Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Penguins, Film, and the Neatest Pencil Sharpener EVER!


9-11: We will never forget. My prayers to those of you who lost friends and family that day.

I have a house full of penguin enthusiasts.  We have penguins of the stuffed variety all over, and we had to go to Moody Gardens at Galveston Island this summer to see the real penguins.  Oh my, they are just way too cute!

I decided to buy the boys disposable film cameras for our trip (who knew they still had them?) so they would actually have pictures printed for their albums.  Otherwise they take a hundred photos on their cheap digital camera and I never take the time to print any of them.  I can't keep up with my own photos, so what in the world am I going to do with hundreds of photos of blurry penguins, dirty floors, ceiling fans, dead bugs, and brother's naked bottom???

By the way, I threatened spankings and no candy the rest of their life if they took any photos of anybody naked on their film cameras.  I can't even tell you what I have found on their digital camera that I had to delete.  There are some things that no Walgreens employee should EVER have to see in their lifetime.

Case in point, back when I was nursing Imp, Duke apparently took a photo of me topless when I wasn't looking.  I saw the photo, decided I was not Playboy material, and forgot to erase it.  So of course a few days later he misplaced the camera and I just knew that there was a photo of my boobs in a less than appealing angle floating around somewhere.  We found the camera and I learned a valuable lesson and now immediately delete all questionable photos.

The boys' thankfully G-rated film photos turned out surprisingly well, especially the outside ones, and the boys have an album started!  I think I am going to go to Ebay or Etsy and buy them both some 80's film snappy cameras.  They run $10-$25 and would be great for young photographers.

I think you become a better photographer if you have to carefully consider and compose each shot because you only have 27 photos on that roll. Not to mention I think we all miss the excitement of turning in film and getting that white envelope full of photos.  Luckily Walgreens and CVS still have 1 hour developing, but I am sure it won't be long before you will have to send off film.


Back to the original reason I wrote this post.  I wanted to show off my newest purchase.  It looks just like a vintage camera, right?



Here it is sitting with the boys' school stuff.  Notice the penguin with the hat (Sweetie) and the penguin framed print (drawn by both the boys last week).   Told you they love penguins.  Oh, and if you go to Spec's or probably any liquor store you can sometimes pick up free-to-cheap cigar boxes.  I used these in school to store my pencils when I was a kid, so when I saw them at Spec's I had to snap up a few (25 cents each!).

I love to smell new cigar boxes, does that make me strange?


Anyway, we had been using those horrible little pencil sharpeners you get at Walmart and I had sharpened so many pencils the other day that I had a blister on my finger.  I was going to buy an electric sharpener, but  they had such bad reviews and they were pricey and big.  So I decided to check out the old-fashioned manual ones and found this little gem.

Some reviewers said it was difficult to figure out, but I guess my kids are geniuses because they both were using it within a minute.  You can set the sharpener for dull to sharp and it sharpens regular pencils and color pencils flawlessly the first time.  We have used it daily for weeks and it works perfectly.


The shavings are in the little drawer on the bottom with the "glass" lens.  So clever.  If you need a pencil sharpener and love old cameras, you have to go buy the Kikkerland Camera Pencil Sharpener
before it is gone.  I think they would make great Christmas presents and plan on getting one for my niece.  I am going to pick up a second for me just in case I can't find them later and mine breaks.  We sharpen a lot of pencils in our house.

Hope you are having a great week!  I will have the CoffeeShop Carnival action and tutorial post coming up next.  I need to finish the screenshots.

Do you want to download my favorite CoffeeShop Actions or Design Elements in one convenient zipped file AND help support this blog? Just click here for my action pack or here for a download of some of my most popular design elements, storyboards, and textures.

4 comments:

  1. That sharpener is awesome! Want!

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    Replies
    1. Thank you! I love it and it is still going strong.

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  2. That is probably the coolest pencil sharpener I've ever seen! ;)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I love it and it is still working great!!!

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Rita