Though at night we may be tired because of his colic, we are treasuring every moment with our little prince. Every day I get out for a long walk with him and get to watch him as he discovers the world a little more each day. It’s amazing to see everything from the perspective of a parent.

I hope 2009 has brought some measure of joy to each and every one of you!

Here also is our birth announcement card, which was also just completed in time for Christmas. Both cards were created with Little Star Greetings.

Credit: miss604

At the Tsawwassen BC Ferries terminal, we met up with a tour guide who took us through the Market where we all stopped for some much-needed coffee (at the Salt Spring Coffee stand, not the Starbucks one, of course. Mmm, mocha).

We were supposed to be sailing on one of the new Coastal ferries, but the schedules were flipped and we ended up instead on the Spirit of British Columbia. I don’t know if it’s because this is a Victoria-bound ship, but it’s not a class of ship that I’d known in my many years of traveling to-and-from Vancouver Island (way back when I used to live in Courtenay). Our itinerary had us down for a “buffet lunch” and I was pretty curious about that – were they going to put us in a private room, or what? To my surprise, I found out that several BC Ferries ships now have a special Pacific Buffet, in addition to the normal cafeteria area and snack bar. We sat down to a lovely brunch before heading out for a “BC Ferries Photowalk”, even catching a brief glimpse of some whales. Ianiv even had a little Marilyn Monroe moment. Cute.

On our way back from Victoria today, I also had a new experience – the Seawest Lounge. For those of you who spent endless hours sitting in noisy areas trying to read… it’s like a lovely little haven. The lounge, which you have to pay to go into, sits at the rear of the ship. There are sections with tables as well as a series of chairs that recline a bit (picture me there with my feet propped up on my suitcase). There’s also some pastries, coffee and things of that sort to munch on. A very relaxing place to be after a long weekend of activities!!

After we got to Victoria, we boarded another bus and headed to a Cider farm… more on that in another post!!

Check out the full set here.

Tonight Rebecca (miss604) and I are sitting up in the press booth for online media with a bird’s eye view of the performance at GM place. We’ll both be liveblogging – me here in this post, and Rebecca here. The eTalk red carpet event has already started and the stadium is slowly filling up. CTV will be broadcasting the event live in BC starting at 5pm and one-hour delayed across the country.

Performances tonight include Sarah McLachlan, Bryan Adams, Serena Ryder and more. Stay tuned for updates!

4:54PM – The crowd is getting psyched for the Junos The stadium is almost full.

5:00pm – Nickelback kicks off the Junos with a bang. Literally. The place fills with fireworks, smoke and a bang as they begin singing “Something in Your Mouth”. The crowd goes wild, the place just alive with camera flashes. And the set ends with a swash of flame.

5:05pm – host Russell Peters takes the stage doing a couple of dance numbers, including some awkward break dancing.

“Seriously folks, I know this is Vancouver. But what’s with the grow op on stage?”

It’s true, the stage is a mix of industrial with the lush greenery in trippy colors, a hint to Vancouver’s “other” reputation. Russell takes some time to greet some of the stars, from Bryan Adams to Divine Brown, whom he gropes over a bit.

5:10 – KD Lang and Buffy Sainte-Marie present the award for Songwriter of the Year. And the winner is… Dallas Green! His thanks go out to everyone “who has ever tried to write their own song.”

5:15 – Sam Roberts Band, winners last night of Rock Album of the Year, take the stage to perform “Them Kids.” Video:

5:20 – Hedley take the stage to present for Group of the Year. And the award goes to Nickelback! Too bad for Great Big Sea, but I’m glad they took the time to thank the fans and thank Vancouver. ;)

5:25 – There’s a brief about the Gala Night winners, then we move on to presenters Deborah Cox, Sarah Slean and Kreesha Turner who are presenting Rap Recording of the Year. The winners are Kardinal Offishall, who also won Single of the Year last night.

5:30 – Sarah McLachlan takes the stage to sing “U Want Me 2″ and looks phenomenal! Just stunning in her cascading dress. Fantastic.

Check out the video of Sarah:

5:40 – Russell Peters and Michael Buble have a cute comedy sketch back stage. But it’s a pretense to introduce the Honourable James Moore, Elise Estrada and Aaron Pritchett who are presenting New Artist of the Year. And the Juno goes to – Lights!!

“I didn’t get into this to win awards. I got into this to write music… it’s really great to be recognized on such a massive scale.”

5:45 – The Stills are performing “Being Here”. It’s a performance without too much in the way of showy things, but it was a strong set.

5:52 – after another look at some of the winners from the Gala Awards Night, we move on to another performance by City and Color (Juno Winner Dallas Green) and Gord Downie. They’re performing “Sleeping Sickness”. Fantastic job!!

5:58 – Bob Rock takes the stage to induct Loverboy to the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. There’s a video presentation about their success then the 4 band members take the stage.

“Wow… home town. Home country. Canada! Never to be forgotten.”

Saying thanks in English and in French, the band gets a little more time on stage for each of them to say their thanks.

“We still get to play these songs 30 years later, and that’s something”

They also pay tribute to their bass player, Scott Smith, who died in a boating accident in 2006.

6:12 – Crystal Shawanda performs “You Can Let Go” with a grand piano, followed by Divine Brown singing “One More Chance” with a strings section and Serena Ryder picks up the pace with her guitar for “Little Bit of Red”. I love her – she’s been my favorite artist in person for 2 years running. So cute.

6:19 – Tara Oram, Nikki Yanofsky, and Pepsi Super Fan Ali Furgala present the Juno Fan Choice Award to… Nickelback!

“This is a good one… this is the one for us… this is why we still don’t have a real job. All because of the fans. Thanks very much!”

6:26 – Musicounts PSA. We learned last night that this program is in need of greater support, it may be only renewed for 2 more years!

6:30 – Simple Plan perform their hit “Your Love is a Lie” to a very satisfied crowd. They worked it! They headed out to the crowd, singing to the fans, shaking hands, going all over the stage for their performance. What a job!

6:35 – Russell Peters goes into the crowd to talk to some sports stars. As a means to introduce Melissa Hollingsworth & Jeremy Wotherspoon, who in turn introduce Bryan Adams!! Bryan sings “Walk on By” with Kathleen Edwards. Amazing!!! Their voices together are like silk.

6:43 – Feist and Jim Cuddy take the stage to present for Artist of the Year. Tough competition! But it goes to Sam Roberts!!

6:50 – Elvis Costello and Diana Krall take the stage to present for Album of the Year. What a lineup for that one! But in the end, only one group can win… and it’s again, Nickelback!

Mom gets thanked first this time around, “I have to thank my Mom… for giving birth to half the band,” its joked. Oooh, and the shut-up music cuts off their thanks.

6:55 – Great Big Sea take the stage to close out the swho with their performance of “Gallows Pole” along with Workman & Eccodek. It’s a fantastic set, lots of drumming and movement on stage.

6:59 – Russell Peters appears briefly to close the show, then Great Big Sea return to close out the credits. Tune in next year as the Junos head to St. John’s Newfoundland & Labrador.

Hope you enjoyed the show & the live blog!!

Sunset taken from Lonsdale Quay. Not as nice as the one we had a few days ago, but beats the grey sky we have now. 7 shots.

Around the same time as the sunset above, looking north. You can see the new watefront development. 5 shots.

And last, a dreidel. Hannukah is coming up and I saw this little guy on my bookshelf so I decided to take a couple of shots.

And so now I will tag six others for the meme: Raul, Jeanne, Rebecca, Peter, Duane and Tod.

Today we got back our first coffee-table style photo book that was created using our honeymoon photos using the Blurb software (free software). We started off with something like 1600 photos from our nearly month-long trip to Europe 2 years ago for our honeymoon (yes, I get camera happy!)

We have nearly 15,000 images on Flickr and have only ever physically printed just our photos from Barcelona last year. We rather suck at the non-digital step. So, I decided to mix the technology in to make it easier. I’m not sure it was necessarily easier to use Blurb to create the photobook, but the end result was something I couldn’t have achieved with just printing photos. Here’s a shot of the software:

In the end, we have a 160-page book featuring about 450 images from our honeymoon. Some of those images are full page, some arranged into quadrants, and some mixed into patterns. There were lots of templates in the Blurb software to create various layouts. The cover I chose is basically a sticker-type thing that goes over the fabric, instead of the jacket (though the latter has the advantage of jacket flaps).

I chose to keep this book just about the images. It was too overwhelming with so many images to choose from to think about putting in a story as well. I had something pretty written for the flaps, but didn’t realize there would be no flaps with this cover style. Kind of a bummer on that.

I will definitely be exploring this in future, and would like to create books with more full-page photos, with text, and perhaps with black backgrounds instead of the white. We had no idea what to expect from the first try, but were quite pleased by it!

The price was just over $100 plus shipping for the book – not bad considering how many photos there are and that they are full bleed, and many at a large size. The quality was pretty good, with only slightly less vibrant colors than the real photos.

You can apply local adjustments in two different ways. One is the Adjustment Brush, which lets you paint a mask over the image to select where you want to make changes. You have full control over the shape of the brush and the Auto Mask feature makes selecting just the right areas very easy. The other way is to use graduated filters which create a gradient mask over the image, which makes it simple to select large areas.

To try these out I used a photo of a leaf floating in the water I took in Deep Cove.

Before: These is the image using the default settings, pretty flat.

After: I used two graduated filters to darken the top and bottom of the image and a mask over the leaf to increase saturation and sharpnesss. I also cropped the image a bit to move the leaf toward the bottom right corner.

These changes make the eye wander a bit more towards the leaf, which now pops out a lot more. And the graduated filters helped get rid of some of the flatness of the original image.

While I was there I took photos with my iPhone to put together a short photo diary. This trip was very difficult, stressful and full of emotions. With these photos I try to share some of that with you.

The best way of viewing this is with the Flickr slideshow, making sure descriptions are turned on: http://flickr.com/photos/ianivarieanna/sets/72157608818262497/show/.

You can also see them in the set here.

The celebration marks the end of the year, with a series of colorful processions through the Commercial neighbourhoods. Thousands of Vancouverites dress up to come participate in the festival – to walk the parade, dance in the streets, view the fire dancers or listen to the ghostly bands.

This was our second year visiting the parade, and it was the perfect night for it!

You can view the entire photo set here.