Odds and Ends

A Picture You Don't See All The Time

After John hitting the jackpot on a penny slot machine.  It took awhile for them to show up with the cheque.  :)   Got a chuckle when they asked - "do you want cash or a cheque or a combination"  John opted for the combination.   Now to just get back that 30% they took in taxes.   Guess I'll be talking to our accountant first thing Thursday morning.

John's Visit to Pasadena

Every year John goes to a conference in the US southwest in around March.   Last year it was Palm Springs and this year it was Pasadena.   Unluckily for me because of the timing of my angiogram and getting the results we couldn't be sure that I could go along (although with the results of the angiogram it turns out I could have).   But he made sure to take lots of pictures on his free time during it and the 1/2 day he had at the end of the conference for me to see.

 Some architectural detail that got his attention.

After the conference ended he had a free afternoon before flying home the next day and used it to go see the Huntington and the Norton Simon.   He'd never been to the Huntington before but after a blogging friend (Mel) shared pictures from their visits to it last year I told him if he had a chance he might want to check it out.    We'd been to the Norton Simon before (2005) and he wanted to go back to it too so it was a full afternoon.   He ended up wishing they'd had a lot more to spend at the Huntington - good - that means when I finally get to go back to Pasadena we'll be checking it out.  :)  He ended up being sorry that he had only taken the little point and shoot (in interests of saving space & weight in his carryon) and would have loved to have had his DSLR with him to do it justice as he's just not all that used to the point and shoot.

 

These last two pictures are from the Norton Simon Museum - there are a lot more but I decided I better not share pictures from it's sculpture garden just in case that's not allowed.

 

The Answer

You're right! It is Las Vegas. We're here visiting John's brother and his wife.

Now as for the picture of the mother swan and baby - that's in the Conservatory of the Bellagio Hotel/Casino where we're staying.

Sunset last night (almost missed it).

I was lucky with this one - I peeked out the drapes when I woke up this morning (still on Eastern time)and was treated to this sight.   The moon does have a bit of a ghost but its the best I could do with no tripod.

Here's some pictures we took of the conservatory yesterday.

Some of the daily cleanup - they remove whole sections everyday and totally replace them to keep the display looking totally fresh and speaking of fresh too bad this wasn't in smell-a-vision.

A "live" picture.

 

Another Hint

The view from our room - mind you this was taken with the point & shoot as I didn't get the DSLR out of the safe at that hour.   :)   Will try to get some better shots with the DSLR especially around sunset seeing as that is west.

Oh another clue and this should cinch it for you  - I won $180. and then another $20. (yeah me) on penny slots this afternoon.  :)

 

Answer tomorrow along with some details of what I've shared.

 

A Tiny Hint About Where We Are

Any ideas?

Here's another one.

I'll say this much - the decorations here change 4 times a year - this time its done up for spring, its inside a hotel and it's quite the attraction - sometimes it's a real jam up walking around it.  

Finally Scrapping Legoland 2003

I'm going a bit slower this week on the scrapping as I had to relearn how to do a collage and life just interfered - the nerve of it.  :)  But I am finally into the California pictures. 

I've decided to break the trip album up into sections.   There are just so many pictures from the attractions/activities from that part of the trip that we really want in the album.   Each section is going to have a title page and this is the one for Legoland.  I think this is the last digital page till I get to the next section.  In 2003 we were just starting to take digital pictures with my little point & shoot and still had the SLR so a lot of the pictures aren't digital that we'd like in there.   

Credits:  Red paper is from Anna Aspnes of Designerdigitals.com kit that she shared in Ali Edwards Yesterday and Today class.  The yellow is from Maurine Stettler of Let me Scrapbook Designs at Scrapbook Studio from the Fiesta Blog Hop. 

 Not sure if going with the lego colours was a good idea or not.

We had a super time there and spent way more time than we thought we would  - it's not just for kids as our friends Gigi & Darrell who were our unofficial guides told us.

 

Change in Yesterday's Layout

I found just what I'd been looking for this morning for the layout I shared yesterday.   I finally did a search on digital scrapbooking construction and came up with the Scrap Orchard site.  It had exactly what I wanted.   I knew it had to be there somewhere.  :)   So here is the revised layout.

Paper is from Lifesong Kreations by Karla, World Traveler kit  and the construction signs are from the Under Construction collaboration kit by Laura Banasiak and Suzy Q Scraps at Scrap Orchard.

Still simple but a little less so today.   Ok - on to Legoland.

Yesterday and Today

This has nothing to do with the Yesterday & Today course but is about what I've been doing yesterday and today.  The past couple of days have been busy - some of it by choice and some of it not.  I could have done without the not part - more on that later.  :)

Sunday I started working on one of those layouts where there are no pictures and trying to come up with something to put on it has been stumping me.  I just didn't seem to have anything in my digi stash that was calling out to me to use on it.  So.... yesterday I spent a good portion of the day looking for new digi supplies that might be travel, especially road trip, related.   I found some on ScrapGirls and have spent a lot of the time downloading the zip files (talk about slow).   Next step unzip them all and look for something that just might work on this page.

Paper is from Lifesong Kreations by Karla, World Traveler kit that I flipped (so the steering wheel was on the North American side of the car).  

So far I'm coming up blank but ....   Anyone have any suggestion as to what to use or a good digi site with road trip type embellishments etc.?

Ok, for the not part.   While I was working away on this I had my readers on with my regular glasses sitting beside me on the desk.  I reached past them to answer the phone & knocked them on the floor.  Now this is where it gets fun - Not!   Well not then anyway.   I couldn't see where they'd landed but checked around the wheels of my chair and they weren't there so I thought I'd carefully back up and have a better view of where they might be.   That is until I heard crunch as I put my heels down (I usually sit with my toes on the floor but not my heels).  Ok, found my spares (one prescription ago) and off to the Optometrist I went where the assistant fixed the bent nose piece for me.   Great.   That is until about an hour later when I got an intense pain in one eye, a sure sign that the bifocal part must be out of alignment.  Back to the spares and after a quick call was told to come back in today when my Optometrist would be in and she would fix that part. 

Todayit was back to the Optometrist who hopefully has fixed those glasses for good :) and then on to what I really had planned to do.   Namely get the winter tires put on my vehicle (possibility of snow tomorrow some time so we want to be ready), have a much delayed chai latte & chat with my school days friend while I was over in her city (right next door to ours) and download more of those ScrapGirls files while I had some time.  If i can't come up with an idea for that page it's just going to stay the way it is and I'll move on to Legoland in California. I bought some neat lego type paper from Paper Wizard years ago to use on those layouts and I'm just dying to get at them.

On a Scrapping Tear

After weeks of seemingly nothing in the way of my own scrapping, yesterday I managed 3 layouts - definitely a scrapping tear for me.  :)   They are all really simple but done and they finish up the Las Vegas part of our 2003 trip.   Now on to the Southern California part.  It feels really good finishing that part up.  It's hung over my head for months, once I finally started working on that album.   I'm actually glad that I waited this long though as before I would have been trying to scrap every little picture and now I know I don't need to (thanks to taking Stacy Julian's LOM class last year & Finding Photo Freedom this past year at Big Picture Classes - even if I didn't finish them). 

Here's the 2 layouts that I didn't share in yesterday's post.    They are both using templates that I got on my massive Biograffiti purchase of the other day.

Kraft paper - Cre8 kit from a Jessica Sprague class I took, red paper from Nadi Designs from the Jessica Sprague blog party of November 2010.

These were the only 2 decent pictures we have from that night but we have super video of it.  :)

Kraft paper is again from the Cre8 kit as the one above and the red this time is from Mary Ann Wise waterpapers (I have no other info as that's part of the picasa file that was lost, although I think it was from 2Peas).

We've seen the pirate show many times but this was the first time we were there with a digital camera and our video camera and really wanted to get some pictures/video of it.  Mother Nature though decided otherwise - every time we went to see it they had to call it off because the winds were just high enough to make it dangerous for the performers.  It was our last chance to see it as they announced while we were there that they were replacing it with a Sirens show.

Looking forward to starting the Southern California portion of the album this week, hopefully today.

Was There A Full Moon Last Night?

Right now I'm in the midst of re-creating my Picasa file of all my digi supplies.  UGH.   All the information was there on Thursday but when I opened it up this morning there was absolutely nothing.   Now of course its backed up so I thought no problem.  Wrong!   The external HD that the backup is on for some reason is not working.   My computer is not recognizing it at all.  Everything on there had keywords applied to them (whether it was cardstock, patterned paper, colour, where I got it, etc.) so that it was easy for me to find things and also credit where I got it from.  Well it seems as it is being recreated a lot of that is missing.   I'm just hoping that maybe I can get that HD to work on J's laptop and then sit & copy it onto mine.  That sounds like way too much work.   It's beyond me why the file disappeared since Thursday.  Ok enough of that. 

The whole reason I was wanting to use the Picasa file was I actually was scrapbooking this morning.  With what's been going on with me lately I've realized the importance of getting this backlog of scrapping done.  So I've gone back to an album I had started months ago - maybe even last year.   It's of a trip we took in April/May 2003 to Las Vegas & Southern California.   I've decided that what this album is going to need is the KISS method.    So Thursday I went through my 2003 Storage Binder (a Library of Memories/Photo Freedom thing) and pulled pictures for 3 layouts.   The first one is now done -  it's of the gardens in behind the Flamingo Hilton where some friends of ours were staying (they'd come down from their home up by Lake Tahoe to surprise us).   It was unreal in the gardens - they actually had flamingos (of course) and penguins - in the desert!   Made me wonder - what do they do with them in the horrendous heat of the Las Vegas summers.

Template is from Biograffiti - Focus, background paper is from the Cre8-Mini kit I got from a Jessica Sprague class (sorry that one is one where the info is missing but at least I've got that much).

Speaking of Biograffiti, I went nuts yesterday and bought tons of her templates.   She's going out of business and everything is on sale at her store for $25.00 total until the 16th of this month.  You can find out more about the sale at Oscraps.