3rd Annual Valentine's Banquet

 Last month started out with a bang as we planned for the third annual Valentine's Banquet that our youth group gives to the married couples in our church. As a member of the planning committee, I was pretty busy, and that is mainly why I disappeared from here.

We held the banquet in our Pastor's basement, which is wonderful for our needs. Unfortunately, it is horrible for taking pictures, so bear with me.

We started out with this:

 

 And after several hours of decorating...

Ended with this...

 The banquet was country themed this year, so we used canning jars for cups, brown paper for table cloths, and roasted peanuts in paper bags for appetizers! It was more informal than other years, but it turned out very pretty!

 On the menu this year:

Country Style Ribs

Mashed Potatoes

Sweet Potatoes

Baked Corn

Rolls and Home-Made Jam

Apple Pie

Peach Cobbler

Homemade Icecream

 And, afterwards, the dish washing crew:

I was so proud of the boys for helping out with washing the dishes!

 Our gang:

Cody, Jenika, Jay, Melody, Carl, Elycia, Joshua, Tanya(Me!), and Chancy.

Like I said, picture taking was a little difficult.

I thought the motion captured in this one was pretty cool. =)

 The fellows:

Cody, Jay, Carl, Joshua, and Chancy.

 And the girls! I tried a little editing on this one, in an attempt to "rescue" it. =).

Melody, Jenika, Elycia, and I.

We had a great time planning and putting on this year's banquet, though I think we all breathed a sigh of relief when we were finished. Looking forward to next year.. perhaps a coffee shop themed dessert banquet! =)

}the wonder of photo editing{

I love this picture. It's fantastic. I want to frame it. But it didn't start out that way.

 This is what we started out with. Great smiles, precious moment, but seriously, what's with those arms?! 

Not to mention the other clutter that took away from the focus. So we cropped.

 Ah, much better! This is picture is great like it is. 

However, I'm a fan of cool effects, so we added a cool effect.

 

These are the Picnik 1960's and Cross Processing effects. Just a little of both, not to much. I like, like.

 But then I added my new favorite effect for pictures that look cool as "old". I like it, like it, like it. =]

 And then I put it in a film strip, just for fun. I like fun. And I like pictures. And film strip. Anyways. I also like photo editing. I like it, like it, like it! The end.

Picnic!!

Yay! The First Picnic of the Year! On such a monumental occasion we had to take a picture of course. After that, what started as trying to capture the spaghetti on the face of a little boy that wouldn't stand still turned into an impromptu photo shoot!

 

 

After several fails,

 

 we did finally manage to get a group picture too.