’ve been such a slacker with the artwork lately.  I’ve been focusing on web design, which I love (and is more easily lucrative!) but I’m afraid both my art and my blogging (here and at Foodwhirl) has suffered for that.  So, I don’t think I’ll be able to make EVERY week, but I should at least make an attempt, right?

Did you know that I developed a new site look for Dabbled, and I’ve never implemented it?  I think that should go on the list of things that need to happen this year–redesign of Dabbled.  As well as porting my poor neglected art site (nancydorsner.com) over to WordPress, and integrating all these sites together under my own little media empire (insert maniacal cackling here).

So, that’s just two little things.  And you can hold me to it!
I’m sure I should come up with a few more…
What about you? What are your goals? :)

I threaded up some big embroidery needles with embroidery floss, and gave him some sweater scraps to use as patches (why yes, I do have a bag of old sweaters in my closet just for the purpose of things like this!) I showed him what to do, and did a few stitches to get him started, and he did great! Here’s a poor cell phone photo of him in action..

I think the patches actually add a great deal of interest to the original snake. He’s also re-named the snake “Patches”. One of the eye buttons had broken, too, so we replaced the buttons with some eyes I’d gotten from the lovely Colleen at Some Art Fabric (who has actually made a sweater snake in the past!). I’m loving Snake 2.0! Here’s the how-to on how to make the snake, if you’d like one yourself!
He loves his snake, and he loves that he did it himself (with a bit of help from mom here and there).

I’m bummed that I missed most of my crafty friends… I’ll have to plan ahead better next time!  But I did get to see lots of my artist friends, so that made up for it.  And of course, the people watching was awesome as usual..  here’s a few costumes for you.  Plus there are more photos on my flickr page.

<<=This was my favorite costume from Dragon-con this year.  The REAL Iron Man!  Love the details… like “Starch Industries on the handle.  (Though I have to admit, I totally didn’t get it the first time I saw it… I was just “wow, what a cool giant iron!”  Then it hit me!)

Other costumes and stuff below…

..

Coming tomorrow – Cool artists from Dragon-con!

Here’s me… in a borrowed helmet and wig.  No, I did not dress up for Dragon con.. Too Much Work!

10 points if you can a) get the reference (what am I doing–it made perfect sense at the time, I swear!), and 10 more points if you can b) tell me why threatening this bunny is a very bad idea.  :)

Here’s a few more below – click on a photo to see larger or as a slide show. Or you can go to flickr for more Dragon-con 2010 photos!