It’s Canadian Turkey Day aka Thanksgiving today and we’re rolling around on the floor with stomach cramps from overdoing it on delicious goodies.

We had a meal with the BG’s dad last night and with my whole family at the BG’s mom’s place tonight. Last night was ham, mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables and DQ blizzard cake, and it was fantastic. Tonight was the traditional meal we have on every holiday and my absolute favourite. Turkey, stuffing, gravy, ham, mashed potatoes, cabbage rolls, salads, sweet potato casserole (a la my mom), carrot turnip casserole (a la my mom), buns, pumpkin pie, pumpkin cheesecake, fresh fruit…and that’s after a huge lunch at my parents place of french toast with blueberry sauce & back bacon.

Now you know why my stomach hurts! Good thing I’ve got this baby to make the fat look nice and hard for another couple of months.

I’m 28 weeks pregnant all of a sudden and I have no idea how that happened. We’re really sucking at pictures this time, but I’m hoping to get a good one this week. I just got (finally!) my new SLR camera and have been having a blast with it. I’ve saved for 2 years to get it and I’m SO excited! I researched for 2 years as well and ended up going with a Pentax k100d (over the Rebel XTi and the Nikon D40x, which were the other two I seriously considered) for two main reasons. First of all, 10 megapixels is a complete waste if you’re not printing huge posters. Many people think megapixels equals quality but it’s only printing size. Six megapixels will easily print 8×10 images and that’s a conservative estimate. They’ll actually print much larger and you wouldn’t know the difference between it and a 10 megapixel image with the naked eye. The other reason was the image stabilization feature. On the Canon, that feature is in the lenses and the lenses are very expensive. On the Pentax, the image stabilization is built right into the processor and works amazingly well. I can actually shake my camera like jello while shooting and get clear images. It’s rather amazing. Oh, and the $200 saved was nice too. I found the Canon and Nikon products to be very proprietary (as in, you have to use their accessories and you pay heavily just for the name) whereas my Pentax has great Pentax accessories but also has things like an AA battery backup option that isn’t available for the other brands. I’m sure I would love both of the other cameras as well, but I’m extremely happy with mine and it’s cheaper. I have some images uploaded to share but since my laptop’s dead I have to install the BG has to install some software on this one so I can shrink them to blog size.

I received a few emails asking for photography and editing tips after posting the results of my first portrait experiment and my first outside job. Here’s a money saver for you if you’re not interested in buying Photoshop or Elements…

1. Paint.NET. A much better alternative to MS Paint, and it’s FREE! It supports layers, offers unlimited undo functionality, has lots of special effects and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools including great cloning and text manipulation.

or…

2. PhotoPlus6 is also free (version 8 is $4). It also has great special effects and great cloning. The text manipulation isn’t as good, but there are other things that make up for it. Like real customer support from serif.

They both have their benefits. They’re free, so I recommend that you try both and see which one you’re comfortable with! I, personally, prefer Photoshop (I’m working with CS2), but for those of you who aren’t either professionals or hopelessly addicted to photography, either of these free programs will work wonderfully.

[Edited to add: Picasa 2 is also great, but doesn't have the editing capabilities of these programs or Photoshop. It is, however, completely 'dummy proof' and fairly automatic. Thanks for the reminder, Deb!]

[Edited to add: Free software giveaways daily here No Microsoft stuff. New stuff by the smaller developers that usually costs money. Download and install the day it's linked and you get it free! Link courtesy Dumb Little Man.]

Oh, and, ahem…next time you’re in a hurry because your kid is napping? Do it, Pronto.

You have until MIDNIGHT TONIGHT to enter the current contest at Much More Opinionated! Make sure all of your friends and family know about it. You do not have to be nursing to use it! You could even give it as a gift if you’re the lucky winner. Helping send traffic to my wonderful site sponsors will bring more contests and more chances for you to win some very cool stuff! (Please note: Comments are now turned off over there.)

We’re busy with family stuff all weekend ~ watch for a guest post at the other place and hopefully I’ll be checking in here and there.

You know this new addiction of mine? You know. Portrait photography?

Here are the results of my first gig.

(I purposefully only chose faceless prints to share with the interweb - she’s impregnito incognito.
Even though the copyright is mine, I respect her privacy.)