Chi-town

Last week I made a quick trip up to Chicago to attend a conference for work.

It was my first time in the Windy City and I was all on my own.

In an effort to pack light, I decided to leave my camera at home and rely on my iPhone. So here's a little bit of my trip in pictures.

View from my room:

A little sightseeing at the "bean statue" in Millennium Park:

The conference I attended was the "School of Word of Mouth" put on by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. It was all about spreading your brand via word of mouth, both offline and online (via social media). Since a social media presence (Facebook or Twitter or both) is a must for almost all of our clients, it was a great conference that I'm glad I got to attend. Lots of great case studies, best practices and helpful takeaways.

One of the sponsors of the conference was Crayola, so there was no shortage of doodling:

The second day of the conference wrapped up around 4, so I was able to get out and do a little sightseeing and shopping.

View from the Michigan Avenue bridge:

Michigan Avenue / Magnificent Mile:

I did some shopping looking on Michigan Ave (Kate Spade, Tory Burch and Bloomingdale's, anyone?) and then stopped for some Chicago-style deep dish pizza at Pizzeria Due.

And of course, I had to pick up some Sprinkles cupcakes for the road:

(Cinnamon Sugar, Chocolate Marshmallow, Peanut Butter Chip, Red Velvet)

They didn't look this pretty by the time I got them back to NC, but they definitely still tasted good.

Speaking of getting back to NC, what.an.ordeal. My flight was originally delayed 30 minutes, so I passed some of the time with a nice dinner at the airport Macaroni Grill:

Then my flight was delayed an hour and a half, and finally two full hours. We finally board two hours late and passengers and flight attendants spend 30 minutes wrangling carry-ons into the overhead bins (the flight is full). Just as they're cramming the last suitcases in and checking the ones that won't fit, the bottom falls out of the sky. The pilot says we now can't leave until there's no lightning within five miles.

Finally, the storm has passed and we're able to get on our way. Except not. The pilot now says the flight attendants who've been working all day have now reached their limit of 15 hours and are not legally allowed to continue working. We must all deboard the plane and wait for them to find another crew.

By this time I'm about to lose my shit. I've officially been at the airport for six hours now. I check my phone and see that the 8:45 flight to RDU is on time (it's now 8:35). Can I make it? I decide to make a run for it, except of course this flight is on a whole other concourse. I didn't think I was EVER going to get there. The blisters on my feet from walking around Chicago for two days weren't helping me. My sandals are slapping the airport floor as I'm getting shin splints and trying to speed walk and everyone is staring at my as a loudly make my way to the new gate.

I get there and the flight is already boarded. I beg the person at the counter to PLEASE get me on that flight. He starts furiously typing away and I'm telling him how badly I need to get on that flight and he screams "just let me think!" Deep breath Megan. Within seconds he's got my boarding pass printed and I get on the flight just as they're closing the doors.

The flight is only half full and I settle into a row of my own and thank the good Lord that I'm finally on my way back to NC. I pat myself on the back for taking the chance and making it work. That's probably the closest to the Amazing Race I'll ever get, and I'm quite okay with that.

Chicago, it was nice to meet you, but how about just letting me go home next time without all the drama, okay? Thanks.

Weekend Recap

We had a nice weekend at home this weekend.

It started out with a trip to Home Depot for gardening supplies and dinner at Moe's (our typical Friday night date -- a trip to Lowe's/Home Depot/Walmart/etc).

I stopped at Trader Joe's for some staples for the weekend while Lee went home to unload our Home Depot purchases. When I got home, he had an excited look on his face and said "I have something to show you."

That something was this:

He had found this little baby bunny in the yard and scooped him up. We had fun introducing the bunny to Sugar to see her reaction. Her reaction basically was: I want to eat him!

Of course, we didn't let her eat the bunny, and Lee safely transported him back into the woods.

Saturday was spent working in the yard -- Lee building a trellis for his grapevines and me planting two rose bushes. The fruits of our labor:

Not much now but when the roses are blooming and the grapevines begin to grow this should be a nice little section of the yard.

Today we had reservations to go zip lining at ZipQuest in Fayetteville. I had been hearing good things about ZipQuest last year but was not excited about the $79 per person price. Even though there are 8 zip lines, 3 suspension bridges, and the full tour lasts 2.5 hours, I wasn't sure it was worth $158.

So when a Groupon came along just before Christmas with a deal for two for the price of one (2 people for $79), I snatched it up and stuck it in Lee's stocking. We decided to wait until the weather got warm, and finally made our reservation this week.

We got there and suited up:

(These are all iPhone pics/videos, since taking a big honkin' camera on the course was not happening.)

Our guides ran us through some quick training and then it was time to zip:

One of the suspension bridges:

One of our guides with Carver Falls in the background:

Lee setting off on the last zip of the day:

I gotta admit, I was pretty skeert jumping off on some of zips as they got faster and we got higher and higher, but it was definitely fun and we had perfect weather. Nice to be out in the treetops on such a beautiful day.

And the perfect way to cap off a nice weekend? This:

Hope you had a great weekend too!

Photo Editing

I use Photoshop to edit my pictures, and use The Pioneer Woman's free action sets for most of my editing.

My favorite action by far? Boost. For 95% of my pictures, I simply run the Boost action and call it a day.

This is a SOOC (straight out of camera) shot from Brevyn's birthday:

And here it is with Boost (and a bit of cropping):

The pictures I took of Britt holding Brevyn were back lit, and therefore dark. For these, I ran the "Slight Lighten" action two times, followed by Boost.

SOOC:

After:

This shot was really, really dark, but I loved it, so I did my best to brighten it up a bit.

It turned out a little grainy and the background is blown out, but I still like the moment it captures.

The one picture I really wanted to get was Brevyn with her parents and birthday cake. I managed to snap two shots. The first was great of Brev and Britt, but Heith? Not so much.

Heith managed to keep his eyes open in the second shot, but by this point Brevyn was distracted and I liked her better in the first shot.

So I used some Lasso tool magic and swapped Heith's head from the second shot in to the first shot. After cropping and running Boost, I ended up with this:

Pretty cool, huh? This was my first successful head-swapping experience, so I just had to share.

My other go-to in Photoshop is the spot healing tool. It works wonders on blemishes, moles, flyaway hairs and, coincidentally enough, stains on high chairs.

So there's a peek at a few of my befores and afters. Any by the way, I have no idea what I'm doing so don't listen to anything I say. I'm sure there are 50 things I should have done differently to make these pics even better. But that's what practice is for, right?

Brevyn Turns One

My cousin's sweet baby girl turned one last weekend. Here are some of my favorite pics from her party.

Happy Birthday Brevyn!

P.S. -- I'm learning more and more about editing photos, and I especially had fun playing around with these. I'm by no means an expert, but I thought it might be fun to show you some of the "befores" of these shots and what I did to get to the "afters." I'll do that tomorrow, so swing by if you're interested.