Odds and Ends

What a Year It's Been So Far

It's been a very busy start to the year here, one which I think I'd like a chance to have a re-do on. For some reason I went nuts signing up for on-line courses although I must say some of them are for the entire year while I've got 3 that are basically just the month of January. The ones I've signed up for that are basically just January (and it's already the 13th) are "Get Great Photos with Any Camera" with Elisha Snow at Big Picture Classes, "Digital Art Journaling" with Jessica Sprague and "Just One Sketch" with Kirsty from the Curiouser and Curiouser blog. I started out with the best of intentions to be pretty close to up to date on these 3 but life has thrown a clinker in there.

Last Thursday night I came down with a pain and we thought it might be my gall bladder so off to Emerg I went on Friday morning - 5 1/2 hours later, after blood tests, numerous x-rays and an ultrasound there was no diagnosis other than it was not my gall bladder (or heart related for that matter). The Dr. in Emerg said it could possibly be muscle related or shingles but there was no other symptom other than the pain.

Saturday we spent un-decorating (is that really a word?) the tree. But before we did that we took some pictures. John had fun (not) trying to figure out how to use the tripod with his new camera (well it's not really new anymore but he hadn't used the tripod with it yet). Finally he got it figured out and we were able to get some pictures.

The next morning we were off to the Walk-In Clinic as a rash had appeared - which meant the pain was being caused by shingles.  Wonderful.  Two & a half hours later I had my confirmed diagnosis and a prescription for an anti-viral and another medication that I just wasn't sure about.   I decided that I'd try & see my own Dr in the morning and not take the the other med in the meantime.   Sure enough as soon as she saw it she told me not to take it and instead gave me one for Tylenol 3. 

The rest of the week has been taken up with working on my Project Life Week 1 (will share in another post shortly) and taking meds which tend to make me pretty drowsy - hence no course stuff getting done.   I'm hoping today I manage to get somethings actually done on them.

LSNED Day 1

If you read yesterday's post you will have noticed that I had put my scrapbooking tool kit in a safe place that was so safe I couldn't find it.  :)  But I found it this morning. I'd put it away in a drawer in the dresser. Of course I remembered that in the middle of the night. :) So with my basic tools (knife, scissors, tape etc) I could finally get to work on doing the first layout for my first LSNED album. I've got a 6x6 album that hadn't been used for anything else so I thought - why not use it and with it being September, I decided to have a fall look running throughout the album but now I'm thinking hmmmm  not sure if I like that idea. I think that is because I need to get out and get more stash (embellishment-wise that is). Although if I totally finished organizing all the "stuff" I do have I might have a better idea of what I have. :)

This is the layout for September 1 when I discovered what happens to me when I totally skip breakfast.

The colours aren't quite true - everything is much brighter than how they came out in the picture.   I think I'm having the same problem Sian was having - different light in September than during the summer so I'll need to find someplace else to take the layout pictures..

Leaf punches are I think Martha Stewart - they don't say but I'm pretty sure that's where I got them from and they are punched from scraps that I had so don't know whose papers they were.   The tag and background paper are both from  a Deja Views Sharon Ann collection called Home for the Harvest that I've had for eons.
 
It's pretty KISS (keep it simple stupid) as a friend of mine would have said.

Learn Something New Every Day

Shimelle (of shimelle.com) has a class running this month called Learn Something New Every Day that I decided to sign up for. Evidently she runs it every September but this is the first time I've taken it.

I haven't decided yet what format my scrapbooking for it will take but I have been writing things down every day, except for last Friday and Saturday when for the life of me I know I learned something but can't remember what. Hopefully they will come back to me. Most of the stuff is pretty mundane and some of it is re-learning but there is the odd really good thing.

We're now almost at the end of the second week and I thought maybe I better post about how things are going with LSNED. So here's how the first week went.

The month started out with me learning how vitally important it is that I have breakfast. Now that doesn't sound like a big thing but since I've recently been diagnosed as being pre-diabetic it is. I discovered this while driving home from the grocery store when all of a sudden I was having issues with my eyesight - not a good thing when you're driving. Luckily nothing happened and I got home safe & sound.

Day 3 found me finally learning what a hashtag was. I kept hearing the term and finally decided to find out what it was. I also found out, klutz that I am, that I need to wear shoes in my scrapping room after painfully stubbing toes on both feet on the feet of my chair. DUH!

Day 4 had me relearning that I need to come up with a system to know just exactly what is in the spare fridge after discovering strawberries in there that one of us had put there. By the time I found them they were fit for the compost bin. Lesson learned!

Day 5 had me discovering that I really need to keep up with class prompts and handouts after discovering purely accidentally that I'd missed out on some digital templates in last year's Library of Memories class I took. They're no longer available so I now know to at least read the prompts everyday that they come out so that I don't miss out on anything else.

On day 6 I learned that until the car dealership service department finally figures out what is wrong with the Mustang and the vibration at highway speed that I better not make plans for the day until the last minute as they are tending to get changed so that I can take it in yet again.

Day 7 was one of the super mundane things - I learned of a quicker way of getting to the car dealership. Pretty lame but I didn't know of it before. :)

After writing this I came up with an idea of how I wanted to do my scrapbooking for it and immediately set to work - oh oh - where is my tool box? The last time I saw it was when the kiddos were coming to visit and I put it away someplace safe so that they couldn't get hurt if they came across it. Now to just remember where the someplace safe is. :)

 

The Best Laid Plans

Talk about your plans for the day going out the window.  Yesterday was one for the books.   Why can't you get better time estimates when you're having work done?  I knew I had to take the Camry in for the usual stuff plus a look at the brakes (they were feeling kind of mushy) and it's emission test (so we can get the license sticker for 2012).  So  I made plans about what I could do to kill the time.   I took the laptop over with me as I figured I could work on organizing 2010's & 2011's pictures while I waited to meet my friend from school days at 10.   I was told it shouldn't take any longer than 2 hours so I figured I'd leave the power cable at home - Note to self:  Don't do that ever again.  I did also take my Kindle (more about that later).  The plan was to work away on the laptop till either the car was ready or they gave me a ride over to meet Janie at Starbucks at 10.  Somewhere in there I needed to go to Costco too to pick up some 12x12 prints I'd had printed of digital layouts that I had never printed off.

Nine forty-five comes along and I can see that the car is still up on the hoist and I can also see that I have hardly any battery life left on the laptop.  Hmmm, after a chat with them where I was told they needed 45 minutes to one more hour they gave me a ride over to Starbucks.   Janie and I had a great visit over our favourite Starbucks drinks (Tazo Chai for me) and she drove me back there at 11:45 (so they've had 2 hours extra at this point right?).  The car by their estimation should be done.   Whats this - I don't see it out in any of the parking spots.  I'm thinking Oh Oh.  I walked in and get "Its not finished.  Its taking longer than we thought.  We'll need another 45 minutes."  Whats with that?    Seeing as they are in the next town to where I live it's pretty senseless having them take me home and just a few minutes later come back and bring me back.  Ok, I did have stuff I needed to do but I'll make the best of it and read my Kindle.  I open it up and theres a screen staring me in the face telling me it needs charging and you've got it - the charger is at home.  ARGH!  

One hour later and finally the car is ready.   With my one very quick stop at Costco (less than 5 minutes away from them) I got home at 1:45  Almost 2 hours later than I had expected.   And I still had to have lunch.  Needless to say I was not impressed and I made sure the owner who we've known for decades knew I wasn't impressed.  He was actually quite shocked that the car or should I say his mechanic took that long.  If they had given me a better idea of the time initially I would have had them bring me home and got some work done for the kids' visit this coming week.  They've always been so good before at time estimates but this time was the pits.  :)

I decided after all that I needed some scrapbooking time.  Any excuse right and I think you need something to look at after reading about my morning yesterday.  Last night, I shared with you my version of the colour assignment for DYL (Design Your Life).  I decided it really needed another page to go along with it and this morning I managed to finish it off after flipping the template, reducing the size of the journaling block and putting in another picture.  I'm pretty happy with it except it shows my wonky big toe that I broke years ago (that's another story all together).  :)   I wasn't sure though, seeing as week one was about symmetry, if I needed to have a circle on the right page to match the left one but I don't think so as I think the bones of the layouts are symmetrical without doing that.  What do you think?  Does it need the extra circle for balance?

 
Here's the complete 2 page layout and I'm happy to say I've got something done from 2005.  :)  Supplies:Template - Cathy Zielske, Papers - blue -Jessica Sprague Beautiful You Kit, red - same kit, cream - Katie Pertiet of Designer Digitals Vintage Blooms kit, beige Jessica Sprague Grand Intentions kit. Date Stamp from The Voyager Collection at Digital Scrapbook Page by Kristmess, Ring on the far right are  from Flutter Expressions at scrappity-do-dah and the Believe in Miracles kit, the font is Tahoma for both title & journaling.

 

Toe Rings and Week 1 Colour Assignment

Evidently every week of DYL there is an assignment to do with colour and this was my first one.  Cathy gave us a colour scheme to work with but it just wasn't me so instead I took the colour scheme from an ad I'd always liked the looks of.   The colours were blue, cream, beige(brown) and red. Nothing to do with what it was an ad for (I think Citi Bank) just that I liked the colour scheme in it.  The template was for 8 1/2 x 11 page and I really have problems with that - I've always done 12x12 right from day one.

Back in April's Story Telling Time I shared part of the story of my toe rings.   Well today I did part of the layout for it for my colour assignment.   I will be doing a right hand side page to go along with it once I figure out how to adapt the template.  :)

 Papers - blue -Jessica Sprague Beautiful You Kit, red - same kit, cream - Katie Pertiet of Designer Digitals Vintage Blooms kit, beige Jessica Sprague Grand Intentions kit.  Date Stamp from The Voyager Collection at Digital Scrapbook Page by Kristmess, font is Tahoma for both title & journaling.

I'm going to pretty scarce probably for the next few days.  My niece is coming down next Thursday and bringing P-Man (4 1/2) and Miss M (19 1/2 months) and our house is definitely not toddler/small child proof so guess what I'm going to be doing.  :)  

 

Yesterday Was One of Those Days

It started well and then slowly became very aggravating and all because of one thing - my 12x12 photo printer or maybe it was me. 

The day started with me finishing the second assignment of week one in the Design Your Life workshop.  I did this one totally digitally.   I know summer really doesn't end for over a month from now but parts of the garden are finishing up while the fall stuff is starting to come on so I thought I'd do a layout of some of our favourite perennials we've planted over the years.  So following Cathy's template for the assignment I came up with this.

The journaling reads  When we started our gardens back in 1987 we were mainly into annuals but gradually we’ve learned that it’s much less work if we replace them with perennials plus then we seem to have more flowers throughout the season.  These are our most favourite ones we’ve had over the years.  sadly squirrels and such have done away with some of them though.                     

Supplies:  Template from Cathy Zielske, Kraft paper from Jessica Sprague's Digi in Deep Class Week 1 Cre8 mini kit, title font is Brush Script and the journaling font is Courier New.   The black around it is just a frame I added when I placed it on here.

It's a double page 8 1/2 x 11 layout and I've never really done that size before so it felt really weird.  I picked the green for the journaling block by using the eyedropper in PSE8 on that little bud just to the right of the columbine.

Here's where it started to get aggravating.   I decided to print it off to put in my album of class assignments.  That worked ok so I thought  I bet I've got a bunch of 12x12 digi pages that I haven't printed off yet so while I'm at it I may as well print them off too.  HAH!  Not!  I put the 12x12 paper in, picked all the options for printing including borderless.  So what do I get one side with no border, 2 sides with 1/8 inch borders and 1 side with 1/4 inch border.  Of course leaving off parts of the layout like part of the title etc.    OK, let's go back and try this again.   Maybe I did something wrong.  Nope - it came out the same.  After many attempts at trying different things I decided maybe I should just check the manual - ok so I was using the wrong feed for it.  I changed that, sent it through again and got the same thing!  It was just so aggravating.   I went in and did an update of the software and driver, changed to different software for the printing and no matter what I did - the same thing happened.

This morning I thought ok, enough of this I'm writing an e-mail to Epson Support and see what they say.   Just before I went to do that I discovered something, I'm using old supply and even though it says fits 12x12 it gives the measurements as 11.6 x 11.6   ARGH!  Wish I'd seen that yesterday.   I've now quickly checked the 2 new packages of it and am relieved to see they are bigger and they say Exact 12"x12".    Keeping fingers crossed.  Maybe I should have just sent them to Costco for printing.  :)

I Don't Believe It - Two Layouts in Two Days

I finished the first assignment of the first week of the Design Your Life course see yesterday's post and this one.   The subject for this week is balance and symmetry.  This was from a sketch that Cathy Zielske, the instructor, gave us to work from.   I'm thinking that I'll be switching over to doing it digitally unless I find a couple of my tools that will make it easier to line things up.  This one took a lot of fidgeting around with trying to get everything in just the right place.  I think everyone will recognize my subject but some might be confused by my title.   I decided to go for it's shorter name (as in Palace of Westminster) just to fit in there.  :)  Look at the wonderful weather we had - it was so good I actually got a sunburn.   This was June of 2008 just before our Baltic Cruise when we had 4 days in London.  It was my one and only time to Great Britain and I most definitely want to go back.

 
 Supplies were the sketch from Cathy Zielske, kraft paper from Recollections, the journaling paper is a scrap I had so have no idea what it's from, blue paper is from Keeping Memories Alive (glad they put their name on the back or I'd be lost as to where it came from too), the font for the title is Freestyle Script while the journaling font is Bradley Hand. 

I discovered something while doing this - I need to figure out how to print more than one picture on a piece of photo paper - talk about waste!

By the way that little silvery rectangle in the bottom left of the picture is the viewfinder from the camera my Dad carried throughout World War II.  One of the things of his that I treasure. 
 
 

Pre-Class Assignment - Design Your Life

I mentioned the other day that I've signed up for a class at Big Picture Classes.   It's a self-paced one as I unfortunately missed it when they ran it as an instructor led class but then again this way I can do it at my own speed.  The one thing I wish there was is some feedback even from others taking the class.   It's called Design Your Life and is given by Cathy Zielske.

We were given the template by Cathy along with the centre square and were to do a layout about what we love about scrapbooking.   I decided to do a why and what I scrapbook layout.   The pictures are top right the 2 of us, bottom centre my sister and her husband and left centre my parent's wedding picture.

I decided to use up some old supplies (including stickers).  Some things I have no idea where they came from as I wasn't good about keeping track of that in those days but I do know there is some Creative Memories in there (the smaller squares of paper and the Memories sticker), some K&Company (the camera sticker) and some DejaViews (the family rub-on).

The top left is hard to see in the layout picture so...

 
I was finding it hard to line up the letters and have them all fit on there so I decided to stagger them instead.  If I remember right I used to have a tool that helped me line them up.  Heaven only knows where it has got to.   I think we need to progress on getting my scrapbooking room done so I can find things.  :)

The square with the tree on it stands for our family histories/geneaology.  I'm not sure if I'm really liking this.  Maybe I should have done it digital instead.
 

Well That Week Slipped Right On By Me

I’ve been busy doing various things this week and before I knew it bingo – it was Saturday. 

I registered for Candice Stringham’s “Oh Shoot Digital Photography” at Jessicasprague.com and we’ve just finished up the second week of it.  Between the classes, the daily e-mails, the assignments, the gallery and her twice weekly chat sessions it’s been busy.   So far we’ve discussed shutter speed and apertures in the class sessions.  Our first assignment was to take pictures that showed speed in one and then the same subject were the action was frozen.   Practically everybody seems to have small children but the option of using children in the pictures wasn’t open to me so…. I came up with this idea, well actually J is the one who suggested it.  Here’s what I submitted for my first assignment.

 
  

The neighbours must have thought we were nuts with J driving up and down the street as I snapped away when he went past. 

This past week’s assignment was to take 2 pictures where in one the background was blurred and the other where it wasn’t – again of the same thing.  I decided to take pictures of one of our peonies in bud.

 
  

Next week we go on to manual – that should be interesting.

In the midst of all that, Stacy Julian’s (Big Picture Classes) redo of Library of Memories now called Photo Freedom started up and as someone who had taken LOM I was entitled to take it for free I jumped right in on that.  It started Thursday so now I’m busy with that too – why do I seem to take more than one course at a time?  ARGH! 

So what else has kept me busy – decluttering and organizing.  Following Mel’s idea on decluttering – do something every day – I’ve been busy getting rid of old clothes.

 
 
Two bags went out to the Canadian Diabetes clothesline drive on Tuesday.  I hope someone can use the 7 pairs of jeans, 1 pair of slacks, 3 blouses, 1 suit, 1 blazer and would you believe – my going away outfit.   Boy was I ever shocked when I saw the size of the waist on that.  It was tiny compared to what it’s like now.  I’ve also got rid of numerous magazines and crossword/sudoku books that were finished (don’t know why they were still hanging around), boxes and manuals, etc. for things we don’t even have anymore.    We’ve got the old computer equipment that we’re getting rid of nicely put aside waiting for the town’s electronics drop-off day and I’m working away at an ad to place in the local paper for some items that I want to sell – like my Grandmother’s wardrobe I shared about the other day.

As for the organizing – I’ve been trying to organize my digital scrapbooking supplies in Picasa and that is a chore all on it’s own.  It seems like whenever I sit down at the computer I’m busy putting tags on everything so if I want say a patterned mainly red paper I’ll quickly be able to call up all the ones I have and so on.  So far I am only up to the C’s in that.   I’m making sure I also tag everything with where I got it from and who the designer is so that I can give credit when I share anything I make with them.   I should have been doing this all along but…..  I think this Picasa file is going to rapidly take up space on my new 1.5TB external hard drive. 

 
 And now what am I on to today – thinking about what story I’m going to share tomorrow for Sian’s Storytelling Sunday. Please come on over and check us out tomorrow sometime.

Oh Shoot Class at Jessica Sprague

Earlier this month I registered for Candice Stringham’s  “Oh Shoot! Beginning Digital SLR Photography” course over at Jessicasprague.com.    It started this past Monday so I’ve put my digi “Up & Running” class on hold at least for this week so that I can concentrate on the photography course.  Yep that’s me.  Nothing like taking 2 classes at the same time but at least the “Up & Running” one is self-paced so I can do it whenever I have some time or whenever I make the time. 

As  part of the class Candice suggested we get a 50mm 1.2, 1.4 or 1.8 lens.   After checking out the prices, I decided to go with the 1.8.  The 1.4 was almost triple the price of it and the 1.2 was out of sight for me.  I’m anxious to get going on practicing with it and doing this week’s assignment, but first I have to find something moving.  It seems most people are using their kids for that – running, jumping, swinging, etc. but I don’t have that option.  J has suggested that he drive by the house a few times and I take pictures at different shutter speeds of the car going by.   Oh I forgot to mention the topic this week is shutter speeds. 

I have taken a few pictures with the new lens on the old DSLR (Canon Rebel XT) and as soon as the battery is charged for J’s Canon 60D I’ll be using it for the class.

For a bit of a contrast here are 3 pictures I took of J – one with the 18-55mm lens that we got with the camera and two with the new 50mm lens at different shutter speeds.

 
 18-55mm lens, 55mm, shutter speed 1/60, aperture 5.6, ISO 400

 
 50mm lens, shutter speed 1/30, aperture 5.0, ISO 100

 
 50mm lens, shutter speed 1/125, aperture 2.5, ISO 100

Guess for a true comparison I should have taken one at a shutter speed of 1/60 but I’m thinking both of the pictures of J with the new lens are a lot sharper than with the “kit” lens and the background more blurred.  What do you think?  All in all so far I'm pleased with the new lens and it's nice and light and small for travelling.

 BTW, can you tell J doesn’t really like posing for pictures?  He'd much rather be behind the camera.