Are you ready for back to school?

Some of us have already gone through back to school and the rest are coming up to it quickly.  I'm on my fifth year of back to school and I thought I'd share a few thoughts.  Please add any other ideas and tips to the comments below!

Clothing

• What still fits?  We go through a fashion show and get all the kids to try on all their clothing and depending on the kid, clothing gets moved to their younger sibling, or it gets put into donation or consignment piles (the older the kids get, the smaller the consignment pile gets ;)  It's a great time to purge all the stuff that doesn't fit any more or that has been destroyed.
• When possible, I try to get my kids' clothing used.  There are lots of great ways to do that in Ottawa, including great consignment sales (the Hot Tots is September 6 and the MBFA sale is on September 13) and there are all kinds of Facebook groups where people sell clothing, toys, etc, not to mention sites like Used Ottawa.  Leave a comment telling us what your favourite place to get used clothing is!
• Another great option is to have a clothing swap with your friends.  Kids go through clothing so quickly as kids and they play so hard in them, I'm all for keeping it as affordable as possible!

Making memories

I'm not always a super organized mom but the one thing I've always done is take first day of school photos.  I love seeing how the kids change over the years!  Make a point to take a shot on the first day of school.  We take ours in the same spot every year outside our front door.  The bricks really show how much they've grown from year to year.  Unfortunately this means we can't move until they're all done school now ;)  If you're worried your skills aren't going to capture the moment as well as you'd like, there are lots of photographers now offering back to school sessions too :)

Being mentally prepared

A lot of the hardest part of back to school is being mentally prepared.  Just remember:

• Breathe.  :)
• Don't sweat the small stuff.   (For all the planning I tried to do with clothing my daughter wore one of the most ridiculous outfits ever on the 3rd day of school.  If it isn't inappropriate weather wise, I just go with the flow )

Extra stuff

I asked people to share their back to school tips with us on Facebook.  Come add yours (or put them in the comments here!)

Want to share your back to school photos with us?  Do that on this Facebook post!

Bit of Momsense shares so great tips on back to school shopping and lunch ideas.

Happy back to school everyone!!

Attention Ottawa Parents: We want to hear your stories!

For nearly two and a half years, contributors to Kids in the Capital have been sharing their stories about what's going on in their families and around Canada's capital. We're proud of the community we've built here. We have our Facebook Page where we share information about local businesses, events and occasional parenting commiserations. ;) Twitter is our playdate planning and discussion spot, along with the Kids in the Capital Facebook Group where we can ask things in a more private, safe environment.

As great as each of those places are, the core of the Kids in the Capital community is the flow of blog posts that never fail to give ideas to so many families in Ottawa. This is a place where you can read new ideas and family-oriented information about about photography, arts and crafts, safety, cooking, technology and most importantly - everything there is to do around Ottawa.

We want to continue growing this community  and keep it thriving. Now that we're back into the swing of things with school, we want to provide the opportunity for each of you to join in our KIC community in a more active role.

The KIC blog runs content Monday through Friday and we need regular contributors. We show our appreciation for contributors every chance we get and each month, all contributors who submit two posts or more will be entered into a draw to receive a gift. Our October giveaway will be a set of tickets to see Beauty and the Beast!

If you're interested in contributing, please email us at kidsinthecapital@gmail.com. We look forward to reading your stories!

A few awesome iPhone apps for fun family pictures!

by Karen Lara mentioned a while back that her DSLR camera is broken (and I am really sad about that for her!) but all is not lost. As she mentioned, her iPhone has a pretty awesome camera - and it's true; she and I have the same phone. But, in addition to the great camera, there are some pretty awesome apps that can enhance your pictures and make fun collages right on your phone. Easy peasy! (Though I use an iPhone, some of these may also be available on other phones also.)

I have recently aquired a number of said apps that go far beyond the filters of Instagram. (Not that Instagram isn't a great app, but its uses are definitely limited.) Some are free. Some are paid. All of them combined will not cost you as much as a new point and shoot, let alone a new DSLR.

Before we start, though, a quick phoneography pro tip for you: Take your shots and save them to your photo library unfiltered and uncropped first. Use either the native camera app or something like Camera+ (which I honestly haven't gotten into like some, but I hear people rave about it) that allows you to go unfiltered. That will give you lots of opportunities to play with your pictures and you'll have one image that isn't going to be dated by a filter too.

I think most people know about Instagram, but just in case you don't yet, it's like a mini social network. You can connect with Facebook friends and  share photos to Twitter and Facebook. Followers can like or comment on your photos and you on theirs. It's great for quick sharing.

If you want more pizazz in your photos, here are a few other apps I'd suggest:

Snapseed - I've heard it called the Photoshop of the iPhone. It's pretty good. Nice filters and control with how intense you make them, as well as a few basic editing options. You can give your photos a nice little touch up on the fly without downloading to your photo editing software on your computer.

100 Cameras - This one was built by Trey Ratcliff, a photographer I've followed for a while now. It's my fun app to play with. There are so many filters and they're quite unique to anything else you'll find in other apps and it gives you full control over the intensity. You can even apply some funky textures to photos. It's not always ideal for photos of people, but you can have a lot of fun with objects and landscape photos.

Once you've edited and applied any filters your photo(s), you may want to have more fun with it! There are some great apps to create collages and add text to your photos right on your phone.

Diptic - This is a basic collage app with all square/rectangular layouts. You can manipulate the layouts to an extent and you can reposition pictures so that it the portion of the image showing is what you want.

Over - Have you ever wanted to add some text to a photo rather than just providing context in a status update with it? Over is fun for adding in text. There are a multitude of fun and funky fonts to choose from, as well as lots of colours and control over size. You can adjust the tint of the photo so your text pops more or to achieve a certain effect, but it's best to pull in the photo as you want it. Over is not an editing tool.

FuzelPro - This is my current favorite collage/text overlay tool. The collage layouts are super funky. You get a lot more than Diptic provides, but it can be a bigger time suck to use, so it really depends on what you want to do. FuzelPro also provides some frames and some text options (not as many as Over, though). It's like a combination of the two tools in one!

All of these apps will allow you to share to various social networks once you've finished editing.

Do you use your smartphone to take photos as you go through each day? What are some of your favourite apps?

Happy phoneography!

*****

Karen Wilson is a wife to Matt and mom to Brandon (4), who blogs about her life at Karen’s Chronicles. She can be found at Wellman Wilson, helping businesses use social media more effectively. Karen is also committed to doing her part to keep the coffee industry alive, because who needs sleep?

Pinteresting my way through summer vacation

by Lara I'm not always the most creative when it comes to finding activities for the kids.  With them home with me full time this past week I have leaned heavily on Pinterest for indoor activities.

What I love about so many of the pins is that just a photo of an activity idea is often enough for me to run with it (psa: when pinning, remember to pin to the URL to the exact post you're referring too.  Too often I click through to a front page of a site and can't find anything about what I thought I was clicking through to see).

Here a couple of the crafts we tackled this week:

Ours may or may not have turned out as nicely as those photos ;)

This particular pin has me inspired to maybe tackle a bigger project next week:

And in case you didn't know, Kids in the Capital has it's own Pinterest account where we try to share all things kids.  Come on over and join us!

Leave a comment sharing what some of your favourite kid activity pins have been lately!

Social Media Mondays: 5 keys to parenting in a digital age

by Karen

Parents who are bringing up children right now - you, me and every other one out there - are living in a time where things change so fast that some barely even find out about one innovation before something new comes along to replace it.

So, how do we raise responsible children in this age of connectedness and sharing?

I have a few ideas:

1. Moderation - I'm not a big fan of the word balance. I think it looks too different from one person to another, but moderation is easier to grasp. Having an active life online can be a hobby and/or a job and/or an obsession. Maintaining interests outside of the online world helps keep you grounded and prevents obsession. We need to teach our children how to use these tools in a healthy manner.
2. Education - Parents need to learn what's happening online and know how to use the tools. It's not uncommon for parents to be uninterested but for their kids to be heavily active. That worries me. It leaves what can be (or become) a major facet of a child's life untouched by the guidance of a parent.
3. Exposure - <rant>It bugs me that social sites have been forced by law to institute age limits - 13 and older only. As a parent, it is my job to decide what sites, when and how much my child is online.</rant> My point in that little rant is that early exposure is actually good. Let's teach children from a young age how to incorporate online tools into their lives safely and develop healthy use habits.
4. Privacy - On this subject, I could go on and on and on. If you are typing words into a device that saves or transmits data in any way, you have no guarantee of privacy. Screen captures, hard drive recoveries, ISP data - these are just some of the places where that data can be obtained. Children need to understand that what they say on any device - connected or not - matters. Choose words wisely!
5. Kindness - Also, empathy and compassion. It's far too easy to let loose online without regard for the person on the other end, but the point is that there is a person on the other end and words do hurt. The written word is a powerful thing. We need to teach our children that bullying, judgmental attitudes and meanness are not okay - online or off.

It blows my mind that my son will never know what it's like not to have some sort of computing device readily available in his life. I remember what those days were like. I remember going to the library to look up everything I needed to know to write a paper. The analog age was time-consuming, wasn't it? Personally, I don't have any desire to go back to that, though I understand why some do.

We need to embrace these changes that technology and the Internet have brought to our lives so that we can teach our kids to use the tools at their disposal properly.

What is your biggest concern for your children growing up during this time?

*****

Karen Wilson is a wife to Matt and mom to Brandon (3), who blogs about her life at Karen’s Chronicles. Most recently, she can be found at Wellman Wilson, helping business use social media more effectively.