Monthly Archives: December 2011

Screen time

How to secure a lifelong fan

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Bubba Watson has long held the esteemed title of Official Professional Golfer of ButterscotchSundae.com for several reasons:

  1. He seems like a genuinely nice guy. This opinion is based solely on his Twitter feed.
  2. He was born on November 5, 1978. I was born on November 4, 1978. We are practically twins.
  3. His name is Bubba.
  4. He participated in this:

Recently on Twitter, he’s been doing a promotional giveaway kind of thing called Bubbaclaus. He issues a challenge every day, people respond with a photo or a video, and then he gives away a prize. Yesterday’s challenge was to “take a photo trying to look like [Bubba].” So we went outside and did this:

The grip might not be spot-on, but I think the hair and the game-face are pretty well perfect. Apparently Bubba thought so, too. Because later he tweeted this:

Pete was very excited to hear he’d won “the Bubba contest.” So excited, in fact, that he slapped himself in the head and shouted “Aw man!” I don’t think the shirt, visor and golf glove Bubba’s sending will fit him just yet, but we’ll be sure to keep them in a place of honor until they do.

Thanks again, Bubba. You made an already nice day even nicer!

Family matters

Say cheese, Santa Baby.

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I thought it would be fun to set up a “Christmas photo booth” this year, so I put it on my December list. Yesterday I realized that December is frightfully close to over and that so far I’d only done six of the 15 things on the list.

So Pete and I pulled out some wrapping paper, taped it to the wall and starting taking pictures. And it was fun — he especially enjoyed taping up the paper — but it didn’t work as well as I’d hoped it would.

Notes for next time:

Lighting
Find a place with better light. I haven’t figured out the best places in the house to take pictures yet, but now I’ve found one that is definitely not the best. A large piece of plywood + fabric/paper + outside would work much better. But then I’d have to build something, probably, and we all know that’s not happening.

Backdrop
Possibly use fabric instead of wrapping paper as a backdrop. The wrapping paper was too shiny, considering that I had to use the flash because of the not-so-good lighting. Also, don’t let the 4-year-old boy choose the backdrop. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t what I wanted to use.

Props
Pete and I threw this together in about 5 minutes while Poppy was at a play date, which explains why Poppy isn’t in the pictures. And also why the only props I had were a few stuffed animals and a Santa hat. Had I done a little research before doing the project, I might’ve found these holiday photo booth props from Oh Happy Day. They’d take a little effort to put together, but the results are very cute. If I ever have a Christmas party, I’m making them.

If I took my time putting things together and setting the stage, this would make a yearly neat annual tradition. There are a few days left before Christmas, so I might give it another shot sometime this week.

Do you have an annual photo tradition?

(That question reminds me of a story.

When Poppy was born, a friend of mine gave her a teddy bear that she’d made. On the 15th of every month, we took her picture with that bear. She grew and grew, she learned to sit up, she gnawed on the bear. It was going to be a magnificent series from her first year.

And then, days before her first birthday, I left the bear at my dad’s house. Hundreds and hundreds of miles away. And I didn’t realize it until Dad had already left home for a drive of hundreds and hundreds of miles of his own.

So we never got that final, first birthday picture of a girl and her bear.

I’m still a little sad about that.)

But anyway: You. Do you have an annual photo tradition? Or a story of a photo-tradition-gone-wrong? Do share.

Flotsam / Jetsam

Child maintenance quandaries

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The children are playing together this morning. They sound very happy. And yet I’m worried. Because they’re playing in the bathroom, and the water is running in the sink, and I keep hearing things like:

“Oh, that’s perfect!”

“I look beautiful!”

“You look like a Muppet rock star!”

“Let the styling begin!”

I should put a stop to this, I’m pretty sure. But they’re having such a good time. And they’re not arguing. I’m just going to deal with the consequences later.

(The Consequences Later:

“Did you put soap in your hair?”

“It was the only way we could get stylish.”

“I see. Go get ready for your bath.”)