iMovie: iThink iM Doing It Right

This post is a twofer because not only is it about stuff I did, it's also about stuff I did after I did stuff. So there!

Way back in April I was a very busy bee. I threw my very first bridal shower, along with Miriam and Lauren, for our friend Anne. There were paper cranes.

And balloons.

And cupcakes.

And watermelon mojitos.

And a DVD that I made for power hour. It was a 60 minute collection of wedding or true love related moments from movies and TV, all with a countdown clock letting viewers know when a minute had passed and it was time to take another sip of beer/mojito/champagne/whatever. This idea came up somewhere into the party planning committee's second bottle of wine, and it didn't occur to any of us that we had no idea how to pull it off.

Fortunately, I got crafty and decided if I was ever going to figure out how to learn (the free trial version of ) iMovie, this was it! So I set about downloading clips from movies and TV. Memorable moments like this one:

And this one:

And even this one:

And, just for kicks, "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid.

If you're wondering why, then I guess you've never seen its effects on a group of a dozen drunk chicks before. It's really something else. Turns out, no one forgets the words. It's like "Shoop" in that way.

Then I set about futzing around, moving the clips in the timeline in iMovie until I got it to precisely 60 minutes. I even figured out how to add a title that came on at each minute.

It took me probably 20 hours to do it because I was still learning, and tended to delete clips by accident or make other rookie mistakes. But anyway, I did it. And it was a hit at the party.

For my next trick, I decided to rip off an idea from an old friend. Whenever he had parties, he'd set up his Mac laptop in a corner, and let all the guests take pictures of themselves with the photo booth application. Then, he'd string them all together to music and make a little video. It was a great way to remember the night... even the parts you might not actually remember.

So again back in April, my friend Delara hosted a Royal Wedding Party, for which we all had to dress "fancy" and/or "royal" and show up to watch the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. She set up her laptop. We took about 500 pictures (somehow)... and then I never got around to figuring out how to edit them together. Until now!

First I loaded all of the pics, then went through and got rid of bad ones. Then, I set the duration of each to be .25 seconds. I fussed around with the brightness and movement on them, and then imported a music track.

Now, here's where either iMovie sucks or I do, but if you edit a music track, you can only put a start and an end. So if you want to take the beginning of a song, then jump to somewhere later, you have to cut the first piece, then import the song again, then cut the part that you want out of that one. And then if you want to get one more piece of the song, you have to import it a third time and cut that part out. It seems like it would be easier if the audio editor just let you extract pieces of a track... and maybe it does in the pro version. Who knows.

In the end, I got the music edit good enough. I retimed a few of the pictures to be longer than .25 seconds so they'd mix it up a little to the beat. And here's the finished product:

BTW, apologies to my unborn child who, unbeknownst to me, had just recently taken up residency in my belly when I helped myself to many glasses of white wine at the party. Mommy promises to lay off the sauce from now on. But once you make it outta there, all bets are off.

If you're wondering, yes I also used iMovie to edit the timelapse video of the weekend bedroom makeover. Now that I've got the editing bug, I'll have to see what else I can create. Ideas?

Being Pregnant Is Weird

Admittedly the Doing Stuff Blog has been a little dismal lately. Avid readers may wonder what's become of the Doing Stuff Club. And why I haven't gone back to further explore the Old Zoo. And you don't even know that I didn't write a post on the return to Tribute Fest. What gives?

Will it impress you at all to say that I'm 14 weeks pregnant? I'd say this is proof that I've been doing something. If ya know what I mean. Wink wink. Nudge nudge.

Now that I'm meandering into my second trimester, things are looking up. I no longer feel like the walking dead, suspicious that someone's swapped my prenatal vitamins for Ambien. And I don't want to barf in your face any more. Not that morning sickness was ever as bad as I feared it would be. I believe everything I see on TV and movies, and what I saw of pregnant ladies is that they uncontrollably projectile vomit. But I'm happy to report that this is not the case. At least it wasn't for me. I was queasy constantly and found everything to be wholly disgusting, but I can live with that.

For those of you keeping score at home, yes I was pregnant while on the trip to Venice, and yes this is likely why I barfed on the plane. And, more importantly, why I couldn't stand the site of any food and why the whole city made my skin crawl. So if anyone had been planning a trip to Italy and my horrid reviews of the place lead you to rearrange your plans, let me assure you that Venice is, in fact, lovely... so long as your future child isn't forming in the depths of your gut, ruining your cheery outlook.

Aside from the physical lameness, being pregnant has been fine. I have a mile long list of things I can't do, eat, or drink, but it's not so bad. I'm rather enjoying the reprieve from drinking and it's been a good excuse for being a lazy homebody. Also, my boobs are bigger, which is fun.

I know some women absolutely love the whole pregnancy experience and gush about it. I don't think I will do this. I hope it isn't misinterpreted as being anything less than thrilled about my impending first born, who I'm sure will be seriously awesome and who I can't wait to meet.

What does all this mean for the blog? Nothing really. Probably just more stuff about babies. Oh, and we have to move AGAIN. The thought makes me want to bang my head against the nearest locker --if only I could find one. And this means undoing all of that work I documented on the blog, like my wall decals and my window treatments , and (heartbreak of all heartbreaks), my weekend bedroom makeover. So stay tuned for moving related posts and of course an adorable nursery decorating extravaganza.

That's all for now!