Photo Wednesday

Photo Wednesday

This was my dads ship 

USS Oriskany (CV-34)

I found it on line about a year ago in some public photos on a message board. Not sure who took it but the credit info that was included is on top.

 

Online Eyeglasses

Last week I entered the realm of ordering my glasses online. I needed a pair of sunglasses and the eye dr was way to expensive. I got my script from my eye Dr. which wasn't a big deal although they did want to know why I wanted it. I hopped on line and started looking around. I ended up going to Zenni Optical. I hunted around for days trying to decide what would look good on me. I have zero fashion since so picking something that will look good on me is very tough. I finally settled on a pair of aviator sunglasses that were sorta similar to my favorite pair. They were 6.99 and I went them over another pair because well they were cheep so if  they sucked I really wouldn't be out that much money. I was surprised that putting in the prescription information was easy you basically just copy it from the paper the Dr. gives you to the boxes on your screen. I selected to have a gradient tent on my sunglasses. They came with a free UV/Anti glare coating. The hole making and shipping process was actually just as quick as ordering from the eye Dr's and I didn't have to go back to pick them up they came to my mail box. There are some instructions on the website on how to adjust them not all that hard as long as you are careful. I did feel like the frame was a little different from what was in the picture they look more rounded than they did in the pictures but they are still ok for $15 I really couldn't beat it. I do think I will go with a little different shape aviator frame next time. Over all it was a great experience and from now on I will be ordering my glasses online.

ArtAchieve Entire Level I Review

It's art time in our house. I though it would be fun for the girls to do some art this summer. We are loving ArtAchieve.The girls are doing the Entire Level I lessons. This is the first level of art lessons that are offered by ArtArchieve. 

First you need to download the lesson pages that you want to do. We started with the first one of course. I downloaded all the pages needed for them to do the lesson. The warm up pages come in different levels of difficulty so if you have a younger child you can have them do the easier warm up pages. The girls tried out both the easy and more difficult ones. The more difficult ones just have more detail in them. You will watch either a PowerPoint lesson or a video, then do your drawing.

Each lesson teaches a different drawing technique and I felt like each one built on the others to improve your drawing ability. The videos were nice because they some times made a mistake and did something to fix it. This was great because it showed my daughter that no one is perfect and everyone makes a mistake that there is no right or wrong in art. Both the videos and power point lessons are easy to understand and follow. Some times a marker was used to do the drawing in the lesson and the girls thought he should use a pencil first because you can erase a pencil. Then go back over the drawing with marker and color once it was finished. 

The lessons start out simple. Learning how to make different kinds

of lines that you would typically use in drawing. Then it moves on to learning about how to do shading on round and square objects. These are all great stepping stones to becoming a good artist. I felt that it gave a nice foundation to some of the basics. The upper lessons have you work on more complicated drawings. Things like the Chinese dragon and a dragon fly. They are more complicated than the first 4 lessons but they are still simple enough to be considered beginning drawing. 

My little one enjoys the warm up pages the most. The warm up pages breaks up the picture in small pieces so they can just practice making some of the lines. The little bite sized pieces make it a little less intimidating for her. Eventually I think she will work up to feeling confident enough to draw the picture as a hole. She says they are fun and ask me to print more than one copy of the one we are working on for the lesson. She likes to do them several times. 


My oldest prefers to just jump in and tackle the big picture. She does the warm ups but she would rather just jump into the actual picture. She seems to prefer the power point to the video as she can click to the next page when she is ready. She said she likes to draw the picture at the same time the instructor does. So the power point is just a little easier to control and she can go step by step to draw the picture. 

We are looking forward to finishing up Level 1 of ArtAchieve. I would love for you to click the banner and read the reviews on the other levels of ArtAchieve. 



Social Media Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Artachieve
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/artchieve  @artachieve
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/artachieve/
Google+: https://plus.google.com/+artachieve
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnahofland/

Photography Challange

I challenged my self this year to take some sparkler photographs with the girls and some fire works photos. I am still learning how to do this and I think they came out well for my first try. If you have any tips I would love to hear them. So scroll though and let me know what you think.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!